by

Island Blog – Scales,Compass.Middle Thing a Finger

Scales weigh things, make a balance. On the one side, the weights. On the other the thing being weighed. At least, that is how I remember it, way back when I was young and weighing things. I even recall weighing a baby in the brass cradle when the nurse couldn’t get through the storm. Problem was that the ounce weights kept disappearing. I found one, once, in the bucket of a toy digger. I just guessed the baby weight, zoomed it up a bit and my guess was accepted. It was winter, after all, days thick with noise and storm and floods and falling trees. This was, and is, island life. I should report that said baby is now father of two and strong as an ox, but with a big brain. I also recall, during that and many other winters, the water clogging or freezing, the oil too expensive and the range very much off. Water came from mountain springs, travelling many blue-pipe miles to our home, a home stuck out in the beyond of beyond. I boiled kettles to wash my children, filling Belfast sinks in the old dairy or in the farmhouse kitchen and it worked like a genius because, with a few rubber ducks, some wooden spoons and loads of washing up liquid, they sat together, splashing and shrieking whilst I concocted a wholesome stew and tatties for an evening meal, whence I wheecked them out and into towels to eat. They liked being around me and I get that. Any of the five bathrooms were miles away and freezing. I would navigate around the abandoned calf within her straw bale warmth, bottle feed her from an old lemonade bottle (not with lemonade), check her eyes, ears, mouth, and then feed my family whilst she snuffled herself to sleep and whilst I wondered what the hec we were going to do with her.

In my life the scales unbalanced, and often, but here’s the thing. I like balance within myself. There may be none outside of me but within I will make it so. In the confusion of life, any life, the balance is in our hands. I believe it. At times the big bowl is too heavy, or too light against the weights and this demands a more weighty response. I know, I know, that scales are now the size of iPads and pocket friendly, but they weren’t once, so go with me on this because it represents balance more effectively. If there is a confrontation or a challenge, there is always that middle thing and it takes courage and determination to level. I cannot work out how to connect my new router. An example for you. The instructions presume I know new language. I don’t. So, my middle thing is to ask for help, after a long time spent beneath my old desk and among the cobwebs. I scrambled out, and up off my knees, and thought this. I have many talents but this is not one of them.

Himself always had a compass. It was within him. He knew where True North was, anywhere and any place in the world. He didn’t even have to look out, nor up. Whereas I might have been sailing across yet another sea and wondering where the hec we were, knowing he knew. However, he was not so good at compass bearing within a home space. Perhaps I clocked this, even though I was so young and so clueless about Farmer’s Wifedom, Motherhood and more. Perhaps I understood balance and wanted it for myself, my home, my marriage. I was never just the middle thing. I could land like a truck in the brass cradle, challenging him to find the weights. It didn’t always work. Men are shite at communicating feelings.

But what about now, about the chaos of life, the threats, the unsettling, the imbalance. Here’s what I think. We cannot change what is out there, but we can weigh the this and that of it, find the ounces, find singular balance. I tbelieve that the middle thing is personal choice. It was when I weighed my 4th baby in that storm, when I used my finger to level something that wasn’t quite scale-agreed. I think we are the middle thing.

Make the scales balance, with a finger, with choice, with attitude. And point true north with that finger.

by

Island Blog – The Immaculate Lawner and a Splinter

I just got one, a splinter. I went up my mosaic steps to the hilly garden behind my home. I had no mission, no compost to empty into my worm-tastic bin, no purpose beyond this, just to see what wild flowers are drinking in the sunshine. Gazillions. I took them all in, had a wee chat because they might think I was some wandering weirdo. I went barefoot, feeling the soft grass like clouds, watched the green spring up between my toes, felt the sun on my back. We had a wee revel, the grass, the moss couched on rocky bits, the wild flowers and me. Even the black honeybees joined in, although they’re more about their own stuff I find. Then, on descent, and holding the handrail as I choose to do these days, a splinter decided to come with me, sharp and into my palm. I need my palms for work at the Best Cafe Ever, and I swore. I did. It hurt and I can’t see it without binoculars, let alone remove it. My specs are, well, shite, as we say on the island. There’s a ‘could do better’ here, I know it.

The experience thinks me. We make plans and then get a splinter, something we can’t quite see, but definitely know it is there, because it hurts, disrupts and alters our direction. This, I have learned, is Life. I know we are encouraged to make plans, but rigidity is no friend. The words, Always and Never, for example are in my opinion, obsolete. We make a promise and break it. I have done so, an so have we all, even as we may quote the Always and Never nonsense, because we are human, soft, flexible, adaptable, dynamic, fluid. We have to be and particularly now. Things change every day, every hour, every minute. The way it was is not the ‘is’ of things.

