Month: May 2025

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Island Blog – Random, Fun, Chance,Respect

Thing is, we seem to forget these, as if they belong, belonged, in youth, something we have left behind with apologies. My ‘recalcitrant’ youth. My ‘misspent’ youth. And that wild and exciting persona is dumped in the past, trampled over in the obscene rush for success, ‘success’ because that word tastes different in a million mouths, in generational expectation, in the midden, and madden of thixotropic stultification. I know it, felt it. What is it you want? Well, who the hell ever asked that question (Im dithering between a question mark and an exclamation here). I do remember feeling lost in a swirl of long hair and crazy outfits and the need to be noticed, the danger in that, I remember. But, and more buts, how come it all gets chucked out with the garbage of what always comes next, the work, the deadlines, the trials of any union, particularly when a babe bursts into what was, heretofore, reasonably orderly?

What I see, out there, and not everywhere, is a dulling. Not here, not on this dynamic island where fun rises from the potholes and with the lift of wee new flight birds winkling right in your drive path to an appointment. They didn’t get the memo, obviously, because the winkle thing can take a while. But I hear of it, read it, in cities in confines of many sorts, the dulling. As if Fun is for someone else, but not me. I know shortage of earning is tricky. I know that there is almost no hope for an island home purchase. But, what I have learned over almost half a decade here, or, indeed on any island, and trust me, is that we need new blood, new ideas, we really do, to come, to engage with the recalcitrants, the pub, the local shop, those who will still hold tight to the place they value above all, bar their mother, and to ask, to befriend, to engage. And not to give up.

The islands are very happy as they are. But in the future, the economy will need any of you who bring random dance, fun, the chance to learn from you and you from us. I’m a passionate islander. I am brung (new word) up short as I watch a searing of a hillside in the creation of a new home, well, hopefully home. I see the changes, the invasion, as it might feel on first encounter, but I know we need those who want to live here to engage with the communities, to bring new hope but….. be cautious and respectful to a gazillion years of knowledge and a working understanding.

I just went to the pub. I laughed and shared and learned, and I would not live anywhere else out of choice.

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Island Blog – Home

Today I worked in the Calgary Cafe. T’is a Friday, changeover day, not a given like a Wed/Thurs given. Folk come for coffee/cake/ soup/scones,luxury sponges, soft, melting, and the welcome is fabulous, even if it happens to be me relocating my specs and smiling like the sun. We all do this. We are a brilliant and dynamic team. There are times we could do with five more dynamics and then we’re just grand for an hour. T’is the life of a cafe. I love my bosses. How often does anyone ever say that? Well, I’m saying it now.

Times of pause, up to speed on prep, on delicious cakes, pizza swirls, scones with all the trimmings, amazing soups with fresh fresh sourdough bread, we kitchen chat. We share laughs, life bits, feelings, fears, whatnexts. Well, they do. I’m the granny in this mix, but I still love to swirl like the cream they put on hot chocolates and other things. The movaciousness of young folk capsulate me. There is hope, energy, a push, a conscious I Won’t Look through the veil of olding, although they see it in their own oldsters. And I remember that energy, still feel it but only because I am so determined to hold on to it. And, here, I am home.

And, by the way, (I refuse the shortening). does anyone still living know what shortening is?

Another marvellous day in the Calgary Cafe.

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Island Blog – You Young Things

Jeez, it took me a while to find any grace today, as I battled with all the shenanigans of re-pointing the walls of a longtime blog, as if, all of a sudden, the mortar upon which I had depended and for many years, had suddenly mortified, which it hadn’t, of course. This is all about money even if it is proffered on my doorstep like a bouquet of fragrant flowers held by a business owner with cash problems. Hey and ho. Anyways up, what my blog site doesn’t know, and probably doesn’t care, is that I have to dash from this room to that for a signal should, (and there’s always a ‘should’) I require an MSM something that used to just be a text message, the about-to-die blue rectangle app, and one I can only receive if I stand on the stool next to where the sun sets, and for flipping ages, by which time my timing is cut and I must needs go again and again. I did the again and again thing, trying, all the time to cut the thrust of my sabre, to control my spit, to mind my teeth, to monitor my swearing. I pretty much failed. However, I do this calm yourself through doorways thing. It works a treat for me, but it does require an open mind, one which doesn’t want to get lost in the rant. I like that word. There’s a place and a space for it. I like a rant. I like punching the air, shouting at my very understanding geraniums, and there’s a laugh in the process because someone always walks by, and then the laugh becomes a tippsicato, lifting into the sky, the perfect dissolution.

