February 27, 2025 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – Lonely, Again

Here’s a thing. That is a ridonculous phrase, but, nonetheless an invitation to stay put and listen. At least that’s what I hope. I am upside down right now. If I cast my eyes back to what has happened over the past forever, particularly the most recent past, I can allow myself this. However, and But, why would those events be knocking me off my feet now? Well, when I ask such a question with absolutely nobody here to engage with, to consider, to respond, t’is only me who answers. She, actually. She is so damn sensible. If I could catch her, I just might incur damage. And, yet, she is the one who walks with me. In this lonely life, and it is a lonely life, I must be cautious around death threats to the one who is always right beside me. I know this.

My day is organised to a great degree. There are many hours in a daylight day, and, as I write this, I chuckle. I remember endless days that seemed to nibble up the hours, condensing them into what I decided was a conspiracy, a plan set to falter me, to confound, to bring me down. Now the hours move like a snail on morphine. I wonder on all the others who might nod at that, although it isn’t always, so. If I have managed to set encounters in place, such as meeting a friend for coffee or lunch, or deciding that valeting my mini is an opportunity for huge laughter and fun, or to decide to drive very slowly over the switchback, setting off very early, noticing ducks and buzzards and white-tailed eagles, flowers, other drivers who do know about island road. I might park and watch, look, pay attention to the ripples on a hill loch, watch a cow lumber away, see her calf jink and bounce. I might play tunes as I ride. I might clean my wee home, marvel at the view, know I am safe and warm and free.

Even then, I am lonely. And, I don’t think it is just me. I remember feeling lonely in a crowd, around friends, in a marriage. Lonely is a thing. And a very big thing, a thing that doesn’t leave just because I don’t want it, or when i try to swat it away in all my pretending. It has a voice, a presence. It is solid and here to stay. Oh, I could fill my days with endless meets and commitments, jobs and nesessaryness, but lonely lurks in the shadows, well fed and just waiting to slide into the room. I don’t feel gloomy. I feel furious. I think, that, as any new shit hits the lifeline fan, the lonely, like an unburied ghost, finds opportunity, and grabs it.

My oldest friend died. Oh hallo lonely. I refuse, btw the way to give you a capital beginning. I know you. In you come. Again.

February 23, 2025 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – Dividing Walls, Yesterday People

Today was a strange wandering. I’ve been here before, in this strange wandering thing. Dreams are interrupticating, waking me in a surety, which becomes a questioning, which then becomes a cold reality. What I left behind as I fell asleep, is there to greet me on waking. It’s as if I have wandered through many doorways, many dividing walls, meeting, as I do, those who no longer need shoes, nor do an earthly walking, the yesterday people. I rose, as ever, made coffee, triangulated my thoughts, pulling them into a shape I could manage, although I was never good at triangulation to be honest, even as I completely got it. However, I knew this day would be a day of challenge. I am up for this, I said, out loud, as I sipped coffee and looked out on Venus and heard the rise of another hooligan. that’s island speke for a big gale, btw.

I touch my skin, my throat. I know I still have voice, still am upstanding, still competent, still strong. Looking out into the darkling and recalcitrant sunrise, I begin to release the night, the dreams. I am here. Many are not, and I won’t be some day. However, I know how important it is to acknowledge these dividing walls, t’ween the dead and the living. I still meet my husband in doorways. I still find what I’ve lost in doorways, I remember things in doorways. The symbol of a doorway transects worlds. Have you ever walked through a doorway and felt an immediate desire to run? I certainly have.

I remember music in doorways, no matter the noise within the house, music which impacted me way back, a cathedral perhaps, the entrance to a theatre, the turn through an arch and the switch left to see African dancers on a street, the duck under an arch to find candles and a warm fire in a welcoming cottage. I remember. I know that, every single time, I walk in other’s footsteps, many thousands in some cases, a few in others, but. I feel it.

Today, as I went out, as I always do, to greet walkers with a dog or two, I was barefoot and stood on a thorn. The wind was a slam dunk, the rain cold, slicing. We laughed, talked, and I turned back to the same doorway that brought me all those smiles, that dogfest, minus the thorn.

February 22, 2025 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – Woman Gone, Pineapple Chunk

It’s weird. I eat, sleep, rise, clean the loo, sort the wood burner, fill the bird feeders, puddle through the rain, buy veg and cheese and a toothbrush at the local shop. I play online scrabble with friends, drink coffee, wonder when, if ever, the dream cleaner will come to crush the dust with some poisonous spray in a schmancy bottle, a load of squirts rising into the corners of my spidery home. I wake to find hours and hours ahead of me, even though I love the waking thing, the morning offer of opportunity and chance. I decide to make a coffee and walnut cake. Lord nose why. I don’t eat cake, any cake. It’s a thing to fill the hours, and this one proffers me 45 minutes plus another 60 of baking. It helps, the thought of it. The cake, once retrieved from the oven, is beyond help. I fling it, as my darling Granny would say, in the bucket.

