I wonder how the world is feeling now?  Since my last, there have been two terrorist attacks on ordinary folk who were just being ordinary folk.  It is beyond belief, such terrible acts of destruction, and yet, they keep happening, and in the name of a god.

In my heart, I know that no god desires such homily to his or her name.  A god, by definition is a deity way above the foolishness of we humans, a loving spirit whose whole ethos is to protect, uplift, inspire and preserve life in all her glorious forms.  The care of people, land, productivity and beauty all come into a god’s curriculum.  All gods, bar none, are worshipped and venerated because of their unseen force for good.  I couldn’t name them all, nor does it matter, because what matters is the way they can work within our lives, collectively as the human race and individually inside a single life.  Some call it coincidence; some the result of prayer and faith, but no matter what a person believes in, I would like to bet that none of us think of any god as destructive, excluding, perhaps, the ancient Greeks who have long lost their credibility as time erases any chance of proving that when Zeus is in a bad mood, earth suffers.

What happens as a result of such insane destruction is all about the rise of the people; true socialism wherein we all help each other.  Heroes are not born heroes.  Heroes rise from the inferno to show their true colours, colours they always had but were never called upon to bring into the light.  There are those who begin charities, those who visit, those who volunteer, befriend, support and those who make cups of tea.  In short, disasters of any sort bring us together in solidarity and strength.  We will not be broken by any act of destruction, god or no god.  We have been formed this way from the very beginning, whether we believe in Adam and Eve or the Big Bang, or evolution from apes or a bit of all three.  It matters not in the long run, although it can certainly cause us to dismiss each other as fools when we come up against an opposing opinion.

Perhaps that’s the problem.  If we cannot even consider listening to someone who believes in a different beginning, different gods or no gods at all, perhaps we play a part in this war of worlds.  Road rage, bad temper in a Tesco queue, cruel whispers, sloppy relational behaviour all sow seeds of anger along our streets and inside our homes.  People are different, some more than others, but we are unwise to think we are safe inside our little cliques.  People Like Us are all very well and easy to associate with.  After all, we share ideas, likes and dislikes, opinions, taste in music, ethics and morals.  So what about People Unlike Us?  Well, they’re over there somewhere, out of our gardens our homes and schools, out of our line of sight.

No, they are not.  They are right here under our noses and they are humans too.  What I find quite wonderful is the learning I can gain if I step off my middle class path and into the scrub.  Of course, once I step, I find it isn’t scrub at all, but another path brimming with colourful and interesting people, and yet another and another, and all of them moving towards the same horizon.  How come I never noticed that before?  There I was feeling safe and superior, thinking I knew it all, when in fact, I know nothing.  The more I learn about another person’s life, the more I look back at my own to find it needs a lot more than a couple of tweaks.

It is so easy to protect ourselves with things and gadgets, new kitchens, cars and home security systems, those of us who can afford such choices.  We can walk this way every day until someone or something destroys it, just like that.  It can be an act of destruction, mindless, so they say, but it is not mindless at all.  Each attack was well planned and thought through, and that is the part that chills us most.  All we can depend on is each other, a collective strength, one big open heart, one big open mind ready to be kind right where we are, now, today, this minute, and especially to that person over there who bugs the hell out of us.

This is a beginning we can all be a part of.

This morning I am patching Popz’s jeans.  On the inside…..?  Or the outside…..?

I opted for outside, to which himself agrees.  To be honest, I am sewing the patches, (courtesy of my daughter’s old maternity trews) onto smoke, which is about the sum of it, but these jeans are old friends and the rest of them are still reasonably substantial.

It got me thinking about patching.  I like patching which is why the family all bring their jeans and such to me for repairs (no flowers, ma, I’m an boat skipper).  I sit in the window and I repair.  I patch.  I do the same over cracks in walls and holes in my heart and dignity.  We all do it, some of us well and some of us poorly, not careful of the thread, the tension required to effectively cover up the damage, not following the grain or the weft.  Some of us don’t bother at all and just buy another one, find another lover, choose another location, but I have learned to be very good at patching, for in the process of working with the old, of giving it new life and colour (no flowers please, we’re British), I am mindful of the time this old thing, this faithful working part, has served me.

