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Island Blog – The Olding

I open my fridge – check that I have something to cook or re-heat, but I know I don’t have the latter. However, I do have a slab of farmed seatrout, a what….a two day portion, maybe in a sauce, 3 days. I smile. I can sauce, and find red onion, garlic, butter, milk. I do this, aware all of the time that preparing a meal for me for 3 days has a few staves of the song missing. This isn’t new, obviously, after the gone of a reason to cook at all. But I do and I love to and I just discovered that I had bought a boxful of Rummo pasta, deciding me, obviously again, on recipes. It’s Cannelloni, my favourite, although it seems I have to the stuff the damn tubes and I just won’t so I don’t. I prep the boiling water for said tubes and make the sauce, adding the notwild seatrout. I remember very well the taste of the wild ones, salmon, seatrout, caught on their way into the inlet and on up the river to spawn, the taste of them, the spectacular of each bite, as if invited into their fight, their salt, the ocean on their skin, their journey. A privilege. Not everyone notices this.

I’m watching cloudal greyshift. They aren’t loud, pushy, the clouds, but it does seem to me that the sky is allowing, like a mother of many, sitting back, observing. My days are watching days. I get no questions. It is as if getting old and being alone becomes all about my children. Oh, that’s not quite true because I do get questions , rarely and when they come….How is it being alone now? How do you ‘feel’ about that? It must be so hard to even bother to construct an interesting meal. that’s a question too. I hi-light this because it is how it is and I hear it all around me. I knew it myself when my in-laws, my parents were lonely, were doubting themselves, and I feel shame now. I could have done more, not to ‘Care’ not that, but just to ask questions which stopped them thinking about themselves for just a little while and which might have meant the world, like ‘Hey Granny, did you write today? Hey Mum how are your cornflowers? Did you manage to shift the wood? Where did you get that dress, see that smile on your face, let me sit down….tell me.

Olding alone is a tangle of weeds. I’m just saying it.

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Island Blog – Swans in Dark Skies

I just couldn’t get to sleep last night. I did go to bed early, closing my curtains as others dressed up for a night out. I spoke, out loud as always, my thankyous to the beauty of the world around me, the hours of the day, the way I am still alive and well and for so much more. It can take me many minutes to complete my list. I settled with my good book and read for a couple of hours as day gave way to the dark, the precious dark, no street lights, no flashing anythings, no glow from any electronics. Just a glorious and natural dark. I realise this is rare and there’s another thankyou.

As eyelids droop and words swarm on the page, I turn off my light and courie in to my soft pillow. That’s it, I think. Morning will wake me, although even as I think this, I know it to be nonsense because I am now left alone with my thoughts, no longer inside another story but back to my own. And here, there be dragons. Over many many decades I have worked to affect this and without any success. I don’t know why. Nor does anyone else.

I bring to mind, in my wakefulness, images of all the good times, the wonderful in my life, the happy faces of my children and theirs; the moments, the adventures, the successes and the way we carved out a life in difficult circumstances, a wonderful and all inclusive life. I see faces of the students who worked with us, the randoms, the ceilidhs, the spontaneity of a Tapselteerie chaos, the way we sorted, fixed, fed, accommodated a gazillion people. I like that movie.

As the midnight hour ticked in I must have dozed off. Then I heard them. Hundreds of them and I know the call.. It took 20 minutes for them to fly by. Shouldn’t be Whooper swans, not now, I thought. They are happy in the Arctic enjoying the feeding grounds. But I am sure it was them, and their longsong, the way I could picture them in the black of night, supporting each other, encouraging each other other, shifting leadership, all that, as they cut the night in half. I heard them gone.

Then I slept.

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Island Blog – The Crevices

I’m watching a slide of cloud folding down into the crevices between the hills, like smoke through the trees, moving like a whoosh to cover over the hill road, the altostratus holding above, the cumulous confident. It thinks me about a load of things. There will always be be levels, the lower, the confident upper. Always, even in nature. Definitely in nature. My children have gone now, all their dynamics with them, all their longings, all their dreams and needs, leaving their roots once again and driving through blocks and hold-ups and ferry issues all over again in order to push their lives forward, to hold up their families. I feel old as I watch them go, even as I know they must. They are now in a place we were in once, very scared. I think everyone can admit to scared in these times.