In the faff and the loss of my identity, my blog site downed like a rabbit beneath a buzzard. It felt like that. My world, I know. The running between rooms, the wanting to shout about mobile reception on an island, or on an island in a storm, or on an island when said island has turned hunch against the onslaught of trixology, internet control and more, had me quite tapselteerie. I know, I flipping know, that this is how it is, and there is much good in the how it is thing. But, I write this with relief in my fingers because I am reconnected with my blog when I wasn’t for about 20 texts and a huge amount of room changing, I and my fellow confusciousees, do have a bit of a battle on our hands. I am one of the blessed. I have children who are right beside me. I know this isn’t a given. And, I am so thankful. Even so, I am still alone in the living-in-the-no-reception-place. I am alone in the confusion with the new world, the quick-sharp sorting of everything, including other worlds, restaurant bookings in another country, the immediacy of everything.

I remember having to wait, and wait, and wait, for everything, for anything, and for weeks.

You young things might ask some questions about that, about how it was, once. If you don’t, you will never know how much and how far your granny or grandpa have come, what they did, where they began, how damn hard it was.

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Island Blog – Not Just a Woman

I never can find the source of my newly thinks, they just come. Chances are someone says something that stops me in my tracks, or I notice something, a chance glimpse of an encounter without words but with smoke rising above the both of them. Could be the times that tourists haven’t acknowledged that I have snaked my way back in a very competent reverse around at least four corners whilst they, in a big four wheel drive thing as big as a starship, sit and look at me, and, then, when the driver, the man, stares straight ahead as he zooms past and never thanks nor smiles, I. know that’s when the think rose in me. I know you, I thought. I never want you again in my life, not that I did, not in my marriage, but all around us lived out these men and, it seems, still they do and in freedom.

I am not just a woman. I am more than an excellent cook, a skill I honed and refined over years, not just because I wanted to please, because I did, but more, because, when I gave up my dreams, being the centre of the need, the giver and lover, the supplier of nourishment, the one to bring smiles and full bellies and gentle sleep, my skills meant everything.

As children grew, as a community dynamic shifts, I got it. I moved with the viable, with the awkward, the times when my man hid away. I got my role. Never signed up for it, had no clue, but there I was, all young body, long hair, still with a dream whispy in my head. It dies. No, it doesn’t. I still have it, still believe in my dream.

A man. My choice. However, and in my experience, there were only about 3 who ever asked me, and listened, about what I wanted in life. I told them. I am a fiery, terrified, strong, weak, beautiful, ugly, competent, useless, woman. I am not my body, and I am my body. I am gentle and very strong. I am wild, spontaneous, awkward, bloody-minded, but not fixed in any of those. I am rainbow coloured and I am soft shell beach colours. I am the storm, the sunrise, the set, the pull of a tide, the stop of boats, the lift of cloud, the sunshift, the turning of the world. I am the moon as she wakes, loud in a starry sky, pulsing power. I am unsleep, I am warm cuddles, I am immediate, I am distant.

I am not just a woman.

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Island Blog – Adventurers

When an adventurer decides she, or he, is fed up of unadventuring, there’s a thing, a stop, a catch a fear, a big kick-ass scary one. Can I do this? Who am I to think I can? What if I fail. let down, feel stupid, fail, fail, fail? The ‘thing’ brings restless nights and all clothing feels too tight, too awkward in all places where shift and motion was, heretofore, simple. It is as if a new dynamic has infiltrated my boring, and bored self, a sort of dancer, a fluidity promised but without a manual for the new moves. I sort of rush in, awkward, over keen, in the wrong shoes, my body still on its way to here, the here which is now my absolute here. I want to be altogether with myself, to be completely present, even though I know that not just my body but my mind are still both on their way along that winding strip of single-track.

Well dammit!. I had a strong conversation with them on departing the mother ship. Ready? I asked. Steady? Shall we? It doesn’t seem to work that way and not just because this old adventurer is arriving in the right tee-shirt and on time. None of us here really know how we will work together. We have never been squished into a cannon of lunch blast, folk arriving hungry, asking for vegan, asking about allergies, about takeaways. Asking for 6 soups with sourdough, for quiche with bits, for two cheese scones with extra cheese, for fruit scones with jam and cream and for many more combinations. I watch the new owners work with kindness and can-do. I watch my co-workers welcome old and young, dogs and babies, serving with smiles and spectacular baking. I am proud to be one of the team. Very proud.

