Month: February 2026

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Island Blog – Rain, Change and Artistic Spike

They’re coming, well the first two are. Rain in Africa is a celebration and getting soaked is a joy. I have watched ordinary people dancing in the streets as rain falls and when rain falls here it is more like being under a waterfall. I know, of course I do, that such a belter of water feels very different when both the temperature and the rainfall is warm. Back home where the air is cold enough to bite your teeth off, a heavy rain is an insult, or feels like it. Slamming at your face, body, mind, thoughts, it can feel as if you are a nothing much, a thing in the way, a pain in the backside of nature. And yet we who accept the change of seasons, the way life is on a west coast island planted head on to the capricious control of the Atlantic, which, by the way is an extremely huge and over itself ocean, flanking endless countries and upsetting even more shores and livelihoods, accept it all. We live within the change. But not just there, here too. This morning, early, we moved by vineyard workers working fast to gather the last of the grapes. The road was honking with tractors, loaded, the mouthy shouts from workers spilling through the open windows of the car, the smell of grape must redolent in the humid air. Adapting to change when it is mostly inconsiderate, is a mighty skill. I am glad I learned that adaptation thing early on having married a man who thought change was part of his clothing and who definitely wondered why nobody else felt the same way.

I am almost 3 weeks in to my stay here. My children work at their work. We move easily together, and respectfully, There are changes all the time with both of them, lifts, downs, challenges and celebrations. I walk quietly in between, moving out to the stoep to watch the birds, the mountains, the change in the sky. I read, write, make a lunch or late breakfast, always happy to serve. I thought about my happy place, thought about asking anyone, what is yours? Always a hesitation as if they never asked themselves that basic question. I get it. These are young folks, fighting for survival in an uncomfortable world, so demanding, so Disney, so unrealistic, so empty of individuality. It will take strength to rise up, to shout I Am Not A Number, or something like that. I believe it will happen because change brings gifts with her. Change proffers opportunity and a stepladder, a wee one, yes, but still. I believe that this time is their time and no matter the damn ceiling, someone will break through. It’s happened before and it will happen again.

This morning I booked an appointment for a hair change. I knew nothing of the salon beyond the rave reviews for this particular artist. We met, talked and together, decided. I felt so important, so welcomed. She said I had beautiful hair and there’s me thinking, old, white. We worked together for an hour or so, like a beautiful dynamic. I came in frowsy, molten lava head, shapeless. Change required. In the hands of an artist, I am revealed. Funny how so many allow the frowse. I’m having none of that. If you’re dynamically spiked, then spike. Age means nothing.

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Island Blog – If there’s a tree, I can nest in it.

I watch Sunbirds today fluttering like trills of music as they build two nests in the squidgy looking not-palm over my head. I am sitting just upwards of sunrise on the stoep, my head thrown so backwards it just might fall off, but I cannot stop looking, watching, as their outflight feathers catch pink, gold, blue. They couldn’t give a damn about me, mere inches away and thoroughly grounded. I am no threat to them nor their nest building and they seem to know that. They perch en route to said nest building thingy, on the framework of the stoep shade, caught pistol sharp against the sun, almost a silhouette and perfectly formed. It’s breathtaking. I forget time, the pain in my neck, my thoughts and any distractions. My entire focus is on this four, and that thinks me. Are they like sparrows, nesting in a commune, or do they select another pair with whom to coorie in, or am I reading this all wrong? Their slender shape, the black cap, the perfection of body shape and wing spread is marvelling and maybe that’s more than enough. There is so much that is not right in the human world. You are right or you are wrong and that ‘wrong’ word has followed many of us into our own protection caves, silencing our voices and nullifying our opinions on pretty much everything. It is good to be reminded that beyond the rules of life for us, life is more instinctive, freer somehow within the mysteries and the magic of Nature and her unstoppable evolution. Living wild and dynamic, yes. Watchful and adaptable, yes. Able to shift and change when there is yet another deforestation to make room for a housing complex, a luxury hotel, a tourist haven, yes.

I like the Yes in Nature. However limiting the options, positive plans are made. In our world it takes hundreds of years to adapt and there’s a deal of gloom and moaning on that journey, as if everything is all rocks and dried up water beds. We could do with Yessing more, looking out and up. To keep showing up bringing our talents with us, leaving the ‘wrong/right dichotomy in our caves and stepping out into the light. What do they say now…….?

What you look for, you will find, or something along those lines. Like the Sunbirds did.

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Island Blog – Bundu bashing and a Cockerel

They’ve suddenly got hens, the owners of the Landaround. Even with ear plugs in to drown the roar of aircon, I am waked as if my mother had just wheeched off my duvet, which she did. That voice is sharp enough to cut through steel and it, He, is right outside my door for some reason, hurtling his testosterone into an early dawn. I rise and yank the door open in my Notverymuch and there he struts, coloured up like a whole day on legs. He eyes me. I eye him. Jaunty he is, proud of his strut, reminding me of someone I once knew and who was not a fowl, or maybe he was, but with a different spelling. I watch the dawn sun rise just behind him as he stands his ground on my doorstep, flightlighting his feathers, lifting the rainbows as he fingers the air with his wings showing me orange and magenta and purple and butter.

