Month: May 2024

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Island Blog – Ceilidh Craic In it

Two days ago, I drove the looooong single track drive to the South of the island. To be honest, I wondered if I would ever arrive, or if, instead, I would keep going until I fell off the world altogether. It is only a couple of hours, agreed, but because it is single track for most of the way, and tourist and local traffic is relentless, I got really good at swinging into passing places. Over and over and over again. Most tourists in their wide-hipped or shiny modrun ( a scots word) vehicles with electronic everything, including passengers, acknowledged my swinging thing, allowing them to slide by me without braking, but many didn’t. I thought about that, my smile wide and my warm hand held up in a hallo, you’re welcome, fingers moving like seaweed in gentle tidal flow, but in my belly there was, I confess, a switch from I LOVE THE WORLD AND EVERYONE IN IT, to YOU WERE NOT BROUGHT UP RIGHT. I did say it was a confession, and I am not proud of that switch. It is not how I choose to live. I knew who were the real locals, the farmers, fisherfolk, familial cars bent into unusual shapes and with a pause before I swung into safety, just checking which one of us would initiate a convenience to the other. I also noticed the resident young, and I was young once, in a damn hurry and with my fed right up with all these bloody cars littering a simple and gently winding road to home, to my home, to their home. I allowed their own switch to ‘Roar’ as they buffeted my Pixty mini so that she shook from an intensive rap, finally slowing to a Bob Marley. We breathed together, she and I. And we smiled. The world is going too fast, I said. No, she wiggled her last, not the world, the people innit. I laughed. Innit? You imitating Sacha Baron Cohen? She paused (I’ve now let 5 fast tourists create an almost whirlwind around us, and noticed a stand-off up ahead as the bus sits like a planet, refusing to cowtow to a silver Mercedes opentop). Woodentop, I mutter. What? Sorry, Pixty. Innit? You were about to tell me.

In it, she smirks and if she had eyes, they would roll. I watched the plovers on the scarp beach, the granite rocks shining with salt water, catching the white light, for there is no sun evident. Seaweed lifts and lands, lifts again, and people are here, enjoying a picnic, laughing with family, taking what they so need from this wild and electric place. I wonder if any of them passed me and Pixty, acknowledged, or didn’t, my swinging. I remember tense new journeys, fractious children in the back, dogs panting for escape, my own belly in a twitch. Keep positive, keep positive, not much. further children, nearly there and all that shit. I remember.

The Ceilidh craic was spectacular. A real community fund raising event, and I remember them too. We don’t really have them here, in the north, in the north which (or is it that) has moved into the too fast life. I saw, again, the familial bonds, the inclusion of children at a ceilidh dance, I shared the craic with those, many of whom I didn’t know and some I did, who have stories, valuable stories, precious stories. I loved every minute, working in the kitchen, bringing out cakes, baked by a woman who marvels me. I met sisters of my husband’s carer, who lives nearby, and I could see the likeness long before introduction. I watched young people pipe, fiddle, sing in Gaelic. I saw and heard young life holding on to the stories, their history, the story of Mary Macdonald who wrote the tune, Bunessan, thereafter made famous as Morning Has Broken, the reason for the fundraising ceilidh. Her memorial is crumbling and needs cash to restore and protect.

Songs and dances abounded. Strip the Willow, the Boston Twostep, the Canadian Barn Dance, and more. Bloody Chaos on the floor, very few having a scooby about what steps to take, but up there, anyways. Cakes were consumed along with endless pots of tea. The children kept pace. I watched the smiles, the laughter, the sharing and the bond these folk share, so remote, so many passing places t’ween them and a shop, an ambulance, a surgery, a chemist. And, as I left the next day to homecome, they stayed in my thoughts, because the strength of that community is something that draws me in. In it.

