March 5, 2015 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 153 On Good Men and Unicorns

I have heard said, that good men are like unicorns. Everyone talks about them but nobody ever sees one.

To compare a man with a unicorn, is, indeed, a strange thing to be sure. Unicorns may be ‘fictitious’ creatures, but they are very real in fairy stories, folklore and even in Harry Potter’s world, which is one I almost believe in. Many times I have faced down a pillar on some bleak and windy station, thinking positively about rushing towards it in search of Platform Nine and Three Quarters. I don’t, of course, being ever so slightly aware that I may, indeed, be a Muggle after all, and, thus both bitterly disappointed, and in need of cosmetic surgery.

The other thing that stranges me about a comparison between unicorns and good men, is that men, in my experience, couldn’t be more earthed. I may attempt, for example, to unfold my feelings about some aspect of my life only to be asked scientific questions. What shape, when, why and how. I may float (just a bit) around concepts of life, love and marmelade and be yanked back down to earth with a sensible ‘fix’ to the situation, one that completely misses my point, not that I have had one of those in a long time. In fact, my being afflated about some other-worldly issue very possibly negates the need for a point, as there are many and none in the mackle mind of a woman at such times.

Now, I know, like you do, that unicorns have hooves and must, therefore, do things like walk, trot, canter and gallop, and for all of these activities, they require some sort of stable terrain, one with depth and structure, one they can see and expect to see whilst they do all of these things. In this, they are very like men, I agree. But, and this ‘but’ divides and separates, they can fly, of float, or elevate and there are few, if any, good men who can do that.

But is there a difference between Men and Good Men? I wonder if this is simply an act of perception. I say ‘act’ because it is a doing word and not a being word and there’s my point. And I have another. Does the perception of a man make him good? If I imagine him to be like a unicorn, powerful, there when you need a lift out of danger, able to move fast over ground or through the air, beautiful, intelligent, magical and interesting, might he not become so? Whereas, if I imagine him stupid and blunt, strong-like-bull but dimwitted and messy and thoughtless, might I not be fashioning him that way?

I know this is a chicken and egg question, but it has thinked me for a while and made me watch folk and consider. We can divide our lives into little controllable units, and, in many ways, this is a good thing. I want my day planned, to a degree, to the degree that is important to me, that is. I want to know when this or that is needed by my family, and what my role is in making it right for them. But, if I have forgotten what it was like when first we met, then, chances are, so has he. Life and the gravity of it has pulled us all down. It happens, but the clever ones among us notice this. If I stopped the car suddenly and said to you, Look There Goes a Unicorn, even if you were the biggest domesticated woman cynic ever, you would look, you would ask Where? But if I said There Goes Your Husband, you might look, you might, but, if it was somewhere you didn’t expect him to be you might say…..well you might say all sorts of things but you would not have the same look on your face as you did when I called him a Unicorn.

January 29, 2015 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 152 Small Things

I had to take action. I’d been listening to their scurryings above my head every night and wondering what they were up to in the loft. It’s a dark, cobwebby space, long and spooky, silent, waiting, holding boxes of heaven knows what, familial bric-a-brac, books – stuff the children will wander through when we are gone, wondering why on earth we ever kept any of it.

Okay I said to myself, time for mouse traps. Yeuch I hate them. I hate mouse poison even more, not that I’ve ever tasted it, of course. I hate the slow dying of it. At least traps are quick, unless they’re not. It’s the ‘not’ bit that keeps me turning over in bed and pretending it’s the wind pushing things over up there. Well, it could be. There are loads of holes for it to shoot through. ‘Up there’ is one of our mysteries. Unlike modern day lofts, ours is 19th century and has hardly changed at all over the years, beyond its contents. Gaps between slates show me sunlight, and as for lagging, there is a bit here and there, but nothing that quite spans the space between roof trusses or ceiling beams. There is flooring, but that just hides a possible Mouse City so I’m not fooled by it. The cobwebs are black and strong. I’ve been right to one end on my hands and knees in search of something, anything I might recognise, batting away cobwebs quite impervious to batting. After a fretful and panicky few minutes during which every episode of Nightmare on Elm Street shot through my brain like fire, I re-appeared down the wonky steps in dire need of both a jolly good hoovering and a double brandy. I could hardly breathe for hours and my dreams were littered with gigantic spiders for nights after. I actually like spiders very much. Just not the nightmare ones.