Hallo, I say and he quirks and takes a squiff at my bare legs. No eye contact I notice, I say quietly because my neighbours are still in bed as I should be. He ignores that, his head performing moves that would snap mine. Finally he struts away, tail feathers sassy, but he doesn’t go far. Why….I can’t resist asking him this….aren’t you with your women? He just moves away, pecking in the dusty dirt, shrieking out now and then. Later, as we drive out for a morning walk, I see why he is alone. Across the sandy space there is a hurry of hens and a big Chanticleer as their owner/protector pecking about quite joco. It wonders me. What does a single cockerel do in such a situation?

We walk in the winelands, moving beneath blue mountains and through baboon lands. At times we bundu bash, although it isn’t the same as in the Real, where Bush/Bundu is dense and positively quivering with possible bites or stings, where my fear levels could stay me back in camp amd thus miss me every exciting thing, even bites and stings. These walks are wild, yes but in a very polite way, the sort of place that Englanders will walk through in frocks and flip-flops with loud voices and a certain entitlement. It is a gift to walk here any day, quietly, respectfully, noticing everything, seeing the baboons, hearing their wee ones shriek in play down by the river, to greet the workers, to notice the swell and fall of the river, hear it bubble and trip over stones older than anyone can map; to notice the growth of the second spring, the pulse of risepetals from just yesterday, to smell the wind and to hear her stories.

Evening still. Watching the sun dip, casting flames all around the blue hills, the tall grasses, our faces. And so, another day. Tomorrow could be anything but I absolutely do know that it will begin with a cockerel.

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Island Blog – The Little Ones

They’re here. They’re always here if we just care to notice. Right now it’s loud fun little ones in the pool after a very hot day. In fact, we barely went out there except to move between buildings, or from house door to car and, in that instance, landing on a seat fit to burn our whateverness. But it isn’t humid, not wetsweat, not fly food, just caught in the tumble of a fire wind. And so we worked indoors, loving the coolth of aircon on the rocks. We shared ideas, played with words, made new ones, honed and distilled until the flow became a whole 8 bar phrase. So musical.

As we walked early morning, the dog and we, through the winelands, flanking rivers and spectacular flowers and conifers, baboons skittled and flew from one side of the red dust track to the other. We heard the squeals and chuckles of their young somewhere down there in the river. The play smiled us as we moved on. To be honest, I would rather not meet a baboon but, as I never have, it might be a good thing for my inner scardey cat. I did notice that we slowed once we saw adults above us on the track, the young below, when my African son called in his retriever and slowed his pace, always watchful, always aware. To get between parents and young, even among cows on a windspite cloud-collapsing west coast island is dangerous. I have learned here that the protection of Little Ones is top of the agenda and no human should walk on, unaware.

Tiny flowers lift their heads to the sun, basking in its warmth. The colours are rainbow and mixed on an over-excited artist’s palette. Primaries, sedge mixes, ice on green, the tang of lemon on blue, an aubergine slice on scarlet, black full stops circling the stamens, louding them, an invitation, a landing pad. Grasses spindle and wave in the rising heat, dry, sharp, peppered with tiny beads of life, Sprangletop. I bend to watch them, my sandalled feet dust red, sunk in sand, warm. I think of friends dressed in endless layers, bodies white-faced, amidships starved of light. Scotland is cold now, rained off and not just Scotland. The dark and the rain can diminish. It is hard to remember the little ones, the Ones that lift and shift the gloom, like tinkerbells. It is so easy to swipe, so easy to deny, to decide that this little one is a nothing much. A big mistake. If we notice, welcome and celebrate each ‘little one’ then, t’is only then that we actually engage with the life we lead, and often for the very first time.

The pool is empty now. Wet little ones scoot behind my chair as if they are sure they will never trip up. Bare bodies, wild energy, wary and confident in equal measure, following the light.

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Island Blog – Encounters and Cats

Waking into a sunshine dawn, I welcome the criss-cross of light through the blinds, stripes of gold on the flagstone floor. Without thinking, I step over them. Of course I know they won’t trip me up but it feels polite not to squash them underfoot. Dressed in shorts and a tee-shirt, I make my way to the main house and coffee. My little room, not far away gives me all I need, a comfortable bed, a tiny shower room and privacy. There are other such rooms and homes on this wine farm but I rarely hear or see the occupants. As is the custom in Africa, a maid will come in daily to clean. It felt odd, once, but not now, not now I know how proud these women are to have work enough to support their own families in the township. Their hair is a mass of black braids, their faces bright and smiley, their characters loaded with sass. Despite their history of ‘domination’ by the white people, they are openly friendly and respectful, and I have yet to encounter a worker in any field, street or shop who doesn’t turn to greet with a ‘Morning Ma, how are you today?’ It feels mellow and right with a sense of togetherness. We move in completely different worlds and yet conjoin in one of mutual respect and genuine affection, often as complete strangers who may never meet again. It thinks me as I remember how comparatively unfriendly the streets and lives of back home can be. We have lost the art of teamwork and become lonely islands. Well, some of us have.

