Month: April 2023

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Island Blog – Mind over Matter

I have a wood thing going on here. Well, not just me, it seems, but everyone who burns wood for heat on the whole of the West Coast. Blimey! That is a whole load (no pun intended) of not-woodness. I’m not sure any of us saw this coming, or, it might just be me who never saw it coming, what with my focussed presence in the present and with no reading of news or paying much attention at all to the slivers and shivers of doom talk in the village. Notwithstanding, there is no wood. It wonders me. What about the old and cold folk? I hope they have heaters, that’s what I hope, although it is a backside hope considering the sudden rise in utility bills. I can, at least, stand, walk, split big logs. What of those who cannot, and, what if this continues all the way up to winter? Let’s not go there, spiralling into that cold flapdoodle. Let us remain in the present moment, something my counsellor advises me to do, a place it is best to be because if I step out into the stratosphere of chaos and imaginary collapse, I just might never return. No, that isn’t me. I will always return because I have the gift of good health, strong limbs, (ish) no medication, no condition beyond widowness, which, for your information, isn’t even a word.

My wood box is empty. It’s a big old box and I am never happier than when it is full. It used to be so easy. I call, I order, the split and seasoned wood arrives with a cheery smile. I stack, and grin, the abundance thing always grins me.. My log box smiles back. I think about the trees, the felled trunks, the gift they give, these felled giants and the warmth they bring to my bones. A merry fire, merries. Another not word. However, I have some old pine woodland out back and the trees, over 130 years old now, are beginning to die. Can you begin to die? I suspect, yes. Felled by an expert feller, stacked in the woods, some, and a few of the bigger rounds brought down to my garage. These rounds are ready for splitting. Hmmm. The biggest waist girth a much bigger woman than I, but, I encourage myself, they are light, seasoned, ready for the axe. I apply stout boots and go to lift the first. I can do this. The other rounds snigger, I hear it and shoot them a fierce look. They quieten. Now, I do know about splitting wood, how to avoid the knots, where to place the axe, or, in this case, the wedge. I grab the mell and almost fall over. It is way heavier than I remember. Bracing, my stomach muscles ready, I place the wedge and swing the damn mell. I connect and the groan from this huge round tells me I picked the very spot. With a great deal of puffing, missing, and foot darting as the whole thing leaps off the block, I chop enough for one evening. One Evening? Yes, I am afraid so, just the one.

One morning I decide to attack a twisty one. It is ready for this as am I, or so I thought. I whack the mell and whack the mell, the right groans coming from this part of a lovely old tree, and whack and so on and so forth and fifth and even sixth until the wedge is deep inside the determined roundness of the round which remains, well, round. Rats! Now I have my only wedge wedged and completely buried. I hear a chuckle and raise my hand like a schoolmarm. I step back to assess. I will not call my neighbour, a weak 70 year old pathetic woman, I will not. My brilliant brain kicks into life. Observing the stuckness of things, what can I do to free this wedge sans man help? What I need is a pole with a point, that’s what I need. I have one, surely? I do. I place it beside the sniggering wedge. It is too high for me to whack with a mell which is weighty as a ton of lead. I think again. Elevation, that’s it, for me. I heft the stuck wedge and the pole and big round of ancient pine onto the concrete floor, stepping onto the block. Perfect. I whack and whack and so on. Suddenly, the pole achieves my aim (thank you pole) and the wood breaks apart. I am exhausted but so chuffed with my body and brain power. I am not done. I may be alone with these alone things, I may be 70 but I am not done.

And tomorrow? Well, I go again……..

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Island Blog – Outside the Word

inside the word we are stuck. The meaning of any word, after all, is in the hearing of the hearer and no longer inside the pages of the dictionary, useful as it still is. So many of them have myriad understandings, and not just that; they have historical or familial understandings and in those back-stony places, they settle and fix. It is not surprising that children with no clue of what they say, spout the words of some parent. Could be good. Could be not. I’ve witnessed much from the mouths of children in both places and just knew the words were not birthed, but learned. I’ve met it in the mouths of women and men at corners, at traffic lights, at intersections, at T junctions, at any place of transition when the triggers trigger and the historical bungees snap. It is like spit, or an unthinking response to a difficult question or challenge. I thinks me.

