Month: August 2022

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Island Blog – Shadow, Biting Ants and Shoulds

The sun is lower in the sky. I know this from the dapples cast along the track. This is the time of year when shadows become more evident. I don’t want to step on them. I stop and stand to watch the way they shimmy in the light breeze, shifting shapes like a moving work of art. As I move on, butterflies flit across my walking, fritillaries, peacock, black harlequins, painted lady and even a red admiral. They flow through the sunlight alighting on scabious, moon something, meadowsweet, supping the last drink of nectar before the season snatches the bar away, pulling the flowers back down to rest for another year. Skitterbugs buzz and hum, scoot and lift around me. I don’t know their names, there are so many. Some hover, some whine, but all come close to check me out. I don’t swat. I say hallo you. Everything and everyone wants to be acknowledged after all.

Down to the shore of memories. I hear the memoric voices raised in excitement, a whale watching adventure ahead. I think I might have to push through the gorse but someone has scarped a space enough for a human to pass through without a single scratch. I see the water appearing long before I reach it. Low tide, new moon, a good time for the oyster farmers to be out on the shore, tending their cages. They have worked here for days, I heard the rumble of tractors, the lift of male voices on the breeze for a few days now and they are here again. The gorse pods pop as I walk through a canopy that once was an irritation to my feet. How quickly pass the years. I stand to watch a pod explode, sending seeds up into the air and watch them land. More gorse next year. The coconut smell is heavenly and I breathe it in, then move on down to the shore. There will be no otter to watch this day. The tide is wrong, the water somewhat poppled on a land breeze. Otters, I have observed, choose a calm incoming tide for their hunting.

A heron explodes from the bow-backed hazel crowd. These benty trees, known, somewhat disrespectfully as ‘scrub’ were tots in the days of my memory, the granite boulders trojans, all biceps and resistance. It seems even they can be compromised. The heron explosion startles me. So much squawk and crashbang, and that’s just taking off. It reminds me of those I knew who never went anywhere quietly, needing to announce themselves. Across the low tide I notice a cormorant standing on the sand. I watch the first tractor coming and watch it sit some more. When it eventually lifts into the sky there is no sound. Gulls wheel and squeal around like gossips, keeping close eye on the action. A fish jumps. The salmon are running, that instinctive push to recreate, even though death calls just as loudly. When the tidal flow begins, as it will soon, the waters will thrapple with jumping fish, the otter beneath and threatening an early demise, like being fired just before retiring.

Home, and I question that. I know this is home for me. I know it. So why do I want to run and run when everything sacred to me is right here? There is no logic to these biting ants that rise in me. It thinks me. I am not the only one feeling this. I believe we all do, we all feel the desire to run and run and run. But from what? I will not swat the feeling away because it is a teacher, a guide. Perhaps none of us really understand what it is to be human. Current culture teaches endless ‘perfect’ remedies for ‘sorting us out’. Once and for all. But, and I am a questing and curious student of life, I know there is no ‘once and for all’. There is no remedy for human-ness. We all know moments of completion and days or months or years of wanting to run. This is not weird, but we pretend it is and label the so called ‘lost’ as if they had leprosy and we might catch it. But this is not Truth. I have a million times of completion and a thousand times that million of biting ants. It is only possible to accept and to love being human if we can allow this in ourselves, in others instead of expecting everyone to ‘get over themselves’ in the spreadsheet timeline we write upon ourself.

I meet other grievers. I hear the same from them all. ‘Well-meaning friends and family ‘tell’ me I ‘should’……….. I just wrysmile at that.

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Island Blog – Go Widdershins

Today I walk widdershins. I decide this last minute at the place where two tracks meet. Normally I veer left but not this day. It thinks me, this differential, this random and spontaneous refusal to stick to the ‘norm’, this comfortable, this mindless unthinking. Since when did I get stuck in the bog of ‘norm’? For a while, obviously because my whole body argues with my decision and my brain is in uproar as if I had turned up to a Monday evening meet of the WRI stark naked, toting a half full bottle of merlot and waving a poster that reads FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION FOR WOMEN! It thinks me, a lot, this differentia thingy. Accordion to mathematics, the word differential ‘relates to the infinitesimal differences or derivatives of functions’. Hmmm. So when I decide to walk widdershins just to experience, at a physical and mental level, the chaos that ensues when I abandon the norm, what I am actually doing is to challenge the derivatives of functions. Well Yip and Pee to that!

