Month: November 2025

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Island Blog – Moody and Beautiful

I love to watch the headlights moving around the backside of the sea-loch. Where have they been and where are they going to? I love the bitey catch of coriander when I open the pack to snip it over a green salad. I love the fall of the dark, when my twinkly winkly lights show themselves, a string of golden positivity. I love the disappearance of my whole garden, the emptiness of birds at the feeders, the slink-silhouette of a cat on the track and the way it suddenly looks up at me, the movement of me, the momentary connection.

I love my shower, the way it changes me from one day and into a solace. I love to sort and prepare something interesting to eat. I love the window dark of my rooms, the blindness of looking out. I love the pop of a cork and the glass of red wine, the way my speaker bigs up my playlist. I love that I got through today, that I walked into the wild, noticed, stomped, trudged, faltered, filled in time, did some admin, all of that. I love that I assembled a tapestry frame, after many attempts, that I changed my bed, laundered bedding, cared enough to respect the linen.

I look around my warm and comfortable sitting room, see the fire licking flame, feel the pushed out warmth, hear the tunes, and it thinks me of the other side of this I love thing. It isn’t an ‘I hate’ no, because I don’t believe in black and white as parentheses. I believe there are many greys in between. So, (don’t ever begin a sentence with that word) Sorry, dad, but I am doing just that beginning…….If there is, and there is, an whole nother to an I love beginning, how does it begin?

Perhaps it is honesty and doubled; perhaps we find it hard, if not impossible, to allow the truth to spill. Because why? Judgement, tick. Failure,tick. You are young, made mistakes. You are menopausal and angry most of the time. You are a young man who was told at a vulnerable age to pull yourself together, to stop snivelling, to man-up. You are a young woman who doesn’t want to do what her parents think is ‘best’ for her. You are sure you don’t identify with the sex you were born with. You are olding and furious about the tiny and daily losses of sight, of movement, of where you put that important receipt, or of who will help you stack a ton of wood, your fingers gnarled and weakened. The Lonely in all of these can be black as an island night.

Perhaps it’s because I am old and doing this looking for receipts, or trying to work out a way to see better in winter craft work, that I can see the love in the lack. Living so long gives a person a ‘so long’ on the angst of things whilst holding tight to a tryst with life. I am still trying to rein in the Lonely, a really feisty and bloody-minded colt, all spurs and twists and moody and beautiful.

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Island Blog – Left of Right in the Dance

There’s a silence at this time of day, when the sun has set behind the hills and the dark, greedy and heavy is bloody determined to win the game. I think about that game. It’s gone on for a gazillion years and yet these two keep on keeping on. We adapt. However, I notice that at certain times of the year those two fighting for space, early themselves. On a cloud-sworn cover up day, the dark finds an invenue and grabs it full force so that, say from about 2/3pm it is effectively dark. The school run is all headlights and avoiding those horrid blue-lit-light cars which confuse and diffuse clarity of vision. Or, they do for me. I’m pulling over thinking Ambulance.

This morning I knew I was going to collect my beloved mini who has been in the operating theatre for almost a week. I was up twirly, Dark still holding like a control freak but obligingly (or maybe because Moon is stronger than Dark), hoisting a crescent moon into its sky, and that light showed me big frost. Oh shoot. I de-pyjamad myself after a couple of strong coffees, black. I did falter. The sun will be low, the courtesy car frozen up, the switchback road possibly an icescape. Then I calmed, ate something and set off. I got as far as my neighbour (8 yards) and could see nothing but black, even with switch-eye shades, the visor down, nothing, no road, no concept of a landscape I have known and trusted for decades. It was gone. I did falter. I could go back home, explain, they’ll understand, I’m old and a fearty. I could. But I didn’t. I stopped, parked, thought ‘what is the left of right, and what is right? It jinked my thinks. I love movement, the physical, the mental, the way we can shift in a dance.