Back to the adventurer. She, me, has been very spiralled, very tired. This is not my point. Of course she is. She is old and has sat on her skinny butt for, what, almost four years since the only himself she will ever want, decided to die. I talked to his photo today. I do often. He believed in me. You can do anything, he said, and more than once, and I could and I did, I did, I did. Still am, mate.

Right now I have strawberry jam a-boiling for the Calgary Cafe – so worth a visit, and a mushroom risotto. I’m also prepping a Pasta Puttanesca. I love the story in that dish. All those women, the adventurers, who chose to work on the streets, had to, to feed the ones they loved, and then, in the rejection and cold of the night streets, the kindness and respect they found.

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Island Blog – Somebody Somewhere

Back from work and I love to work, particularly there, in the cafe above a big ass, wide sandy beach, white grains, old shells caravanned through endless crashing waves, longtime empty of their inhabitants, and, very possibly, centuries old. Landed here, the bits of sparkly life, ground down, still sparkling, all laid flat like a platitude, for careless feet to scutch up, for kiddies to rebuild into passing castles, for yet another tide to grab with oceanic multifingers, careless, tossing any grab into any wild weather, a constant swirl, no chance to find a home.

It thinks me. Up here, and away from the centuries old thing, there are humans. Weird ones, funny ones, lying ones, avoiding ones, shy ones, shouty ones; those who burst into a room, with a smile like Santa, those who hide behind a load of fitkit , those couples who can’t decide without each other. I notice body language – a closeness to the counter, a big voice, assertive – a pull back, shy, begging a welcome, an invite. I see young parents come in, tentative, with a wee one who just might kick-off. I so feel for them. I see indecision. Where shall we sit, in or out, here or maybe over there? there’s a deal of head snapping on that one, a whole dynafusion of questions. What is my place here? Should I take charge? Did I just take charge? Is that okay? Oh, dear…….The space before the welcoming counter is a whole flipping world of learnation.

I pull back, after having a gazillion chuckles with the frontal guests, fixing their orders and charging them 400 quid for a scone. Ach, it did have extra cheese and a delicious locally brewed seaweed chutney, but, nonetheless, a bit too much. I will work this pingy pay thingy eventually. However, the fun connection created when an eejit like me who never ever said she was ok with such scary equipment, erupts into a body relax across the counter, I know I am in the right place. I am seen, happily playing the fool, and they, I can see it, gentle. Instead of us (the workers) and you, the welcome customers, and this frickingly loaded counter of spectacular cakes and lunch options and just a few of us being very dynamic btw, and rules and that charging thingy, it’s just us humans, people, picked up and moved, tossed every which way by endless life-changing winds.

We are all somebodies, all of us somewhere, all of us trying to breathe.

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Island Blog – A Peppering of Sleep

There’s a spicy dance in that, in a peppering, and the dance is my decision. When others hit the pillow and soon are lifted into the warm embrace of many hours of forgetfulness and refreshment, I soldier on. Well, I am no soldier, btw, but there are times I can imagine myself one, although, and this must be said, I would have baulked at the confinement of that ridonculous uniform with its guttural limitations and the inability to bend at the knee and the fact that nobody ever imagined a real soldier would need to move light-quick. Which they do.

Anyway, I am in a nightdress, a long tee-shirt to be precise, and why am I spilling this irrelevance?

I go to bed at an early hour, one I remember, way back, as a Let’s Go Out time. Not now. I have my herbal tea, my book. I close the curtains on the summerlight, apologising and thanking. So far so good. I read awhile, feel my eyelids and concentration shutting down, and courrie in to the feather down warmth, the comfort of a solo bed, the space, the peace, the quiet. An hour or two later I burst up, wide awake, completely ready for a new day. I kid you not. I am raring to go. I listen to the love-call of a Tawny Owl (actually, it’s deafening, but delightful). Mother moon has thankfully chilled her pants now and is a wee Fadie in the star-crisp sky, clouds banished, or just tired of clouding for a while. No human sounds. No outlights beyond those daft mason jars full of solar beads outside my own door. You might think the world has gone out, but no. Geese mumble and croon to each other, to the gathering of vulnerable chicks, who, had they been mine own chicks, would have required a load of gathering and a ‘Muchlouder’ than any mumble or croon. Oystercatchers, always freaking out about something, trillett and dive about around the rocks. I catch them in the moonlight. A plane flows overhead, a dart, heading north. I make another herbal tea. I watch and I see.