I know, I know, all I actually did, despite my rocket scoot into fantasy, was to walk the other way around the Tapselteerie track, but this is not the point. The point is that this day a differentia stopped my unthinking. Something outside of me posed a challenge, threw down the gauntlet of years and sent a dart into my mindlessness. I recall the moment. Go the other way around, Differentia said.

But I normally go this way. (whine).

Eye roll from D.

Ok, I will. (whatever)

Now I am not saying that I met a family of giraffes or anything like that but going widdershins is something I would highly recommend because, and I realise this in my own life, we can get horribly caught up in what we ‘normally’ do, eat, the places we meet, the timing for Sunday dinner, the food we eat at Christmas, the people we have over, the iron fold of pillow cases, the day I phone Mother. A million things we ‘normally’ do.

Quit ‘normally’. I say that with confidence because this adherence to such limited parameters confine us in creeping-up ways that create resistance to change and, as we know, the only thing that never changes is change itself. It is entirely human to fall into the comfortable prisonal run of dull predictability until the day or the moment we realise where we are. A hamster on a wheel. This is also entirely human, we all do it. It isn’t that she or he over there was just born brave. We all are, but life can tamp us down too often and over toolong time that we doubt we have the wherewithal to go widdershins to what is expected of us, our ‘duty’, the glass ceiling and more and we lose confidence in pretty much everything about ourselves. I get that. But the beginning of a lift into a new relationship with self begins with just going widdershins on one singular thing. Could be ‘nothing much’ to anyone else but it may well be a significant stepping stone on the path to finding who you are, really, the core you, the runbone you, the person you fear most because, well, you’ve heard too much criticism over toolong. Step out my friend. You won’t regret it, I promise you.

But, best not go to the Monday meet of the WRI stark naked, toting a half empty bottle of merlot and waving a banner. I doubt it would end well.

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Island Blog – Catch the Magic

This day, not an almost day, I walked the runbone of this place, at times ferocious and wild, at times soft-mothering and with arms wide in welcome. Scrunch leaves fell, some held on, many upped their noses at any thought of this falling thing. Not yet, they whispered, not yet, not me. And I smile at their defiance because it echoes my own. The sun shines warm and the cold wind has gone elsewhere and that makes me wonder about all the troubles Elsewhere has to deal with, for it seems that a load of things go there whilst we turn away from them in happy dismissal, back to the life that was just fine before. Maybe there are people living in Elsewhere? Ok, I won’t develop that just now.

To be honest, the flat sky was blanket thick for most of the morning, but warm, and warm is something we could not depend on for a whole summer. I watched a spider swing from one tree to another, the web shining bright in a catch of sun. I saw an otter fish in the sea-loch, oblivious of my presence, silent I was and upwind. I noticed the brave new flowers pushing through crunch-space, the track (doomed) a drystone wall, the gravel on my drive. I said hallo to them all. I never underestimate the need for acknowledgment, not in the human world, the animal kingdom (why isn’t it a human kingdom? Human arrogance?)not in the plant world. Everyone, all ones, have a voice that longs to be heard. Another digression.

Later I get to see my son when his boat docks in the town. I find myself zipping through like a teen in my sassy mini, thrilled even to share a cup of tea with him on deck before his guests return. I see his wonderful children, those lives I have watched from birth and now see at secondary school. I have to reach on tippytoe for a hug. Where did time go? Although hours drag, years are fleet as foxes. Bizarre.

Home and the sun is still warm. I sit on my bench in the sunshine with a glass of red. A spider works the beautifully crafted rail that once enabled my husband access to the garden. As it spins and shifts, a rainbow, a tiny rainbow is reflected in each silk of the web. I hunker down, lift up as light shifts and splits and I catch the magic on this day.

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Island Blog – Almost

Humid, sky closed, the white light deafening to the eyes. There are peeks of blue, torn bits of cerulean cloth, promises that come to nothing no matter how much I want the whole bolt to show itself and then to stay. Big billow clouds rise lazy over the Blue Ben, no wind to move a damn thing on and all this tiddleypom fits my mood. I tell myself to get on my magic carpet, and I do, stepping ‘out there’ 3 times today. Watch the tidal dance; notice the turning of the leaves, the bud of beech nuts, the blood rowan berries, the dying time, the time for rest. I did a lot of that today. I read almost 2 books, watch almost 7 geese explode the water, eider ducks almost, their back ends disappearing as I arrive at the shore. Interesting to be recognised by your ass, I chuckle, my first today. I guess some days are almost days, the hours slow as the almost slug whose trail up the side of my deep set window twinkles now in a zap of sunlight, the map of a night journey.