I look at my view, one I never take for granted, the tidal ebb and flow, the woods out back, the sound last night of Barn Owls. I see the grass longging, lengthening, cupping wildflowers random in their rise and I see the chaos of that, and the order. Think of a baby. We watch, observe, marvel, encourage, laugh at the random. And, then, we control. We become the splinter. Why? Ah, yes, to conform with the rules handed down. This is how you do this. But not anymore. The innovators are all over us now. We have Autonomy. We have Choice. We know what is happening in our world. If we do nothing else, let us keep the green, the life-flow that feeds us, mind, body and soul.

I know, when I drive somewhere, even here, that I will see immaculata. Gardens synched in, controlled and statuesque like women of the past. The colours will be gorgeous, all in rows and all controlled. Immaculate lawns. Not here. I am already in a dither about cutting grass at all, taking the heads off those lions and cuckoos, the daisies, the others I cannot name. I probably will cut just once and avoid any cut in May because the bees so very much need us to stop tampering with their lifelines. And not just bees, but all the flying insects considered swatting material, pests at best. Do we actually realise how important they all are?

Splinter moment.

by

Island Blog – Reasons to Celebrate

There are, approximately 9450 words beginning with ‘C’. Well, damnit, I can never find any of them when playing scrabble, or, maybe, I don’t have the insiders like the flipping vowels, or, maybe, the other player has stuck the damn ‘C’ at the top of an Eiffel Tower from which there is no escape. It’s a pinnacle, and if, if, there is a Z or another impossible consonant affixed way too close to said ‘C’ then, basically, I am f**ked. However, that C challenges me, makes me both furious and determined to like it at all. I don’t mind it in ‘nice’ or spice’ or priced, or all those other words which seem to employ the C as a follow on. I like it in Niece, for example, although the I before E except after C thing in English Language lessons almost grew me wings. The rules of grammar are absolute and infuriating. I know that all that I have learned is not important now, and I accept that, whilst feeling a tingle of sadness for the beauty of what is lost.

I look for the C beginnings. Caring I know that one, the way of it. How about champagne? Ah, now that gives me tingle. Even though chairlift, coercion, confinement and control rise into my head, I know how it is to celebrate. No matter the years of awful, for anyone, if celebration is a sparkler within, then celebration will out. However and however, I wonder if folk darken, lose their hold on the fun of life, deny themselves the grabbing of moments when the sun.suddenly shines after months of darkness and rain? Noteveryone. Not me.

As a family we celebrated everything, every achievement, every brave move, every birthday, everything. Through tough times, through loneliness and exclusion, through self-doubt and sibling rivalry, through all of it, there snuckles a smidge of hope and if grasped, barely breathing, this snuckle can bring the C back three paces.

Celebration. Such a wonderful word and, just to say, I am proud of C getting to the front of a very big word. Celebrate everything, every moment, everyone. I know life is damn tough right now, but bring the damn C to the front.

Celebrate, Celandine, Collective, Creedence, Cherish, Community, Charisma, Co-ordination, Collusion, Co-piloting.

Let’s go with this, plus Champagne of course!

by

Island Blog – Mud Heft and Stone Humping

It annoyed me, the scourge of mud below my wee pull-in. It used to be gravel but I am letting it return to itself, to that grassy green naturality. To be honest, I am displeased with those who seal the ground shut. We have little enough of it left, after all, and all that healthy breath is paved and suffocated. I know that gravel isn’t so clever at closing the land, but it dims the light. Folk moan about moss in their lawns and yet moss is essential in so many ways, and, by the way, moss is way more beautiful than sticky-up grass, mown into controlled order, like Dickensian pupils.

The sun was freed up, all of a sudden, and the wind grew warm. I pulled off two big jumpers and felt quite menopausal for a few minutes. The weather is bajonkers, but this smells of warm stories and hope. It inspired me to do something. about my grump. See, when lorries or big vans deliver they just scoop onto my not-gravel, digging nothing less than. a whole ditch. Those wheels sink so down, I feel like I am looking at the topsoil of hell, not that I. believe in that. I selected my least rusty shovel from my fishbox of chaotic garden things with handles and marched forth. It took me ages. I stabbed and jabbed, scooped and dumped and all beneath a warm(ish) sun. It wasn’t a big scoop, just a deep one and I felt a butterfly of excitement once I hit the tarmac.