I have only connected with the Woman Gone, now and again over the decades. I married as a teenager, birthed my beautiful first born son at 20. She, the She of this, was already rising into the world of music, and she soared. Her voice. More than that. She, and I remember this, was good at her piano practice. She stuck when I wanted to build fireballs and to run. She stuck, she held, when I lost myself in the running thing, going pretty much nowhere. And then one man held me safe. I had no longing for a career, unlike her. I just wasn’t steady enough, I know that. If the running is in you, in your feet, you probably need someone to, not stop you, no fricking way, but in a gentle hold, breathe, wait, let’s talk, thing.

I have known death, watched it come, and often. But this, this woman, too sudden, too fast, too much. I know how well she was loved, how shocked those who thought, as I did, that there was no chance Death would softly take her. There will be a funeral, memorial, of some sort. And, to be honest, I am glad I will be there. The confusion of this whole frickin awfulness may, just may, find solace in a gathering.

I remember us at the bus stop right outside her house. I walked to it. I’m a primary girl, 6/7/8/9 and on. It was bloody freezing, the frost thick, the snow holding the cold, pushing it into anyone who passed, and particularly into feet and fingers. She laughed at me as I trudged towards her. As I moved closer, I noticed her fur-lined boots. How did she manage that? My mother had read the rules (always), and my shoes were regimen. No fur. My toes were threatening gangrene even then. We boarded the bus for the 25 minute ride to a school I hated, in a uniform that didn’t fit, was grey and puckered in all the wrong places,for me. We moved to the back, as we always did, being early birds on the pickup list. She dug in her lovely schoolbag, coloured and soft, whereas mine, of course, was a hideously rigid satchel, and pulled out a pineapple chunk.

I will never forget that.

February 20, 2025 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – Hallo You

I’m watching high-flying gulls cant in the wind. The gusts are punching down here, pushing over open-mouthed wheelies or sending them into a scuttle down the track. Trees bow and bend, whipping around as if to protect themselves as they feint and duck as best they can. Unlike gulls, eagles, anybirds, they, like us, are somewhat pinned to the earth. It thinks me, as I look up at the majesty of soaring. Even the clouds look bonkers, scudding like ducks, splitting from cumulus into wisps of rejection, only to disappear into the white light. What thinks me is this. How strong we are. How tough, how resilient, and how we can rise from any threat to our lives. Even loss. Even bereavement. Even the darkest of times.

This is one of those times for those I know.

I know we aren’t birds, we can’t fly, we can’t lift nor dynamically rise as if not caring a jot, nor would that ever be a human thing. We are grounded, thus we care. We are rooted, thus we care. Enter confusion. Sorry….Confusion. Someone precious was just there, weren’t they? Wasn’t she? Well, hell yes, all loud and bubbling over with music and energy and fabulous clothes and a feisty mouth and the look of a pixie with mischief on her mind. And, now, she has lifted away. I doubt she is flying with gulls, although she may be, but she is definitely a flyer. Where might she be? Over forest, mountain cold, desert hot, or skimming down an ordinary street somewhere, juking, diving, canting, lifting? She leaves so much love down here, a rising warmth to lift her into the whatever. I don’t know what I believe about the next bit, but the big shut-off idea does nothing for me. I’m a hoper. And, as the sun pushes the damn wind away, for now, shining my windows into a murky embarrassment, I smile.

Hallo you, darling you.

February 18, 2025 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – Lucks Penny and a Mouse

There is a time in my day which isn’t what it was. Once, it was flaming chaos. Now it is chaos for endless others, but not for me. The time spans, approximately, the 4.30 to 6pm tilt towards lunacy. It was home from school, food preparation, feeding dogs, lambs., children, workers. It was welcoming guests back home all drippy, flush faced, possibly contused, all requiring reassurance, warm guidance, hot bath, drying room, dinner by the fire. All of that. I don’t miss it, but I am so glad I was there with the drippy, questioning, angry kids, food, endless food, thing.

That thing is no longer active. And, does anyone get this, it’s a huge empty space? Oh, we fill it with rememberings but there is small, if any, gravitas in rememberings. None of us want to go back, to relive, but and, that but is a butt in my thinking, there is an empty. In approaching this, I know about fixing. I know about that Elastoplast being totally inadequate when faced with a scarple of a wound. And I don’t just talk of my long family experience. What of the loss of a relationship, the abandonment? What of parental rejection? What of a whole lot more? The Gap is there. What we did, once. What filled this space, gone. It is scary, and we have to fill it all by ourselves. Well, that is so shit, btw. I recall running like a hare through the tilt towards lunacy, knowing that, eventually, it would calm, to a degree. Food. Always works.