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Island Blog – The Atticus and the Reflexion

I’ve been allowing a whole load of thinks over the past days. They swirl in like twimbly waves against the atticus that stands strong, stoney strong, against any natural flow, like a frickin blockade, salty confusion and a whole load of ineffective slapping at a finite. I got sick of this. To slam at a solid truth is to waste energy and intelligence. Although most of us, if we are honest, keep swirling twimbly waves at a solid something we don’t like one fricketty bit, by the way, until we eventually blow out of breath and energy. And we see the pointlessness of such a flagellation. As I have done, thank the holy crunch. I decide to employ reflexion, a different word to the one with a ‘c’ and a ‘t’ and with a shift in meaning, if not a complete one of those shift things.

I can see behind me, beyond me, I can see from whence I have come and this damn atticus is right in my path, if waves can ‘path’. And I have been slamming at it with full ocean saltforce, without intelligent thought. I suspect this is normal, whatever that means. It isn’t just me who confounds, surely? And then I find reflexion. It’s a flexi word, dynamic, inviting and entirely appropriate. It is ‘the phenomenon (I’m already in with that word) of a propagating (again) wave of light or sound, being thrown back from a surface’. Don’t you just love that! Opportunity, choice, intelligence, all so dynamic. However, I do know what it feels like to be on a boat in wild weather and facing an atticus, and it took a brilliant skipper to draw us all safely away from a slam dunk that would have so pissed me off down in Davy’s locker, as dinner was all prepped and the fires lit and the candles just squatting there all ready to fire up the evening. The undertow in an ocean is never to be ignored, not for one minute. Just saying, and maybe my just saying is saying something. Overboard, and you could end up in Venezuela for Christmas.

I know atticus is always a sudden. I also know how reflexion can tumble me over and onwards to fret another shoreline, to tingle more little toes, to whisper over other sands. But, without an atticus, there’d be no limits, no new startings, no haltings that help us to consider our choice of direction. We are in control of our own boat. I just got that. Once again.

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Island Blog – Outsea, Stamina, Vagabond

Normally, I write to music, a background of brilliant lyricists to an accord of well-depthed musicality. Beats and all. I am a rhythm dancer, know the upper levels of vocal, surface level instruments, worked with the best. He could hear discordance, dis, cor dance, in any recording and said so, when he could. And, through walls of children noise, of egg boxes, baffles and plywood confines, so did I. I was curious, like Alice, wanting to learn through my own imagination, my own stop, no, maybe, no, yes, thing. I could hear it, as he did, and still do. Any poor combination dies quickquick. The depth must be there, from the bottom to the top, or it will never grow legs.

However, this writing to music thing, is a tad poorly ce soir. My phone, which has been shouting for backup, for a couple of days, has now laid down with a ffs, refusing to connect, without a load of huffy repercussions, to my so-called smart speaker. Thus, it is silent here, in this sunshine island home with a view that stops every single passer by, and is the envy of all those who don’t see it, don’t know it, as, well, normal. It isn’t mine, nothing is mine, no ownership of land ever grinned me, not never. Land is land, land owns land, no matter what man does in his/her attempts at ownership.

I digress, big time.

I’m thinking about stamina. I knew I was always, and still am (ish) a sprinter. Can do short distances, then flop. My daughter is a long distance woman. I didn’t know her at first, once she showed her colours. How can I advise, recognise, guide a female from my birthing, who is so different to me? T’was a thing and a half, for some time. I took my mother fingers off the control button, watched her develop, away from me. I searched for a connection and found it, eventually. The Sea. It is in her blood as it is in mine and we have connected in ebbs and flows over time. She lives in the Outsea, that place where no swoosh and lap is in earshot, where Sea is a dream, a longing, where trees and insular roadings and confines, vagabond her mind, where the call of home, of gulls and the wild, of crashing storms and the loud of it, the fear and uplift, dynamics her.

I had no idea I was going to write this, in silence. I just read Stamina, and in she came.

