I hear calls, here, inside my ordinary life. Birds in trouble, a catch of a mew from a feral kitten, lost and hungry. I hear the rumble of boats way out at sea, the whirr of a coastguard helicopter, the call of a lamb being an eejit, even the high-pitched squeak of a mouse in my drystane wall. I hear it all, even, and above the noisy interior of a home on Radio Two. I don’t think my ears do the hearing. Can’t be. I think I hear because I care so much about them out there, fighting for their lives, every single minute of the day. I remember, in that short spell of living on the Glasgow streets…..well, not ON the streets, I was super aware of the timbre of passing conversations, recognising trouble. It caused problems, as you may guess, as I launched myself towards a young woman lying on the pavement and crying out. I heard her pain and that was enough for me. I just held her hand for a moment, and she looked up at me and I don’t regret that one bit, as her eyes said many things. Thank you for caring, no hope here, please move on. And I did.

My kids liked to eat three dishes. Macaroni Cheese, Shepherds Pie, Sausages and Mash. The End. Now, I may have bored myself to death preparing the same old in a weird triage, but it happied them and all plates were cleared in seconds. Life was ordinary then, as it is now, but I know something, something I had no idea I was teaching them….the ability to listen beyond the noise of Def Leppard, of Super Mario, of the shite and spite of secondary school, because, even if they don’t all admit to it, they do listen, they are aware, they do hear. So many times I can walk with someone who just talks all the time, listens to nothing, hears nothing, unless I arrest progress and say, Stop. Listen.

I can hear mice in the undergrowth, the chatter of baby tits inside a drystane wall. I know the call of a young buzzard, the way a mother woodcock reassures her chicks, hidden inside a stone uprise inside the woods. I can hear when a huge beech limb is about to give up and fall due to water ingress. It isn’t magic, just practise and an open mind. There is a wonderful place in-between the sensible worldly science and the Otherness and I can embrace both, and I like that very much. I think being stuck is a choice. Not mine.

Still, in my days of the now of me, I can be cooking something, dancing to something, listening to something, and the ‘else’ calls from outside, lifting me there, taking me out, barefoot, with a cheese-coated spoon in my hand, to hear more. Living between two worlds, if that is what it is, is for me. And, I have a hag stone. Oh, I don’t believe I can see faeries, or even through them. I don’t believe looking through the hole will give me illumination. I am no fool. My feets are firmly grounded. But I am open.

Always.