So what to do, what to think, as that damn gap moves ever closer, as the clock ticks on? Well, I am no guru, but, I have found that being thankful for the laugh memories in my life, pulling them up, has changed my thinks. We did have such fun, such naughtiness, such crazy. Such lucks penny.

Today, I went to pull out a big pan to cook a curry. I pulled out the drawer. A wee mouse, raised, terrified, looked at me from within the big pan. I pulled back, whispered, I mean you no harm. She, it will have been a ‘she’, (only the ‘Shes do the hunting, just saying) rose up, her wee paws held together. A few seconds before she took off. Obviously, I scoured the pan and cooked on, but there was a gift in that encounter, and I call it lucks penny. Which, I have learned in this island place means a gift unexpected. I like that.

February 17, 2025 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – Light Amends

The light is longer. I watch the sun swagger in a higher sky, almost refusing to dunk into the dark. It thinks me. I get it. After all, who would want to dunk into the dark when there’s a swagger in those hips? I was talking to a dear friend just today about hippiness, the pair of us altercated by a thing we cannot control. However, we can mediate, upseticate. We, not the sun, earthly grounded, yet equally controlled by the ultimate gravity, can take action. We can walk, we can make damn sure we walk, we can bend a bit, we can do bloody something. Or we can fold. I don’t do fold. Nor should you. Sorry for that wee bitty lecture.

The thing about getting into the Oldness Enclosure, is that, I have discovered, folk comply, give up, ask for alms. That’s a very old term. Google it. However, it fits. People do, people did, people don’t. I’m in the ‘don’t ‘ team. I walk out into a skimmingly freezing nowhere, the nowhere of my girlish soul, not girl, ancient, over 70, still me, still. Although, thanks to my children and the allowance of aging, a confoundment to me, I can still hover between the light and the dark. I can still wonder, feel lost around all the stars in my beautiful life, still ask, what now, what when, what if? And find no answers, and that silence speaks loudly. I won’t say volumes, because, even as an avid reader, volumes sent me running for a milkshake, a cup of tea, a coffee, a brandy.

We ponder this, you young folk. We lie wondering about how we will be, who we will be. Know this. Oh, we will say all is fine, everything’s fine, but we need you to coorie in, to gentle questions, to which we have buried answers for a whole lifetime. Don’t leave without answers, kindly gentle. Give your time.

We move into Spring. We see new life. How about making amends?

I have no idea why I ended here.

February 14, 2025 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – Knickers,Triggers and Dreams

Life is such a funny thing. Funny. Now, in my day, that meant fun. A captivating laughter of a word, an invitation into something less boring than the rest of life, an opportunity to be ready to go, to dance, to step out into a new lift, like a birthday, when it wasn’t. Nowadays, it means different things, a few of them, and the ‘thems’ both shrivel the word into something odd, weird, dangerous whilst adding the extra ‘ny’ as if that softens the meaning, which it doesn’t. It seems to me, as I grow ever older and not much wiser, is that the shiver and sliver of words and their meaning, as I knew them, grow roots in a day. I meet them, get them wrong, am laughed at by my young, adapt, even as I untangle myself from the unexpected twist and tumble of them. It thinks me.

I was thinking about knickers. Now, when you put ‘knickers’ into spellcheck, the kicking K is banished. I liked the K. There was a kicking thing about it, about knickers, and I have a lot to say about knickers. Too big, too containing, too long, too fierce, too much, way too much elastic. As if, as if, this containment was ever going to ‘prevent’ anything. How blind, how controlling were our forebears. That thinks me too, and I remember having a beautiful and dynamic daughter, way back. But fierce knickers were never going to make any of a difference to anything. We need fun, we all do.

Today, in my now life, with my now friends, we can laugh about knickers, with a K, We can remember the triggers, the delish of fun, of funny, and, to a great degree we still have all of that. We can share a table, warm and safe, talking of our times, times of fun, of funny, of ghastly knickers, of times of elicit freedom, never spoken of, our dreams, so soft on faces across the table. Actually, I don’t think that has zip to do with age. I have seen across much younger tables and watched dreams spill out, lift, rise, dissipate. That triggered something in me. I remember that urgency, that yearning face over other tables. T’is life. And, then, fun arises, laughter lifts to bonk its head on the ceiling, and return to flutter hope down.

I remember the damn knickers with a K, and those dreams.