When I write I traverse wordage, skidding over what I have learned (endlessly) about the language of poetry and prose, established by the acknowledged writers of the time, that is/was to say men, and into the fighterly fight for freedom of lingual Speke, irrespective of education, situation or sexual orientation. Words themselves can become ‘stuck’. What is and what is not acceptable for the time can shackle at best, imprison at worst, can become the voice of change whether in subject matter or in what has been dictionary-fixed. Writers fought to be seen and heard and have done so for a very long time. Still do. New pens, new colours, new races, all with powerful voices can now be heard through their writing. Their freeflow of wordage can now arrive into our bookshops. We buy, we relate, we ‘wow’ their courage. But, if we ourselves had met them in the troubled streets of their time, or watched them as they scribed in the cold candlelight of a single room, playing with new phrasing, uncomfortable revelations or the re-shaping of old words, would we have recognised them at all, acknowledged them as ‘acceptable’, on our way to dinner with those who stood steadfast in the current judgement? These time warp vagrants lived inside the word until they refused to for one more minute and that alone could send us running for the shelter of what we knew was Right and Proper, the safe ground. Even inner doubts and wonderments can be quashed decidedly, as we all know.

However, outside the word is a place of new freedom. It also offers a freedom from labelling and without any details given here, there are way too many of them labels. Born, as they are, from old beliefs, old conditioning with its many accompanying and confusing fears, we are now, if we are brave enough, loosed from those chains. Writers turn and twist words, alter the sense of sentences, morph nouns into verbs, into doing words as opposed to settled fat facts. And the best of this is that anyone can write. At no other time in our history has such freedom been offered, never mind afforded or celebrated. However, and there is always one of those, in order to write and to write well, it is not enough to just want to. Before I wrote my book I knew it, taking two writing courses, one with the Open University and one at a writer retreat. Those two words and together create an oxymoron, by the way. Writers do not retreat. Just saying.

The process of writerly training is essential. To learn the disciplines, not of limitation but of a deeper understanding of wordage, of expansive thought, of distilling said thoughts and of creating rhythm, phrasing, and to show but not to tell, all these are essential tools (toolage?). Ok, my online dictionary argued with that one. I won the fight. Writing tutors in this age, this time of emerging from Covid lockdown isolation only to find it is back bigtime, know their stuff. We are different peoples now. We, I am hoping, live alongside each other in respect and acceptance. It is time, HIGH TIME, that we left our oldness behind, those beliefs that kept us home when all we wanted to do was go dancing with the gay guys, the gay girls, those who made life fun no matter the daily troubles they encountered. They and many others who don’t want labels but might need them now, just to be seen. Can we not see them? Yes we can.

Every voice matters, every story is important. Writers, you writer, please write. Do your training, study, yes, but do not hide behind I Can’t Write. You can. Speak. Break down the label barriers. Push through the permission judges and run. We need you, you who have experienced a load of horrible since lockdowns and beyond. You, who have the courage to live outside of the word. We are all waiting……

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Island Blog – The Tomorrowlands

This morning begins, for me, at a time that bothers me in its insistence. No! I almost shout but don’t, modifying my shout-ness, even though there is nobody else to hear, this is no longer acceptable, this 05.30 lark when even the larks are slumbering on. And, yet, my body clock ignores my remonstrations with the tenacity of a teenager. I give in and get up. The light is the right light, the morning light, and the day is dawning whether I like it or not. I do like it for I am an inveterate morning person. What does inveterate mean? I forget, but it fits because other people use it around such subjects as chips with vinegar, reading crime novels and gardening, to mention but three inveteration opportunities.

I digress. Risen and with coffee on the brew, I wander into the conservatory which is cold. The nights are cold, star-backed and sometimes frosty, a relief from the heat of the sun. I am not complaining. Sun and heat are rare gifts in this island life and nobody with a modicum of sense moans about the odd times we enjoy both of these together. Oh we know the sun is out there somewhere, behind a depth of cloud cover that could halt an entire Scottish regiment, a feat most opponents have historically failed to achieve, but the ability to get the old boy to push through has confounded us longtime. Wishing doesn’t cut it, nor do prayers. Weddings can, and have, capsized a whole bride. Nonetheless, we island on because the beauty of this lump of rock is second to none.

