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Island Blog – Lime and Rebellion

I made a tomato salad. This is no big deal, obviously, but it was more about the push towards making it that gives it a voice. I had these tomatoes delivered on Friday last, in a brown paper bag and from a local veg grower along with fresh beans, long stem brocolli, cucumber and green things and more. Back to the tomatoes. The bag I placed separate from the confusion of the salad drawer as pretofore I have, many times discovered a mulch beneath some hopeful vegetable or fruit that got itself forgotten at the bottom of that drawer. Reminds me of my endless teenage years, not that I became mulch.

I pulled them out, the tomatoes, all firm and looking at me. Let’s do this. I have no idea what I am doing. I used to, way back in Tapselterrie Days but only because it was an everyday thing. When the everyday falters in grammar, into commas and full stops it is easy to lose the connection with what used to be. So damn easy.

I slice the ones ready firm, cut them four ways. I spin red onion into a skinny admin. My basil plant is holden by whitefly so I scuff them off, the white invaders, select leaves, finely chop and say farewell and thank you to the basil mother as I send her into the wild around me. I go to my cupboard. Red wine vinegar, I think, although I don’t know yet. I have to source the maniples of a metal adjustable spanner in order to release the lid of the red wine vinegar. I add grated lime, another instinct. I cover the bowl and let it sit. I thinks me.

I am here alone now. There is a lot to be said for it. I meet many widow friends these days and I see a light and a lift in their eyes, one I never saw in their eyes, nor their bodies when I met them as wives, as mothers. It isn’t a true freedom but it is a freedom nonetheless. They don’t have to explain themselves anymore. They don’t have to apologise for any flight of fancy. You might think they could begin to be themselves, but just don’t go there because these good women who married young and bought into a culture which proffered security and sanity and control and safety and in that commital, they, I, became who we became as mothers, as wives, as carers.

So, the lime is redolent of rebellion and it works in this salad.

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Island Blog – The Cafe, Keeping on, Q and Clouds

Someone said the Q word this morning. It isn’t allowed, and we all flinched as it spilled through lips and took off like a jester cloud, filling the whole place. It was gentle for a while, coffees, hot chocolates/what type/marshmallows/cream, bespoke teas, cakes, scones with jam and cream, blueberry bakewell, still warm, chocolate cake so full of chocolate as to dynamic the most miserable of souls into hopefulness. Peanut butter brownies, gluten free flapjacks, and so much more. WE are so much more, the team who work here and that’s a good thing because of the Q word earlier.

Around midday they came, and kept coming. The Washeroo was swamped with plates and cups, water glasses and pots and pans and all things kitchen. I don’t even know what half of this equipment is for but it does produce excellent lunches so I don’t really need to do more than to make sure all of it is thoroughly scrubbed. We welcomed dogs, children, families, couples and we never stopped at all, clearing, chatting, welcoming, delivering great food. I ducked out at times, just to escape the high piles of plates and cups and cutlery and pots and the endless parts of a new mixer. I changed the water many times in the deep sinks, so scurrilous did it become. I remember pulling back at one point and looking at the greasy brown swirl of it and thinking this. I don’t want anyone to think that I would ever countenance such water in my sink, not staying there like it was an ok staying there thing. I pulled the plug often.

The thing about running a very popular cafe is that the populous will come. They come because they hear it is a lovely welcoming space and that the food is healthy and fresh and prepared daily. Of course they do. And reputation will grow because people will recommend and new visitors will come because of that. I know that the owners of this cafe have got it so right. I also know that a business takes years to learn its wingspan. I remember growing a few and the early years were also cloudal. I remember doubt and judgment and loss of confidence. However, I am glad we kept going because now all around the world the work we did is used in protocols around sea-mammal research. There were clouds aplenty in the long years of that keeping on thing.

Home now and the sky is a big nudge of clouds. Not a flat sky, not lying down, not at all, but there are stratonimbus and a dwindle of cumulous and a load of feathering interruptions going on in the conversation. I hear it loudal. It moves all the time, shifts, blends, pulls back as if in outrage. Below, I have a baked potato and salad for supper.

