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Island Blog – Go for it…. The Green Light for Risk

Pre 1974 the British never said this, the Go for it bit. In fact, and I remember well, there was none of that wild nonsense. In fact there was far more Don’t you dare go for it, for girls anyway. And It was never going to change. Breaking out was a big risk. Many did and I admire them. But I am not talking about historicalness, more about cooking and about the way I cooked for all those years without a clue. I had musical talent, I knew that. I was a creative, I knew that. I had one recipe book. I knew that too. It was the birthing of 1980 on an island in the wilds of wilderness with shitfaced gales and striated rocks upholding the peripheries and intense freezing cold and no fricking fires in the homestead, or none that would stay alight without bellows and a load of swearing. About floors so cold it was impossible to walk without boots on, about ice in the threadbare spouts of carpet. I remember them. Going up to bed, a mile of stairway, I saw those ice spouts glint in the moonlight. They did smile me even though they solved not one of my problems.

I remember the mile long stairway.

There were times I walked up and times I walked down. On each journey, mostly, I conversationed myself. I knew steps to be an opportunity for change. I hate this, I am cold way beyond my bones, I want out. I am ready, I can do this, How many pack lunches today, how many dinner guests, how many knocks on the door to say Here’s a lamb. That’s the only one that angered me.

Positioned before the big blue aga, I found inventions. Each evening from April to October, we worked together. She was testy, up and down with the blow of the switchy winds, puffing out and pulling in, but we got to know each other. She helped me produce a load of made up recipes, the go for it green light strong in me as I pulled back from a book recipe thinking no, not enough lemon, garlic, whatever. Guests were happy, effusive, booked for next year. I cooked intuitively, and as I grew more confident and less doubting, I became courageous and a good cook. However, it wasn’t just in cooking that my intuition served me well. When the next disaster arrived I trusted my quick decision making and took action. Oh, I am not saying I didn’t doubt myself because I always did, and nor am I saying that I was always right because I absolutely was not, but it seemed to me to be the only way I could operate. Unlike many who spend a long time thinking things through, something I wish I could do even occasionally, I jumped in the deep end immediately as if I was the only one who could save the day. This is obviously ridiculous. There are many things which do require a lot of thinking through and those things were undoubtedly startled at being brought firmly to a conclusion they had neither expected, nor needed, but I would have missed their startlement completely. Where did this not-thinking-through gene come from, I wonder? When I do force myself to think for more than a few seconds about a problem, my mind wanders off in any number of irrelevant directions. I try to pull it back but this wild horse is determined to bolt. Perhaps my brain was inserted upside down.

Now that old bones tell me just how old they are and that Time is also slower on the move, I consider all of the above and it wonders me, the way we are made, the influences of our childhood, the genes we inherit, the talents we learn in order to be Somebody among millions. I suspect we will never be able to unpick the fabric of ourselves, will never understand everything, or anything much about how we are who we are. The most important thing, I do know this, is to value and be thankful for all the things we have achieved in our life and not just to focus on the failures which I do, a lot. I blame school reports. ‘She has too much imagination.’ She has considerable difficulty in sitting still.’ She is disruptive in class, too cocky, too badly behaved.’ and so on. These told me, of course they did, that I was someone undeserving of all the glowing congratulations bestowed on those who would never have disrupted anything and who could sit still for days if required. I was bright and intelligent, funny and mischievous, witty and daring, but none of that came home with me at the end of term, so it’s understandable that I misremember myself, even as an old woman. I sincerely hope that my generation is the last, or almost last of subjugation and the disinterest in individuality, for there is brilliance out there in our children and their children and we need them to grow into themselves, ready to risk, to Go for It, whatever ‘It’ is for them.

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Island Blog – Invaded

I say I don’t mind it, but I do, momentarily, when a spandrel steps in. Not a real spandrel, but I can sort of believe a body existists behind the voice of an authoritative intervention. I have no issue with AI, although I may have many issues with its manipulation and control. Still I stand human and thinkful. When I click, as I have done for a very long time, onto my blog access, I meet a load of not fluff, but more like doors with controls. I don’t like it. I remember, once, at 17, negotiating my way beyond a butler (human) who was not up for letting me through. It thinks me.