The day slows down as I feared it might. Some days are tortoises where they used to be hares, way back when a clamjamfrie of children, not all my own, plucked at my skirts for biscuits and pressed for attention, then disappearing alarmingly, returning just in time and in dire straits, when food was required every 30 minutes and when life had her hand in the small of my back. Move on, move quicker, MOVE! Now there are no such demands, no pressure from life, in fact she is now telling me, the skeerie minx, to slow down, to ca’ canny, to rest. But even as I dislike this sudden, for it feels sudden, lowering of my sails, it is here with me now and I must needs welcome it as I welcomed, and thanked, the spirited life in my limbs. I decide to shift the limb spirit into my mind. It seems to work. Instead of bemoaning a loss of spirit and strength, I welcome it into my thinking. It decides my thoughts which decide my feelings which decide my actions. I have learned this from life coaches, a few of whom, or is it which, are in my family, and I have imbibed the truth of it and taken it as ‘read’. Funny that word. Read sounds like ‘reed’ and we know what it means. Read sounds like ‘red’ and now we are much confused. Heaven knows how anyone can ever comprehend, pronounce or employ such tiddleypom when learning English, especially the old English, a language quite beautiful to me but if I were to launch into it in, say, a Glasgow pub, I might not get home at all.

I’m still digressing. What I wanted to communicate was and is that my day was slow. It took me half hour stretches of resistance to restlessness, holding, controlling my desire to lift, walk, move, and it thinked me of the sea, the waves on the beach, fretting at the sand as an old woman plucks at the bobbles on her old cardigan. I read a bit, walked a bit, went to the shore a bit, made a feta and spinach dip, a bit, sewed a bit and la la la. I know it is right and proper for my children to have their own lives. I celebrate that. I know that it is right that my old china is dead. I celebrate that too, because it was always going to happen and could have been so much more upsetting than it was. I know I am perfectly tickety-wotwot alone. And, I also know that there are so very many other people out there who know exactly how it all feels.

Slow days, they come, but the joy of living in this funny, clever, resourceful and dynamic community is something I treasure and will treasure again at 05.30 in the Tomorrowlands.

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Island Blog – See That

That’s what we say in Scotland. Well, in some parts of this wonderful country. We say ‘See that’ and it doesn’t necessarily mean we see what remarkables us. We might smell it, or hear it, or feel it or notice it, but the verb is all about vision, as we know it. And even that ‘as we know it’ thingy can confound others who stick to the senses as separate and well defined over long years whilst the ‘See Thats’ trickle like water over the human boundaries of the sensory divide.

I remember meeting it in a bus shelter in Glasgow. I heard one woman to say to another ‘ See Him?’ I looked around but she did not and nor did her companion. Both knew he was nowhere near and I quickly learned it. She went on to list his weekend crimes, omissions, commissions, et la and la. I was captivated. The rain lifted all but the pavement from beneath our ill-clad feet, theirs in heels, mine in flats, and my eyes fell to those feet, the way they moved in perfect tune to the active movement of their bodies, arms, fingers faces, eyes, spines. It was as if I was watching trees in the wind, the bending, the swing this way and that, and the connection between these two. They caught branches, tipped back their heads, laughed, hugged, and I could see that. See that.

Since then I have felt at home with a ‘See That’ knowing as I do now that there may be no actual seeing. See that can, and often does become the prologue to a story that only one in the mix has actually experienced. It can come out other ways. See Him? See Her? See This? See That? See Who? See What? And there the story begins and it can lift and rise, pull up colour, crash into grey or black, but it begins every time with vision. Vision experienced, vision proffered, vision received, a communique, a connection, vital.

See that smell? See that sound? See that touch? All visionary in its presentation. I love it because it thinks me. Our eyes are so very precious, our looking, our seeing, our vision and the way we can see means everything. I don’t know what it is to be blind nor losing sight but I do know that a deal of my adventures, understandings, my sorting out of self angst and fear has grown through my inner eye. We all have that sight.

When we eventually caught that bus, the friends still chattering, me silent and alone, I watched them. They were two women leaving their home lives for a day at work, no doubt demanding and exhausting. My stop was before theirs and as I wobbled down the bus (driver didn’t slow) I paused and turned to them. It was a risk. English, or so they thought (so very wrong) and proper spoken. but they had the grace to look up. You taught me something today. Thank you.

