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Island Blog – Visitors

There are buzzing things down by the sea-loch. A lot of them. We thought, initially, that it might be a swarm of bees, departing an overheated colony under the leadership of an overheated young queen. I always feel sorry for the old girl, the gazillions of potential young she has spawned, the way she just got bigger than the rest and was fed on soporific royal jelly until she had completed her task, laying down the promise of a new generation. But the sound wasn’t quite right. If I stepped two feet to the right, there was silence. Ditto two feet to the left. Now, I know the sound of a swarm, found one once hanging in the rhododendrons just below my home. I could see the ball, rugby sized, and calm as still water bar the buzzing. Around the shape of what was probably a thousand honey bees, workers, (females) flew like security guards, protectors. We couldn’t collect the swarm. The ditch was too deep, the bramble interference too invasive and grabby. In the time it took us to locate assistance, the young queen had communicated a ‘Let’s go’ and they were gone.

I know that at this time of year there are many buzzing things. Flying creatures fat or skinny, creatures that look like wasps but aren’t, things that look like very small bees, things that ding about like eejits against the inside windows of my conservatory until I scoop them out and wish them well. Visitors. As I walked slowly back up the hill from the shore, tilting my head for location of the sound, I decided they were Bog Flies, or Seaweed Flies. To be honest I don’t care what they are called. I am just happy that they are still buzzing and together. And that leads me to ground level.

You know when you have a sibling to stay for a few days and it is so easy, so much fun? Ok, perhaps not everyone knows this, but I have a few sibs and I am fortunate enough to say this about all of them. This one is my brother,the only male in a sea of females. He came with his other half and every minute has been fun, inventive, easy and filled with chunter and banter and laughter. To think I was alarmed about sharing my bathroom, my space before they came. And there’s another thing. Anxiety about something that only exists in my imagination has, many times before, rendered me legless and out of breath. At no time did any of what I imagined manifest. Never, not once. There is a learning there. We have driven around cliffs with spectacular views, met friends, shared stories and, with my brother, shared memories, not one of which we agree on. We have walked, paddled through a rising tide, collected stones, talked of West Coast History, of the shameful clearances, of the migration of cultures, influences and languages, of families, losses, learnings and gains, of changes and mind shifts, of moving on and of staying stuck. He is currently up a ladder checking out one of my leaks whilst I write. The sun is merry in his sky, the moon fulling herself into a blaze as the tide goes in and falls out. We have watched salmon jump in the narrows, watched indigenous wildflowers sway happy in the warm breeze. In short, we have used every minute of this short visit and what we three have created are many miles of buzzing memories.

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Island Blog – Windswept, Wildfires and Hope

Life is often a surprise, what happens, when it does, how it does. The thing I have learned over many decades is that we only learn from mistakes or happenings outside of ourselves. In times when we make no mistakes or don’t encounter outside happenings, we learn absolutely nothing because the human ‘cosy’ inside us just keeps moving on without thought nor question and most definitely without learning a thing. And that learning is not outside of us, no. The important learning is within, and if it is a mistake, we evaluate, feel the shame and guilt and make a change. If it is a ‘happening’ outside of ourselves then we learn from our response to it. Did we fall silent, slide away, or did we grab a tool and run to help? Did we show up or were we a ‘cosy’ human, all fear and ‘what can I do…..I am just little me, cold and heading for the safety and the denial of home?

These questions flutter around me like butterflies at times, at others like ravens (I love ravens) or vultures. I skinny through all the gaps in between, alert and watchful because, and this is simple enough, I want to be a part of whatever is happening around me and well beyond me. If I don’t understand something, or when I mistake myself into a pit of regret, I want to learn because I can always research, can learn, can step up to say ‘I made a mistake’. I am sad that so many have been subsumed into the isolation, the refusal to admit that they just might have been wrong. However, I am not about sorting anyone else out. It’s a full time job sorting myself out, or in.

As our world shifts uncomfortably within the strains of the corset we have strapped around her pregnant belly, she is talking to us, she is telling us, she is shouting, she is showing not what we can save because she knows we cannot, not now, not with powerful leaders still greedy for control of lands and seas, still killing, still ok with it all. But, and there is always one of those, we can do something. We can learn new skills, we can research, we can stop believing all the toxic nonsense on social media, the platforms which only exist on the surface of real life and yet which control immense depth and wide geography. At home, one home, we can teach our children. And they are our future, their future. They need not fear but must be taught emotional and practical intelligence.