We, it seems, are living in the melee of something we can’t explain. That doesn’t phase me. I’ve been there most of my life. However, this has a differentiouness, more shapes, more colours, more promises and more threats than in the before of my days. It also doesn’t please me, and why would it. No question mark required. What works for us is the us of us. We know our way around it, the rules easy, the safety prescient. Still does. If we still know who we are in this, our ethics and beliefs and, more, if we don’t pretend it’s not happening, we can stay in the game.

I remember learning once in my only office job, that the only way to change anything was to be in the room. I still believe it.

We have all been invaded before.

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Island Blog – Equinox

The one 24 hours when day and night are more or less equal all over the world. Happens twice a year. That’s a big thing. In the days when we, the eejit humans of now, were completely connected with natural life the tomorrow would be a day of celebration and of introspection, not that most folk could spell either of those these days. I know this and accept it, but it won’t stop me mentioning the old ways. Most of what I ever see rising into Facebook or other social media platforms seems to centre, a lot, around the best make-up. Perhaps there’s a truth therein, something about concealment, pretence, I don’t know, even though it does, I confess, bother me. I remember mornings leaving a warm bed, pulling on something waterproof and protective and heading out with a torch to tramp many lambing pastures. I remember hearing my squelchy footsteps, facing down a frickin gale or diminuited by hail or snow. Make-up could not have been further from my thoughts, let alone face-lifts nor the perfect frock. And I am glad of that.

Although the equinoxal shift is not actually felt, it does mean something, even now in this material world. And, for those who are curious (my favourite word) the Autumnal Equinox has a word to say. Because night and day are of equal length, there is the opportunity for a balance shift. It is like being in a Thin Place, and you might like to look that one up. We have plenty here, on the island, on the edge of the edge. When life is out of alignment, such as a balance between work and rest, giving and receiving. This equinox mirrors trees losing their leaves, the surrender of old habits, heavy burdens, old commitments, none of which serve now.

As I left work from a very pleasant day at the Best Cafe Ever, in the slapdash of rain, a crow came down over my car, lowering before me. The road is a winding for sure, and this crow followed every turn, leading me. I watched its wings lift and shift, staying with me for a long time. I have never experienced that before. At one corner, it lifted away to land inside a Rowan tree laden with berries. I slowed as it settled, looking straight at me. Thankfully, the oncoming traffic was non-existent.

In the old ways, Crow is an omen of change, of the knowledge of right and wrong, way, way beyond the limitation of human thinking.

Happy Equinox.

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Island Blog – The Disappearing Road

I like pathways or skinny roads which disappear beyond my vision because they invite me on. I like conversations which tail off in the face of interruption. I like the look on someone’s face when there is no chance of finding out more. I like chance encounters at a coffee kiosk, on a walk, in a shop doorway, in a luggage collision in an airport, when faces tell me so much and voices tell me little, if anything. I remember, as a child, hearing words from older mouths and looking up into faces to see something which made me suddenly unsure. I had no language to explain it, even to myself and, chances are I just skipped on as little girls do, but now it thinks me. What I saw when I did look up were the scars of life, the lines of worry and the brilliance of learned concealment. I have them on my own old face but instead of giving me issue or a rush towards an appointment with a cosmetic surgeon, I love them because they invite me on. To look further. Where will I go now? Where do I lead myself? What does that twisty spindrift of a barely drivable road lead next? I am still curious like Alice.

I like the seasons, the way they take for fricken ever to arrive as if not one of them has ever learned to be assertive. We, down here, winkle our landlife through indecision for weeks, cardy on, cardy off, thermals needed one day, becoming a fitted boiler without thermostat the next. Windows open until they slam shut in the fist of a gale. A clear blue inviting a gentle walk until, not quite half-way through, the sky closes in a grey whooha and a million clouds dump their load as if they had held on far too long.

I like the way the islanders respond to all of these things. I met the same acceptance in the 70’s among the wonderful men and women who worked at Church Farm in Martham. I had never, till then, met truth from mouths which connected with the expression on a face. I remember a light in my heart then. Here are people I understand, even though I was the farmer’s wife and they were workers, it didn’t matter. I could see where that disappearing road lead. Here, in my island life, there is a shrug, a nonchalance, an acceptance in pretty much everything and yet with a curiosity, a mischievous challenge, a ‘let’s go’ thing.