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Island Blog – Levitas, Obeisance, a Foundling

I’m about to challenge all those words, although I will, for this sentence, acknowledge their dictionnary confines. Since the whole hooha in my life, at this late stage of said life, but not lacking a single moment of sparkle, and, as I solidify, with great resistance, I notice words. They flicker about my head like the swallows, all of them going somewhere too fast for me to follow. I watch them flit away, catch the tail end, reach out to catch what I can never catch. Fleeting are they, and so are many things, many people, it seems, and I know it, have known it for decades, had forgotten it in the steady dusky trudge of olding. I had. I really had. When I reconnect with the students we had working with us over a decade or more, I hear of families, even of teenagers, of the birthdays and failures, the surprises, the moments, and I am confounded. These wee ones were my wee ones, once. They arrived all full of promise, fists up, (particularly the girls) and with intelligence we really needed in order to create a huge charity that still lives on today – The Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust, one committed to benign research in Atlantic Waters.

I remember walks down to the pub after looooong days at sea, doing this research thing, my own boys as crew, or skippers, eventually, and the buzz, oh the buzz of being recognised and invited was so exciting. I thank them all. I get that this sounds ‘all about me’ and that’s another thing I would blow out of the water, given time. It’s dismissive and judgemental and, ok stop there.

To the point, or points. Solidify gives me indigestion, the word, that is. It sounds like sludge. I don’t do sludge, even though these past few days of what, of coping, no, of moving on, no, of understanding, no, I sense a sentence barking for ‘in’. I may not be such a writer. The confluence of contradictory wordage can split an understanding. I think I need my dad here. When, let me develop this……the challenge is made (weak word), the challenge accepted, the pistols at dawn are an inevitable. And, although I’m unsure of that word too, I kind of like it. Hearing it, or reading it, gives me fight.

I was fine as I was. I was in sludge, I now know. I was thinking, I am over the hill, now. I am 71. I know I am feisty, I know I am strong, I know I am lonely, I know I am, what? I know obeisance. click. I know levitas. click.

And here is where I challenge, Foundling. With the deepest respect. I am she.

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Island Blog – Lemons, Zest and Loving

I was angry, and anger, in my life has played two roles. One confounds and limits, sinks me. T’other fires me up like a rocket. I have heard so so many people tell me, intelligent people, I thought, who told me any anger is a BAD thing. Much research and even more inner work has taught me this is not the truth. Anything in ‘overdose’ is damaging, yes. Any emotion without reflection, introspection and direction is damaging, yes. But with inner work, intelligent work, and with a heart that does not want to entertain any controller, and certainly not the control of any emotion beyond the timing of its natural flow, anger can turn into a flower garden, a new path snaking through old undergrowth, old limitations, old beliefs, old stuff. Anger is random, sudden, a boom to the gut, the heart. It traverses a whole body and not just then, but perhaps for days, weeks, months, but if what a goodly loving and trusting human being wants are peace, dance, chances and a new path, the latter will reveal itself. It always, always does.

Yesterday, and, if I’m honest, the day before, too, I just wanted to sleep. And so I did. Although Sleep and I will never be easy bedfellows, separating many times during the hours of darkness, whilst the oystercatchers make a right bloody fuss of pretty much everything down on the shore, I could sleep these past two days. Not all the day, but in bits and bobs for it was necessary that anger calmed his boots within me. He is calmed. I went to work today feeling quite the thing, as they say on this lovely island, and I know, now, what I know. I let go, or try to, of self-hatred, of the sting of rejection, the confirmation that I am not the vibrant, exciting and fun-loving woman I believed myself to be for a few short weeks. Well, I try to let them go, tell myself to let them go, insist in fact that they bloody go, and they do for a short while until they curve back to me with renewed energy. It is hard work living alone when that is not what I want. Others have confirmed this belief. In order to be cheerful, I have to start the process. In order to see a friend, it is I who must make the call. In order to laugh, I must pop one into my mouth prior to a visit to the shop or into the harbour town. It is, oftentimes, exhausting, all this DIY living. If I want to build a new life, I must find the tools and get to work, I know this, and, before he came to mess things up, I was actually finding my stride. Now, back at the start, I have to summon up enough get-go to get going all over again, erasing, as best I can, the memories of happily shared days, of conversations, of plans and of companionship.