They probably still think of me as that weird ya-di-ya woman. See her………..?!!!!!

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Island Blog – Question the Surface

Life is lived on so many levels, or it can be. Mostly we stay on the surface, paddling madly to keep up, put down, move beyond, our horizon in sight. Above us is forever, below is fathom on fathom of a world most of us know little about. Many of us never dive down, and, apart from plane travel, the above is also an endless mystery. How high? How deep? What changes as we fly, as we dive? No, don’t go there. Let’s keep our eyes on who is putting something in our wheelie bin, who drives past, who walks the safety of the pavement or who parks in our space.

On the surface we see only what is. Above and below we cannot see nor understand, so we enjoy the thought of it but that is quite enough thank you. I don’t have the kit, the understanding, the courage to even let my mind go there, never mind my body. I’m too fat, too weird, too unloved, too plain, too beautiful, too something or other. And yet, within the restraints of this constraint we fail to really live. I know this because I remember my surface thinking. Safe, under my control, behind my locked door if I choose to lock it. Enter the Lonely. Oh hell, she or he is just waiting for such a time, such an opening. In ‘they’ come like a giant in a small room, smothering.

Been there. However, not now. And Why? Ah, Why is not a question. Why is an impertinence. Never ask anyone ‘why’. If you asked me differently I would tell you that I know and knew there is depth and width to this life, neither of which, or is it whom, I can either comprehend or explain. I just know. Somethings (plural) will happen if I just decide to acknowledge that fact. There is more than me in this living palaver and thank the holy grail for that! There is nothing lonely about a palaver because a palaver takes at least 5 influences. You cannot create a palaver alone. It just doesn’t work.

This morning, this ordinary morning, I had a plan. I would wake early, make coffee, eat something, sew something and then go to the shop at 9. All sorted. However I had a feeling there was a palaver in the brewing, not of my doing, but a palaver nonetheless. As I was talking to one of my boys on the phone a car pulled in. Rats, I thought. Go Away, I thought. You are NOT in my plan. Turning to see who it was, I recognised a friend. Ah, ok, all change, I thought. He might need coffee and a hug and a chat. I beckoned him in. Come, friend, and welcome. My ordinary plan had just dived deep or lifted into the sky. I smiled.

We spent the day together, walking, talking, noticing everything. We shared laughter and tears, wisdoms and tomfoolery, we just were. No agenda. I saw things through his eyes and, I think, he did through mine. We lifted up and we dived to the depths. The sun was warm, the wind soft and gentle, the larch emerald, the birds singing out Spring, the sea almost table flat. I would have seen none of this had I stayed on the surface, my agenda in my hands. Out of my hands I saw more than I could imagine. The connectivity of human friendship, however unexpected or initially inconvenient can make us question our surface.

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Island Blog – Showing Up

Today I feel small, not insignificant, but small. It thinks me. Feeling small is good considering the smallness of me, of any of us, in the hugeness of the world. Okay, that’s the number of people. However, in a wider way, I am small. So, by the way, are you. It can humble us, this feeling small thingy, but it doesn’t mean we don’t matter, I don’t matter. I can think I don’t matter and I meet other septugenarians who also can think that way on days when effort is required just to show up, when a life-long-lived turns into a solo act with nobody in the stalls, no tickets sold; when children with all their noisy demands and angsts and troubles and growing pains are now living their own lives, to which I am an add-on. Loved, yes, cherished, yes, but an add-on nonetheless. How did that happen? Not so long ago I was so very big. Now I am small. I live on the edges of other lives, cheer their joys, comfort their sorrows and after that I am small again. Just me. Alone.

I look at life as an opportunity to learn and to adapt. On days when I feel small, I round on it, question it, investigate it, challenge it. Not as some others would, not saying, as in a pantomime, Oh No You’re Not! No, not that, because denying a feeling or pushing it into the shadows just creates a bigger shadow and it always returns, bigger, darker, stronger. That way danger lies and I have seen it, seen folk lose their foothold on what life has to offer, watched them give up, grow unkempt, uncaring for themselves, trudging. To hellikins with that. But, and I am very aware of this, t’is so easy to fold in, to shut off, to let the ‘small’ feeling define a man, a woman. In this state a person can start apologising for their voice, their choices, their very existence. It is a sad observation indeed.