Of course I know why today is as it is. Having good friends to stay for a few days, all that chat and laughter, the walks, the moments, the memories shared, the good food, good wine, a high that requires a see-saw low. We made songs together, discussed the phrasing of words, of music, the interruptive surprises in both, the melodies that work and the ones that stay flat as slack water between the tides. Actually a tidal body of water is never slack. There is disturbance from below and from above. Water is rarely ever slack and as I sit after walk 3 to watch it I see movement everywhere. It’s edgy, recovering from the ebb and waiting for the flow which is about to begin, that punch of Atlantic Ocean, the slip tide bullying the rocks in its rush to spread and rise and fill every possible space once again, its belly laden with fish, nutrients, seaweed, flotsam and treasure.

And we were not slack either. Although there were gaps in our dynamic creativity times, all 3 minds whirred and clicked with ideas because although we might not see each other nor work together for months or even years, the moment we come together, we become creators as a unit and it’s both exciting and exhausting. And then it’s time for them to go into their own lives, leaving me in mine. The silence is loud, the space too large, the time-pass too slow. Of course I know the sense of loss will pass. I have work to do on another song, a new one, something about rising with a tide, only not in an ocean, more in a life, one that has to allow the Lonely and the Sadness to step right on in and take their seats, because friends and family will come but they will also go, leaving me to get straight with the long swaths of just me and my jumble of memories. It is what I do with that time that matters, requires my attention, that slack water that is never slack.

On the shore, perched on a 200 million year old rock, I remember the ebb as I wait for the flow. It thinks me. Life is like this, my life too. This may be a slack time, and for some time perhaps, but the flood will follow, or the ebb and there is great consolation in knowing that. Almost.

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Island Blog – Huge Grey Knickers and Moving On

Today I had frock trouble. Admittedly it was 3 am when the ditherment began, dark as jet outside and moonless. It was also 3 am, an hour when all the doubts and wrinkles come blasting in. I think it’s the noise of them that wakes me, the chaos of voices all saying something different but all in the same unsettling tone. Critical. All that I didn’t do, should have done, did do and shouldn’t have done rise like goblins from the dark ground of the night woods. It was the wrong time to have a frock issue, I know that, but it seemed like a good focus at the time. My wardrobe is dark inside, frocks hanging like a line of empty women, all colours, styles, shapes and drops. choosing aright is important on any day because my frock combo creates me a story for the day ahead. Do I feel like a Spanish dancer today or a bag lady? Am I needing colour or is there colour already in me? Do I want midi or something just below the knee, reds or blues or do I want frock chaos? The latter wins today. I might as well continue the theme after all. I swat away the bluebottle buzz internal and focus on the external response. I select a pink straight down dress with a sauncy little frill I wheeched off an extraordinary summer top from China, the rest I used to stuff a soft toy. I add a bright lemon yellow slightly shorter dress for layering and complete the whole hysterical combo with a butter yellow cardigan. I check the mirror. Triple ghastly. I’ll do.

Coffee and music and no cake-baking today. I’m enjoying the quiet of the nothing of these nobody hours, waiting for dawn to yawn awake. No sun this morning, not visible anyway through the flat grey that reminds me of my school knickers, thick, huge and woven tight enough to blank out all light. I smile at a dorm dressing memory when one of my friends, tiny and slimpicked, demonstrated how she could get a pillow down hers without any stretch of the elastic. My mother says I’ll grow into them, she laughed. I met her decades later and just know she never did. In those school days when frocks, loathsome frocks, measured, controlled, no waistband, long sleeved, high collared, no buttons, were our only escape from the sternly tailored skirts, I confess we did feel an almost kittenish sense of freedom between prep and prayers. We could actually move without creaking, lift our arms without the snap of angry starch, breathe without the throttle of a tie, wiggle toes freed from the brace of stout lace-ups. I can feel that freedom now.