The thing about being old and alone is that nobody wants to hear about it. I have been thinking much about my husband as he felt himself losing himself. I thought that, had just someone asked him, someone beyond the family fear of it, the clinical response to it, asked him, genuinely and whilst he still knew himself, ‘Tell me about you. You have lived such an extraordinary life after all.’ We didn’t, they didn’t. I have nothing but respect and thanks to the carers and the ‘officials’ who came, but the system forgets or denies the ‘crevices’ as the smokecloud descends over the strong tree-lined hillside of a longheld life.

This situation is everywhere. I get the fear when things wobble and sustain. I walked through it all and, to my regret, I formed myself into a clinical response. I forgot who we were. I miss you at Scrabble, at Cards, at the chuckle on your face when you got me. I never learned Chess. I tried, you said ‘It’s easy.’ I wish I had asked you about your life, so much bigger than mine when we lay together. I wish I had not turned into mother/nurse so quickly as if I could fix everything, bring you back. Even though I could never have fought this awful life sentence, I still can find ways I could have been more than. I could have shown you the clouds, the way the hill road disappears in cloud swoosh.

I’m laughing now. You would be. It is as it is. Yeah.

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Island Blog – That Cafe and Today

I see gulls flip over the ebbing tide, the copper seaweed in brazen exposure, the sea-loch quietly grey and slightly wind-skiffed. I see the sweet pea pods waggle, the old rose holding tight in its last pink shout to a greyling sky, cloudbacked. I see the grass peppered heavily with clover leaves. Perhaps the blooms will come, perhaps it’s too late now for Autumn is definitely here. I know it because the fire has been on all day and I am fast running out of wood. this running out thing comes so quick. It seems that one day it’s…. what light stuff to wear and the next there’s a shiver and an opening of sweater drawers, much to the surprise and subsequent skitter of spiders. They’ve been safe for months now after all. I pause to let them go safe. It doesn’t bother me, the change of a season. In fact I welcome it. If we never accept and adapt to change, we just get some resistance issue like bad temper or a skin condition.

The Best Cafe Ever was gey busy last week. A gazillion lunches, endless coffees and cake, teas and allergies, dogs and wee ones, rain and shine. We welcome them all. In fact, someone said to me today, someone who isn’t afraid to speak their feelings, ‘That Cafe has just got it so right.’ And it’s true. There is something about hearing laughter all around, folk feeling welcome and well fed, served with smiles and can-do, which speaks volumes about any place of hospitality. And I love being part of the small team, as do my co-workers. It tells me that, although this place is only two seasons old, the idea of it, the walking it out, the risk involved has got it ‘just right’. We are small but dynamic. We are ready for whatever comes no matter the bizarre thunderstorms, no matter the craziness of the world, no matter the rainshift, the snaggle-toothed roads, the ferry issues, the lack of parking because there just isn’t enough rock to park on. No matter any of it. Still the gulls wheel and shriek under a louring cloud bank; still there is a humbacked whale just out there; still there are hills brocaded with a turning green; still there are wild birds lifting and hovering, floating on updrafts. Still the tides ebb and flow, still the night comes and there is no pollutive light.

A dot on the map, yes, but a dot worth a visit.

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Island Blog – Confusoball

I flip on a light as I head for a shower. That’s a first. It’s been light for months and now light is shifting. I don’t need the light, but I choose it, I want it. As I curve, like the staircase up to the next floor I choose that warm glow. I almost heard the light, the wee thing, chuckle. I am back. Yes, I said, and paused and by the way you will be pivotal for endless months because Spring is like a teenager who never wants to get out of bed. I’m not sure she got that, but we do. We can bow down to the unknown, to fears, to olding pains or to the sense of living in a world we don’t know, nor understand. I am very aware of the bow-down capitulation. It gets me every single day, no, doesn’t get me, but it rises like a rising thing and I am very aware very aware that it is just me against it. And I am, against it.