But that is not me, and it needn’t be anyone else who questions and wonders and whose spirit, once effortlessly strong and which now needs CPR, is resurrected consciously. Rise you sleepy twit! Well, that’s what I say and loudly. It is definitely harder in the older and lonelier years, I agree, to make something of what’s next. It can be cranky-sore to show up. It can be a massive push through pain and loss. But (love that word) I have met such ‘small’ people over the years, those who still appeared for lunch in a colourful turban or a swishing skirt and emerald leather boots, men included. Those whose spirit refused to stop the party, who danced as best they could, who sparkled in the queue for the Sunday papers. I have seen them, I know. And, do you know what? The younger generation LOVE to see such a love for life because it tells them that growing older, feeling smaller, does not mean a miserable decline, not at all. And what better legacy can we leave those beautiful young people?

So there I was feeling small. It lasted an hour or so, the lonely, the emptiness, the wondering if this is it. Then I whacked up the music, wrote a prayer, went to church, read it, laughed and joshed with others, drove home, walked the wee dog among the wild primroses, violets, new larch green, the nesting birds, geese flying overhead, a sea-eagle half way to heaven. I’m still small in the bigness of things, but I am not insignificant, not at all. If I can show any young person how an old person can still dance, even if only in his or her mind, then I will show up, again and again and again.

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Island Blog – Nature Talk

Snow. I know. Riddickerluss, but snow is here turning the Ben into a light, red at sunrise and bridal just now. That white is a white we can never replicate on material, nor in paint. I remember art school, madly trying to find a pure white, the one Nature produces without a single dither. Ach!. it’s an ‘almost’ at best. Clouds for we painters were always the ultimate challenge. I digress. This Ben is millions of years old, thrust up in the ice age or some such thrusting era, when lands split and digressed and pushed up from oceans and upset a whole load of sailing boats, dinosaurs, marauders and those who set out to ‘discover’ lands which, just fyi, had been lands for a very long time pre ‘discovery’, those who lived there already being just fine with their living thing. Looking at the Ben thinks me of such. When I see and watch a creation way older than me, holding stories and histories within its stones, its edges, its falls and its brave organic life clinging to ledges and finding sunspots, adapting and allowing and still thriving, I marvel. We eejits can learn a thing or two from such a claim to life, instead of whinging about the lack of ryvita (me) or wood (me) on the island.

If nature, sorry Nature, can find ways to adapt to change, big ass change, then so can we. But there’s a difference. Nature has always challenged her followers, her children, her ground, her stones, her seas. We, on the other hand, grow comfortable too easily. A fine street, good housing, adequate pavements, parking, drainage, etcetera has turned us into lumps. I remember in my middle class youth, hearing that this generation, mine, needed to know hardship. I turned away from such nonsense, laughing, well fed, safe, in good housing, secure. Now I see the truth in what they said. We have no idea how to deal with hardship, never taught, not through the years of expectation and abundance. But now we do need to pare our tools, to sharpen our wits because it is coming. We need to teach our children that nothing is a given, to learn them inner strength to deal with what is out there now, how to meet life physically and mentally strong. I wish my own parents had taught me how life can be in the ‘out there’ but they never thought it would change, the ‘out there’. I was completely unprepared, me in my white socks and with church on Sundays and everything warm and safe. I learned the hard way. My kids too, the next generation. And they have kids.

It isn’t the end of the world, no, not at all, but I know that those who learn how to accept the beginnings of climate change and its effects now, will be the kids who can find their way whilst others fanny about wishing it wasn’t happening at all. They, the former, will be the ones who notice everything good such as snow on the Ben in April, hear the sound of life in lambs, watch the green of grass and refuse to cut it, allowing wildflowers to rise for insect food and pollination, who will share their wood when there is a lack, who will learn to bake bread, grow herbs and veg, who will be wise in the ways of that which Nature has been telling us for years.

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Island Blog – This Day

People talk about, sing about, These Days, Those Days, and as I listen, I hear anew. These and Those indicate a collective, a while of days. But it isn’t the truth, not around Days. It can be, around children, or mountains but not around days. Days are themselves and particularly in troubled times, when they behave like picks in the road we knew as level, aggressing the flat ground, upsetting the flow of progress. They pucker up, cause us to founder and flounder, to twist off piste. Well Dammit. Damn those days.