When we are born into a family, there are plans made for us before we can piss straight. This is normal and everyone does this, including me and himself, even though every single baby proved enough for a dissertation. As new parents always believe they hold the reins, and they do, for a short while, even as a new and often uncomfortably independent spirit is born with every child. This can prove awkward, even embarrassing. Oh, we all know of teenage angst, of hormonal turbulence and think, as we laugh through it all around a table with parents going through the same thing, that it will pass, the whatever of the whatever of it. It may not.

I, for one, found my way. I say nothing against my parents, my loving safety, their patient opportunities for furtherance. I was loved. But I always longed for escape, to follow the disappearing road. I didn’t know why. Perhaps it was the million miles between words and truth, perhaps the carefully defined road connections, the marked out parking spots, the rules of controlled living. I live no longer under any controls although I find my own both severe and opportunistic as if I have to choose. Ok, I will. I accept the severe, the self-judgement, the list of my crimes and failures.

I still love that sleek and slim disappearing road.

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Island Blog – A Very Big Man and Sea Bear

I knew this one, him and his wife and that multitude of kids, wild as scatter stones and yet close as could be. Together, that’s what I thought. We met on the CB radio, at least I did, as Sea Bear, my husband, reached out to communicate with another islander, one beyond the one we lived on. The men had met, of course they had, out there above the feisty challenges of the wild Atlantic wavery. Not that that ocean ever wavers. She is always super confident it seems to me. The CB radio sat in the Tapselteerie kitchen, in the corner, crackling and snorting away with half sneezes, faltered messages, broken at times. This was the way we communicated way back in the day. For all its frustrations, it was the only way and, somehow, we settled within such limitations. They also pushed us into inspirational ideas, these limitations. We always found a way and even if I was catering to a load of dinner guests with way too many children bursting in and out, the smaller ones crawling about under tables and work stations with tonka digger buckets full of earth and wet stuff, asquirm with puzzled worms and tickety beetles, I would dash to the CB and say, Lady Q here. Lady Q, for goodness sake. I blame my posh accent which did me proud in elocution lessons and later on stage, but here among the west coasters I just sounded ridonculous.

Many winter nights when dark fell like a surprise and the gale-propelled rain slammed like hammers against the wispy single-glazed windows, we shared family info. Our lives could not have been more different. There we were living in a mansion house, a load of acres under our belts, and there they were. It didn’t seem to matter one jot. We just really liked each other. We laughed together as we rarely laughed with others. These people get real. They had a naughty streak we were drawn to. They knew how to live outside of the uppity nonsense we had bought into. Of all my memories, and there are gazillions, of my 48 years here, our times with this family, even mostly over the scratch of broken CB radio, stand tall and bright.

Now both men have gone. Two unlikely friends, for they were just that. If I go deeper in my thoughts, this gives me hope. It didn’t matter, the difference between us. What mattered was the spark, the naughtiness, the fun, the mischief, the solidarity of like-minded humans. We went over once, as a family, for a meal and sleep over. In our slow, very slow, boat, it took ages, but we got there to a glorious welcome. We feasted on their catch from the sea and we drank whisky and whatever else and we shared stories and laughed as the rain blattered against the stone walls, warm by the fire, warmed by each other. I won’t forget that evening.

RIP Big Man Frank. I hope you’ve met up with Sea Bear, wherever you both are.

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Island Blog – The Will Be of the Might Be

It rained all day. I woke to the lash of it, the slam against my bedroom window, the leaks. I paddled downstairs, almost enjoying the wet beneath my feet. It felt thrilling. The wind was up, no idea of its identity as I never did. I needed my husband to understand such frillary and he is very gone. Just wind, then, slamming rain like an old woman with no teeth and a mouthful of spit and way too much freeway. She woke me, a lot. I slept once I recognised her and refused to engage. She’ll lose breath soon enough. Always does. However, this rain, this old woman/ spit thing does seem to bring Ground Control into a standstill. There must be something about the way she moves which brings in a certain turbulence. I confess that a part of me is wondering at my words because every single year this particular windolence moves in and does just what we are experiencing right now, we at ‘Ground Control’, it seems, are astonished all over again. It thinks me.

Delusional thinking appears to be well ingrained. I can see the need for a link to Ground Control, the voice of definicity, the assuredness that, even now, we can shape our world. And that thinks me again. Why not, indeed? I have in my time washed the diorama off the jeans and tees and sweatshirts belonging to the uprising of my babies as they touched 6 foot and beyond. Were they not about to reshape at least a part of the world? And, in my own time, did I reshape too?