Sleep is important, yes. But, and but, there are those of us who don’t sleep to order, and never did. There is a fear mongering around lack of sleep, a feeding of nonsense from the ‘higher-ups’ who might tell us we must have 8 hours sleep. In the times I have known and learned about, the people who determined to make a good life, may have done so with little sleep but with a brilliant attitude. I can dance, no matter, I can laugh, no matter, work, no matter, rise and rise, no matter. My heroes. There are too many lovely folk caught up in tired, in lack of sleep, and I was there, a lot, and for years, until I got sick of myself and the whining. I realised I was looking at the lack of things, of me, of life. Well, that’s only going one way! I asked, instead, What Can I Do?

No matter the tired. What can I do for someone else this new morning?

Ok, morning is a stretch. I’ll ask again once you light-lift my looking, when the owls, geese and oystercatchers shut their wheesht, giving way to a blackbird, a thrush, the dive-dart of a woodpecker, the flutter of siskins and goldfinch. A new beginning. Another one. Lucky, lucky me.

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Island Blog – To Pace Myself

Not writing a blog feels like not breathing right. I’m all staccato and pixillation. It’s been busy – I’ve been busy with work, people, emotive tiddlypoms, opportunistic dynamics and sunshine. I complain about none of those but they do demand a new attention, one to which I had, heretofore, not thought about at all. Truth is, I forgot that I am now over the 70 hurdle and that does make an infuriating difference. I don’t ‘look’ my age, or so I am told, and when I see others bent over big midriffs, stick in both hands and with a list of ailments so long that, were I to ask about them, Wednesday would turn into Thursday.

It doesn’t seem to matter how actively I make my brain work, with scrabble, wordle, writing, reading, good conversations on interesting subjects, nor how much I walk, row, bend, strengthen core muscles, a body will demise. It’s a right p in the a, and no mistake, but that’s how it is. Three days work in a busy cafe takes me four days to recover from, even though I love it. The whole getting old thing, in my opinion, is of faulty design. Surely the whole person should age concommitantly, brain and body agreeing on a strategy and just getting the hec on with it. But, no. There are those whose body continues about a million miles beyond their brain, and vice versa. Who ever thought that was a fun idea?

So I doze a lot, catching snatch-sleeps randomly, but not on work days, obviously. I tell myself this is newish, that I will get used to it, and I hope I will because I don’t remember a time when I had this much fun. Buzzing as a team member, laughing, serving, joking, teasing, washing up, chatting, moving, helping……all so uplifting. I have more energy than ever raised within the past 4/5 years. I laugh more, and easily. I see the fun in pretty much everything. I matter. I am seen, valued, important, and what I think is this……..

There should be a shop (do I have to write ‘store’?) for oldies who find a new purpose and who are on the hunt for a new body, one that isn’t carrying all the sharps and damages of decades. I could flip through the items for sale, check out the general strength, the state of internal organs, the power in the arms, hands and fingers, the vertebrae, the hips, knees and more, the versatility of well-toned muscles and the ability to bend from a strong core. A bit like buying a wedding dress, but more long lasting. I would keep my face, heart, mind and beliefs, however, because it was all of those attributes that got me this far in my crazy bonkers life and I love my life.

Perhaps I need to learn to pace myself, whatever the hell that means.

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Island Blog – A Squeeze between Cows

Driving the switchback to the harbour town, to where the Co-op’s shelves are diminished,thank you, hackers, I coast down the brae. The town is buzzing and there is nowhere to park. This island harbour creates a welcoming curve of safety for its people and the fisher boats which, once, filled the pier, canting together, double, and sometimes triple parked (sorry, moored) as they unloaded their catch. I remember, way back in the days of Tapselteerie, driving in to negotiate a box of prawns, crabs, lobsters, to feed my guests. Fresh today. No better selling point. A load of work for me indeed, but I felt engaged with a process. These fishers spent many hours out there, in all conditions, hauling, hoping, moving here, moving there, searching for their income, the cash to feed their families, their sense of self, of success. The winter months are long and lusty, no chance for a slide into a kindly Atlantic, not then, for she is in a frickin tantrum and all the way up to May. Respect.

