My creeper is waggling. I’m watching it right now through my wee window. It’s Jasmine, but the Jasmine thing is not the point. For weeks and weeks, it has waggled a different way. Let me explain. The prevailing wind, no, just the damn wind, has barrelled in from the Cold Lands, bringing stories, yes, and that is a marvellous thing for those of us who listen to the wind instead of berating it, but we kind of get the Cold Stories now. After all, we have heard them since November last year, and we welcomed them back then, were intrigued, looking expectantly to the re-widging of important information we all needed in preparation for the very long winter up here. Such as, bin your shorts, frocky loose kit, strappy wimsy, sandals, the fun of lifting out, moving up, the spontaneous yes to picnics and swims and let’s go- ness. All that. And we get it. We understand the farewell to the warm winds for about eight months, being realistic. Lambs born in the so-called Spring, can disappear into the snow, not here, but a bit further up on other wild islands.

However, this year has outsmarted us all. We were ready with our shorts and frocks and our picnic Let’s Go thing. We have had moments, even days, but those Cold Stories have kept coming. Today, oh today, the wind changed. It was warm, and I could feel the new stories bursting out, as if they had been stuck in the wings for way too long. There was a fiesta feel to the punch of it in my face as I arrived for work today. Aha…..a great day for all those towels to dry, those bed sheets and huge frickin duvet covers to fly free in this warm blast, to absorb all these stories. I did wonder, as I dived up and down, pegs in my mouth, fixing linen to plastic, releasing them to the beneficial wind, if anyone might smell a story as they settle for the night. Maybe, although I also know that, in the world we live in now, very few people think this way. No matter. I hear snippets, calls and sudden images, nothing I can hold on to. I don’t mind that.

Thing is this. And the this of This is important to me. I know what I want. I want the Long Sea, but a short sea when I’m on it; I want to muddle through whatever I’m going through, but I don’t want to end up in a muddle. I want to walk through a Sea Meadow (Machair) but I don’t want ownership; I want a long stem but not the cold stories to cut me down; I want to walk free along a wild shore, ancient stones from north, south, from everywhere, bibbled into roundling walks. I want wide skies, the almost full Buck Moon I watched last night, big as an ostrich egg and a luminary just above a rise of granite, and the cloudal twist as if they’d all arrived at the wrong disco.

And connection. Without this, there are no stories. Do all young parents read bedtime stories? I no longer know. Do older children take the time to read stories back to ailing parents? I don’t know that either. Do those who know they hear stories ever say so? Another I don’t know.

Meanwhile, the Jasmine is waggling. I walk out into the warm. We haven’t known warm since last September/October. And I am not wasting one moment. Nor is Jasmine.