I think, no I really believe, that the more experiences we have in situations of constraint as youngsters give us a real opportunity to learn compassion. To know what it is like to feel in any way imprisoned, whether inside light blocking huge grey knickers or in a relationship, or a job, or even in a whole life, teaches us something that gifts great power, if we can rise from blame. I find an instant compassion when anyone shows me, no matter their age, old or young, that they feel starched shut. It matters not that I have experience their circumstance. I know the feeling and, if we are honest, feelings are everything to an individual. Everything. If someone comes with angst and anger, we can just sit and shut up. Just listen. Just be there. I remember the ones who were there for me just like that. They, without realising it, gave me the courage to move on. And I thank them.

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Island Blog – All Things Possible

It’s the day today, the second anniversary of being dead, for him. I felt it looming for some time now, for days, weeks, even a month or two, like exam results. No matter how quickquick I was to brush away the bluebottles, they kept buzzing. I am not sentimental, I said. Firmly. I do not recognise dead anniversaries. Birthdays, yes. I always remember the loved dead because birthdays are happy days even if my father-in-law would be a walking fossil by now. I remember him upright and gentle, a gentleman, a man of few words but with a million of them behind his eyes and his silence. I see them, the dead who matter to me, in their smile state. Those times of throw back laughter and shared jokes, of kindnesses and all of them around my table, sharing turkey or cake. Their date with death was just for them, not for me, even if I was there when they slipped off into light, reconnections and peace.

But this day is a bit closer to home, both in time and relationship. He was my husband, my life partner, my Captain Impossible. He wasn’t always impossible but the impossibles began to show early on in our shared life. My own too, I have no doubt but we can never see our own impossibles now can we? I think back but cannot point my bent old poking digit to an exact date nor time. I just know the confusion began when I still had the right amount of hair in the right places, my limbs plump and strong, my mind agile and fleet as a deer. Perhaps he saw it too but he would never be drawn on such an Alice wander into the complex labyrinth of emotions. He did logic. He wandered one way, I another and we met now and then at a water hole. This is how it is and, I am discovering, for everyone, or almost everyone.

I didn’t go to the grave. He isn’t there, anyway and the very thought of leaving flowers is anathema to me. They would die, gasping for water and I won’t be the perp of that. Instead I went out to lunch with a friend, conscious of the time, the dying time, the very last breath issued through half smiling lips. It was important for me to inhabit the now of my life. That’s what I felt, even if the now is lonely and scary and confusing. I ask Myself (wait for it) what I remember feeling when Captain Impossible was here beside me, well, at the odd water hole, and she (yes) snorts and reminds me in a louder voice than is entirely necessary, that I also felt lonely, scared and confused when he lived and breathed. I sigh. She is right, but somehow this feels worse. Worse than what? she is rolling her eyes now. I wish you could see her all punchy and dynamic and in ridiculous heels. He is, sorry was, here and now he is not. But you are here, free, strong, able and mobile, almost straight, bar the bent old poking digit, and there are days ahead, rooms ahead, times ahead, your head ahead. I nod said head. She is right again.

So, after my stripping down and lifting up (how does she do that?) I move into the sunshine evening of the day I didn’t want to remember but did anyway. It is passing. and will be gone tomorrow. Tomorrow there will be music and cake and I don’t care if it rains or not because I will walk and watch the ebb or flood of a new tide, see the geese straggle-strong pump their wings above the sea-loch, watch the sparrow chatterboxes on my fence, wave at passing visitors, read good prose and remind myself of the man who stole my heart, my life, my everything and who is now, no doubt, steering heaven into a new orbit.

My nearly daughter stopped for a fence chinwag. I made some joke about my not being chosen by Jesus for a sunbeam yet. She said ‘I bet Popz is telling Him No, not yet, good heavens lord, not yet! She was enough trouble in life. Give me a break…..” She is probably right.

So this is for you today, you, Husband, Dad, Grandad, Popz, Fairbs, Richard. Captain Impossible who made all things Possible.

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Island Blog – There is old and there is laughter

I notice a thing or two these days, well, maybe a thing or three. Although I am young inside, my thoughts still girlish, I cannot dash as I once did, dammit. The way I could spin and jump, run and skip are now a memory. I could even catch an escaping child once, and although I accept the hilarities of growing older, there are times when the whole thing bugs the bejabers out of me. It makes me snort and stomp and then, as if snorting and stomping were big deals, I have to sit down. I don’t remember when this all began. In my short term memory I remember being able to lift a fallen husband from the floor. I could dash here and there, had to be able to dash here and there what with all the calling out of my name, the cries for help. Perhaps, since he died and with my to-do list barely covering the back of a postcard, I am allowing sedentariness. This does not sound good, not to me. I also notice that with an armful of bedding en route to the washing machine, I am very cautious as I descend stairs I used to hurtle down, arms full. I am more chary about where my feet land as if they’ve forgotten the way.