This life is this life.  The choices we make, I made, compile my story.  I did that.  Nobody made me do any of it, although the consequences of those choices often tried to break me, to defeat my wild woman spirit, so that I gave up and fiddled with my wedding ring and dreamed of escape.  I wasted time in victim thinking.  Poor little me.  Such a shame her life isn’t a doddle, or his or mine or yours.  Well, it just isn’t, not for nobody.  That person, or couple or family or car or lifestyle you envy is a figment of imagination.  It’s a Disney nonsense, believe me.

Well….. I Disneyed far too long and now I could sell wrinkles to most of China.  However, I am deeply fond of my wrinkles and my patched up internals because they tell me I am strong, not weak.  They tell me my wild woman is well and thriving, bloodied but not broken, never that.  She is open to change and joy and disaster.  She is present, absolutely present, as she continues marching like a wrinkly amazon through every single little minute of her life.  She and I are mates now and she helps me often, when another hole appears in something, to find the fun. She re-lights the sparkle in my eyes and she also tells me to stop whining and to DO something!

Patching his nib’s jeans thinks me of the design, the worker who fashioned them and the place he or she might live somewhere on Earth.  Is it a good job?  Are you happy?  What’s your story?  Oh, and thankyou for being such a faithful friend.  Although I ask the question about being happy, it always stops a person into a think.  Define happy.  Is it living your dream, flying high, free and definitely Disney or is it just deciding to be patch perfect?

I know which I believe in.

Chopping wood today and splitting kindlers thought me about work.  How we define it and what it really means.

Work is good.  I remember my brother saying that to me years ago and I felt like punching him.  He, after all, seemed fired up and excited about his work, whereas I was unfulfilled and exhausted with all the demands of life.  Everything felt like work and work was all there was.

Then, as Tapselteerie faded into my ‘past’ and the children grew wings and flew into new worlds, I remember still feeling resentful about housework, cooking work, shopping work.  Slamming the hoover into corners and bumping it rudely down the stairs, I cursed the ‘have-to’ of it all.  Dust was always landing somewhere, windows were always grubby (that flaming dog snuffling at an outside rabbit) and once again I had no idea nor any interest in planning the next meal.  Oh poor little me!

At art school the tutors spoke of ‘our work’.  Work?  This surely is play!  No, it’s work.  Seriously?  I could feel my heart open to the idea and I practised saying ‘this is my work’ as I held up a big, colourfully indulgent canvas to an admirer.  It felt weird in my mouth for quite some time, but eventually I got the hang of it.  Somehow, as if by magic, other work, like the domestic round, became less of a monster in my head.  I found, that, by hoovering gently, respectful of  floor, corners and hoover, whilst planning my next move on canvas, I was lighter and brighter and more mindful.  Ever so slowly, the resentment left me and no woman could ask for more because most of our lives are spent working and reworking and reworking within the home.  Even one with a full time job will still be required to plan the meals and the sort the children and cater for her husband’s moods and whims.  It was aye thus.

Then one of my sons brought Mindfulness to me, the practise of it, the art of it.  I had known of it before, but, like all wise truthdoms, it was only known to me in words, a sentence that brought me an ‘Aha!’ but never found its way to my feet. However, working resentfully is exhausting and I was becoming progressively bored with my downturned mouth in the mirror.  I began to walk the talk of it and over time it has changed me completely.  Although so many aspects of any work are dull and repetitive, I can bring an element of Mary Poppins into each task, if I am mindful of each one.  My mind can float whilst I wash yet more dishes and there is nowt wrong with that, for some of my best ideas spawn whilst labouring at such a job.  However, I can also, and I do, bring myself into the very place I stand right now, and by carefully cleaning a plate with pretty flowers around its rim, I can remember where it came from, the person who gave it to me, perhaps, and can then bring them to mind, their face, their smile.  Instead of cursing because the washing up liquid is running low, and I forgot to buy more, I can take in the smell of it, wonder, as I do, if its septic tank friendly, why it has to be coloured a luminous green or a pus yellow, and so on.  I am here.  Right here, doing this, or doing that and I am mindfully engaged.