The cats greet me with morning miaows, pushing their soft heads into my legs, curling around them. The big retriever huffs a welcome, a soft toy in his mouth, his eyes asking for play. When I first arrived, the cats looked at me as if I had landed from another planet, scooting away, a get-lost glare in their wake, but now, as they remember me, we can share a space in peace. We respect each other just as it ought to be, could be, can be among humans. When something shifts, a comment is made or opinions differ, we can take it personally, responding thus or not responding at all, slinking away with a head full of furballs, hurting, a spit of questions on our lips. I know this because I have been there, many times, but now that I have learned to separate what I can control from what I cannot, I tend to take a good look inside myself. Not in the search for either self-blame or a cutting response to what I perceived as an attack, but more to read the bones of what just happened, which is where the nugget of truth will lie. And the reason I do this is because I am not a child anymore; I am not controlled by old triggers; I am not under any control save my own over me, and I want to allow, accept and let go. The alternative is a dark tunnel, a very long one.

If I was a cat and didn’t like what another cat did or said, I would spit, yowl and take myself away. This is honest cat behaviour. However, it isn’t quite the same for me. Such a response might get me arrested. In recognising this simple truth, I have human choices, me with my big and clever brain, my heart genuinely loving, my letting go of childhood issues and triggers, my experiential wisdom and my understanding that my perception is not unilateral. However, I do know that it takes vulnerability and courage in situations of discomfort such as a big difference of opinions on a subject we both feel strongly about. It doesn’t mean I concur or demur, not at all because I still feel the way I feel, but in order for anything to move forward we need to team up or the anything gets stuck in a bog. It also doesn’t mean that my only option is to be passive aggressive, defensive, repetitive or opinion-fixed. So, am I open to both opinions sitting beside one another like Tweedledum and Tweedledee? Can we smile over the chasm of our differences and keep moving, stronger together?

Well, if we don’t, then nothing goes nowhere, nor anywhere and we are both lonely.

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Island Blog – The Road to Somewhere

6000 miles and 6 days later, I am wrapped in African heat. One very long flight has carried me, and a gazillion others, over deserts and oceans, well, one ocean, depositing me into new sounds, new songs, stories and landscape. I left muddy puddles and pale faces, bodies so wrapped up as to become almost unrecognisable, and walk now among bright colours, new languages, unfamiliar birds and wide African smiles. It is so much easier to smile when the sun shines bright and hot.

On this wine farm, one of many, we seek the shade of massive trees, gum, fever, oak, palms and many more. We walk alongside well-established vines, heavy with fruit for the second picking. The staff here are always at work, strimming grass that doubles in size almost overnight, and particularly so after the big thunderstorm and heavy rains of yesterday. When it rains here it’s as if the whole sky is coming down, but, unlike the West Coast of Scotland, it is warm and refreshing. Nobody dives for cover, but instead stands beneath the waterfall wearing wide smiles. Rain is so very precious here.

The house I stay in offers a wide and open view all the way up to the mountains where, two nights ago, a huge fire lit the night sky. We saw it first as a golden cloud above a blue and distant peak and those who knew recognised it at once. As day gave way to night, the blaze was clear, crimson, poppy, scarlet, orange, yellow and frighteningly hot. We watched it from miles away, and there was a gasp and a beauty in its devastation as it moved down the mountain, consuming all in its path. Thankfully, and after two days and nights, the fire-fighters, from the sky and on the ground, managed to quell the burn and no homes were destroyed. It thinks me, the beauty in destruction and the chance for new growth. Twins.

When something appears as destruction in a life, it will always proffer the opportunity for new growth, even though at first all you see is charred earth where once there was vibrant life. When such an event has evented me, and on looking back, I can see that it’s all about attitude and letting go, two tricky buggers for sure. I invested every part of me in preparing the ground, planting seeds, growing a sense of both ownership and control. I had made myself more important than the far stronger forces around me. This is mine and I build me a fence to protect what has now become my ‘familiar’. Of course I am upset when my castle is toppled and it is understable and acceptable to wallow a bit in the loss. But is it a loss? I ask this of myself because, just perhaps, I had made my life smaller with this fence thing. Perhaps I am far more enterprising that I believed.

I stand up to look over the wasteland of an old dream, and I just let go. I won’t build this way again because that familiar is gone. Instead I will step lightly into my imagination, tell myself that I am merely a part of the next adventure and must remind myself of this daily. In the uncertainty of our lives nowadays swirl a billion opportunities for new growth as long as we let go of holding on too tight to what was. With open eyes, ears and heart, we are magnificent creatures, capable of so very much. Does any one of us know what step to take first? Nope. Does anyone see the completed dream? Nope. It is always a case of stepping out, left, then right, then left again, holding the dream lightly, ready and willing and open to every new encounter. Yes, it takes courage.

I’ll meet you on the road to Somewhere.