Month: September 2025

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Island Blog – The Dancing

They used to say that here, way back in the day, as a question. ‘Are you going to the dancing?’ possibly without a ‘g’ at the end. There were many dances here, fiddles playing, easily once a month and just for the fun of it. When I think about those times, no television, no mobiles nor computers and when Wifi meant the wife, the food provider and the marching ferocious woman storming the pub, intent on the removal of her husband. I saw it often, laughed as he, the Big Provider was dragged out and pushed into the fishbox at the arse of a tractor, whilst she, the Wifi, carted him home for a dry out, till the next time he managed to escape. And he would, and did, many many times over, always with the same result. I recall one evening in the pub when someone came in saying, She’s on her way and I watched him falter, this Big Provider. Never underestimate a determinedly powerful woman. Those days are gone, as have all those spicy, fun, naughty, brilliant characters and we have no regular dances these days because the whole frickin world has chosen to stay home, to watch screens, to scroll nonsense, and, worse, to believe it’s all true. To feel ok about not interacting with other humans. There’s no longevity in that state. Evidence proves that, the escalation of mental troubles and so on and so on.

To the dance. We don’t have them here as we once did. I’ve already said that, so I think wide, not forward, not back, but wide. If we were taught, really taught to think wide, I believe we would evolve from this cocoon state, one which our teens are thinking means ‘butterfly’ at the end, but which means nothing of the sort, into a determined breakout. Punch the walls. Don’t accept the dark. You know who and how you want to be, but you/we all have been duped. The way forward is community, other people, a conjoining in something, anything, because, and this is fact, AI can be very helpful, but it has no heart, no mind, no touch, no cuddles, isn’t there when you slip in the rain, can’t help you lift wood in for the fire, won’t hold you when you cry, make tea for you, sit with you in the dark hours when you cannot sleep and which will reach out, a genuine care in its eyes, and say ‘I am here for you.’

Nor can it partner you in a tango. Just saying.

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Island Blog – Looking for Corners

Thank you Franz.

I’m watching a lour of grey clouds, rain fingers pointing down, loaded with rain. The sea-loch is doing her thing, at the mercy of the bothersome moon, which, to my astonishment can morph from a frickin upsetting orb, beautiful, yes, interrupting a million sleeps, that too, into a finger slice, almost overnight. I would like to know how she does that. The full tide is still in Springs. Neaps will come tomorrow. You can Google that.

These louring rain-soaked clouds with pointy fingers are travelling. I see them move across the wide sky. I see the fingers, I do, and it thinks me of those who face tricky situations, as if life is pointing at them. You. Oh, that can be a good thing. You might have won an award, been chosen, but that’s fleeting. It can be a tougher thing. I know those in that tougher thing thing. They are suddenly way north of familiar, and unsure of footing, no knowledge of the landscape, searching for corners, because corners proffer a quick turn, and in a different direction.

However, life isn’t a box, nor a bloody duvet cover. It’s linear. We think we’re moving on quite the thing, and something happens. It spirals us. We never saw it coming. We were just doing our thing, watering gardens, shopping, choosing dinner, sorting diaries, planning, and BOOM! The fallout is well named. It is a fall and an ‘out’ because after the shock has turned into clouds and rain, the last thing we need is anyone with their head on one side being lovely and spouting platitudes because they haven’t learned to think beyond them.

I’m going south of the familiar for them. And you never know what you might discover in corners.

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Island Blog – Double Spacing

Just changed my bedding, most of which is quite simple, although the fitted sheet and the requirement to turn the mattress took a thing or two. I’m ok with that. But then I square up to the duvet cover. I know there will be trouble, like me being lost inside a load of recalcitrant cotton for enough minutes to miss a whole phone call, eventually emerging with the look of a startled duck. Does anyone else know this duck thing?

Finally, the bed is set, although my arms are exhausted with all the whacking and relocating of duvet endings, none of which seem to agree with this particular cotton, and supposedly double, duvet cover with bloody buttons, none of which match with holes and flaps I never asked for.

I recall working as a chambermaid with the same fury rising in me. Things just refuse to fit. That was my acceptance. The inner may be one size, the outer quite another (plus flaps and buttons). It thinks me about life, about being an human, in my case a woman, which, in truth means a load more trouble. Nonetheless, this inside being more than the outside is a tricky one, and enlightening. If we just knew how impossible it is, and always was, to ‘fit’ any of us into a shape that is acceptable to a world which, or is it that, fits in for the sake of peace (ish), we might tear a hole, or ping off buttons.

Rageous, I know…… and please excuse double spacing. No fricking idea how that happened.

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Island Blog – Look like Ballet

Another busy week in the Best Cafe Ever, and it isn’t just me who says this. In between the days, family stuff, although ‘stuff’ is the wrong word come to think of it. In other’s lives, there are happenings, not great ones, in fact not great at all, but wait. See that ‘wait’ word? Always bugged me. What is immediate and all consuming spirals a mind, every time. The encouragement to wait is, from my experience, very Buddha, and I like it, just don’t always know how to buy into it. The urge to run, to travel, to support, is strong, very strong. But……wait. It thinks me. As I’m faffing about with thinks, all blind in the clouds of it all, I do get it. There is a time to go and a time to not go, although not going sits like a burr under my arse. Ah, bless the olding times. We seem to get better at knee jerk, even if we can knee jerk like the best when required. So I feed the birds, tend the plants, scoot off to to the Washeroo and work, notice my thinks, notice how my team mates are dealing with their own lives, retain a strong hold on the present whilst sending prayers and great visuals to those who can do with them, big time.