And I remember the dance, the way I went to the left of right with a partner who was making a collision mess of such a simple swing, couldn’t count, legs flying, hands barely gripping. My feet knew better than I ever did, and I saw what might happen if I didn’t guide this galoot back into formation. It’s the same inside my own mind, the crazy galoot, the dark and the light and the whats are there for me to hold onto when the dark oppresses, the light is quiet and hesitant and the galoot is a wild tom on the hunt?

In the silence, now that this island comes bome to itself, there are bare roads, plenty parking, no holidayers, some of whom expect more than they might if they just got the whole island thing, the way we have to go left of right, a lot. I’ve met plenty who’ve come here, and they love it. I do, I confess, have a squidge of an issue with the expectations, as if here is the same as the ‘there’ they have come from, with everything perfect. Island life is far from that. Instead we learn to go to the left of right a whole lot. Here it is all about acceptance, understanding, a gentle acceptance of the way that every single one of us do our best. And, all of us can keep up in the dance.

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Island Blog – Perceived Failure

Ach, well today was a bit of a trudge. It didn’t wake thus, and nor did I, jumping (I did) out of bed as the very first schist of morning framed my blackout curtains. When I wake, I’m like Alice, excited, down the stairs and into the fart of the sparrow all exuberant and ready for strong coffee. I call Alexa into Radio two and bring in the tunes and, despite the dark which will stay resolute for at least another 2.5 hours, I am there to welcome in the light. To be honest, I would like to be one of those who stravaigle into a morning, yawning, turning over, sleeping again until the last noisy minute, such as the arrival of the council bottle bin collectors, all twinkly winkly lights and big noise, arrives at my door. But I am not, and there’s a twister. My mum attributed her ability to hit the pillow asleep until morning, the actual morning, not the hour, when light beckoned breakfast and the whole world visible, ducks on the pond, all that, as an easy conscience. I did squirm at that, I confess. I think she probably said that to my dad, he who didn’t sleep, who caught me wandering all awake and in the dark of the landing and who told me stories, cooled my feet, stayed with me until I did drift away. I wonder if he did.

In the echoes of Remembrance, of those who went to war, some many times, and all who came back changed. The echoes continue, even now. How on earth does a soldier return to ordinary life, the caption of it, the captive, the superficiality, the expectation to adapt overnight? It wasn’t recognised in my dad’s day, nor before, the fallout, the agony of it, the loss of one for one, the strong bonds formed under immediate fire. the fear, the desert dark, the cold, the all of it – the refusal to tell out. It is now, I hope, although I’m guessing there is a lot of fallout, too many echoes, too many triggers, too much seen and not spoken out.

I’m shy now, once I see I have written this. My fingers do their own thing pretty much. So, I felt a trudge today, did I? I can see the judge front of me, all male and whigged. I planned to do this and didn’t. But I did sweep the floor, no, that’s a lie. I did walk, truth, I did do 100 rows on my row machine, I did check the canoes on the shore, see they’re tied right. Truth. I did walk, a bit. I did lose my specs and still haven’t located them. I didn’t attend a meeting, giving my notgoingness. I did bake a potato for supper, prep a salad, light the fire.

There is no competition. I know that. But I still compare myself against others. There is a learning there, and, as I work through this, I feel a tad less furious at my perceived failure.

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Island Blog – Confusulate

Today was a bit of an upsydownsy, not in anyway distressing, no interjections, no road blocks, no awkwards, no tricky altercations , no big stuff, none of that. Just a confusulate . Explain, I tell myself, finger wagging like a headmistress from the past and a very long ago one. I can see her, see that finger, how interesting, how damaging.

I decide to make something. Sweet Chilli Jam. I’ve made it before and it is delicious, but in my life it would need to be frozen for acres because there’s only me here. I can, I know give wee jars to those who may well swell with a wide smile and then let it go to mould. I still make it, for the pleasure of the making. It thinks me, as I get this, the process. This is me. I have always known this, held this. Those nights of tricky lambing under flickering dodgy lights at 4 am in the snowscape, of birthing in the freeze of a stone cold byre, pulling her into that cold, swiping muceous from her mouth, blowing in breath, over and over, and then the warm glow of life, the change of colour to the. skin, the wonderful of that singular moment.