The Q word? ‘I think it might be Quiet today”

Enough said on that.

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Island Blog – Part of ‘We’.

Just made my green stuff. All the goodness. Carrot, Celery, Apple, Ginger, Broccoli, Spinach plus Turmeric. I usually make it in the early morning, but forgot. I never guarantee that I will like the taste but, as I recall from the medicine proffered decades ago, I will drink it because, apparently, it is good for me and ‘good for me’ with my sore bones and my guilty mind in mind, I decide to decide to believe in a sort of wipe-out, a cleansing, a restart. Not that I can, obviously. I remember once, driving down an even narrower lane than most on the island, late at night and legging over a fence in my long frock to hide from the police behind a nettle hedge after a riotous meal out. I have the tear in said frock to this day, although I did repair it with good needling and a heart. I think about this as I fridge my green stuff and chuckle. I could not leg over any fence now, although I probably would give it my best if nobody was watching. I am not one to readily accept the limitations within which I now live, those which might just attempt to contain me. I am not about to accept that, been too contained and for too many years. Enough on that. However, I am not interested in prowess. It’s enough for me to know that I could do what I once did, if suitably challenged.

Thing about this olding thing is that it is critically important to keep connected with other lives, with those in a younger generation who discuss things that leave me mystified. Just to connect, that’s the power of itself, and I know this first hand. Too much time alone, gazing at the beautiful view from my home, watching nature unfold, deliver and pullback is not enough. Humans are required, and not just a wave from a passer by. In my beloved cafe job, where I am looked after in ways that tell me I am respected as myself, the, at least, 33 yeasr beyond them, the granny. Here there is purpose. That’s what we can lose if alone and olding. And purpose is a thread, like a continuance in a tapestry, or a connective line in a painting, or in the way a business includes and settles. You are all important here, your difference matters, the things you bring, just you, matters. You are an integral part of ‘We’. It’s a belonging.

In an alone life with a mouthful of stories, with the scars and breaks of legging over fences, of the heart stopping awfuls of rushing to a bedside to sit all night as a child fought to breathe, of the disappointments, the leavings, the lack of communication, of the all-too-natural guilt of motherhood, I welcome the connections I have now. I can’t change the motherpast, nor make it better, but I recognise my place in the now of now. And I can smile.

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Island Blog – Ebb, Flow, On and On.

There are diamonds on the water, an incoming tide speckled with sunlight where the luff of water rises like hope. I watch a carder bee on the cornflowers, not many left now, as birds flip and flutter through the sweet peas, mostly pods now but still lifting blooms to the sky. Tangled clouds overhead, a conversation up there. The grey ones push along, but the white wins through, holding place, giving way a bit, but just a bit. They hold the sky and I admire their flexibility. They’re like good friends. Okay, I will allow you to be grey today, but not for long. I watch them, the white, flex around the grey, even as they hold the ground, or sky in their case. Sun beams in between all these cloudal shenanigans, the ultimate smile. I feel its warmth on my skin and it smiles me. A young robin jinks on the fence, the result of a second sitting, singing pure and strong. Go to the fatballs, I tell him/her. The bird twists at my voice, eyes me from the shoulder of my garden bench as if I am a right twit not speaking ‘robin’. I don’t put out seed in the summer months, much as I am tempted to, only fat balls and mealworms and I am out of the latter for now. I hear, just now the screech of angry gulls and ditto crows and just know there is a sea-eagle out and about. Then I hear the yip and see him and her lift into the now flat sky, a grey and white collusion. They soar as if it’s nothing. There is only sky for them, no wind to tilter, no other bird that high for now. The gulls splinter off, bored, the crows too and here comes the rain. I catch a white tail as they redesign the sky. They are at home up there, rain a notbother, hecklers left way behind, for now. The vista mists, the hills beyond smokey and indistinct. I love this place, this place of seasonal change, of sudden disruptions and community strength; of good people with pockets full of smiles and who are always there with a hug when the grey comes in. I see the definition of the far hills now, the shower albegone, the sky still holding shut but that could change in a heartbeat much like tunes on a playlist, shuffled.