I am learning to laugh at a lot of things these days. No, this day. No promises for tomorrow. I meet those puckers, and not because I have done anything different on this Tuesday, that Thursday, no, not at all. It is all the same now here in this alone state. I might have written ‘widowhood’ there, but I won’t and because there are many states of aloneness. Some chosen, some welcomed, most accepted and accommodated, albeit unwillingly. We need each other but the each and other of whoever we know or encounter can send us running for the dunes. It is confusing.

So, for this day (no tomorrow promises) I rise thankful and smiling. I walk, cook, listen to music, create some sewing nonsense, talk to family, laugh, visit a local library and connect with friends. As I sit now as the rain comes in (a given up here) I won’t say, These Days any more. Because I know, as I never did when I said those words without thinking, that there are not These Days. There is only This Day.

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Island Blog – There you go

Spring is here. Let me feel it one my skin, beneath my bare feet. Let me hear it, the birdsong, the rustling inside the branches, the dart and dash of new life. Let me watch the creatures return, the gathering of nesting softness, and let me know the fear and the joy of finding a home, one in which to birth and protect the next generation. Let me take it all in, no dash and hurry, no missing any of it. I wander a track squelched by winter cold and rain, the mud ridges trying so hard to firm up and sinking me nonetheless. Last years leaves mulch beneath my boots, pushed ever down into the ground and it smiles me. We are born, we live, we die, but in that inevitable cycle we leave something of ourselves behind, something that can become the ground for a new beginning, one we will not experience. There is a song in that, harmonious, melodious, lilting-sad but a powerful legacy indeed. Our own song may be sung out, but we can bring a new baseline for another generation to stand on in their own times, times of feeling lost, times perhaps of fear or confusion, saying I am here, beneath your feet and you can do this because I did it too, feeling just like you feel now.

The sea-loch is quiet this morning, a late frost ghosting the grasses that run down to where land meets tide. The ancient rocks shine in morning sunshine and the old trees along the shoreline, still winter brown, will soon rise into green. Migrant birds return to sparkle my garden with their impossible colours, goldfinch, siskin, whilst those who stayed home line the fence awaiting breakfast. Birdmusic fills the air, lifting melodies into a soft blue sky, melodies no composer ever really captured. On days like these, hope comes calling. Everything is possible. On days like these, a morning like this, I remember waking to work with a smile, a gasp at the sudden beauty, one in which I played no part. And, yet, my part begins now, not just as witness to a morning like this, but in an active role. Guests at Tapselteerie need breakfast, children need winding out of bed sheets and into school clothing. Packed lunches need to be prepared, wrapped and delivered. A whale-watching trip lies ahead, the boat impatient and bobbing. Get me fired up, get me out there among the sea-birds, the dolphins, porpoise, otters, seals, whales, the wild wide ocean calls, can’t you hear her? Yes, we can hear and we are on our way, human time. There is, I tell the ocean, a process to a morning for our part. We need the right clothing, the breakfast in our bellies, a packed lunch in our knapsack, binoculars, waterproofs, boots for the island landing, our bird books, cetacean books, our cameras, water bottles, an extra jersey, hats, gloves………Good Lord what a ridiculous list, sighs the ocean, lapping faster against the stone jetty. She needs none of those add-ons after all.

It may be a boat trip, it may be a walk or drive to work. It may be a day in school, or there may be no plan at all. It matters not. What does matter is how we do whatever we need to do in a day, our attitude. Are we thankful for this day, this hour, this moment and do we say so? Do we notice every detail with humility and gratitude and say so? I know, having learned how life can be snuffed out in a single breath un-breathed, how important it is to be present in every living moment, to appreciate it and to say so. And, more, how that outspoken presence leaves a legacy for a new young life, as yet un-lived. We come, we go. What we do in between, who we are and how we do what we do is remembered, either as encouragement, nourishment, an example to follow, or not. None of us can change all our circumstances but we can, with grace and our eyes on each moment, each encounter, leave not just our own story, but a lot of invisible threads that conjoin with others, leave kisses on a stranger’s heart. And, the legacy of that is endless.

