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Island Blog – Cross the Street

We walk as we always do, along the paths we know. Of course we do. It’s safe and familiar and we meet the same people, the same contours, the same trees and spaces and views. We know who we are along the way and it’s comfortable, normal, uneventful. To be honest, we don’t want ‘eventful’ not as a sudden thing, not in this life we have worked hard to bring into a shape we can manage. Manage. As if life is ours to control. No surprise then when a shadow falls on our path and we are suddenly and severely compromised. Of course, there is a perception thing going on here. Most of us, hopefully, won’t meet muggers, or a pavement explosion, but we will meet rejection, taunting, something that trips us up and makes us fall hard. Could be a realisation, a thought, an encounter, a sudden eclipse wherein we see what we have avoided seeing for possiby years.

Here’s a thing. A thing I have pondered for decades. What is it that keeps us in the familiar? Think on it. I am guessing that the people we most admire have broken the chains of it, whether in a film, a book, a story, the ones who actually had the courage to cross the street, those who said no, this is not me, and who stepped out and kept going, with the wrong shoes and no money and into the unknown .

I meet teens who know who they are and it isn’t who they supposedly were. They speak out and they cross the street and I applaud them because they are bravehearts. I know I am granny and old but I glory in this. We all deserve pavement space, can work together to shift and move, to single file or to shimmy around each other. I believe in this world and it’s about bloody time. We need each other, We need the skills we all bring to the work place, to the world to the pavement.

I have crossed the street, the odd times I have been in a city, when I knew I didn’t want to encounter what was ahead. Another time I could see a blanket of threat heading my way. Youngsters yes, joshing yes, but with the louding of parental lack and that saddens me. I didn’t cross the street then, although I probably should have done. I kept walking and smiled up. 10 lads, merry, Bacchus, The ages of my own boys. Hey, I said, have fun. Thanks Missus, they all said, swerving around me.

Not need then to cross the street, and there’s a message in there there too.

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Island Blog – Alternates and a Finagle

You can wake up feeling the other side of marvellous. I do. All the guilts and swithers come in like vultures on the carcass of me, picking, resolute. At such advances, I turn over, relocate myself, bring my mind into the present which is probably, at such times, about 4 am. The duvet is swirled around my neck, a throttle, my feet cold, the upside of me definitely downside. There might be cramp and there will certainly be the untruth of me coming at me. This is not who I am. This alternate is not welcome. Ok, I need coffee to deal with that in a sentient and settled way, even if I am in a ghastly dressing gown and the only bird out there is a barn owl. At least I am the right way up which I am not in bed. In bed I am compromised, open to all demonic flapjacks.

Thinks me. And what I knowknow is that nothing stays stuck on the page as it did in school. The real of life is that everything shifts like opinions, clouds, affections, every damn thing. There is no statis. There is no finite, not with people, not with nature, not with life. I’m not even sure there is finite in science, not that I know a scooby about science. The key is to be dynamic, adaptable, open to change. Such a truth and an infuriation.

I for one am rather tired of uplifting stuff. It’s as if pronouncing good things makes them happen. Which it doesn’t. I am definitely a woman of positivity but not because I am told to be. I am she because I have lived through shit and storm and loss and fight and I emerge as me. This is not a new emergency thing. I do it often. I don’t want to cause trouble, of course not, but at 73 I do feel the ‘ncy’ of emerging, like a professorial nudge in the back as if I need permission for this emergent-ness. I am so much a child of my time.

But what I have is the skinny thinks of my generation. I could and can finagle my way out of everything. We were buttoned up in scratchy pants and strapped into bodices. Our legs were covered, our eyes controlled, our hands and fingers gloved. Nonetheless we found our escapes. Life will out and those who thought they could ever control the life of another lost so much. Life is a wilding. Life is wild. Who you are is who you are.

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Island Wife – Be Brave

I remember being told that my book, Island Wife, would resonate with older women. I sat there, across a table with my publisher and my agent thinking, older? Yes, I was 59, but sassy. I was still in complete charge of my accoutrements, faculties and agendas. I could move like a dancer, arriving in some sort of wild costume and just off the Oban train, complete with a jaunty herringbone cap. Older for me was my mum heading for 80 and, although still feisty, a bit cautious over rocks – still game, though. I get it now. I started early, in love at 18, married at 19, mother at 20. Nobody does that, not in the lasting game, as mine was. I suppose that I just could not relate to the ‘older women’ thing. The ones I had experienced were tired, downtrod, got their make-up wrong and spent a huge amount of time pretending they were ‘fine’ even though that word meant something so different to me. Fine was about spectacular art. Fine was the way a butcher cut a fillet just right. Fine was how someone arrived looking magical into a gathering; a spectacular arrangement of flowers; a perfect sorbet. Now it has become a dismissal, a middling beige nothing.