Most people I know about live on the surface, paddling like mad, looking for shore. Think about it. How often have you actually have a real deep conversation with anyone? Quick hallos on the school run, eyes checking for how you look as ‘mum’, the quality of your clothes, boots, makeup. For men, the whole ‘right way’ to look, to impress, regardless of financial constraints. Surface paddle. I see that it is important, but it is only sustainable if a person decides to be owned.

I am with those tho swim against the current because that is where something happens. It is never about money, nor greed. It is singular. One person just swimming the other way, brave enough to risk, wild enough to break out. As long as we bow down, as long as we believe what ‘they’ say, we will be safe for a while, but not for long.

Buying, social media, all of it, can consume a soul.

It isn’t real. What is real is connecting with granny, lighting a light on the stairs, minding the chickens, covering the bee hives in a storm, sensing that storm, forming a cupola. However, I completely get that I would have wanted the best high-top sandals, the lowest cut skinny shimmy of a dress. Such a confusing time.

I’m a confusoball.

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Island Blog – Senses, the Truth and Repeat

The whiplash of waves against basalt rocks; the slamdunk of a ship’s bow against a punch of ocean; the pipe and caw from seabirds as they slew by; the whistle and moan of wind; the mourn of seals; the skidoosh of incoming dolphins, spray-swiped, bursting the waves wide open. We have heard, seen and felt them all, and more, and each of them overtake our thoughts, which, in my case is always a good thing. My bent toes are no big deal, my concern about not enough knickers, my doubts about olding life, all twist out of my hands like feather wisp. In this environment where everything is wild, the stupidity of human thoughts comes home with a thwack. It thinks me.

Even as we talk together we learn from each other. First impressions fade as layers of protection fall away. A voice speaks, the timbre now familiar, the words, the stories only just emerging as confidence grows as it can do in a small group and in a wild place. We risk our truth, the revelation of it, at least in part because once we say farewell to each other in a day or two, we will travel back into our insecurities, our doubts, our diminishing thoughts, albeit changed to some degree. And how did this change come about? It came because we were here altogether inside an experience, strangers at first, sharing the sounds of each other, feeling the sharp edges of another’s life, learning the musicality of another’s voice. We heard the sounds together, the whiplash of waves, the squeak of dolphins, the creak of a boat in a bumpy sea and we saw the glint of diamonds when she was calm and silky smooth. The lift and dip of sounds, of sights, of touch, the smells of wildflowers as we walk over island tracks, each foot absorbing old stories and the effect they all have upon us is a twosome. We notice and take them home with us, or we forget them and go back to our daily worries and concerns.

However, as our lives become more and more controlled and as we (or most of us) buy into that control, we do have choices if we decide to to notice the times we really connected with a moment, with a person and with how we feel about ourselves within that space; the way it can change us. Not for the the better of everyone else, but for the bettering of our own self, our own soul. It isn’t fuelled by comparison nor resistance and nor is it immediate. It grows slowly and gently, still respectful of others, still working away at life, but with a new rainbow inside, quiet, perfect, pulsing with colour. We are not one of a number and we are one of a number. We are not like her nor him, nor them. We are all unique and way more individually and independently valuable than the controllers would have us believe. They don’t like it, of course not. But we do.

So take each experience, lift it into your hands, notice every detail and keep it close. Shake it up like a snow globe and watch it until the last flake falls. Make it more real than all the marketing control, the fear driven rulings, the invisible pressure to be just one of a number. Say ‘I am unique, valuable, important just as I am.’ And say it every day, a zillion times till I sinks in and sticks. Nobody cares about bent toes nor any other hang-ups which mean damn all because the only person who cares is you. Anyone else, on seeing another anyone else looks for something way below the obvious. You look in the mirror, you scrutinise and judge your own geography, geology, physiology. All irrelevant. Someone else is looking for friendship, a welcome, the light in your eyes, the hint of a story that isn’t their own because their own is probably dull, in their opinion. Often it is only through another’s eyes that we see ourselves as we actually are.

