It’s cold, the wind an iceslice with bitey teeth like a ferret, not that I know a damn thing about ferret teeth but I can imagine. Tiny sharp incisors and no filters in the mind of the owner thereof. I was bitten by a mouse once, the tiny rodent I was trying to save from being sluiced down a push of rainwater. I grabbed it, no thoughts of teeth in my own mind and was hurt and upset until I understood an instinctive reaction. I could have been a ferret after all. However, and this is irrelevant, the wound rose red and its subsequent pulsation required a switchback trip to the doctor because I was basically carrying a balloon on my forefinger, thus unable to text, employ finger recognition, or point an accusation at anyone without inviting ridicule. Irrelevant.

This time of year is yahoo Spring although it isn’t yet. I do know, of course i do, that Spring up here on the butt of the west coast of Scotland with the wild Atlantic wheeching up huge waves and making a great big noise about it, munching old rocks into pivots, and flipping sands into a beachy confusion, is to be expected. I remember lambing in April in the snow. Not me, the cheviots. But I was on the early shift and for weeks. 5am, swallowing mouthfuls of darkness and cold, looking for colour. Not moon, or maybe moon, such a fickle light. I’m searching for those undercover, the ewes who take their hideaway in cowers and coppice, under hedges, in the brack and barm of stone dykes. Twins or triplets definitely a challenge. Too much for the exhausted mother. Delivering, shifting tricky ones coming arse first, all out, all ok, pulling off the sticky stuff out of tiny mouths desperate to breathe, sucking the stuff, mouth to mouth, blowing in whisky breath probably, the wriggle and pulse of life in my hands, the shouty thrill of it, in the early dawn. The crows are not awake yet. My job, to deliver if I can, to make safe if I cannot and to leg it back home to wake himself. I can’t do that one, this one. He was exhausted, had walked the fields/parks all the day before right up to Crow Sleep Time. He rose, still clothed and smelling like days of unwashed and sheep. The daytime walks I couldn’t do. Feral kids, guests, dinners, bedroom changes, cleaning, phone calls about cottage bookings, calves to feed, cow to milk, stable mucking out, hens to organise, eggs to collect. Enough. We did well. I know we did, the clueless We who had never done a single thing on that list before. Lambs survived, mostly, children definitely did, guests returned to the Quirky Hotel and now……well, now I have none of that other than what I’ve learned and that is a powerful and energising gift. This is what I did, what we did.

Now, when I still swallow mouthfuls of darkness and cold, I remind myself of what I have achieved and, therefore what I can still achieve, not in the same context, nor genre, nor situation, but I still can achieve. And here’s how I do this achieving thing. Any time the alien thought marches in tooting a trumpet, all important and (somewhat ridiculous) I shake my head. Ah, I smile, no thanks. You think you define me now as, yes unsure, yes with less self confidence, yes a bit wobbly whilst hanging heavy curtains, yes in a dither because my car computer tells me I have a stop alert when I know that everything mechanical is quite fine and always was before computers made us all doubt our own intelligence. I am grafting myself off this failing tree, because I realise I stuck myself here. And, it is so good to notice, to realise, and then to take action. I have strength, huge strength, maybe not physical although don’t tell me I can’t lift this, nor carry that because I damn well will. I have wisdom, experiential wisdom. Not many care to connect with that in these sad times when oldings are written off as a right pain in the arse, and that saddens me. I learned so much vital knowledge on how to cope with life, the world, the isolation, from my granny, my parents, and, I am happy to say that my ferals and their kids do connect with me, asking things, smiling a lot and with no understanding at all of how life was without the internet.

Talk to your granny, grampa. Your wisdom guides. They really never thought they would ever be a pain in the arse. Trust me.