February 12, 2025 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – Moon Heavy Dreamer

I’m watching the sky today, just now, cloud capped, closed. I’m remembering the Snow Moon pushing them away with her bright breath over the past few nights. I woke with her, heavy across my bed, the loud of her a steady night voice, colour, timbre, the whole firking orchestra, around 2, 3, 4 am. Days gone by, nights gone by, as is always. There’s no holding them. I love the moon, the new and the full, because they make me uncomfortable in my jeans, in my life. There’s a holding, a containing I fight, as I always have, and yet, and yet, it thinks me different because, precisely because of this discomfort, I honestly don’t want it to change. If everything set simple, like a milk pudding in my life, then so would I. Disturbance is essential. Yes, it does upset me, feels me contained and restricted, sends me in a spin for easier jeans, thinks me that I am finally achieving what my mum always feared, an increase of bodily self. Funny how that still has a voice.

I know I have choices, always had, always will. However that knowledge is a truth, and not a feeling. It’s the feeling bit that confounds, surrounds, compromises a day, a night. Without the belief that I, or anyone, has a choice, the right to choose, we can be caught up in the twizzle of a twister, a disturbance we deny, allowing outside control. I think that life is a dance, and I think that being energetic, dynamic, is essential, to say no, to say yes, to move, to stay put, and so much more. Trouble is, that the old thinking gets tangled in our knicker elastic, halting movement. I remember it well, the confusion of it all. And, although I am hopeful that times have changed, see in so many ways that they have, I still notice a holding on from my generation of parents, and beyond. Such judgement, no allowance for flick or fancy. It saddens me. All people have choices, and, better, the opportunity to change a deeply rooted belief that says…….what you look like decides whether we approve of you, or not, how you speak, how you present yourself, your qualifications (on paper), your family background.

I get that so many slide down into the swamp of unbelief, and, that others rise up into shapes that don’t fit them at all. You can live a whole life, the only one you have, in that unfit shape. To a degree, I did that too, hoping for approval, for recognition, for acceptance. It worked pretty well. However, at this end of my life, widowed and in the evening time, I do hope that one day choices will be for everyone, for men, women, children, and all of those choices will be welcomed, discussed, guided and supported.

I may be a dreamer.

February 6, 2025 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – To Be a Lighthouse

I love them. Lighthouses. My something grandfather was Keeper of the Lights around the Inner Hebrides and I didn’t know that until recently. I think of him and my something grandmother, living on Tiree, setting out with supplies and jokes, encouragement and connectivity, bringing food and light and weapons and seeds for the growing, books for the learning, candles for storm lights, patches for waterproofs, new wellies, whisky, tea, and more. In the days when people peopled the stone cylinders of hope and light, where all furniture had to have a rounded back, like old women, and the long days and nights felt like forever, the boat delivery was a glorious landing. In the between it was only us, only me, with my carrot seeds, my tangled beard, for it was a job for men, of course, being the stronger sex, the men who could cope with weeks of storm-blasted isolation, whereas women could never have managed such a thing. Women, who were never asked, might have loved such, and managed just fine had they ever had the chance. A personal trainer, less corsets, less parental control and muscle building excercises, would have proffered the actual chance to show how strong they could be, and which just might have upset the abacus, in a good way.

I hope I have been a lighthouse to my children, and not a boss. All I wanted was to be a light for their own chosen journeys. I want to save turtles on Zakynthos. Goodness! Ok. I want to go to a shaman centre in the Eastern Province of China. Goodness! Ok. I want to move to South Africa. Goodness! Ok. Just three of many. Other parents may have heard, I am gay, trans, I want to be known with another name. I want my baby, even if I am 15. I want to join the circus, I want to be a policeman, a trumpeter, a dancer, a market trader. I get the parental questions, of course I do. But, but, what about your degree in law, politics, medicine? We paid for it, it cost us! This was never our case, but I hear the disappointment. I honestly don’t think their dad, nor I ,ever felt that. This life is tough and tougher for the children of privilege. Expectations can stop easy breathing, so heavy, so limiting. I sincerely and fiercely believe that all those historical corsets have been burned on a bonfire, a red sunset preparing the dark for a sky-thrall, a gasp of freedom in that soft breeze.

To be a parent who really wants to be a lighthouse, who can say, when confounded by a stuttered revelation from a young thing, one who, and I quote, has no idea about life at all, is challenging. There will be sleepless nights and worrying days because we seem to think, wrongly, that we can control our children. Weren’t we children once, with dreams beyonding us from the corsetry of parents? Yes, we were. And what did we want? Acceptance, wisdom, help and a lighthouse.

Be a lighthouse.