But, (again) I have fire, yet, in my belly, fire for life, for a good life, for the one I want, and no-one can extinguish that fire, unless I hand over the water bucket. Which I will not do. There is too much zest in my thoughts, my heart, my imagination, my brilliant brain and strong body. I think of others who have been rejected, of children, teens, older women like me, men, boys, those whose sexuality brings in black storm clouds, the marginalised, the unwanted, the extras in this game of life. I am fortunate, indeed, to have so much loving support from family and friends. And, one day, I will laugh at this, at myself, my reaction, my sinking into negativity. I will say, Oh, this happened to me, once, trusting me, loving me, and, believe me, time will heal the cuts. There will be scars, but scars are beautiful things. Scars hold compassion, empathy and understanding. Love your scars because, one day, you too will laugh at this pain, and you too will be quick to hold another who has been rejected.

This is how we love the world.

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Island Blog – A Man, a Horsefly and the Itch.

He came into my life like a complete surprise, as, I believe, I was for him. A random and unlinear sequence of events collided us. It was exciting and wild. For a week. He spoke of a possible future, at least while we got to know each other. A mid country meet here, a trip away there. We laughed a lot, moved easily around each other, shared many interests, and appeared to be on the first part of a journey. We are not teenagers, not fools, both with a long and, at times, uncomfortable past, a lot of which we shared. I felt a flicker of hope, the chance for a new adventure with, possibly, him. I had believed that my life with a lover died with my husband. So many years of caring, of being mummy and nurse to a man who, once, could just look at me and I would melt. I had tidied her away, that ‘on fire’ woman, that reckless abandoner of anything sensible. My body worked as she should, but she was just functioning. I had even resigned myself to a lonely old woman line of same-old, making myself rise to bright and bubbly, to being the clown around those who needed a laugh, to uplifting everyone, even though my trudge boots shouted at me to chuck them in the sea-loch, just to put them out of their misery. I didn’t dance so much, rarely sang at all, performed domestic tasks with a sigh. Who needs this getting old and lonely thing? I would ask my Marigolds, my blue hoover, the birds in my garden. I found it, at best, tiresome and quite unnecessary. We should be shot at such a stage in life and if another person tells me that I have a lot yet to give, I just might be arrested for my response.

A week of holding hands, of walking on the beach, of lunches out, coffee in the sunshine, a nice Rose at sundown; an emotional sadness at leaving. His. Then, nothing, but the odd text. Still, I knew he was working, and in areas without mobile reception. I knew that, because that is what he told me, and, the dutiful little woman understood. In fact, this dutiful little woman, on reflection, missed a lot of hints, but, with hindsight, it is often easy to join dots dismissed at the time as just dots. After work was completed and I still believed in the ‘let’s meet mid country’ or the ‘we could go away for a few days on a trip’ I was firmly dumped via a text, one I have deleted. It was so teenage, so self-absorbed, so dismissive and disrespectful and did not justify any response at all beyond a snort of laughter. However, this is a first response. I know that others will follow, anger, sadness, the confirmation that I am a complete idiot for believing at all that any man would find me attractive at 71. Etcetera.

But, and there is always one of those, all this teaches me, and teaches me well. I don’t mean the nonsense I have heard from the man haters, because I do not hate men at all. I think they are wonderful, love to be with them, hug them, laugh with them, listen to them, and the latter is how it was with this man because he only ever talked about himself and, I recall, rarely asked me a question about me, my loves, my passions, my dreams and hopes. Man is man, for sure, working very differently to women, but most men I know are strong, sensitive, and emotionally intelligent creatures, even if they cannot find the words for good communication beyond golf, boats, science, things that function with a motor and the vagiaries of spotlights, cars, politics, economics and how bluetooth works, to name but a few. And they can learn to ask questions and to listen.

