Month: September 2024

by

Island Blog – Barefoot and So Very Connected

Shadows are longer now. They surprise me, twisting my eyes towards them, when the sun gets behind this overgrown shrub or the line of my rake, or just me. I am, it seems, the giant. I reach all the way up to the big larch on the rockface, my neck and head lost in the skinning branches. I smile at the thought. Long gone are my days of hiding in trees, of scaling the scarp of an ancient trunk, scratched, bruised and, at times wishing I hadn’t bothered to begin. But the absolute joy of hoiking my butt onto a strong limb, into the hook of a tree mother’s arm, the inevitable wobble and correction and the determination to stay exactly there, completely lost to the eyes of predators, aka, adults or, later, visitors, even my children, is like a fizz in my blood. I like the memory, hold it, recognise it, know that it, once, was mine.

Although the Siskins, Goldfinch, Swallows and House Martins are gone, Robins have returned with a different song. Their Spring ‘Come to Me’ has changed, in timbre, in melody, in regularity. Timely, I guess, but what do they sing for so beautifully? Perhaps they sing for. Autumn, on the cusp of Winter. Perhaps it’s for the superb clarity, the reviresco of light, the copper,gold,fiery sunsets, the way the basalt sharps up, glitters with rain, sparkles with sun, moon, reflecting, as we all do in the autumn of our lives, a new and unexpected brilliance.

There is sudden sun and sudden rain, sudden cold and sudden warmth. The invasion of another seasons is always a fight. Think about it. Summer (so called) has lazed about for months, taking her place, sitting fatly upon her throne, throwing us, this year, a capulet of cloud sneezing and, somehow, she managed to throw into our mix, a. big dose of winter. I suspect, she, fatly lounging upon her throne in the Out Of Work Months, mixed up a laboratory of cold spite, made it work, cackled a lot and then brought her experiment down on our heads. Summer always had a love/hate relationship with the Winter King.

I watch chimney smoke across the sea-loch, early morning, as the stars are still stars and the cold is a thrisk of caught breath. The ground is sharp and fierce to my bare feet, a thrill and a real connection with the earth. It is a mystery to me, this sense of connection. I claim no understanding, and I don’t want to, because I love a mystery. I just know that I am always, ALWAYS uncomfortable in shoes and that my feet are happy bare. I cannot walk barefoot along pitted tracks now, any more than I could heist a larch trunk, nor heft my old butt into a mother curve, but that is ok. I could once, and that is enough.

The mice are coming in. I knew they would. The nights are cold now and they are no fools. Survival is everything. I won’t say I am okay about mouse droppings inside my pots and crockery kitchen cupboards but I honestly feel this is a problem that would arrive me a derisive snort from a woman who has no kitchen left because of the bombing. I sweep them away, wash anything I cook with, hope the wee sweet furry creatures don’t eat through the lagging of my water tank in the loft, and wish them well. I suspect I am fortunate to have met animal invasion on a regular basis in my young wife-life. It helps.

Rowan berries, wild sienna, catch my eyes. One here, heavy with fruit, a wide bloom of branches, over there, one skmming for space t’ween big-ass confers, doing her best. Hazels nut up, cones catch the sunset, way up there atop an ancient fir or spruce, and brambles wink blue-black in their tangle. This is Autumn. The rut will begin soon. I will hear the roar of stags echo across the sea-loch, plaintive, threatening, both. The crisp is coming in, no matter what, and it is beautiful. It is tough. It is upskittling, confusing, sudden, It is as it is. We, who live so very close to nature, are so ready for the tapselteerie of fickle weather changes, and we will adapt, and that is our human skill, if we so choose. I think, sometimes, no, often, of those who live in cities, in controlled (so called) environments, and wonder how they are coping with the strangeness of our new seasons.