I know how thoughts slip through all filters, tricking their way into the ordinary, tipsying it, tilting it and illuminting a light that shows something new. It’s exhausting. But I am in for the learning, despite the confusulation .

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Island Blog – The Shelterbelt

I feel weird today, sort of in the in between of stasis and movement. I wound tangles of wool pretty much all morning, realising, once I just had to stand up, that I hadn’t made my bed, nor turned off the lights no longer required. It felt strange. I don’t miss things like that as a rule, but, as I stravaigled the stairs, a tad shame-faced, flipping switches and sorting my duvet, I allowed myself to courie in to a place where nobody waits to judge me. The shelterbelt. The place wherein there is hot cocoa, a butty, a warm bosomy mama with wide open arms. We all want this, if we are honest, particularly those of us who never experienced her in real life.

The morning expanded as I kept untangling wool. You know…..there are times when untangling wool can play a very important part in a person’s future. I just don’t know the how or the what of it right now. My mind scurried back, like a nibbley mouse, searching in the scurry of what might have thrawn me, thrown me into this stasis. Ah……the funeral, the two funerals this week. One, okay-ish, a long-term friend, tired of life. The other too young, a bit older than my own eldest, also tired of life. I reckon that’s the shaker. Perhaps the sudden dive into complete emptiness for the family, for friends, for me, spirals a landslide from some invisible and magnitudinal force. It’s a gasp, a stopping. And, a day or two away from that ‘stopping’ I wonder why everything just continues on, as if there’s polyfilla on tap, to cover the ripped cracks in the landscape of so many.

Remembrance time now. In church we celebrated all those who gave their lives, those who went to war, or who stayed with ‘war’ once they met it headlong. The brave, the courageous, the loving, the curious, the inventive, the ones who, in private times, cried the cries of the seabirds, the oceans, the losses, the flipping wild of this bajonkers life. I drove home, wondering about a pub visit, but didn’t. And that wonders me. I could have found a shelterbelt just for a wee glass, could have told myself this is ok, to connect, to talk and said where I’d been, shared my deep sadness and my even deeper respect, the confusion of it. The twist of loss and lift, of the fall of rise, and the rise of falI…..I just came home with it.

I think we may be all the same, dinging like pong balls at such times. We can still ping, but we also need that shelterbelt. Or, I do, anyway.

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Island Blog – Explosical

I just made that word up by the way, but it fits. In that word is Ex, meaning gone. Plose, as in ‘Boom’ and Sical as the arse end of Musical. Well, if Latin/ Greek scholars can derivativise words into minute parts, then so can I. Much as I respect the past of historical learning and memories, even remembles, it is high time we caught, grasped onto, and learned from the way language has changed flipping ages ago. We all have many new neighbours, new work colleagues, new dialects on our streets, among our new-met friends, in all social gatherings. And it isn’t just the pronunciation of a word, the tilt and lift and shift of the musicality of a well-established word. I know this, I have been confounded, felt the hesitation and the embarrassment as I tried to understand what the person across from me just said. I got the drift, but not the fulcrum. Even in my long ago youth, I remember that sweaty awkwardness, the wishing I was anywhere but there, trapped in a chair, sweating anxiety. Not now. Now I will respectfully admit to my own lack of understanding.

There is musicality in all languages, in the way they emerge from the iodine of whatever the familiar is to us, the old tunes, the stuck of it. It seems to me that the English, the British, are more stuck than they might want to be, perhaps with the legacy of owning half the world thick in aging throats, perhaps. But to lift into a welcome …..How about that? I am my father’s daughter and thus fixillated in entrenched wordage, but, and I do believe this, if he was still with me, and could still pontificate enough for me to bring him down to a whisky and a courie-in, he would get that, no matter the dictionary, which, by the way I have added to twice. Language is explosive and musical, and if we want to dance with it, well, we need to get out there and do just that.