Now, stones, I thought. I have some big ones, old as Eve in my garden, fallen from drystane walls of old. I grabbed my wheelbarrow and bent to hump three big ones onboard. Heavy. they were and still are, but they are beautiful. Ancient basalt, naturally formed and willing to help. I placed them in situ. Now, if a van or lorry thinks it might cut my corner off, it will regret it.

I wondered if I should paint them white and then dismissed that nonsense as so urban. The moss growing over them is so beautiful. No white paint here. After all, drivers on islands might consider the fact that we are island folk and also that they should be looking for rock trouble, as we all do.

I hope you have sunshine too.

by

Island. Blog – The Insprits and the Mostly

Life is mostly ordinary for us, We might think it is different for those with solutions to everything, but, in truth, nobody does. Rich or poor or in between we find solace in the ordinary. In this ‘ordinary’ things work, wifi connection, light bulbs, fridges, washing machines, bus times, clocking in to work, locks on outer doors and systems we trust. Night is night and day is day and daffoldils are early spring and bins are emptied on the right morning. Mostly, it works according to. Mostly. And we like ‘mostly’ because we can ignore any inner doubt, any mind-fiddle that awares us of the fact that this is not as stable as once it was. And this we ignore, mostly. But there are nivits in our world now and I have met a few. Actually they have been here for many years.

I watch the tide rise bejonkers, too soon for the full moon. It slips determinedly over grass and rocks either side of the sea-loch. The Insprits are here. To be honest, it twinkles me because there is no sustainable ordinary in island life and I know this. I have lived with them for many decades. Mostly Folk could not live this way, but this way will be the way one day. The weather decides ferry access to the mainland. And, since Covid, there are many happy homes here, those who love the. shenanigans of the Insprits, who work from home, who dance with the ditzy dynamic of everything ‘island’ and who are patient.

I’m looking out at a full tide, the rise beyond itself. I hear the call of whitetails, watch a canto of buzzards, see the black lambs cajink over new grass. There’s rain coming, again, we all know that, but there are those wonderful moments when it stops and there’s a sunblister in the grey and then we see all the beauty beyond the insprits. They were always here and always will be. The sudden upsets, the unexpecteds, the terriblest awfuls.

If we can hold to loving the ‘mostly’ but prepared for the insprits, and we can teach our children this, well then, we are wise.

.,..

by

Island Blog – Power, a Reset

Back home from work at the Best Cafe Ever I always arrive to a turbulence of birds. Even in this rain, they sit along the wires and I swear they welcome me. I say Hallo Friends, but just to let you know that I will stop feeding you from May 1st, whatever the weather. They will miss me, and I will miss them very much, the dip and dive, the rise and flutter just outside my window, but what I know, and they don’t, is that a ferocious disease is coming back and will kill them and their young, if I persist in my desire to watch them feed. It thinks me.

When my children were too young to know what I didn’t want to know, I had to be the responsible one. I had to say no when that ‘no’ word set up a load of trouble. No, you cannot go to a disco at 14; no you cannot borrow the car; no you will not get flashing trainers, a TV in your bedroom, a pet snake. It was years of ‘not easy’ but that is intelligent parenting and not one of us wants it. But time passes and then they become parents and then they say ‘Ah, I get it”. It’s such a long wait to hear that, if indeed we ever do. Nobody knows a life until they live it, after all.

In the BCE, there is a young girl, new to the tasks, mid early exams, on the brink of womanhood and still under strong protection against which, I imagine, she rebels. I have watched her, listened to her, engaged with her and she is one fine early woman. I have met such in my granddaughters. Strong, clear on what they will and won’t accept. I resist the words that rise in me, the cautionary tale, and I just say, as I said to her today. Remember one thing. Do everything to make sure of your independence. Do the work towards that independence, no matter. how hard, how much you yawn at the thought of it, because if you don’t, you will end up being convinced. that a different way to yours is brighter, like the flashing trainers were once to my kids. Flash and diamond lights and promises of gold and magic is a load of shite. Always.

I wish I had known who I was at that age. I didn’t. I was, then, a follower and the leader was a man, everytime. I have nothing against men, I love them. When they come into the cafe, the bikers, the fit cyclists, and, even though they are young enough to be my sons, if there’s a sparkle, I play. This the fun of life and I love it. But I do think of those long ago days when I had no idea of my beauty and I can see ithe truth of that now in old photos. All I had was a need to escape. Thank goodness I did, and into safe arms.