I am open, wide open, and I know it. It has taken many decades to arrive at this point. I believe in equality, in inclusivity, in compassion, kindness, friendship, in action. And the last is important to me. It is wonderful to spout the prior beliefs, but without action, they’re just pointless words. Would I stand against injustice, my voice clear? Would I move forward, or against, something or someone who didn’t? Do I remember old Sally’s needs as she pines for her long dead husband, her dog, her cat, her rabbit? Am I so busy with my own agenda that it’s as if these ‘poor’ people are as of nothing? Or have I trained my mind to be aware, way beyond my own thixotropic ‘stuff’? As I notice something that bothers me, in any situation, do I shake my head and continue my dash for last minute food and the bus, or the train, or the whatever that consumes my thinking? Do I?

Back home from work and a pecan coriander pesto to make. A shower to be had. A list for tomorrow to be made. A twisty cloud sky to watch. From full moon, the half moon is sudden. In the full, there is turbulence, big winds, huge tides, a load of show-off in my opinion, not to mention all those who get no sleep while this showing off is going on. Talking to my African son, suddenly, and jerkily, a red deer hind and her very young calf walked by my window, all unsure, alert, their skins healthy and their legs long and strong. They looked at me, I looked at them. Go safe you beauties. Go safe. You look like ballet.

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Island Blog – New Songs

Working away in the Washeroo of the Best Cafe Ever, with tons of cups, plates and pots and jugs, I noticed I was alone, and there was someone on the other side of the counter. It thinks me. The other side of anywhere is going to make you feel a bit dodge. I know, we know, those of us in the hospitality whatever, that a welcome is so important, that moment you swing in all gym fit, or wobbly on sticks, or just ok with yourself all the way up to that counter. If you get an immediate recognition, a welcome, even if we are five miles behind on soups and quiches and the best coffees on the island (it has been said and many times), you feel welcome. We like that. We want that. So let me dip to remove a wash at solar degrees, thank you health and safety, no judgement, rising immediate, my glasses a fog. All that in minutes, less.

This is a new song for me. And more, a life change. I look at my olding upper arms, and see a swell. not much, but more than I ever thought I would ever see. It ruffles my chuckle, it does. I know I’m in the Autumn of my life, maybe more, but this does not distress me at all. At each, and often awkward turn in my life, I have remembered who I am. To be honest with the shit that came in, the shit that comes in to all lives, I did founder. For me, it’s rocks. I live around them, they are a safe place and a rocky end.

But, even in the thin of things, there is a song.

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Island Blog – Lucky

What is Luck, beyond being a word oft wrongly understood? In my ancient thesaurus, the word has many and diverse meanings. These days I meet those who consider ‘luck’ to be a chance happenstance, a random beneficence and they have reason to fix on that belief. However, in my study of words and wordage, I discover more. ‘Luck’ can mean opportunity, a new chance to shift something, to make it anew. Well, not anew, because there’s nought new in this world apparently, although I disagree with that too. What the writer meant was that all humans are humans, after all and after all, as if we are all either robots or born from the same womb.

So, when I say I feel lucky, I can just hear the triproad of rocks in my path with all this analytical tiddleypom, all rising into mountains only they can see. My through road is clear. I feel lucky. I can see. I can freely walk around a rip-tidal Atlantic coastline any time I want. I can smell the sea, watch her stories rush in, pull out, rush in again, and I catch some of them. I can see a hover of gulls, hear their screeching, watch the lift and luff of their agile wings. I can taste the clean rain on my tongue, feel its healing on my skin. I can walk. I have wonderful caring friends. None of my children died, nor theirs. I can buy the food I want to buy. I can travel. I live in my own home with a view (I will never say ‘to die for’) that others envy. I live in a warm encompassing community. I belong. I have shoes and boots, warm clothing, a comfortable home. I am not belittled, marginalised, racially attacked, afraid of any walk on the streets. I have not lost my voice.

So many right now have none of this. It disgusts me.

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Island Blog – Politely

We all have something going on, shit hitting us, smack, crack, flack. It spreads. To be true to me, I do think and the thinks think me. and they are this, for now. My family . Ok, pull back a bit from that. It seems to me that posts about positve positives hit the whatevers which mean more ticks and clicks and therefore, friends. I sincerely hope someone does a reality check on that. It also does that think thing with me. I could ask why? The why is clear…..why would you not post something you want to post? And then, in I creep…..is this the truth or is this the ‘acceptable’ version? I only ask because I’ve been there loads, and still dither.

Obviously we are not going to reveal, more conceal, when family hit shits the fan. I get this.

I just want to wave to those who are right in this, hit, shit.