In the cafe one day, families came in. One family inspired me. A young couple with one boy, about 8. We are used to a chaos of crumbs and spills from a kiddy controlled table and as long as they enjoy their experience, we are happy to sort things out. However, this family lifted me like a butterfly. I was leaving after my shift and met them in the carpark. They recognised me. Thank you, said the dad, holding the hand of his boy. I didn’t see mama. As I pulled out I called, ‘you are so welcome’ through my window and at that moment, the wee lad turned to me and called out ‘Thank you!’

Ah, there is hope.

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Island Blog – Fiddleplay and Deep Time

A beautiful day, all sunshine and squawks from gulls mobbing eagles over the tidal loch. Everything clear, sky wide and still, garden flowers heads up to the light giver, safe from wilderley gales. Still. I wasn’t and that’s me all over. I say I am not a busy flicktwit, fussing about dust nor to-do lists, but I am, I confess, a woman who was a mother at 20 and birthed 5 children and who outlived a husband and who now has no idea who she is. I was somebody once, I remember that, the buzz of it, the exhaustive demands, the have-to go here or there, the suddenness of immediacy. A boat in trouble, a guest overboard, another 4 for dinner, a crying mother from a cottage because it had rained all week and everything and everyone was cold and wet. I warmed her obviously, tumbled dried her towels and clothes and Himself went up there, into the hills and sorted the dodgy fire. All fires were dodgy on Tapselteerie. I have no idea how we got away with that, but I do remember many fine folk, mostly women (no surprise there) who knocked on my kitchen door with faces. I can see those faces now. And here’s my thought. They came, they asked, they were brave and they were pulled in to the warm and fed and watered.

One of them said she played the fiddle. She was beautiful, Irish, four kids. I asked her, bring your fiddle, and she did, and we danced a story from her past, one I recognised. The fiddle captured me in that moment because it is the voice of stories, of history, of deep time. And that thinks me. In my olding, many memories scoot back, slowered, rainbowed, probably nonsense, but I get glimpses of someone bringing in wild salmon, the fish caught on it’s way up to spawning, full fat and strong. I remember receiving this huge fish, welcoming in the fishermen, whisky poured, the laugh around us in that kitchen, the fiddleplay. Even in times when no fiddle played, the fiddle played. Deep time. Those fishers long gone. The wild salmon too. They were then and this is now.

I’m not so sure about now, but, then, I am guessing that in deep time, not many felt sure about their now. Olding is not fun. I should qualify that. It still isn’t fun but there are options and choices. Things hurt, bones mostly, but could be more. Thoughts slow, take time to land. Hearing might grow cloudy. Concentration striates, shifting all over the place, like a seconda on a harley with no map. I meet many of us, all bright and brittle all can do and all doing this olding thing, feeling sore and tired and bloody determined.

One young woman, younger than my youngest, said to me yesterday this…..You inspire me. You are so ……

That was just what I needed to hear. On i go, fiddleplay lead on.

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Island Blog – Spirit and a Thumbs Up

I’m back from work, a busy one, many lunch and tea/coffee customers, all served well. With my new eyeball I can see which table needs clearing and out I go with a scoosh thing and a cloth and a wide tray. I talk to folks along the way, notice the ones who don’t do ‘talk’ and those who bend in like willows, easy, open, smiling. All cafes have all sorts.

I meet people. People with ready smiles, drivers in cars who swerve and reverse, who acknowledge me in my car. I meet others who don’t. There is ridgity everywhere. I understand it, I do. A holiday, too hot, wrong accommodation, just doing this holiday thing to save something. Been there. I think many have. I have no wisdom here, only experience. And here comes another thing.

I met a beautiful chef and his husband. I see how life can be now in the now of now and it skitters my heart. I work with him, laugh with him, wash his pots and pans and bowls and spoons (too many spoons) serve his food, honour him. I think that my own spirit, my inner rebel just loves and thrives on this and other such connections. I have seen so many faces on the other side of the counter, asking for lunch, for bespoke teas, for incredible cakes and pastries, for soup and salads, for hot chocolates, all from here or nearabouts, and then there comes a sparkle one, dynamic, curious, fun. Could look like anything, or anyone. No code, just that sparkle. Hallo you.