I still walk daily, move any time I feel a bit stiff from sewing. I still keep up an active and mobile life, although not to the same degree because there is no need, no name calling to react to, and more, no real requirement for that morning planning. Prioritising tasks is unnecessary now. I can take all day to one thing and sometimes I confess I do. I eke out the task, moving slowly, simply to fill in the hours. Oh, I know I am not alone in this limbo of puzzlement. Many of my age feel the same. How did old age creep up so quickly? When I do recount my own experience of this unfortunate process to others, we very quickly turn to the funny side and this is the blessing of it all. We regale each other with experiences, errors of judgement and our mild to horrific encounters with embarrassment. We throw back our heads and laugh, showing what teeth we have left to the sky. The magnifying mirror is now required to check we have our face on the right up and around, the dress not inside out, the shoes match, the car keys and sometimes the whole car are not lost. The way we might paint on eyebrows only to discover we have two sets having forgotten the job is already done. The discovery of hair in places that were hair free just last week, or so it seems. The way a younger person studies our faces just a beat too long so that we just know we are out there in public and impersonating a Belisha beacon. We write Washing Up Liquid four times on the shopping list because we remembered it four times, even if we only need it once. And the way we tell ourselves over and over again that we are not in danger of any marble loss, we are fine, this is normal.

Although I have no issues at all with the natural circle of life and death, I honestly never thought it would come to me. I have been one of those laughing at an orange face or two sets of drawn on eyebrows in my time. I have rolled my eyes from behind a dithery old woman in a shop queue whilst she counted out £30 in two pence pieces. I have scooted past the slow movers, been impatient at those who take two days to ease into a car, travelled behind that car on my hurrying way into town, swearing and flashing my lights for her or him to pull over and let me by. Old is hilarious until Old arrives with a lot more than overnight luggage.

I walk, along with my peers, through a limbo of opposites. If I decide to hate it, which I do, then I lose because this pugilist is way stronger than me and besides, hating anything never brings peace. But and but there are ways to accept whilst always seeking the funny side of this aging thingy. It is all, as it always is, up to me to choose how I respond. In my case, the red rebel fire still burns. I will still adventure, still walk in curiosity and gratitude, in humour. So what if my teeth are falling out. So what if I must needs take my time in rising my body up and out from my low slung Mini Cooper, whom I adore as she resembles my final freedom from having to accommodate, well, anyone else. So what! If I ever think wistfully of the days long gone, I quickly remind myself of how raggedy they could be, how little time there ever was for myself, how tired I could feel and how defeated by the endless demands on my time and my skills.

They say, whoever ‘they’ are, that we women should glow red and gold in the Autumn of our lives, how we should continue to walk sassy, to speak with confidence and with a truth reserved only for the over 65s, the grannies of the world, wise, hairy and albeit cautious as we descend the stairs. We should continue to shake our booty, to swing our creaky hips as best we can, to take care with our dress, checking for food stains which now invite an ‘Oh dear’ from anyone with younger eyes. I get it and I do practice this booty shaking thingy no matter how old I feel on any given day, but I shake with caution, sass with my eyes on the ground in case of trip alerts always hoping against hope that I don’t fall over, a laugh held in my mouth just in case I do.

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Island Blog – Here and That is How it Is

So here is how it is. Ten days of a visiting son with his kids, this morning, gone, the air sucked out of my lungs as his car disappears around the corner. Nothing has changed. The sea-loch still rises and falls to the whimsy of a Sturgeon moon, the birds still flit and flut between feeders, the house still stands strong, broad shouldered stone, protecting me from a load of outsidery things. The shop still opens at nine, the builders head off to work chugging iron bru at 6.30, my neighbour heads off to his fishing boat for another day of net tangles and swear words. And yet everything has changed.