My beautiful granddaughter turns 16 in a few days. I was almost married at 18, I told her recently. She, beautiful and talented she, laughed. Never me, Granny, never me. I want to focus on my exams and my piping (she is a brilliant piper) and then I laughed too. Of course my clever and beautiful girl. Of course.

by

Island Blog – Bumble, Soup and Times Ahead

I wake in my old thoughts a few times in the night for no good reason beyond the immense shackalackle of fat rain crashing down and making a noise I might have reported to the Noise Police had I not realised what it was and therefore controlled my inner fishwife. The thoughts were weird, random, old stuff. I did the ‘wheesht’ thing with my hands, both of them. Thoughts are uncontrollable. It thinks me of those teachers who go into schools and who, though strong on their subject, just cannot hold the room and are thus vulnerable to the jokesters. I am trying, over decades, to teach my thoughts, and they are pupils even now. I can brandish my wand until I become the catherine wheel, but they won’t, don’t listen to me, no matter how many sparks I spiral out into the night, any night. I must befriend them. Much like teachers, I guess.

As I drove the skinny road to work this morning, I felt so excited. I mean something here. I am someone. I am the Washeroo. Others can do it all, with eloquence and majesty but I love that place. It used to be about hiding and I could. nobody could see me there. I love the change that the Calgary Cafe has wrought in me. It was an invitation and, I am sure, a risk, but here I am again and who knew how many dancing staff could shimmy around each other with dozens of lunch orders and with tunes on, and with changes and skedaddles on table shifts and others suddenly joining and the joy in it all.

My break. I grabbed a courgette, pea and mint soup in a big cup and took myself off to Pixty. As I opened the door, I tipped the hot soup, not much but enough to singe fingers. I did laugh and opened my windows to the warm sun. A bumble flew in, beautiful, sharp arse, conifer stripe. Hey, I said, quietly. I got the trapped thing in its buzz. I held my fingers up and it landed there. Then, window open gone.

New Times ahead.

by

Island Blog – It takes Time

I used to be lonely, and for years, not just after himself took off to the stars, although that sideswiped. me a ton truck more than I had expected. When you care for a partner, and for so very long, you can find yourself wanting it to end.

I used to envy oldies like me walking past my island home holding hands and actually talking happily together. I used to slow down, to tackle any task wounting my steps, pausing a lot. Any task would have taken me five minutes plus a bit in the past. But the past is gone and I am very changed. Most of that change is olding, and we all face that, in time, but there is a lift and lift of responsive changeability, which kind of implies I did the changing myself. I did. I knew I didn’t want to hover over the past, wishing a load of shit away. I knew, instead, that I wanted to be someone, be something, no matter any demise, any trauma, any loss. And, the answer was/is simple. I hate that because it isn’t. However, over the last six odd years, suddenly alone and not just in the death of himself, but of my family leaving the island, I have learned much. Actually this learning thing has surprised me with its results. It seems to me that, by just a gentle daily practice with intention, a whole. way of seeing and believing shifts like something underwater and unseen.

I. wanted. to decide I was perfectly okay with all those happy lives around me. I wanted not to feel lonely and. definitely not needy., but a decision like that has. no legs because it’s all about willpower, and mine is floppy. I don’t know when I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself, to question my going out there among friends with a rictus smile, the great pretender. But I do. remember. hiding, facing nothing, living in minutes, filling in hours, drudging my days. And at some point I found light, just a twinkle, a tiny something that lifted my. heart, made me smile. Could. have been a. hug that was real, a hold. Could have been the stranger who wanted to chat in the veg. section of Dugie’s. Could have. been a kindness on the road to a dentist appointment. I don’t remember.

When the whatever began it showed as faith in humanity. I felt seen and heard. I mattered, and that made me ‘matter’ up. I began. to appear, to rock up, to step up. Now I work, now I walk, now I see couples go by hand in hand and wave and smile and wish them a wonderful evening. Now I feel that I miss nothing at all. I can embrace those slow minutes and, when I put on tunes, can dance through rooms that hold only happy memories. I remember so much now that my mind is rid of all that angst. The key for me is thankfulness. When I wake, whatever the striations of the night, I greet the dawn with a thankyou. As I go through my day I thank and allow. The things that irritate are only there when we feel like confronting. If we don’t, if we just back up, back down. then I recommend the peace that comes from that decision. Everyone has a tough life.