Spirit is strong. It rises my own, confronts my wrinkle thinking and reminds me how I am still very much here. They laugh at me, the young, but they laugh and I will absolutely take that as a personal thumbs up.

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Island Blog – My Face, I Think.

Jeez but it gets harder to click onto my own writing page. I have to caterpillar my way through botstops and signposts facing backwards at best, nowhere at worst. However, it is as it is and this automaton fantasia will not leave me behind. I can feel my face lifting and falling, twisting and flexing as I write this. I have such a face. To be honest, it seems that my face works as a singular whereas one might suppose I was, at least partly in control. When I hear something someone says or reveals, my face is right there, showing off, definitely that, long before my considered response, with appropriate facial confirmation ,has a flipping chance to catch up. It’s like holding back a wild colt on a fraying rope, and that might just be a good piece of imagery.

It isn’t that I can’t control my face because I can….ish. It takes longer now with all the wrinkles, each with their own opinions, their sense of place. They are not just ruffles of skin, no collective. They are independent runnels, valleys of ponderance, elevations of realisation. It’s exhausting managing them. And it is my face by the way, not that they give a toss about that. So, when someone says something that rises a response in me, one which I absolutely know how to hold, to control, to banish into complete annihilation, my face takes over. It shows. And, if my face is busy considering, faltering perhaps, the eyes have it. Darn. I can spend many awkward seconds flicking away, looking for something giving me time, me, not the rebel face, not the eyes, not the truth.

Ah! The truth.

We live so much in lies – a word which creates immense trouble but it isn’t a long one, so easily tackled. Over ‘polite’ time it has become a white dissolution, barely there at all, a wisp, a nothing. But we all notice, we all see because this……our innate connection to ourselves is strong. We know what we know. Don’t need affirmation. Don’t need acceptance. If we are ‘outsiders’, considered disconnected, awkward, different, weird, hold to that. It is a gift.

I have a word for you. Aspectabund. It is long dead in dictionnary world but I like it. It means he/she/they who wear emotion on their face/s. It was understood then that emotion carried import and a certain control over logic of the day. I rest there, as does my face, I think.

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Island Blog – Authenticity, Honesty and Fun

Early this morning, as the sun warmed like a surprise, I was out cutting some sweet peas, cornflowers, pink things, yellow things and some green leaves from a Somebush, when two men wandered by. I know them. They are islander friends. Because it wasn’t raining, we talked awhile. One of them commented on the piece I had written in the local paper, said how brave I was to be so open about the truth of me. Me, behind a huge climb of sweet peas, still clipping, smiled and said, Well, I am an open book, nothing to hide and honest about tough times, because we all have them. Two thinks after they had merried their way along were, one, what the hell did I write, and two, why isn’t everyone honest about the tough times? I have spent the day ruminating like the sheep in the field below my home, pondering these two. Of course, the answer to the first is easy to answer because I dashed inside, found the page and read my words. Okay, I thought, no big deal, I just was authentically honest about how I felt at that time. The second question dithered me a lot. It is a big question and also a little one. I see the little one like a skinny thing on a cold street, running barefoot whilst the big question is in the minds of those who don’t have a clue about that experience, even though they do because everyone knows the skinny street runner within, hungry for something or someone, cold and lonely. Everyone.

Pretence, however, is what we are so good at. The fact that the answer to How Are You, requires ‘Fine’, is evidence enough. That it is immediately accepted is unfortunate, to say the least, but the secondary fact that we morph into the Fine responder so easily, is scary. It becomes a thing, denying truth, denying authentication, dissolving honesty. Oh, I realise that nobody wants to hear the troubles of another, not randomly. In this crazy and blinkered (my opinion) race for ‘success’ we are too busy and too forward thinking, aka on our own trajectory, to bother with whimpers. Words there to think about. Troubles, Another, Blinkered,Success, Busy.

Back to me. I listen to many songwriters, read many poets, listen to many innovative speakers, hear the honesty and the involute complexity of the way they work words into a beautiful tangle of authenticity. There is no fixing, words and passions, truths told, honest reveals, truthful presentations. I am he, I am she. I have failed and failed. I have walked the wrong path, fallen many times, been lifted up, lifted myself up. I have followed the wrong leaders, sunk in endless bogs, felt fear and cold and shame and guilt. But I have learned this. The world brings in a synapse of wild complication. There is this way, there is that way. An inquisitor will try them all out. That’s me. I know the cold fear of valleys and the elation of mountain tops, but I find the pretence that valleys don’t exist hard to allow. Nonetheless this is not a challenge I would bring to a falsehood I clock in nanoseconds on meeting anyone. I just wish it wasn’t there, wish that the great British stiff upper lip nonsense had melted away into history, that people could just be honest about their lives, themselves, to be truly and bravely authentic, and then to take action, to have fun. Fun. Remember that?