My text said, confidently, that my delivery of whatever will be delivered today. It has rained all day long. The roads are or could be flooded, the posties drenched. Add to that the ferry, the big one, which didn’t run today because of something or other. Endless hiccups, endless problems and endless angst. Island Life. It is smurry out there, can’t see the hills, only rain. It’s beautiful, though, like a painting.

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Island Blog – I want to be

  1. Compassionate, so that when I am tired and fed up and in an inner hurry to get back to myself, I have enough to stop me, just enough, to remind myself of my ears for listening, to expand my heart, to feel the human music of my pulse; to bring about the reduction of hyper nonsensical blood flow like a sliver-river of me me me, to dam it, to bring the beavers in.

2. Welcoming, when I seriously wish I had a shotgun in my hands; when I am interrupted mid snip of rose blooms, when I thought I was alone with this rose snipping thing.

3. Kind, as so many have been kind to me.

4. Thoughtful, when most of my thoughts are about how old and limited I am, or think I am.

5 Loving, when I am here alone and my family is/are miles away and I do wonder about that, the collective ‘let’s get far away’ thing.

6. Curious. Well I am definitely that. And, as 6 is my favourite number, I am sticking.

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Island Blog – Fidelity to Self

I remind myself of myself, here, solid, living, human, but only after a turbulent ten mile hike with the shenanigans of ‘take over’, which I meet around AI. I wanted to book a train ticket. I also tried to purchase an online voucher from a clothing company, done before, many times with all the birthdays in my life. It isn’t straightforward now. With my train booking thing, I do remember, with a pastfull wistful sigh, calling Steven in the Oban Office, having a catchup with him and his life, asking about his mum and dad, great friends whilst he found me the best deal, felt me safe. Those days are definitely gone.

Talking to my son, he recognises that his generation, is it X or Y, I don’t know, is the one which is going through the greatest change, and I agree. As the eldest daughter of a father who returned, somewhat intact from the 2nd world war, I’m not sure that the X or Y generation is more of a changer than we experienced back then with silent fathers who weren’t the dads they might have wanted to be. I know there’s no comparison. One was trauma after war. However…..there are many who see AI as invasion as war. I don’t and it thinks me. Of course it can and will be abused. Even in my ordinary booking of a train ticket or my attempted purchase of a gift token for my granddaugher, or in the writing of my blog, or even as I choose music to suit my mood, AI invades. I decide to live with it. Many, oh so many of my generation, refuse and go hide in the dark cupboard under the stairs, as if that ever helped anything, which it doesn’t. I learned from an early age that the only way through is through, not around, not blind, not hiding, because what comes in such force, comes anyway, and those who hide just stay hidden. Even if I don’t know my way through the force of an ‘invasion’ I still won’t hide, because, and I realise this as I write, I want to be seen. It thinks me.

There grows a division between my generation and the X or Y of now. I’ll tell you what that means and what that invites. The first is an incremental division, a pulling away, a retreat back. Ok, you linguists, I just repeated myself there. A retreat is obviously a backward step. I’m leaving it here. But what happens is that the older ones, the ones you find hidden in a cupboard under the stairs are someones who have a lot to say beyond their fear of the way the world is now. They have stories. Has anyone asked them, taken the time, met them in their old and foggy memories and shown interest? Chances are you will learn something astonishing, pivotal to your own life and your own unanswered questions, for they have truly lived.

There was a wedding today at Calgary. I was delighted to meet the young bride and her son as they bought ice-cream yesterday. I looked in her eyes, felt her delight and her energy. It might rain, yes it might, but it didn’t and the day is beautiful and warm and sunny and I am thinking of her on such a special day. It seemed to me as she talked with Lou, the owner, that nothing and nobody could spoil her day. I also saw life lived already in those lovely eyes. It matters not her generational letter. She was a woman in love and excited and, I believe, being true to herself. I remember being that woman many decades ago and regret nothing.

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Island Blog – Tearaway

We start with a plan. I did as a young mum with a tumble of kids. In my plan, in our plan, we were excellent parents, mother, father, we were. We weren’t. In the melee ensuing of business development, of invasive strangers, of things collapsing, falling in, stopping, as in water flow, of freezing pipes, of bat invasions, mice, cold, we did falter, our dream did sink somewhat. It felt boggish. But we were not going to go there because, even though we dreamed and thought deeply, we were above ground people. If you are a person of the land, the field, the marsh, the emptinessof soil and space, who know the fear of drought, of flood, of loss and gain, the singularity of joy, the sharing of it, then you will recognise something. Possibly more than something, because everyone knows what it feels like to sink, what it feels like to choose ‘above ground.’