I wake in the night sometimes. If the moon is loud, or if I hear swans beeping to each other as they fly over my island home, from the freezing arctic, heading south, I wake. I know why. I cannot miss one single chapter in this extraordinary life journey, even if inconvenient. I rise from bed, fling open the curtains, see the night, see the stars, search for swans, feel connected. So very connected.

,

by

Island Blog – A Fetouche

I’m watching the tide, Springs now, so big high, big low. Kind of reminds me of me. The tide, at this flood time, brings in the salmon and sea trout which (I’d rather write whom) just want a reasonably safe passage up to the fresh water that they seek for spawning. Interruptus lies in wait with lures and nets to catch them t’wirly. You might have to look that one up. Nonetheless, it intrigues me. The full moon, the swell and suck of it, of her, for surely, with her tempestuous nature, the sea is female? I cannot believe I wrote that, so ridonculous it reads in our, thankfully new, appreciation of how wrong we have been for a verrrrrrry long time. Eish.

Back to the tide. And to the weather, which, or is it whom, has confounded us this year, as it did last year, only in a kindlier way. I have frickin massive sunflowers, green for about 5 feet, blocking my view of any tidal flow, and yet producing no buds at all, till now, tiny nubs, and yellow as butter and I am so pleased I didn’t wheech the stalks out a while ago. There is always hope and that’s how I live and so, perhaps this seasona interrupta is teaching me, and you, how to listen and learn. I have blue things growing, pink ones too, stocky and holding to the earth, hesitational. I get that. And it wonders me.

I worked at Lunch Club today, just as a volunteer. In the village hall we lay out a welcome table, flower festive, for anyone who comes. One did. Then two, and then, as we in the kitchen decided it was a quiet day, up to 17 arrived, all smiles and ready for soup, sharing and laughter, and pudding, of course. I leaned against a kitchen unit, as my friends accommodated the rise of human tide. It told me that, even if each singular life appeared all green and no flowers, even if the tidal rise and fall of this year, this season, never lifted their spirits, that we could conjoin here, in this kitchen, we could make a stepping stone for each other into the next day. I am no fool. I know that most folk ‘pretend’ that everything is ok, that they are ‘fine’ and that they are not afraid, scared, cold, lonely.

We know the moon rise and fall here. We see it loud, every time. We are so close, we could touch it. We can walk out into the blast of Spring tides. Sometimes, I wonder how you who live in cities and out there beyond the connection we have, manage emotional flow. It is hard enough to understand out here. A fetouche, for sure.

by

Island Blog – And it Did

When time stops for someone else, it also stops for me. If I don’t know them well, it stops for a little while, a gasp of shock, the ensuing ripples and thoughts and rememberings of the time we shared, upsetting my natural flow, and I understand and accept it. However, if it is someone much closer to home, this time-stopping thing courses like a virus through my mind and body. It’s as if my days are uppity wee shites, refusing to walk the way we have always heretofore companionably walked, through an ordinary routine, however dull, acceptable and, above all, recognised and known. I can wake without the day, out of kilter somehow, but not in a somehow I can re-jig nor whack into submission. It’s a stumbling, and it disorientates me enough to rise a roar in my mouth.

Because why? Hmmm, perhaps because all my thoughts seem to collude with the ‘stopping’, a timeline snipped like a ribbon, that fragile, when you think of it, the Big Scissors and the delicate ribbon. My thoughts, like all honest folk will admit to, are for myself. In the gone of someone, my own Gone thwacks me in the face. I can feel boundaried when I didn’t before. Of course, it isn’t about me, and why do I say that, because the me in this situation is definitely loud as a claxen? When any sadness comes, I battle with the elements therein. The reason, the why, the what, the what if, the how, the where. I am a strongly emotional woman. I am unable, nor do I want to be ‘able’ to take any loss as a ‘whatever’. I know those who can, and I find it odd, weird at times, that anyone can just shrug off anything that happens to someone else, to the over there of their lives, and just move on, light-foot, confident. Confident in what, I often wonder. In the immediate truth that nothing such as this will ever come their way? Or is it that their inner wiring is right and mine is faulty? Looking at that sentence, I know it’s not true. There is no Right. There is no Wrong. There is just a different wiring. It isn’t perspective, because I know about perspective. I lived with a long-term husband who never saw anything as I did, beyond the obvious mathematics of lambing, or the positioning of the massive Christmas tree. It was in the area of emotive intelligence that we found ourselves on different continents. I don’t say he didn’t feel emotional, because he did, but all that ‘mess’ was kept firmly under wraps and almost never turned into words of communication, whereas I could bleed noisily and copiously over the death of a lamb, a cat, a dog, a friend, even a notreallyfriend.