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Island Blog – Tapselteerie and Widdershins

I’m watching my money tree. I’m not sure it’s mine, actually. I have no recollection of growing the thing. It just arrived, not as a gift, I’m certain of that, but, more likely, a cast-off from someone leaving. It would have arrived in some young person’s arms, all apology and hope, because what were they going to do with this damn thing fighting for life, in a pot of earthy mess?

Anyways up,….she’s here, and for many years now, a veritable bonsai beauty. She arrived as a spindly twinkle of life, all floppy, over-watered or, more likely the reverse and required a mother touch. I gave that. I always do. Now she holds proud right in my sight, in the window above my writings. She thinks me.

We live in a following. We do. We follow signs, orders, expectations, protocol, regimes. We go with the flow. And I am all about going with the flow, until, and that word is one of my favourites, one or some of us pause, feeling that we don’t want to continue on. And that’s a tricky one. I thought much about it today as I walked into the fairy woods, now considerably less wooded after the last storm-fell. (new word…..soon to be stormfell). How would I turn on this ‘follow’ thing? How would I find the courage to go widdershins against the clock of ticking inevitability?

Methinks this as I wander on my walk today, as I feel connection with the lift, of life, of sinking death, of all around me, that there is much I can do. I can take in a money tree and give her life. I can challenge this and that and make something happen. I can push through the desire to hide and chide and then go to the pub to meet friends. I can commit to this, take that on, because both this and that in my tapselteerie thinking means I am widdershins. And I love both words.

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Island Blog – Make it So

Blimey, it’s been a while since I tapped these keys. Life loughed in and I was busy being mindful and also going to the mainland which is mindfulness enough for any sentient and emotionally aware individual by the way because we never know when we will get off, nor home again and at what time and in what state. Anyway, all is well for now, until the next venture into a Neverland we islanders believed was something to do with Peter Pan.

Tapping away, I recall learning a qwerty keyboard. I remember it well the Pitman rise of keys, the required strength to punch the Q or the P, the Z or the Y or any other damn consonant rarely used and under the watchful glare of eyes, pin-striped, narrowed, judgemental (judge…..mental, now there’s a thought or two) of the Ma’ams who ran the show. One, wide-arsed and slow moving, her nylons sounding like frenetic waves on a shore as she marched between our desks, and the other prinky pink, sharp as a cut, glasses peaking aloft, holding tight to her edges, a bustier, a confiner, controlling knickers, something like that I was sure. She could barely breathe. I wondered about their love lives, but only for two embarrassed seconds, to be honest. They were old and I was recalcitrant 16 and knew it all. However, I was bright and surprisingly keen to get out of this place but with honours. I didn’t manage those, as others did. I watched the others who did. They were alight with the joys of being a secretary. check that word out. A secret-ary. You get it. I was absolutely not. Lasted a week in my first job. Second job, my ‘boss’ decided my pert arse was his landscape. I kept no secrets after that.

I digress. What I wanted to write about was fairy lights.

Because I don’t go shopping, don’t go to the mainland unless I have to, I trust the google search on Warm Fairy Lights. It doesn’t always work, in fact it often doesn’t work. So I hesitate to risk purchase. I’m not interested in battery powered lights which are gold for as long as it takes to sigh and smile and turn away,and die very slowly and whitely and flickery. I have seen golden plug-in lights in family homes, other homes, I seek them like a drug, asking where did you find these and they all say, with a floppy hand wave…..Oh, I don’t remember. I want to pin them to the ground right then and to choke the answer out of them, but I won’t and I don’t, much like, on the back of the trust and hope and belief of my Secret – Arys, I really did see golden, the chance to be somebody, noticed, respected, a part of something growing and wonderful. I’m not saying it can’t happen, chance is always a thing, and I am still hoping for that chance, for plug-in warm, golden fairy lights that don’t lie about their lack and for secretaries to make it so.