I employ the above ground as an adjunct. Today was remarkable at the Best Cafe Ever. No, it was overwhelming. There must have been hundreds of customers, in line and for 5 hours. I did feel like sinking. I didn’t check with the others in the Servery because to be honest, we barely met beyond a pull back or let go in a narrow space as we served and cleared and tried to make the soup last. I did turn into the Washeroo thinking, I can’t do this. That lasted not even 5 seconds. I have great inner talk. Don’t be ridonculous, ya eejit, rise, RISE. It works.

I like to tearaway from, well most things if I’m honest, but on this one, from inner giving up. Too many do this, too many times I have been tempted. and then the Tearaway comes in, like thunder, like a smile from Joe the new postie, from a word of recognition, a smile from eyes really connecting with my own, and a tune with lyrics which stop me, the tune that takes me to my piano, makes me pay attention.

Tearaway. From old confines, from old controls, from old myths and mistakes. Tearaway.

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Island Blog – 3 Day Streaker

My blog tells me I am on a 3 day streak. After 14 years of writing blogs, this is a disappointment, and feels like a sort of criticism or judgement, as if not being ‘there’ once or twice or even thrice is a failure. Reminds me of childhood, of school when if I or my peers weren’t constantly ‘there’, failure was subtly suggested, the outfall inviting judgement. You found yourself in landfall, smelling bad and very unsure. I know enough, now, of the confusulation in such forums, in the anywheres of social media, to ignore such trite nonsense. But, and here’s an admission, it still sets me back a step. It seems that what others think or how others judge matters and possibly a bit too much. This thinks me. It does matter in all the right ways, but in the possibly wrong ways it, the mattering thing, can become confusive, and here, where all I deal with is my daily blog fight with grammar, spacing and comments or judgements, I do have to laugh at myself. Out there in the Out There, ordinary women are fighting for life, saving flooded homes, grieving at the loss of everything. I know this, we all know this, but it is too much to take in when something assaults a life, here, now. My irritata on a robotic comment, in the aforesaid light is embarrassing to be honest, but I don’t believe it should be denied, swiped away as nothingmuch because it matters to me in the right now of now and it has an effect.

And this is my point. I feel the judgement because of some ridonculous conclusion I came to. What brought me here? It should be a laugh, a coffee, a fix, a nothing. Ah……not nothing, oh no. Childhood and child experience is a raised head here. I see the rise, the face, my young face, and she is me some decades ago, no freedom of speech and no idea what to say, no idea who I was, no confidence, no voice beyond the one which got me into a big dose of trouble and more than once. Just a rebel, they said, she’ll calm down. I didn’t lose the rebel, but I did ‘calm down’, did learn to conform, to fit the space proffered and allowed. I birthed five children, I was mother of this number before I was 30. It was all I wanted, even though, I am sure, I was way less than the ideal mother. I was absent/still in the room. Disasters came daily, mostly out there in the ‘Out There’, man overboard, calls to search for a missing canoeist, a life possibly lost on the arse-side of Tiree or Gunna; or the woodburner going on fire, pipes burning, rattling, and guests panicking and me flapping everything down with the promise of scones, a warm fire and my competent husband who made everything better and with such inner confidence.

He saw me. He left me to deal with damn well everything a lot of the time, fixing, in a state of immediacy, always en pointe. Always. I’m not sure he was aware of the exhaustion, nor the legacy it left. I remember being told, in my childhood and often, to look after the Little Ones, my wee sisters. We might have been packing to go north for our summer holiday, or anywhere. Look after the Little Ones. It’s loud in my memoric ears. It’s what big sisters do, isn’t it? It’s what you do. But, not once, not ever, did either of my parents ask how that felt for me. A tip for parents nowadays. It’s often the older kids who get lost in the mist of whatever ‘disaster’ goes on in a family. The expectations weigh like tons and the older kid gets lonely, feels invisible. And ‘invisible lonely’ grows. It has a voice which won’t shutup.

On a good note, when I began this after recovering from the slap of judgement, I noticed that spacing went wild, twice here, thrice there, and letters jumbled, making interesting words now and then. I fixed it.

Still off-pissing for a 3 day streaker blog. I’m still here.