Last year a horsefly bit me. That bite, as you may remember, led to danger, to cellulitis and possible sepsis, and then to the revelation of breast cancer. Had that horsefly not carelessly bitten me, I would, definitely, be growing a cancer right now, one that doesn’t show in a lump, but in a silent spread. Since then I have embarked on a fitness programme, the right food, exercise, and, most importantly, a re-understanding of how precious my life is to me. This man inspired the same, the man, the horsefly, the catalyst, a lead into more and better and, importantly, a reset of boundaries and the opening of, heretofore closed, doors. I dance again, suddenly, sing more, feel alive and beautiful. And, I am.

The horsefly and the man. Both bit me. But I grow stronger for those bites, however much they itch.

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Island Blog – Past, Last, Elastoplast, Vast

Listening to a singer songwriter, Irish, a beautiful voice, I remember singing her songs way back when I had confidence, long chestnut hair and strong limbs. They said I sounded like her, this beautiful Irish singer, and, at times, I could hear that. Just a glimpse, but a glimpse, nonetheless. I knew how to get lost in the words, the music, the glory of good musicians backing me, and a pub full of folk listening. I am so glad I knew those days, the arriving, setting up of mikes and baffles and wotwot. Walking down from Tapselteerie House, once my kids were (almost) in bed and all the dishes were washed, there I was, just me, wild and excited, nervous and alone. Each week we gathered, played Irish, Scottish, Gaelic, blue grass, anything that just came in the moment, no script. Then I would make the walk home down the unlit village street, on and up onto the dark track for well over a mile, high on music and laughter and strong and wild. I do remember arriving (quietly) through the kitchen door, shushing the dogs, grabbing water and going to bed wherein I could not sleep till almost dawn and HALLO wee ones, and Hallo guests expecting the full Scottish. I didn’t mind one bit, had the energy for all of it, just for that buzz, that wonderful buzz of music, song and just me away from the domestic demands for an evening.

A past now, but a last too, for I can still feel the thrill. I can smile at the remembering, and I can let it ribbon into my past. However, I may still bring back the light of those days should one of my children, or their children ask me to tell about me, not the facts, but the feelings. My own do this, but is that because I ask them to hear what my life was like at their age, no matter what they think they saw and understood? Perhaps. I know I have sat at the ancient feet of someone decades older than I and asked a question, that led to another question, that lit something in that old body and faltering mind, and I have heard stories way wilder than mine. I am glad of it. To imagine this shaky set of bones living a bonkers life, full of fun and mischief and crazy is, for me, a truth. Of course they did. They lived through two wars, real threats, real deprivation, not just two years of Covid lockdown, not that I want to minimise that, but I’m just inviting a perspective shakeup.

What I have learned of said fun, mischief and crazy from those old bones has laughed me into hope. They may be falling apart in a way that is overly ghastly, but they did really live. They were wild, once, crazy, full of fun and mischief and, ok, not all of them, but oh so many. They have stories they seriously believe no young person would ever want to hear. Ask them. Because I did, I learned coping mechanisms I would never have learned otherwise, domestic survival tactics, the way to keep bloody going when every sinew said I’m Done.

We can put an Elastoplast on our past, hoping it might heal. It won’t. Our past is what it was. Although I love and celebrate the current culture within which all those in dire mental pain, survivors of everything shocking and horribly wrong finally have a voice, I really hope that family, support and intelligent healers are ready to help a move beyond. I have no experience of such, thus, no voice in this space. From my fortunate place, I would fight for all freedoms, all areas, all colours, all sexuality, all of it. The past of us is not just my personal past, where I had bacon and eggs on Sundays, and cleaned the car on Wednesday afternoons. We have blasted way beyond this. I might get the terminology wrong as we all move, bumpily into a future, with all the wrong words, and wonky limbs and the mischief always at the ready.