It is the greatest freedom, this engagement with whatever I am doing.  Sewing on a button, watching the cock blackbirds fight over the girls, brushing down the stairs, chopping the kindlers.  I can consider the tree it once was part of, where the tree stood and for how long.  I can thrill at the warm flames it creates.  I can think of how Spring brings new life to the blackbird who wins, wonder where he will nest and if his young will survive mink, jays, the sparrowhawk.  When stirring a cheese sauce I can consider the farmer, the dairy herd, the wide green grazing, the peaceful baleful eyes of the cows, the way the sauce thickens most delightfully, hot and creamy.

So, although my ‘work’ has become more about the domestic round than before, I am content.  Not because life is perfect at all, but because I have found the perfect in the smallest of tasks and, by living moment to moment I have a child like enthusiasm and acceptance of whatever this day shall bring.

I only wish I had learned it sooner.

What did Valentine’s Day bring for you, I wonder?  Errm, nothing.  I’m too old for that lark. When was it anyway…..?  We don’t celebrate such Americanised nonsense.  We prefer to grumble about the retail giants who maximise their percentage by stepping on our hearts. Besides, we’ve been married long enough to know we don’t much like each other.

The thing about love is that it isn’t the first bit that makes any impact whatsoever beyond the affixing of a ring and the fact that ‘I’ am required to become ‘We’ overnight. Where I drop my socks is no longer my choice, nor is the clothing I might select for a quiz night or my daringly cut gown for a ball.  I may not shoot off on a long weekend without saying where I am going and with whom. In the choice of soft furnishings I can no longer choose retro Quant if my significant other feels sick at the very sight of those garish colours and that clumsy patterning.  I may not invite in a passer-by for tea if I know my S.O can’t bear his or her laugh.  I begin to announce when I am going to bed instead of just going to bed.  I may not lend the secateurs to a neighbour without checking with my S.O first.  And so on and so fourth and fifth and sixth.  This is marriage and this is (possibly) when the dislike begins.

When children come, blessedly as very small babies at first, everyone thinks life is now perfect, which it is, up until the drugs wear off, and the car arrives to transport me home. But the motherlove is ferocious and singular and exclusive and the poor old dad, who has barely dared to allow his new name to roll off the tongue, is banished to second base.  As far as he is concerned, he didn’t do anything wrong, but wrong he is, if he should dare to question the new pecking order in the home.  It was aye thus.

However tricky life is after that initial falling into love (which never lasts long) in a relationship that has gravitas and texture, one that hasn’t died of boredom or drink or infidelity, but is just a bit peely-wally, attention is required.  Celebration is a good place to begin.  I have listened to those who tell me ‘we don’t do birthdays, or Christmas, or Valentine’s’,  and then watched the one who said it rather hurt when his SO took an old schoolfriend to Hawaii for 3 weeks on her 50th birthday.  We need to notice each other for flipping years by the way, to gift and to show romance.  I believe this would keep couples together for much longer, for all their time on this earth, if we all woke up to the important fact that every relationship needs food.  Weekly, not once in a while.

For my Valentine’s, I got a lovely card, addressed to ‘My One and Only’ and a box of chocs. He has remembered the romance of Valentine’s Day for almost 45 years, even if, in between Valentine’s days he has been a difficult S.O.b  So, have I.  This marriage thing is a walk in the dark, not the park, for not one of us has an easy ride, like what America tells us in her movies where everything is rosy at the end.  There is no ‘rosy’ unless we accept that roses have their season, scenting the whole garden, filling the eye and the heart with a gasp of wonder…… and outside of that season there is little, or no, fragrance at all.

I want to shout WAKE UP people, but I don’t.  I just wish that young couples out there can hold onto hope, can find the legs to walk on, can understand that a marriage is not one person trying to change the other, (and if that fails, which it always does, there is the justification to move on) but a complete ballsup, a collision of stars, a chaos that only ever needs a regular butterfly.

If it was easy, life would be a breeze.  But it is far from easy.  There is no greater maw to swallow men and women, countries, races, creeds, than that which requires us to converse with each other.  Lifetimes have been lived avoiding certain subjects, people, situations, all in the name of personal peace.  We avoid those who challenge our beliefs, our standards, our morals and ethics for fear of taint. We choose our friends carefully as if we were born to such a luxury.  It is our right, after all, in this free country, is it not?