And so we can learn from each other. We can stop our circular thoughts, cut the spiral, spin it off into the ether. All that judgement, those ridonculous negatives that float without ever grounding into truth. We can say ‘I am unique, valuable, important, just as I am.’

And repeat.

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Island Blog – What is real

The sgurr of Canna rises in rockjag, granite layered with larval basalt and dressed partly in a lush green. The late and welcome sunshine lifts it into a story, People have lived here for thousands of years, working with what they had. They climbed these cliffs, fed their sheep, their cattle, themselves. They had boats or didn’t but either way the only connection to ‘civilised’ life was over the water, the oftentimes complicata of tidal conflict, of adverse weather. They didn’t run out of milk because someone had a milk cow. They made butter, cheese, curds and more. They didn’t run out of green because they collected ‘green’ and made something healthy. They kept pigs, those who could afford one, and sheep and they shared. They had wool for carding and spinning, clearing off the lanolin in stored barrels of urine, and then washing the fleeces in fresh spring water from rushing burns, drying them on hillsides. They had clothes. All around them moved healthy air, sea blown, pure, unpolluted. Even today, this day, in times of human foolery and folly, this place breathes clean and clear. The island has a strong community ethic. We can feel it. Unlike so many ‘civilised’ places, with instant everything and an uber a quick call away, this place, like so many Hebridean islands has so much more to offer.

I watch those who live an island life with interest. Although I do live on one such island and have done for over 4 decades, these remote places, inhabitants from a mere 40 to perhaps 400, I notice things. No woman is bothered with her eyebrows, the shape of her nose, nor what she ought to be wearing. When life is paired down to what is actually important, such fricking nonsense is just fricking nonsense. It teaches me. Although the ‘patriarchal’ control is supposedly diminishing, it seems to me that women still uphold it, maintain it.

Where life is truly lived, engaged with fully and is tough, challenging and deeply fulfilling, may well lie well outside and beyond ‘civilised’ lies. I watch the sun light up a curve of cove on Rum, its tail fire dancing over the stacs of Canna and then gone in a cloudsnap. I see salt peppering the windows of the boat as we swing and sway at anchor in this bay. I feel stories, ancient stories flow in and out of me, words in gaelic, auld scots, and understand not one word even as I understand it all.

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Island Blog – Wild and Herself

I sit on the aft deck listening to the snap of the ensign in a corrugated wind. Today we engaged with the Atlantic close up, feeling every wave, the lift and push, cross tides beneath and around us as we rounded the lighthouse at Ardnamurchan, always an adventure and a half. Then on to the Isle of Muck, the seas sideways and upside down and very teenage. It wasn’t rough. I know rough. I know massive waves breaking over the bow and this wasn’t like that but I have sea legs and my old legs remembered themselves even though it is years since I bowed through anything remotely rough. Other guests do not have my experience and I noticed how they quietened and hunkered as I rolled with each twist and screwball feeling immense thrill and excitement. I remember this. This is my whole life with seafarers.

We moored and walked for a couple of hours over many stories and a million years, through wildflowers and wild birds and the few people who inhabit this remote island. Then back to the boat for another dance with the Atlantic roil until finally the best of skippers brings us safely into our resting place below Rum for the night. What has uplifted me today is the way I feel. I was so very tired when I boarded. And yet today, the first day, I feel alive and wild again, feral and free and so happy. Is this my happy place? Not just the island magic I already know so well, the wide and truthful sky, the endless weather changes, the wildlife and the island people but the direct contact with the ocean. I thought I was afraid of rough, any rough. I remember saying I would not go on a boat again unless the sea was dead flat, dead, flat, humourless, a whisper of herself, submissive, polite, like so many women I know, as I was once. Today she showed me wild, almost in a tantrum, her truth and I felt as one with her.

I am always learning.