I meander through the morning telling myself not to focus on the gone thing. I tell myself to get busy as if all is as ordinary as it was 11 days ago but as the hours slouch by I know this gone thing will catch up with me, with the hours, with my thoughts. I feel old, stiff, annoyed with both. I never thought I would get here to this old feeling. I used to laugh at such nonsense from my ma, my scary mother in law when they looked as I might look now if I allowed anyone to see me looking thus, which I don’t. Feeling old, I told them, is one thing. A thing you cannot avoid. Presenting it is a choice. Don’t make that choice. I hear again my wise words, spoken through a young set of lips still plump, words begat by the father of ignorance. Who can know the feel of old until it arrives one morning with enough luggage-intention to stay long term? Nobody. What we do, when this guest arrives is to choose our pretence. It’s a bit like a journey on a false passport. This is me, not me, me from choice. I may not be this person but I am determined you will acknowledge this ‘me’ because if you don’t then I am grounded with the old feelings, the fear feelings, the lack of swing and chortle feelings and I refuse, point blank (whatever that means) to accept that.

I walk as I always walk, noticing the grasses husk and ochre. I touch their still yet softness as I pass. I see bracken spot and curl, the carpet of fallen leaves, already brown and crisped into tiny coracles on the track. I see hazel nuts overhead, rowan berries blood red against a blue sky, beech leaves goldening high above me. The ground is soft and mud blown, cut and spun into soup by yesterday’s sudden thunderstorm, here and then gone in a matter of one short hour but nonetheless a herald of Autumn’s closing fist. We may have more sunshine days, who knows, but the word is out among the seasons and the Your Turn thing is shifting. I pass by the shore and look down but cannot go. For ten days it was crazy down there, endless loud girls crab fishing, the growl of a quad, the squeals of delight, the absolute takeover of a small thrust of rocks, the learning, the delight, the falls, the fire lit to cook noodles or sausages, the glorious family fun of it all. I continue around the track, remembering. In my mind I see them all, bright eyed, ready for nonsense, scaring me with their bravery, no, not that. It is their confident youth. The way they skitter like lizards over all terrain, the way they sparkle at cake or chocolate or fruit pastilles. The welcome they give me. The whites of their eyes, their teeth, the shine of their wilding hair, the flash of their feet as they dash past.

They are gone and it is a heavy thing. I know, I know (please don’t fix feelings through logic) they will come again. Others will come again to inhabit this glorious place, to redefine it, to render it their own for a short time. They will sing into the clouds, the blood red sunsets, yell at the moon, cry at the falling in, laugh at the cake, fish for the abundance, argue, storm off, come back for a warming hug. I know this. But this day I feel their loss deeply. And that is how it is.

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Island Blog – Cake on a Plate, Curiosity and Choice

To choose a day, if I had to, it would be this one, simply for its beauty and surprise. It began with what looked like a full moon at 2am although I was never spot on with my absolutes, an almost circle millions of light years away being, by definition, unmeasurable through the naked eye. A little sleep later and I awaken to warmth, to clear blue skies the colour of possibility and happy sighs, little puffs of cloud as from a celestial pipe. Tranquillity after months of rain and a twisting wind unable, it seemed, to settle on a restful direction. It thinked me of bluebottles which, in my opinion, have no sense of direction at all. Too hot by coffee time to sit outside, I throw open all the doors and windows and settle to my weaving, now that I have completed my ‘journey’ wall hanging, the completion of which made me restless too. Completing a long-term project means I now have to think of the next one and that place is like a crevice between two cliffs, or two rooftops, the possible fall a fatal one. I look down it and my eyes cannot find the bottom. It is unnerving although it never used to be, not when my to-do list was the length of a roll of wallpaper at the very least, those days when I just jumped the gap, undoubtedly in pursuit of an escaping child.

However I knew it was coming, this crevice thingy. I could tell even from a distance, that a break awaited my footfall, even if I couldn’t gauge its width nor depth. But I am a moving on sort of woman and also a curious one. Nobody ever got anywhere by turning back through fear, only through a considered choice. My weaving is my first, colourful of course, and without an image in mind. It is a journey and I am at peace with that. I find my colours in voices, encounters, skies, hills, woods and shorelines. The chirrup of oystercatchers, the piping of curlews, the scurry of woodmice, the distant laughter of children, the sound of a boat heading out to see the dolphins play. And, through endeavour, I learn. I learn and I improve, I change and I adapt and all beneath the cloud scud, the cerulean canopy, the broil of Father Sun. It is enough.