I have learned over the years that whatever I madly, frantically, try to avoid follows me like a shadow.  I don’t want to be challenged after all.  I want a simple easy life, and yet that is not what I was offered.  Those who would challenge me don’t have murder on their minds.  I know this now, but my brain is often a fool.  Because I feel uncomfortable in a challenging situation, I avoid any further discourse.  I leave the space we share for the safety of solitude.  But, in doing so, I am learning nothing. This other person has the words, the phrasing, the depth of knowledge on our shared subject and I have run out of all of those.  I must counter his or her opinion.  The fact that I now cannot, is alarming me horribly and I take this challenge as a personal wounding.  I leave the situation hot and flushed, cross and embarassed and I mentally plan safe ground in future encounters, or no ground at all.

But, I am missing something here.  I love a good discussion.  It’s just the subject matter that must be chosen carefully.  No politics, religion or whatever the other one is.  What a shame!  Do I avoid these subjects just because he or she is of a conflicting opinion?  I believe in God, but he doesn’t.  So?  Are we both out to convert the other; could we not just converse, share our thoughts and beliefs without fear of taint? I don’t mind if he doesn’t believe in God, and he doesn’t mind if I do.  What we both mind is that our conversation will elevate to bullying, to all those clever words barracking our ears, the feeling of being trapped and powerless before such empassioned twaddle, for that is what it is most of the time.  Our beliefs do define us to a degree, but is nobody allowed to rethink, to develop old ways of thinking into a new and beautiful synergy?

I have watched people fall out with each other over a mere difference of opinion.  The danger of this is that each returns home to do two things.  One is to re-establish what they already believed in and the second is to build a false image of the other.  In short, it is easy for conversation to collapse into a fight, albeit a verbal one but no less aggressive than had one punched the other in the face.  Over a cake?  Yes, it was, over a cake.  10 years of cold shoulder because the one who didn’t win the prize had noticed a flaw in the winner’s Madeira and said so.  Loudly.

We can laugh, but we all do it.  Perhaps not over a cake, but a message perhaps, a rumour, those times we say something we can’t back up with evidence, and are accurately challenged.  What if we rid ourselves of that fear, those walls of protection we build around our little lives/beliefs/principles/morals?  What if we embraced another’s right to their beliefs without being scared we will be taken over?  What if we just learned to enjoy the sharing of space and words with another precious human being?  Instead of suspicion, we could befriend and learn.  We could ask and listen.  We could even not respond with our own fixed beliefs.

When a life is done, all that remains is what it meant to others. The impact it made, the legacy it leaves behind.  That, and a few bones.

The morning is crisp and peaceful, a slight frost holding to the grasses, making them look a bit startled.  Nothing moves but the smokey grey clouds in a pink peppercorn sky.  I walk out to join the dawn as a soft breeze begins to ruffle the sea-loch and a noisy line of curlews pipe in the new day.

I fill the bird feeders.  For a few days now I have heard the change in bird song.  There is a spring in their voices now, and feeding time is a mad dash of grab and scuttle as male blackbirds fight for their dames and little coal tits play a romantic hide and seek among the the little trees, ghost bare for now.  I know it immediately, when the song shifts from winter minimalism to a spring aria, and it smiles me.  There are snowdrops flowering, a bonkers daffodil or two in a sheltered spot, crocuses and even primroses, butter yellow jewels along the old drystone wall.

I get to thinking about language and communication.  It seems effortless between bird species, the pecking order clear, submission and deference, fight or flight.  Not so with humans.  How someone says something often overrides and negates the initial issue as a discussion declines into a battle of wills.  Semantics cause endless strife, the understanding of a word, what it means to each individual, what its root source is in their own past, how it filled their young ears.  I remember calling my much younger husband a slob once.  To me it meant he was being lazy when I was rushing about doing all the domestic chores.  To him it meant something very different, a label he refused to wear, pertaining, in his mind, to a useless lummox who hung around street corners pinching handbags and spitting and being rude to old ladies.   He was upset for some days after.