It wasn’t that I was a damn fool about death. Everything has a timeline, everyone dies, I knew and know that, and it doesn’t enfrighten me. I just might not be ready for that delicate ribbon to be cut, is all, because it comes on an ordinary Tuesday morning with the day mapped out and things ready and the linchpin working just grand on all four wheels of my wagon. Suddenly, out of nowhere, there’s a cut, a stop, a finite, and my hold on the hours ahead falters, hours and hours escaping my fingers like a jail breakout, and I am left here on my sturdy wagon, fingers splayed, mind blown, alone and thrown, suddenly pointless. Shopping for groceries, visiting friends, laughing gaily, all of those a stop, as if the curtain just came down, which it did.

And it did.

by

Island Blog – Like Wild Birds

This is how I see it. Tidelines create as I watch, an incoming huge force meeting resistance, another super force. Sailors call it wind over tide, which sounds like a tablecloth lifting teacups, a shatter of inconvenience and mess in a street cafe, like an ‘oops’. The incoming Atlantic is striped as a deckchair, the recalcitrant wind fighting a pointless battle. The tide will in. But the wind is no less of a player. And she is no fool. Any voice against a mighty force can make a difference. She may concede defeat, for now, but she will blow on.

In my ordinary life, I did a lot of blowing against an interminable tide. Life was as it was, and my timeline was my timeline. Many will know this for themselves. I gave my all, as so many did, and still do. And I regret not one minute, well, maybe a few. As those I knew and loved die, it thinks me, and remembers me, of the times I knew they were riding right with me as a wind over tide, and the laughs we had, the way we turned back into our lives, the way we just damn well got on with it. Of the way that connection kept us all going on, no matter what, and with joy and laughter and mistakes and a fierce attitude.

Like wild birds.

by

Island Blog – Equinoctial

When you find yourself, suddenly, as an author, as if you’ve suddenly elevated to some level above everyone else, with the looking down puff up that comes with so called fame, albeit momentary, it is not what you originally thought it might be. Told, as I was, that I need to blog to engage with Facebook, to put myself out there, no matter how much I might hate being the focus, how much I still hate my body, how little confidence I have when everyone is looking at me and waiting for something. For what? Oh I got that bit. People, my people, my could be friends are looking up at me and I don’t like it. I was down there with you, but yesterday, playing on the streets, hooling the hoop, laughing in the lunch queue, swapping stories of how frickin awful the weather was on wash day, and how much we hate Mondays. I remember, deciding, I had to move back home. Now, let me be clear. I did not, and never will, elevate myself because of what I have achieved. What I have achieved, what any other person has achieved, tells me absolutely nothing about who they are, who I am. Are we good to our partner, kids, family? Are we kind, always, understanding, always? Are we able to forget self in moments of stricture and irritation. Are we? That is how we are, in truth.

I felt the cold today, the nudge of Autumn. I have a few jerseys (jumpers in American) and I required a more substantial one today. And that, jumper, jersey thing brings me to a point. As I write, a blog, or read other stories, or listen to them, I hear a word I thought I knew well being ‘wrongly’ presented. I check it out. The Brits have one way of spelling this word and omg the Americans have moved a whole consonant. My musical mind, the heretofore understood mathematics of language rising up in me like Mozart in a mood, fights this. It was spelled this way, for ever! But not now. Now we flex, those of us who will. We become equinoctial even when being that close to any change is, at best, a right pain in the mental arse, at worst, a tsunami.