To say I choose a day might sound as if it is the best of all days by comparison. As if somehow all prior days were a bit limp. But this is not what I mean. Not at all. Sunshine is a truly wonderful thing, necessary for a spirit lift. Sunshine warms the skin, sets natural hi-lights in dullen hair and tints bare skin to freckles and tan. But there are a zillion days when this is not the case, when it’s cold and darkling, wet and endless, but even that last word, the endless word sits me up straight and shoots my eyebrows into question marks. I want to shout ‘So?’ because when I awaken to one of those, it is just one. There may be more, although life is never linear, not really, even if the weather appears it so. It is all about attitude, about personal choice. Will I venture out #eveninthis or will I sit on the wrong side of a the window and allow my body to slump in defeat? Will I follow my curiosity or will I grump that Alice in Wonderland is ‘just’ a story? Just a story, as my own life is and I will not write out a boring one, one that sleeps everyone shortly after Chapter Three. No indeedy.

As this day is chosen for its given beauty and surprise, like cake on a plate, other days are no less of a gift because we never know when all days will stop. The thing I do on far-from-cake-on-a-plate days is to choose. I am a bright, intelligent and imaginative human, just like you. It is a singular choice to celebrate every single day, regardless of weather, circumstance or cake. Among those whose lives are a real and genuine struggle, I have met the widest of smiles, the warmest of welcomes, the wonder of generosity. The impact of that insight changed me forever, and deeply.

Tomorrow, whatever the weather, will be my next chosen day.

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Island Blog – A Feisty Queen

Waking after a good sleep to the moon, huge and bright, her mountains shadowy. She isn’t full yet but will be tonight. So long we island folk have missed sight of her, clouded thick and rained off as if dissolved completely. Funny how important it is to be able to see the moon (and the sun) and after many many weeks of a closed day/night sky, I can feel a joy run through me. It was midnight when we met. She lay heavy on my bed, waking me, her lemony gold light pushing around the blackout curtains, strong as a policeman’s torch. I got up to welcome her. She hung powerful in the black, throwing her light down into the sea-loch, lifting it into an eerie luminosity, rippled, soft, almost green. I heard oystercatchers up way too late and, in the distance, the scream of some creature calling out the last of its life. It didn’t last long.

Some days are full of fun and laughter like the lift of a kingfisher, all sudden and electric blue and unexpected, or the happy cries of children, or a kindly word from a friend or stranger. Other days can be quiet and unresponsive, seemingly tired of being ‘just’ a day. Little things can elevate a mind, blow away the closed sky, open it wide to the sun or the moon, bring a gasp. But these are not little things, not in my thinking. Little things are such as a household shop, taking out the bin, opening a bill, tidying a room, making a bed. Big things always involve people. People change everything. A chance encounter with a kingfisher is a wonderful thing but I want to share it. I want to point and say Look, There! It’s the same with the moon, or Father Sun when He finally battles his way through the endless cloud. I want to share it all.

Although Myself does, as you know, a lot of snorting, she is a mate. She is always here and I now recognise her value to me. Chances are she snorts at this too, but I am busy writing and she knows not to disturb me at such times. I also get that people talk to themselves. I am doing it all the time and it isn’t weird as is generally perceived. When there was another here, I didn’t need her. Now I do. And I am thankful. However, in the perception of the world, I might be seen as a weirdo. Well, no change there. I decide to fully engage. I still love people interactions, still need them, we all do or we end up in a silence that I’m not sure is healthy. But I do know that being alone and out of kilter with that alone-ness is just a state of being and I have gone through plenty of those, all those transitions, all those changes over so many years. And what I understood every time is that my full engagement with the uncomfortable process handed me the key. I must re-kilter. If I can accept and allow whatever life has thrown my way then I take control, not of it, but of me, and that is empowering.

I love a full moon these days because I have her number. Instead of allocating all blame to her, my mood swing, my lack of sleep etcetera, I welcome her. I ask her what she is teaching me about the bloody hoopla of womanhood, the lies that fetter a woman, the controls that imprison her. She doesn’t bother my sleep any more and I love to wake to her voice, to watch her fill the night with all her power. Controlling the tides, the women of the world, the weather, she is, indeed, a feisty queen, whether I can see her or not.

Feisty Queen. I wouldn’t mind that on my gravestone.