I do remember the train journey to almost home, the stunning landscape, the chacha of the train along winding tracks, around lochs, through endless scapes of empty deliciousness, past the Hogwarts Express bridge, the winding of endless drover tracks, the moody mountains, the clouding, the spritzer of light. My thoughts carolled me to the ferry port. ‘Older’? I got that even as it thinks me. I realise I was being a mayfly on the surface of real life, aka, the truth. I believe that as I walked onto the ferry for home that I sunk a bit, got it, and it freed me. Of course my story will resonate with others who have experienced such a life.

There is so much vanilla out there, so much beige. On the out-there forums, everything is ‘fine’. It isn’t. Where is truth? Where are the young writers going through rebellion? Facebook and more are all about memories and wonderful moments. I do love to see that but it is not the truth, not real. If I said anything in my story, it was raw truth, still is.

Be brave.

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Island Blog – Im Patient, Com Promise

I’ve just reversed out from under my desk. Not my desk. A desk inherited with uneven legs and good drawers and with a fallen sharp thing hidden in the down below. Much like me. I had, I noticed, flipped my Winnie the Pooh calendar to September which, even for twitchy, fast-running me, is an overdash and so I set to correct, losing the lot down into the spider depths, hence the reversing thing. This, as you may guess, is a complete irrelevance.

I am (searching for an adverb) fed up with not being able to do whatever I suddenly, and twitchily have done without any thought and for years. I cannot bend down lower than my waist. Well, that laughs me. Waists are, from my own observation, all over the place. However, I know where mine is, and I do not bend below. This constricts, obviously. I am required to curtsey before the saucepan cupboard, before the washing machine, the freezer, before the cupboard under the stairs, before the picking up of any fallen objects anywhere. I can hear my white goods, my doorways laughing at me.

When releasing my washing from the cylindrical drum, I am required to kneel. I was never good at that. I pull out the sheets, towels, tees and jeans and turn towards the skids. Still on knees because I can’t lift anything heavier than a pregnant hamster (they don’t say that), I work my way to the pulley. I rise, good core muscles, and take each piece by itself. It thinks me. I never did that before, just wheeching the whole damn lot onto the struts without noticing a thing. I notice things now. My olding pants require either new elastic or a trip to the bin. Perhaps this is what I learn from this limiting limitation, my eyes so very important, so momentarily com- promised.

Without my work in the Best Cafe Ever, I am remote, stumped, awkward with myself. That’s one truth. Another is the wealth of help offers for lifts, deliveries, friendship. This glorious community. I know I am an im patient. I remember being compromised in Tapselteerie days, so sick I was falling over, but there wasn’t the time nor the opportunity. I was the It and there really was nobody else who could fill my role. I am so rarely decked and thank the bejabers for that because I am twitchy and need to move on. Although I would love for arms around me, for someone to bring me fresh food, light the fire, the candle, gentle the evening, I am alone, strong at times, weak at others. Hearing swans overhead, rushing out to see their traverse, watching still tide, seeing the lushgrow across the sealoch, catching the firelight, hearing the music.

A com promise.

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Island Blog – I know nothing of everything

And that’s a truth. There’s a belief among teens that their parents should have sorted the nothings out by their 40’s. I remember thinking it as my own parents arrived in doorways surrounded by nothings, As a teen, I had no language nor the right grammar nor the wisdom to interpret that doorway nothing thing. I do now, but we only ever do that through experience, and why does every generation hide it away with sideways glances and the voice of doorway control?

There are songs and poems and writing around this. I know that someone has to quest. A marvellous word. One, I hope that will be connected to me once I am gone away to cause whatever havoc is allowed me in the afterness. And there will be much. I watch the grey come in, the slip slide of slanty rain, the lift as if the clouds are matrons with a fistal pull back, the hold, the skylight, the clearing, the blue, the everything.

I still know nothing. I like that. So much yet to learn.

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Island Blog – The Wild

I remember the shout. Reef in the mainsail, now! I didn’t hesitate because with him at the helm, there was only me and that me was down below hooking a Moses basket onto a gimballed hook with a baby nestled within. I was fast, no hesitation. As I scooted up the steps onto the deck, I could see why this reefing mainsail thing was not something to be considered, nor questioned. There was a black cloud threat and building. Grabbing and affixing my safety harness and with rain already slicing the wind in two, I got to work. He risked a tilt into the quiet space between the was-wind and the now-wind, two very different creatures for sure and the huge mainsail flapped and crackled, bucked and heaved. I had never felt so alive, so valued, so very the It of the situation. Skidding, sliding, grabbing, holding, I used all my strength to crank the crank thing, bringing the huge mainsail down to the boom. I remember watching the sky appear above each reef. I remember my arms aching, my fingers flexing, turning, holding and that moment when all was safe, that massive sail contained and that sky glowering at me like she just lost at checkmate. I slid on my butt back to him, grin wide, eyes full of rain, and unclipped.