I felt the chill today. Actually, that is pants. I felt it a wee while ago, but did the whole pretend thing, and amn’t I great at that! It isn’t that I don’t want the equinoctial change, I love it, but there is a difference when we get older. I think of all those who are terrified of the long winter months without support, without food. I have never been there, but I see it and, as I write from a place of stone-build, a fire burning and food in my fridge, choices even, my humble stumbles. If writing could change anything, I would write it. Even as I say that, I know that brave journalists, brave writers have done exactly that. I bow to them.

We allow ourselves to become so caught up in our own stuff. I do it myself. But, but, and but again, when I notice I am all caught up in the sludge of ME, and it sickens me enough to march up the stairs, to dress myself, to pull on my boots and to step out even though that judge inside my head is urging Rest, Don’t Bother, Stay Home, Do Nothing, I push through and it is a push. Once outside the door, I breathe in the cold, hear the Robin, see the rain, feel it, watch the bowing of roses in the wind. I get in my car and I go. I’m not sure where, but the where of where I was is not the where I want. I want to embrace a change, not as a watcher, but as an integral part. I want to be equinoctial.

I have no idea how to do this, have no plans, but I reckon, am sure, that there are gazillions of people who will be right there, clueless, like me, wanting change, scared stiff, stuck, fed up, lonely.

Hallo You.

by

Island Blog – Accidie and Work it Out

Well, I’m having none of that. Mental Sloth? No, no, not me. Or so I say. But the truth is, we all know it from time to time, that stimied stultifying collops, sorry, collapse into the I’m not going anywhere, even though I should, ought, should, ought, to. And, even if we do have to go to that Anywhere, we fight it every step of the way. And then comes a morning when we feel like Peter Pan, or I do, and nothing, not nothing will stop me flying out there. The trudge sludge days are the way life is. I do wonder what it is in that clear and researched knowledge that makes us think we are wrong to feel that way, when everyone does, over and over. What I have learned is to unjudge myself, and to celebrate the days of crash/ lift and shift. However, I do know that accidie may well be lurking. I don’t look for it, she, him, but they just might be awaiting the chance to pounce and for no reason at all. I dig down for the roots of accidie and I find them, tendrils that go back, if my fingers can trace them, to childhood, through teenage, through marriage, through motherhood. It seems to me we love/hate guilt.

Today, this morning, I awoke to sunshine, or the beginnings of it. I smelled it coming through my wide open window and we met in togetherness, once I had worked out my eyeballs and a dissociation from a completely bonkers dream. We humans take a while to get there. I heard a robin sing out like Pavarotti, as they do this time of year. No other bird sings and that makes sense. They no longer seek a mate. So what on earth the robin is doing, making dawn melody is both a wonderfulness and a wonderment. So not a chooser of accidie.

I drove to the harbour town, swinging around the bends, the single track gloriously free of tourists, not that I mind tourists, we need them, but their driving skills are so insouciant and it minds me of something. Lack of research. We have tippy roads, cows everywhere, sheep, deer. We have ridonculous corners, big drops, loads of reversing opportunities and more, locals in a hurry, going to sort something and needing to get there, doctors, vets, and more. I’ve been here 46 years and I am still hoping for a touristic change!

Home and a walk into the wild, hearing a young man sorting a fallen beech, talking to him about regeneration, about the danger to touristy kids on fallen limbs, because he knows about woodland, and also about the complete cluelessness of visitors who, it seems to me, expect fallen trees in a wild woodland to be health and safety safe. I am glad that my kids lived in a time when we said, Work it out, Keep vigilant, Check where you are, and then, Go for it.