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Island Blog – Connections and Fairytales

I notice, as a blogger in these new days that if I don’t blog for a while, I am forgotten. It is up to me at such a time to relocate myself and to get through all the other Judys, a definite and determined swim from the depths. At first I felt annoyance, then a sense of dismissal, of loneliness. I wasn’t important, noticed, valued anymore. Frome where I am right now, I laugh at this. Of course we are forgotten, of course connections move on and up and over and return, although the return bit is always down to human connection. Everything is fluid and nothing is a given and this swirltide is how it is. Personas are shaped and twisted, photos of real people are synced and redesigned according to the accord of the finger or the brain working with the outblast of inter-intelligence. Hush, now. A lot of all of this is really good. Many more trifocal revelations and understandings. Many more bots and trolls. But this isn’t new, people. They were always there.

For centuries good folk have lived with such an alternative dynamic, worked with it. They connected. They met, together, laughing drinking in island crofts, isolated places in the outer wilds and also deep within cityal streets with pubs welcoming and shops selling veg and material for your curtains and cheese and eggs and kindness. I met many of them. I met their determination to keep on keeping on. I was a furious middle-class 16 year old and pounding the streets. I came to the market and we talked. I will not forget those marketeers, for they wound me web stories, talked of families, of hope of fun, of fun, of fun, of fairies, of stories.

Even in these forgetting times, I still believe we need connections.

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Island Blog – Beginnings

I meet them all the time. Here’s one. The trolley thing which holds an entire orchestra around lunchtime in the cafe has one swivel wheel twisted out. I skinny around, loaded with dried bowls, whisks, palette knives, sieves, whisks etcetera and my fast foot meets said twist. I remember, in a nanosecond the dancer in me, old yes, but innate, born in, fast and determined. Another is when I lift a load of heavy plates and their etceteras from the wishdosher, lower than my knees, mentally connecting,, with a eye-rolling ‘hey!’ to my strong core. We have to do this, I have to do this, because she, the core, can so easily fall asleep, thus forgetting herself and I need her, sleepy or not. These tiny beginnings I notice. I notice that I can do this.

All through any day, a cafe day, a not cafe day, I can hear so many spoken thoughts, random as skitters, flying wild, just spat out because there is that chance, that moment, that connection, that beautiful second when someone listened, heard, stayed a moment or two. As I wash up, walk out, serve, clear tables, chatter flies above us. Nothing lands, not for me, not for us as cafe workers, but there are times when a word and a table stops me in the buffers. I can see myself halt, heavy tray of china, detritus, cups, glasses, positionally armed and wondering if I will actually make it to the stackeroo and seeing without any connection, a new beginning.

I have many thinks about beginnings. I thought I did, that the only one I would go through was the day I said yes to marriage to a man, and it was easy. I fell in love and even though I completely don’t agree with falling, it happened. But in the now of my solo now, I look for more and find the beginnings in moments and interactions and connections I may well have missed before. There’s a something in that. There is so much, so much out on social media pushing out the unrealistic as if we fail if we don’t have perfect nails. I know that’s not all of it.

I begin with being open, aware and noticing and right where I am. Yes, I am on a beautiful West Coast island. I do not live in urban tricky. I don’t live in abuse, control, fear. I don’t even know how that feels beyond imagining.

The way I see beginngs is this. Angry spoilt middle class teenager thinking she could escape her life and the morning after. We are born where we are born. Identity grows and dishevels and what? I don’t know.

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Island Blog – The Grannies, the Shelf and Doorways

We are many. We are legion. We step back having been the quickstep for decades. We hold the walls, hold to the walls. We keep the balance, we interfere, we quicken and we falter. We don’t know who the hec we are a lot of the time, apologize and curtsey in doorways we never knew existed before, not in this house of endless meals, of welcomes, of beds made up short notice, late talking, of searching without the right language into the new world, one we really don’t understand, the lie of the land all around the home, bodies everywhere, party detritus tidal in its curve over a once ok carpet. Of a lot of holding back, of rubbing old tinsel lips in ponderance, of confusion and inexellence, where once we were excellent, the ones who bandaged, made fast decisions, even overriding the hesitating grandpas, who btw were astonished to find themselves on that high shelf, in my generation. In the laughness I see exactly that in the generation after me. Nobody is ready for that shelf.