I light the fire. I like the flames, safe inside the wood burner doors. Change again. The day is slipping away, the night-push stilling the roses, the flowers, the trees. Not yet though, but for me, the change is coming. I wake early, go to bed as others head out for dinner. It suits my situation. I like to hear the walk and chat of those walking by my closed curtains as I read, coming back from the pub or a walk. They are like night flowers, life living itself on and on, soaring, claiming space, lifting. Laughter rises like hope, just below my window, sparkling diamonds on an incoming tide. And the tide will continue thus. Ebb, flow, on and on and on.

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Island Blog – What we Give

I walked today, a bit wobbly, a bit sore, a bit doubtful. After a stupid fall, a small one ,the capital of which can make all subsequent letters lower case. It was a bump, just that, but the old of me denies a quick revival, as it might not a ten year old. I walked today, a small one and decided I would notice everything along the way. I had to get out and the sun was warm and the sky kind and my thoughts were doing me no service at all.

I started out on the Tapselteerie track, unsure, just me. Well, it is always just me so that’s not unusual. I turned at the fork and headed up the track, the original for the grand guests back in the day, and stopped to watch Painted Lady butterflies on the wild Scabious. I stood awhile, unmoving, just watching as they sipped the nectar. It thinks me. Oh I know it is instinct but go with me here.

We teach out children. Most of us think it through. Most of us us want them to learn the stuff which will help them even though we know that their generation is a somewhere we will never have the language for. Did I know that in the 70s/80s when I was mum to five? No. Even though I had the taste of the 60s, I went blind into motherhood, as if nothing would change. How incredibly stupid.

I look, now and then, at photos of me as a young mother. I don’t recognise her. I was so so young. And yet, this very day, one of my kids recognised his childhood and how we taught him. He had been through a challenging time and was so thankful for what we had taught about survival, about a can-do positive attitude, even in fear, especially in fear.

And I remembered myself, that young mother in a wild place and thought this. We don’t know what we give.

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Island Blog – To be Seen

I was working out something, no, somethings, as I worked today in the Best Cafe Ever. Not just me who thinks that. about the Best Cafe Ever. I hear it all the time, and more so today when someone said just that. Not to me directly, but to one of the Calgary Girls, we who serve and smile and pet dogs and clear tables and oh goodness, forgive me, there are men in this mix and it matters to them too. One the boss, t’other the Tuesday Chef. Both marvellous men. It’s just that mostly, it is the Calgary Girls who work the dynamic in the cafe. Although we are all, without doubt, deciders on inhabiting the sometimes awkward space the servery, we are the inviters.

Remember times when you arrived for coffee on a platform, or in a cafe, or in a clothes shop when the one who could bridge the gap across a counter did, or didn’t and the difference it made, not just to a possible purchase, but to how you felt for the rest of the day? We want to be seen. We really do. There is the very possible to interpolation, of a little smile, a welcome, a warm conversation. We know we are one of many, that the welcomer is fed up, has her/his own life stuff, but that smile can change our whole journey to work, to trouble, to tough decisions, to whatever. For me, this is the gift I can give. I have no idea about the life of anyone who orders one cappuccino with oat milk, one without, and one blackcurrant muffin, one slab of chocolate cake, two plates, two forks. I don’t need to. I love serving, making an experience a very happy one for them. They are people.

I looked into the ‘inter’ word. It’s so easy now with Google and AI, but in my day it was a downstairs scoot to the Huge Oxford Dictionnary taking up hours and dusty inches in the sitting room bookcase. A word came to me, found me, no idea what it meant but the way the letters connected, the way they fitted, caught me. I like it. I hesitate here. It seems as though interfusion is invited and, perhaps it still is. I am old now and still wondering, and yet, and yet, when i get a welcome from a barista, eyes on me, or a eye response to my hallo. I get it. We need to be seen, ultimately to be heard.

So, let’s start on this. If we step out there, traversing the wild of our imaginings, keep walking, keep telling ourselves we want to connect, no fear, no fear. I have walked beside someone who nudged me away from any possible connection on the streets. I won’t do that again.

Everyone needs to be seen.

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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.