This day, we walked onto a wide white sandy beach to send ashes back to the sea. This place she loved, he loved, this curve of powdered shells over many many years, where the sea comes in and goes out twice a day and every day; where the sky goes on forever and where we stand looking out to sea, to the great beyond, thoughts lifting, memories, moments, pictures of a lifetime well and truly lived. Through heartache, troubles, joys and laughter, through birthdays, anniversaries, holidays and ordinary days, these two held the line. I hear their laughter as I watch the wavelets lap at the shore, claiming ground. I watch those times they flew above their troubles in the cant and tilt of a seagull, a raven. They walked here once, no, more than once. I see them still, on this beach, distant but there. As I walk back up to my car with my little dog, sand in my boots and shells in my pocket, I know I will not forget this sunshine day, the words spoken, the sight of ashes floating away, the flute melody, the poem, the song, the prayers, the being a part of it all.

Back among ice cream eaters and picnickers I look up. An eagle flies. I wave. There you are my lovelies. There you go.

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Island Blog – Joining the Dots

When I first arrived in Africa, after the first flurry of excitement, I noticed how I felt unsure as to my part in the play. This happens each time I stay anywhere, to be honest, moving as I am into someone else’s life, home, timeline, routine. It’s as if the very air resists my forward motion, not that it is always forward, my restlessness and indecision tilting me left, then right, forward then back. My brain, so active, seems to collapse in on itself, a splay of wires and worms and it is then that the invaders invade, the ditherers, the undecided, the falterers, the wobbly arm-flailing, foot shufflers and my body obeys all of them. And, as if this wasn’t enough to confound the most confident of people, my fears rush up behind them like a second wave of soldiers, all with bayonets on rifles and determination on faces. These fears in Africa might be that the kettle roars and at 6 am will awaken my kids and make them furious so I’d better just have water. It might be that if I open the sliding door into the garden all five feral and definitely indoors cats will charge as one to disappear over the wall and into the mouth of danger, so I’d better stay inside. I can’t run the hot tap to wash up last night’s dishes because the water makes enough of a racket to waken the dead, trumpeting, snorting and coughing like an old man with lung disease. I shouldn’t go for a walk because that would let the dog out, the dog that always waits for permission and is fast asleep anyway. It is all, I know this, ridiculous, but I go through this every single time, me, confident, assured me. It’s as if my body arrived here but my spirit stayed home or is, hopefully, en route to join me up again like a dot picture.

After a few days I reassemble. I don’t feel it happening, like all my personal lego bits are now clicked into place, it just happens. I fire up the kettle at six, wash the dishes to a trumpet voluntary, open the sliding door and shimmy through the skinny gap watching the cats who watch me back, languidly, yawning, curled up, with no intention of going where they have never gone and do not miss. I go for a walk and the big dog watches me from between his paws. He may be hopeful but he knows the drill and besides, his beloved master has yet to rise from sleep. I can even put on a wash, now that my spirit has arrived from the UK, late but not damaged in any way, as the machine purrs softly once I have worked out how to programme it. The days mellow into routine with serendipitous opportunities presenting, for both kids work from home and are busy most of each day. I have ‘suddenly’ prepped and ready to go. In between meetings we can hop to the shop, go out for lunch, take the dog for a walk and it is always ‘suddenly.’ I rather enjoy that I enjoy ‘suddenly.’ I decide I am a ‘suddenly’ sort of woman, remembering the Tapselteerie days when every damn thing was ‘suddenly’. I had obviously learned the ropes and it gladdens me. When the flurry is done and they are back to work and I am back to whatever I fancy next, I smile. I ask for a list of jobs and write them down. Now I can varnish window frames at 05.30 if I so choose or oil the deck furniture before the temperature hits 33 degrees at 0900 and all the fears, ditherers, foot-shuffling undeciders have melted away in the heat. Even the fears have mummified. I look down at them and they look a bit sorry for themselves in that state. It’s because I no longer feed them of course, now that I know my way around this life.

And then I come home, from 38 degrees pre flying to 6 degrees in Glasgow and I just know the whole palaver will begin again. Even in my own home, things feel not of my making. I don’t have the fears but I have certainly walked miles inside the house getting mostly nowhere and this will continue, I know it, until my spirit, who did not want to leave Africa at all, returns to me. She may detour via other continents, of course, she’s a bit naughty like that. But I will wait for her, and when we are back together, all our ducks will be in line, our dots joined and our feet in sync, ready for all the new adventures we have yet to share.