For me, oh I know I am lucky, fortunate, blest, whatever. But I do remember the full stops, the commas, the parenthesese which came like a blow. It was never that I was eradicated, never that, but I sensed the invitation to full stops, commas and doorways. I was suddenly not who I was. Not excluded, never that, but there grew woods and motorways and lifestyles that rose up between us, between me as the feeder, accommodator, welcomer, and the new woman in his life, the new man in hers. It thinked me of those shunting trains on tracks, always going backwards. And I did. I curved away, into foetal at times, unsure of my voice. I had never even thought about my voice before. I lived in chaos, beautiful chaos, exhausting chaos for many many years and I was she. I was She. I lost my voice. Not the actual voice but the knowledge of it, the recognition for me. It had been an usual, ribboned, rainbowed, musical, gifted and now the hesitation to emit anything vocal spun me into a hole in the ground.

Something rose me, rised me up. It was the acceptance that you, young person, now my child’s beloved, is a generation below me. I want to learn from you. I also see your welcome. I am aware of doorways. I respect you, see your dreams, love that you want time with me, invite me into your video games and endlessly bleeping iPad or whatever trackillion light tracts. And your beautiful children, real humans with a truant of consilplisit emotions and longings and dreams. And I am still Granny, or one of them. There is always a welcome, warm food, bandages and no judgement although I might twist a tea towel at you if you don’t help with the washing up.

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Island Blog – All the Way to Whales

I know that I am still a rebel. Against what? Good question. The thing is that ‘most of us grow out of it’, supposedly and politely and concomitantly and absolutely fitting in to lives so very far from our dreams. So reads the manuscript. I am at the steam spout end of my kettle life and with not one regret. I know that without the grounding, or sea-going strength of the man who saved me, I would have gone to some dive somewhere and died of over-ness. I would. I know it. He, the older-than-me, wild, foolish, closed up man, held me. He did and for decades, through the utter chaos of children, the strife of in-laws, well, just one, actually, through the fears and the choices we made, the walking out of that crazy. The first whale watching business in the UK, benign research, the first. I bought in, was right there, in the rain, boots on, helping the first intrepids aboard, handing over sumptuous packed lunches, thermoses, just knowing they would be coughing their way through engine fumes all the way to whales and that I would be there at the end to collect them, dry them off, feed them scones and jam and tea and, more, to laugh with them about the bounce and tricuncular shitski of the Atlantic, god bless her, around rocks and other irritations.

I think I found an outlet for my red, rebel. To be honest, I think rebel is born, within a child. I have one or two of my own supporting that. Thing is, what do you do with this red thing for yourself, when you just know life isn’t as it might be, when confines and controls and mysogyny and religion divides and sadly conquers. How can you see this at 7 years old without the language to process, let alone explain? My theory is this. Many of us are here in this uncomfortable playground. Many pull away, home to the familiar, the compromise and live with it for decades, never mind minutes and nights. I am a pull away, although some might say I compromised, settled, and to a degree, they are right, although I twist at their conclusion. I loved full time, moved into wife. I loved that. Things shifted, changed, the moment a child was born. I changed. I grew fierce, defensive, powerful. That modem operandi never changed with four more birthings. I never loved as I loved them, never. Maybe that was a troubling thing.

See that red rebel? She is wild and bothers not about doorways nor invitations, nor stupid rules, nor old past judgements. Atlantic thinking. I remember on a warm evening, way back, after feeding three courses to 16 guests, seeing them right, warm fire, help to bed. Alone in the corridor of clearing up, ironing the tomorrows, letting out the collies, watching the big kitchen sink to rest as I wouldn’t. I remember the wild excitement of seeing whales out there, the out there which billowed into the farmhouse kitchen, way beyond food time, but I will always provide food. I saw them, briefly, the whale-watching ones, saw their smiles, the twinkle in catched eyes, the long hold goodbye. I smiled at the rebel connection. There are many of us in the wings.