This takes a decision and practice and a lot ot Time. They say Time is an illusion. I like them.

by

Island Blog – Thoughts and Feelings

It is so good to be home, and. that thinks me. Learning as I have from others, wiser than I, I make my mind go deep on them. It is too easy to think a thought or to feel a feeling and for either to skitter off like kangaroos. I want to grab them and to hold either and for us, together, to burrow deeper. What is it about coming home that really makes it so wonderful? What is it about that feeling that so caught me by surprise? It can be catch in breath, a skitter in the belly, a wildflower in the mind, or a sudden desire to run. It can be so many things, but without deep thought it can decide itself and that is usually a mistake. As long as we surface glide over feelings and thoughts we can make wrong decisions, ones we later regret. However, it is understandable that we do this surface gliding thing because nobody ever taught us how to hold, to allow, to let a reaction breathe for itself. Instead, we react. I have reacted so often in my life that I have learned the inefficacy of it. Not always, of course, not when a situation requires it in order to save someone from falling into the beyond of themselves, but often when there was nobody nor nothing in danger beyond my pride or the invasion of my personal space or my crappy decision to go inside when I knew that inside was a trap.

Situations mellow me for sure, people, friends, community, a safe place, home. This is a truth, although even this will never stop the budgie flutters of awkward encounters and situations, most of which happen in my beautiful island home and when I am all alone and in my own mind. Thinks and feelings have, as it seems, no boundaries. And I love the challenge. In my youth, nobody mentioned feelings. In fact I do recall being remonstrated with for the abundance of my own as if. I was somehow poisoned and potentially a dange. to others. I was, I know it. Without. a clue and in my youth I just know I ‘infected’ others. Who in my days ever ever spoke of feelings. or developed thoughts? Answer…..Nobody.

Thus my feelings about being home list thus….. warmed, welcomed, safe, protected. My thoughts are scattermagic. They will settle as I let them breathe. Half of them are still in Africa after all. The key is to allow, to give thoughts and feelings time because they are up against all the fears, anxieties, imaginary demons, realtime horribles and more, already swirling like crows inside any of us, and they will wait for a clearer sky in which to unfold.

I am home and that is more than enough.

by

Island Blog – From Flame to Ice

It feels so weird turning over two calendar pages. I did say thank you to the one I flipped past, something to do with not being picked for the netball team I think. Strange how the past triggers thoughts of being unimportant like mist when the sun comes out. I see how my home has been nurtured in my absence and I feel truly thankful. I have great and good friends who probably would pick me for the netball team, even just for laughs. I unpack, downstairs because my huge suitcase is way too heavy for an upstairs attempt. It’s good for me, I tell me, to do a lot of stair rising, which it. is. People my age give up too early. The wash is on, the mail opened and mostly binned, the fire lit, the range turned right up and the upstairs of this old home ever-so-slightly warmed. Lordy, it’s cold, and snowing now, a lot, like meaningfully determined. The tulips are flattening, ditto daffys and soon the anemones and wee other things will disappear completely. I tell them, snow gets warm as a coverall. I hope that’s true.

I was, I confess, afeared of my journey from mainland to ferry port, the chance of said ferry being offed for about ten reasons, the roads being busy, wet, rainfilled, the clouds so heavy they just land right in front of you, but none of that happened. My journey through quiet roads was easy, my arrival way before time, my name on the list and the ferry (not the bathtub) was shorter than expected as I met and talke with a lovely young islander woman all the way through a dodgy cup of tea. There was nobody on the boat we knew, we agreed. The season has begun. We talked of the ferry disruptions and our thoughts on the proposal for a tunnel and we both blanched at that. The thing about island life is that it is safe just because nobody can get here without a ferry ticket.

It’s snowing. This stupidly named gale is coming apparently. The roads may slip us or they may not. The visitors may grumble or they may not. There may come a storm that threatens life and limb, or there may not. The weather reports. always give us. the disaster thing. It is nonsense. All anyone has to be is prepared. I learned ‘prepared’ even before Tapselteerie. I learned it from the boots up in Norfolk, married to a farmer who could look at me, all puzzled, when I freaked out about something he had encountered and managed for years. In my defence, I was only 20. I. learned quick and why was that? Because I want to be an agile and vibrant part of an active life. I still do. It. does. wonder me. Are there gazillions of people out there who just don’t want to face what is clearly ahead?

Enough now. Unpacked and chilly, I am morphing myself back into. the now of the now of island life, the life I love. And I wish you all a very happy Easter.