I remember the wild. The buzz of being so essential, so needed, so valued. He smiled me in. Well done, lass, he said and those words meant everything. The hanging baby slept on. The storm was nothing of the sort, just a teenage tantrum. The sky cleared, the night began and stars came out. Ha. I said, as I looked up at the wide expanse of a gazillion constellations. I got there before you all, and I did. It remembers me and I don’t say that lightly because even when we forget the feeling of such wild times, our body remembers. Water has a memory and we might do well to accept this as we, those of us whose wild times might seem beige and back then and of no import and no longer possible in the shape of what is. I have to challenge this, in myself for starters. If there is wild, was there once, it does not die. We will eventually die but the wild is like a fire within, a sparkle, a crackle, an opportunity, a magic. I don’t like to see it allowed to fade in someone’s eyes once health limits barrage in. However I also get it and it is so easy to believe that the wild was then and now I am compromised and afraid and kind of stuck with a stick and all I have are the memories of me doing crazy things I couldn’t do now.

Where’s that wild? Where’s that dancer, the one who was spontaneous when others dithered and who danced me till I was dizzy and on fire? Where’s the one who said yes we can do this, who made the fire on the beach, the one who said ‘ just lie here and see the stars’, the one who sang, who told stories, who always made something happen, no matter where nor what, nor when, nor who(m)? The wilders who always caught the magic, grabbed it, reefed it in at times and then let it fly. They still do and you don’t have to be young to grab the ties of that kite. T’is only fear that makes us pedants.

The wild is in you. Keep her fired up.

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Island Blog – Old Fingers, Sleight Hands

My son held my hand in his, tipped it, looked hard. This hand has done so much work over so much time, he said, and handed me back. I had reached out to light a candle, to lift one thing from here to there, to do something ordinary, an ordinary that turned into an extraordinary. How often do any of us feel recognised and acknowledged in such a way? Since then I look at and see my old gnarled fingers in a different light. They are right there in front of me all day, opening things, turning things, writing things, answering things, holding things, lifting, turning, upturning,moudling,arranging wildflowers, forming dough, spreading, pointing, arresting, catching, holding , performing, retracting, beckoning and pushing away. And more.

I think of all the times I took control and all those times i didn’t. I remember both. In the life I lead now, the power of it not in my hands but in the lives of my children and their young’uns, I don’t feel compromised at all. I don’t know if it’s magic, but my kids are right there for me. What I want to teach them is that olding is fine, that old fingers can still lead you to the dance floor, can still hold, still point, still hold a hug.

I still have the mischief, dance floor, anywhere.

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Island Blog – Rebel, Conformist, Fear

When you have the rebel pusling through your veins, following rules feels like being really good at dodging bullets, those fired from the gun of ‘authority’. Whenever I am required to conform, I get this itch, everywhere. As a youth I didn’t always employ sense. I am altogether great with sensibility but going only with that has led me up some very dark alleys, and so I have grown up, sort of, although the call to irrationality is strong. For decades I thought there was something wrong with my wiring, that I was, and I was, a rebel without a cause. I like the word Rebel and for sure there are many times in life when a rebel is a very good thing to have within a pack of conformist ditherers, all drunk on fear. They say this so we should comply, even if we don’t agree nor understand and even if it feels horribly wrong. We will settle. I remember, once, visiting a very proper house with everything in place, dust free, with everything either beige or polished and being taken into the ‘front room’ which had obviously only been used at wakes or on Sundays. Take a seat on the settle, she said, pointing to one, an arthritic looking straight-backed L-shaped thing, and as rigid as a born again, and deciding I wouldn’t. I walked to a chair instead and parked my butt. I could tell from the snort that I would not be invited again, but I just couldn’t do what she asked. The very word riled the rebel in my red-blood heart and that rebel took over.

So, when I come back from eye surgery with a loooong list of ‘don’ts’ I manage my own snort. I know it is important to comply in this instance because I want clarity, but there is so much about fear in just about every ruling and I won’t play with fear. I know that I make choices others avoid, but here’s the thing. I have common sense now, although there is nothing common about it, and I thank my parents and my granny for gifting it to me. For all they complied, they were rebels, not overtly, but subtley. It was in the twinkle, the suggestion of mischief, the stepping out of line as the line dozed off in boredom and compliance. They had a voice and they used it. It’s nothing to do with birth, nor wealth, nor privilege, nor the desire to be better/louder/cleverer than the next person. It’s a blood rush, a have-to and it is all about bringing mischief back, bringing fun back.