I was going for a Covid booster. To be honest, I dithered like a fairy in the wings dying for a pee. for days before. I don’t know why, still don’t. I set off anyway, lacking any answer to my swither/dither, meeting the usual. Cows, lumber, chestnut bodies, slow, pink tongues, road block. I actually love that. These cows are beautiful creatures and their calves are just gorgeous, prinking and bouncing and all over the flipping place. The mamas can fill a single track road, sidey-on. And, they don’t budge. Oh, they might slink you a look, as they cud on, but that’s it on acknowledment. You can hoot, as someone did, as my eyes rolled, as I turned off my engine, but hooting is for owls, not for cows. Wrong language. Me no understand…….

In the Booster Lounge, aka, the scout hall, I went for a pee. No paper. Oh, to hec with that! I went on a hunt, pushing open doors, finding a kitchen, checking cupboards, grabbing loo roll, sorting the situation. Well, isn’t that what you do, when you think of the next person who might feel very upset about the no loo paper thing? Into the Booster lounge, a line of awaitees, no speak…..nurses ready, positioned around the hall. These are people, but everyone is awkward inside weirdness. I know this. I sat in a seat. The last time I was in this hall, I said to a complete stranger, was when I delivered my son, who now is the father of two, to Tai Jitsu. She laughed, but asked no questions. I must be scary, I thought, but no, not that. People just don’t ask questions.

When I got back to my Spinny Mini, she was completely stopped by a delivery van. That’s ok, I thought, I know he is on a schedule, wanting to get his deliveries done so he can get home across the sea to his family, his home, his rest. The sun was a beat, the soft warmth of a hug right around the harbour town. Smiles were everywhere, shorts, sunglasses, bare flesh abounded, folk dondering along the single track road, laughing, easy, happy. It is rare here, this longevity of sunshine warmth, but we’ll take it, we will definitely take it.

Homing…..I get behind a driver who slows, brakes, at every passing place. My eyes, not under my kind-gene control, roll. I pull back, but just for now. I won’t do this all the switchback way. Various diversions and limitations abound at this time and I get it. The Road Boys are doing Road Things, and the result, I just know it, will be a marvellous thing. But, I know this single track, every single wheech and slide, the places to peel off, the safe landings when anyone meets a terrified tourist who knows none of the above. We can be kind. I am kind. I have a sporty mini, I adore her. She can wheech like no other car and can park in a bird cage. Just saying.

Almost done, almost home. Sliding around the multiple bends, coming down from the lift of the high lochs, the sun hits my face and the view out to the Isle of Coll sharps me. I can touch it, this Long Island, this familiar, this Far Away. The village comes into shift and then……Cows. There’s no track (road), just cows. Lumber, golden red, beautiful, right across any chance of passing. Mothers holding the space. Youngsters bright, bouncy, all over the place. Camper vans rising from the below. A load of gear changing. A meet. Nothing can be be done. That’s what I’m getting from the nothing that comes from the cars before me and the camper vans aft of the rise. I sit a bit. It’s nice in the sunshine. No idea what’s going on in those cabs. Just as I huff enough to decide me to get out of my sporty mini and go gentle these coos away, one old mama moves, and the rest follow-ish. We squeeze between cows. I like that.

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Island Blog – Feelings Left Behind

We can lose years of feelings, yet remember moments burgeoning with them. When someone died, or was born, we know the date, but have quite forgot the feelings around that event. We get a glimpse of joy, of sorrow, of relief, of anger, of being there, as a person, remembering, perhaps, what we wore and who was there. Feelings flitter away. The sense of presence, of engagement, of inclusion, seem, to me, to float into the already past of such events. It thinks me.

How many of us can accurately come up with a date, when asked, one which includes lockdowns? Not me for sure. I start off answering a question, one that requires a datal fix, and I founder. It was four years. No, that cannot be. ok, 6 years. No again. And. I trawl, literally trawl as through a whole expanse of ocean, sky, time. I can feel my arms reaching back, lifting as I try to gather in an answer, wanting so much to gain a hold on ‘that time’, but I cannot. Then, when some semblance of datal knowledge (did I just invent a word there) arrives between you and me, I find myself alien to the facts, because I cannot find the feelings. This happened. I know it did. You just told me it did. But i am not there without feelings, so, basically, I am not there at all, although I was. I did get a glimpse (stupid word btw) of a sudden rush of something, but it was gone in a second, and I couldn’t hold it back.

There are so many memories I want to haul in like a fisherman, to pull ( with my own strength) into the boat I am now captain of, and to spend time bobbing in the salt, the wind, the sun, the storm, picking through those times, feeling them in my fingers, remembering them as I was then, as everyone was then. A memory bank, like other ocean banks where living is visceral and immediate, and time is but an illusion.