I remember coming home at the ten o’clock curfew, my Dad (bless him) would not sleep till I was safely home. I waited some beats, heard the phew of silence and then escaped through the sitting room window, had a ball, and arrived home on the 5 am milk float. Who knew this? Well, you do now. It was my past and is my lasting memory, oh so many of them and mostly out of hours, on the dance floor, out there, out there, the vast of what was. And I was colourful, I was psychedelic, although I never took drugs, and then the comes in as it always does. See the stories?

I met someone today, a woman I respect and love, and she has dementia, and I saw it. Ask the stories now, right now, let the grandchildren ask, encourage it. This woman, that man, they really lived. Once. They walked back from the pub after a session, a song, a lift for a few hours from the dire of their lives. They all had, have a voice, have stories that will make your perspective shake into a whole new shape. Trust me.

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Island Blog – Lightening and Just Me, Just You

Same sound as Lightning, but with an E. It seems that just one E makes all the difference to the meaning of a word, spoken, that is. Written, all is clear. How confusing is that! When we write a text message, this can mean that, and ‘that’ can blow your pants off. We must be so careful with words. One message, meant to explain an inner drift, shift, split or maybe just inviting understanding, can send someone into a swirl of inner doubt, into childhood, when who I thought I was, wasn’t, pretty much. It thinks me.

I play with words, with wordage all the time, but I am canny, cautious, and still make mistakes. We all do, and, as we observe A. N Other living out their lives as best they bloody well can, who feel the ok enough to tell us about what they did with this, or him, or them, we might think before we text back, if we feel a judgement coming on. That damn judgement, that speaks in the voice of a long gone parent, grandparent, teacher. That is our own thing, and thus irrelevant. I always want to bring in an elephant here, I can see it, the mahout, turbaned and brown as a nut, and grinning through betel teeth, the elephant pondorous and on a steady trajectory, but that, also is irrelevant, for now.

How we did this or that, demands questioning. So many do not, question, and so the pattern continues patterning. Until someone stops it, just like that, in a lightning strike. Where does that intelligence come from, being as it is a newborn in their lives, in any life? It seems that, if we are open for change, asking for it because we are tired, so tired of living in a loop, meeting ourselves over and over and with no change in sight, and someone will just shout. SHOUT. And, as in a lightning strike, something falls.

Today I went to visit dear friends and we talked (or I did) for ages over tea and a beautiful dog and a view across forever, had the mist allowed. There was a lightening. I have known these two for a very long time, met them here and there, now and again, and yet, today, I was there with them, in their home and I felt so connected, so happy. We talked of dementia, of caring, of the village, of our beloved island, of bees, of woods, of trees, of the times we remembered dancing in the village hall. A lightening. I drove home in a different set of thinks.

Although I have always known my place is here, my people are here, over past times, I have felt isolated, of my own doing. I look for both lightning and lightening, but it was dark. I made it dark. And, in the dark, for all its shadows and demons, an essential part of the damn process of recovery is birthing from any number of wotwots. Not one single one of us would choose to go through it again, but we have learned to believe than light exists, and more, that we are needed in that light show. Just on our own, limping, awkward, with our own broken hearts, just us, just me, just you.

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Island Blog – Scrambledom and Showing up

There I was, bobbing along with life, knowing just which way was up and which down, gravity and flight both behaving appropriately. Breakfast was at the usual time, a usual accord t’ween avocado, poached egg and ryvita with Pond Water. Coffee, already strong and lining my stomach like an entire defence corps of marine snipers, buzzed me and the morning. I swear, as I jounced outside barefoot to squash the wildflowers and to administer nourishment to sparrows, blackbirds, robins, Siskins, greenfinch, goldfinch and collared doves, that my soles were just off the ground. Could be tricky at my age but what with my rowing machine and my endless dancing around the kitchen, I am yet confident in the uprightness of me, body at least.