In the Premier Inn, Braehead, I met many ordinary folks over two days of consultation and surgery and I noticed, as I always do, that everyone feels alone, that everyone welcomes a smile, a chat, a craic, everyone. Conforming is doing a grand job of turning us into robots, lonely, silent robots. I watch someone heading for work, worried about something or someone, light up and twinkle me back. A fireworker, a builder, a nurse, a medical supply driver. We have nothing in common and yet we do. We have a few moments of conversation. I could have said nothing but I said something and from that we connected. Each time we both left thinking of each other. They probably left with a chuckle, this old woman outside a hotel watching the diggers dig the life out of a spread of green to make room for yet another building, but that’s ok with me because I saw the twinkle, the fun behind their eyes, and I heard them, I saw them.

We need more rebels.

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Island Blog – I Want Clarity

Yesterday I saw through a misty haze. Today I am seeing detail and clarity. Although there is a falsehood across my eye, it’s like a new windscreen on a car, startling at first and then that glorious rise in the gut, the heart, the belief of it, of seeing everything clear, right there, a sharing, because I am involved.. I am the looking and the seeing. We are complete, a perfection, circling, the tree, the bird and me. It is more than enough. And all thanks to the brilliance of surgery.

I confess to anxiety pre this. Not for the surgery, I know I know zip about surgery and the surgeon has trained for eons to absolutely know, so there is no anxiety there. No, it was the journey, the possibility of a ferry and on time, the hotel I had booked into. Where is it? Let me check. Oh, yes, just a mile away from the hospital. A taxi ride. I had booked at the Premier Inn, Braehead, a bland flat-faced building with no character at all, but. I had spend ages in a taxi from Queen Street just getting here and many quids down and yes, I could have sourced a bus but was compromised, bleary-eyed, anxious and tired, so blow that for a feathering. Tell you one day about ‘the feathering’ – t’is an island thing for husbands to be. Moving on.

The minute I arrived I was welcomed and smiled upon. My room was comfortable and I did manage to get over the fact that the window was/is sealed shut after watching a pitch full of young footballers training. So many, so many teens working like pros to be, really lifted my spirits. I met nothing but kindness in that hotel. The outside belies the inner mother.

Now with family in the North Berwickshire wild, I walk out with sunglasses on, and a gazillion eyedrops sloshing about my eyeball as I watch the swallows swoop among the flies. I can see them clear. I watch the lift and wave of the beech branches beyond the farm gate, the way they definitely do not agree on choreography, the detail of the leaves, the definition clear to me, incisive cuts to make the perfect leaf over and over again, the blood veins. For the first time in more than months. A glorious gift and in a few days even more clarity, and then I won’t doubt myself again because nobody does when they can see ahead. If you know nothing about the road ahead, at least you can see it and thus make an informed choice.

At times I was fine with the mist. It almost laughed me, until it began to compromise my freedom, my independence. I grew up then. I want clarity.

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Island Blog – Borderlines

The tide is high. It’s a May thing. Two full moons and she is sassy with it, building already, shifting tides, lifting beyond established expectations already, anticipating something new and inventive, a space to wide out. I remember that feeling, the opportunity to break through a line drawn in the grit and spit of childhood when I wanted to fly above the whole map and redraw it. There are many lines and I probably don’t need to draw them because anyone living within those confines feel them like chasms or buffers. Either way, you fall. Until you don’t, until you have the courage to ask for help, or to jump, or to just run. Nature does it all the time.

We meet borderlines everywhere. At work, in a community, within a relationship. Some we have to allow and accept, many we don’t. Within our lives, so very much is different. Some of us do have the choice to argue, to demand our own space, our own thinking, our own beliefs and to hear that they are considered despite generational beliefs and accepted confines. Not many, I’m guessing. But in my feral world, in my so called recalcitrant childhood, in my difference and my confusion, there is always the chance for a voice. If it would just find the courage to speak out. I didn’t, but I did find someone who would and did. It happened to be my life partner, and I was lucky in that. Borders did not bother him. He broke borderlines all of the years. But even now in widowhood I remain cautious until I stop and think. And that’s important. In simplicity, this is it and there is me. We don’t match. Obviously it begs the question. And?

In my long life I watch many borderlines shift and pull away in a curve, a gentle thing, a giving, a sharing of space. In communication, within relationships, in moments. Someone chooses not to follow the line. Someone decides to curve and bend, to allow and then to move on beyond the border with a smile.