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Island Blog – Transition, the Familiar to Adventure

Moving from one state to another, one location to another, equals transition. Prior to one usually feels me anxious as if I have stepped off a familiar path and into the scrub. I need my navigational skills, skills I always doubt I have. Do I have the right boots? Are my eyes sure of sight, of their looking power, their clarity? Is my case too heavy or too light? Do I pack a sandwich? Stupid nonsense like that, and then some. I have always wanted to be the sort of feral woman who just gets up and goes, who doesn’t care about the right boots nor the damn sandwich and who is so childlike as to simply adventure on, scrub or rocks or cliff edge or bog notwithstanding. I never was, and yet, and yet, since I turned 70 a while ago, I am learning. This in evidence as I unpack my lightweight suitcase on board the Lucy Mary. I have four pairs of knickers for 6 days. Never was good at arithmetic. Actually I had packed 5, (still a lack, I agree) but one pair fell apart on removal. I sit on the bunk in my cabin and look at them, see quite clearly that they must be a decade old. Oh dear. The other guests look so well assembled although I confess I have no clue as to their knicker situation. My clothes, the few I had brought with me, are a touch threadbare, my usual island kit, but it’s as if I am seeing them for the first time in stark realistic reality. I also forgot mascara, essential for the other end of me. All this thinks me.

When I meet with strangers I couldn’t give a monkeys as to their outward appearance. I notice it, of course I do, the well-heeled, the tatty bedraggled, the somewhere in between, but how someone presents rarely has much truth in itself. It doesn’t tell me who you are, what you are really like, your innermost innerment. Thus, I tell myself firmly, it doesn’t matter what I look like either, and I gently slide myself into another transition, one that leads me back to myself, the real inner me, the truth of me, open, vulnerable and ready for adventure. Over the next few days I will learn from the other guests. In this sea-blown cloudscape, among these ancient rocks and twists of history, we will join in a mutual interest, risking ourselves enough to open up in ways we never do when walking through the familiar.

Right now we are heading into a mildly lumpy sea and I am thus in danger of missing my keyboard one letter at a time, so I will stop now and lift myself into the adventure.

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Island Blog – Shift

I smell Autumn. It happens around this time of year, every year. The thing about living so close to nature is that senses align in ways they never could in Urbia. The tensual connection with the light, the way the wind flexes, shifting from this to that direction , even momentarily, the tap of cold on bare ankles, the way the distant hills turn grey sooner than before. It would have been survival back in the day. The grasses, left long and now all seeded out, bend like dancers but take longer to straighten up. Seeds and down fly everywhere to the last resort. It doesn’t upset me at all, although I do pull a warmer jersey from the mix today after work.

Thing about Summer is that she is a spirit, short-lived and a cavel, supremely wonderful, providing ridonculous temperatures for a while and then, after giving out all she has, gets weary. Autumn, a very different strength, also female but much older, rises like a grandmother with the promise of a gentle and long-term handover. That’s what I have observed over almost 50 years here in the cup of nature. I felt her nudge today as I got out of my mini, arriving home from working in the Best Cafe Ever, and even though my fed is thoroughly up about my olding limitations, sore thumbs, hips, I still love my membership in the dynamic team. As I arrived home, felt the shift, saw it in the ‘might need lights’ thing (not yet) and I smiled. I love the seasons, the way they don’t give a thought to what we daft humans plan. They are the power and our power, and if we want to connect, the way to do this is to engage. Autumn isn’t July? It is here, and, if you read books and stories and actually want to get how it really is beyond the falsehood of Urbia, this change will not upset at all.

I remember my mum packing up our summer kit in a huge ottoman. Teeshirts, frocks, shorts, all of that. The winter kit came out. Jumpers, warm breeks, thicker socks, long-sleeved underpinnings. It was (and I am guessing) around October. Not now. The survivors will just go with it. My suggestion, if it is possible for you, is to check the stars, to feel the slicker breeze, to see what can only be seen in Autumn light. Clarity. To shift away from how it was because the was of that is long gone.

I smelled Autumn today. I smelled her as I opened my car door, arriving home. I felt it in my house. lit my fire, noticed deer on the far side of the sea-loch, sensed a crisping of air beneath a dense camp of clouds.