Pond Water begs an explanation. One of my sisters who is a top chef and who eats so healthy I barely recognise what’s on her plate, guided me towards this daily green drink. I adopted the habit after cancer and now this green stuff is an integral part of my morning. These days it is added to, thanks to my gorgeous nutritionist who is monitoring my elevation. Celery, carrot, root ginger, spinach, broccoli and apple form the basic. Add to that, for those, like me, short on protein and other complicated things, bring in pea protein powder, Brazil nuts or other nuts and pumpkin/sunflower/chia seeds. Whizz it all up with water, sieve, and there you have it. Pond Water. At first, with my sister, I wanted to spit the whole mouthful out. Now, it is a pleasant drink, not least because there is so much goodness in it.

The ordinary, the familiar, are easy walking mates. I know them and they know me. And so, on we go through the days without pause or cause for much thought. Then something happens, coming in like a dart, a sideswipe and the legs go out from under me. This thing didn’t happen directly to me, but to one of my children, and then not even directly to them. They are all well, alive and in the same place. But, for one, the windows have blown out, and they are rocked. I feel their pain, their turmoil and, being the mum I am, I know where I must be. And I will be there. Just working out the massive palaver of travel from the island, what with the ferries being dipsy at best, for now, and the timings of a bus, a plane.

During the daylight hours of this day, I have considered my knees. They jerk. A lot. Always have done. I respond in the immediate when my beloveds are in pain. I go to, regardless of where we ought to be in ten minutes, or whom we might upset with this go to thing which is often messy and always thoroughly inconvenient. We were all going left, bobbing along, muttering and grumbling and then ‘boom!’ a sudden slews in like a sparrowhawk and grabs someone by the wotnots and everything changes, for me anyway. I know where I need to be and will be, and all this I learned as a mum, a mum who has oftentimes refused to comply with what appears sensible and logical. I like myself for that. I know scrambledom, and we have worked together before, many times. What our children remember is not the material gifts from a parent, but that one time when they were broken and mum or dad just showed up.

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Island Blog – Moons in her Mouth

I find that there are as many ways to respond to change as there are people. I recognise resistance, fear, exhilaration, denial and many more unspellable words describing the palaver of response. Trouble is, change is invariably frick all to do with us. Someone or something else initiates this change thing, muddying still waters and messing up picture perfect landscapes. It’s like the world without or within just shifted a whole 45 degrees whilst we, busy doing the same thing in the same way for ages, remain rooted to the spot and staring at nothing. Where did what I know and understand, go?

The answer is, Not Far, in my experience, but why life has to do this irritating shift is, well, irritating, at best upsetting/confusing and scary at worst. But wait……..if I can see that in my security I was just an automaton, performing tasks in the usual way and without questioning anything, and, thus, not really alive at all, then perhaps I should take a closer look at what change has on offer. We humans have been gifted elevation above all other living creatures, and, yet, any animal, bird, reptile or fish knows more about adaptation to change that most of us two legged bright sparks will ever know. And, yet, change is wild around us, moving in on a storm, in stories, in the turbulence of extreme weather, the warning loud and clear to all others, it seems, but us. I can see that we have depended too much on a material infrastructure, trusting in impermanence, thus gradually losing our natural abilities as intelligent and sentient human beings.

Even as a young woman, well, girl really, I knew I wanted the insecurity of the traveller. It scared me, the thought of the riptide, the undertow, the wild and desolate landscape, an unpredictable sky, but the call was strong. Thankfully, I found a man who had more experience, more knowledge on such travelling whooha and who reckoned I could be a good travel mate. I learned so much from him, thirsty for the knowing of how to react when encountering danger, for example, or of what physical and mental strengths I needed to develop in order to be, not unafraid, but canny and unpanicked. I did panic, a lot, in the process, but I also learned a gazillion lessons on survival, and I don’t mean living on Mars, but more just living with constant change.

And then I learned to love becoming a dynamic part of Life with all her shifts and shouts. Sometimes she whispers, and I turn my head to hear. I know that businesses fail, that shops go bust, that hackers grow like weeds, that war is a boundary away, but I also know that I am a survivor. This is not arrogance, safe behind a locked door of smugness and control, but just one woman, spinning in harmony with the world, vigilant, always learning and with moons in her mouth.