As we learn to live with dementia, he and I, language and sentence delivery require a greater consideration than before.  It is a test of the powers of adaptation, and a welcome one, for it has taught me much about being careless with word usage and timing.  In my own birth family, we learned from our mum how to outdo each other with sarcasm and sharp wit.  There is no place for that now, and what I have found is that I am far more respectful than ever before, quicker to apologise for being rude or dismissive, humbler. I wish I had learned this sooner, for it sits well with me, being respectful and kind and patient instead of flashing my talons in defence of my small corner. It all seems so silly now, with hindsight, such a waste of time and energy.

It is true, because I know it from experience, that when I need to adapt my language and behaviour because someone else has changed their song, or it has been changed for them, I find myself at peace.  The rythym of the day is a soft beat, soothing and calming, sort of calypso, my favourite.

All we have to do is listen for a change in someone’s song, and find the harmony.

I love ordinary days, days when I have nothing in the diary and nowhere I have to be.  As I wake, I savour the feeling of ordinariness.  I dress and send up my thanks to God for another new morning.  Coffee and a whizz pop (not what you think) made with spinach leaves, rocket, ginger, soft fruit, goji berries and apple is a green delight that I just know sets me up for the day.  There is a newly delivered bag of locally sourced forestry firewood to unload, so I lift the barrow from the back to the front and don my splinter-defence gloves.  I love such physical work and the regularity of such work strengthens and empowers me.  After all, I can do anything, for I am Woman.

Prior to the unload I fill up the bird feeders with nuts and fat balls and seed for the birds that have been lining my fence awhile now, since first light, in fact, chirruping their encouragement with increasing volume and impatience.  They depend on me and my fat balls etc, and if I am away, I feel guilty.  It takes them a day or two to return after I’ve abandoned them to Winter’s meagre pickings.  This morning I watch a goldfinch alight on the peanuts.  I see his rainbow colours flash as he pecks at his breakfast, seeing off any cheeky tits with a few swear words.  I learn that he is higher than they in the pecking order, for they only try to move in once, dashing back to the wire, like reprimanded children, to wait their turn.  There is a feeder full of nijer seed, but the goldfinch hasn’t found that yet.  I hope he will, and that he will bring his friends along for the joy of a goldfinch is something to lift a heart every single time.  I make a note to clean the feeders for the diseases old wet seed can develop is fatal to our garden birds.

Gulls wheel over the sea-loch in the fine smoky rain, calling to each other, talking of fish and tides, freedom and flight.  Although I don’t speak ‘gull’ my imagination can tell me anything I want it too, and it is here, in my imagination that most adventures are born.  I can make an adventure of any situation and I always could.  There are some grounded folk who believe that what you can explain is the real truth, but I disagree with them, although I don’t refute their knowledge of the facts, but, more, find  it limiting.  Einstein believed that the imagination is of more value than the proven fact and if he believed that, with all his scientific brilliance, then so can I, little old me, small but dangerous, living my ordinary days out on the island.

I take my time to light the woodburner, watching the flames catch the spindly kindling.  I blow the dust off the mantel and the dresser, watch the motes catch and reflect a flash of light from the fabulous and subtle Christmas lights I decided not to lock away for the mice to chew.  I have no idea what time it is and I don’t want to know.  My stomach will tell me when lunch is required, or if I need more water to drink.  We all need more water to drink and most of us ignore that sound piece of advice, choosing coffee and tea instead whilst our poor minds and bodies quietly and politely dehydrate.  I consider the small list of tasks I must complete this day and my eyes lift to a card I received from a friend.  Believe in Magic, it reads, and I place it in full view, in between Sisi the colourful beaded giraffe from Africa and the drip bucket for the leaking ceiling.  Another card-to-keep, from my sister, placed beside the other reads thus:- ‘Don’t you hear it? she asked and I shook my head, no, and then suddenly she started to dance and suddenly there was music everywhere and it went on for a very long time.’

I consider whether or not to make a seafood risotto or some soup, or neither.  This is how a day without deadlines can be with choices to do or to do not, a day to dance or to read or to sit and watch the birds, to count the raindrops, to hear the gulls talk, to open my heart and my mind and to absorb it all, this life, this earth, and to be oh so very very thankful that I am here, that I am me, that I can be whoever I want to be.  I have known deadlines and tension, pain and sadness, sickness and death.  This is what a life is all about.  Nobody has an easy one.

There is magic in ordinary days and in ordinary things, if we choose to seek it out.