Anyway, back to the mice.

In trepidation and braced for Cobweb Attack, I donned my head torch and pulled out the wonky steps, took a deep breath (my last for a while) and, with my head, pushed up the trap door. Let’s re-name it. Loft door. Yes, that’s less scary. I pushed up the loft door and let my torch scan the darkness. What did I expect? A line of jaunty mice, all waving and saying ‘Gosh, we haven’t seen you since last winter! How have you been?’ Hmmmm. Nothing, of course greeted me beyond the long dark spooky silence and all those flaming boxes of nothing I recognise. I actually did wonder if the stuff wasn’t ours at all, but left behind by one of the Whoevers who lived here before. I saw a cricket shin pad thingy, well, half of it to be precise, the upper part now a fluffy mish-mash of ‘munched white’. Spurred on by this sight (himself will be horrified…..no more Wicket Man) I set the traps with peanut butter and nearly lost a few fingers before getting it right. Sorry…..I whispered into the gloom and let myself down. All day I hated myself with a strong hate. How can I be so cruel? I know it is utterly foolish because mice should stay outside shouldn’t they, and if they don’t, well, it’s their funeral?

It thinked me of small things, generally, in life, because it is the small things that have the power of big failure or of big success. For example, our daily habits are small things. We dont really consider them much, are not mindful of them until one of them begins to jar, to feel wrong, to nudge for change. If we don’t make regular checks on our daily habits, we may find ourselves caught in the cobwebs of our lives, trapped in the dark. We humans can think that we are who we are and that’s that. We can’t change now. Well, I will challenge that. However old we are, we can change and all change begins with the small things, one small thing.

I may feel ludgy and lethargic. What can I do about that? Well, I can stay ludgy and lethargic, or I can decide to take a walk for ten minutes and then tomorrow, I can make the same decision until, after a few days, I have created a new synapse in my brain, a new habit, one I don’t even question. I just do it. Then, one morning I wake up and I don’t feel ludgy and lethargic any more. Gosh! How did that happen? Well, it didn’t ‘happen’. I happened it.

I caught 12 mice. I didn’t feel great about any of the process, but I knew I had to deal with the small things before they became a big thing and chewed up all those mysterious boxes in the long, dark, spooky loft. I went up this morning and found both traps un-pinged. I’m not saying the job is done, for the small things will, no doubt, be back, but because I have taken action, I have created a new synapse in the loft of my life. Who knows……perhaps this Spring I will crawl up there in a hard hat, with a sharp knife to open up the past.

Somebody’s past, anyway.

January 20, 2015 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 151 Winter and Spring

“Winter is not a season, it’s an occupation.” Sinclair Lewis

Now, as the cold sets in and the winds bite, we can turn towards home. The lack of strong daylight draws us to the soft lighting, the fire glow, candles and a good torch for the Last Dog Walk at bedtime. I find I read even more, if that is, indeed, possible. My tastebuds changed their tune and thick soup replaces a rocket salad. I remember Elisabeth Luard, the famous cookery writer saying to me, once, that she loved the winter. All those bonkers unmatching hats and gloves, the fat woolly jumpers, thick socks, big boots and nobody watching her waistline, least of all, her. It was almost with a sigh she welcomed Spring, knowing full well that those pretty frocks might well resist joining at the zip.

Gone are those foraging walks, the fresh tang of autumn with skies full of redwings and the leaves turning into gold and red to finally fall to the ground, a crunchy carpet at first, then a soggy mulch beneath our boots. Mud gathers below the verges, frost splits the tarmac and the potholes re-appear with a vengeance. But, walking into winter can hold its own delights, after all, who doesn’t like jumping in puddles? If you have gone beyond puddle jumping there is something wrong with you because it may be the best form of excercise you can take and there is never any harm in re-visiting the inner child. So many of us lose our sense of play and it is a Zeus of a mistake. The finest people I know still play childish pranks at 80 with twinkly winkly eyes and a dare in them for you to even think of disapproving.

In Sweden, so I am told by my viking daughter-in-law, there is no rain/sleet or slush. There is only snow. Kissing the ground at first, this white out can grow to terrifying depths, disappearing whole houses overnight. If it ever happens here, there is considerable panic as if we are all about to turn into snowmen. Trains stop, buses stop, and nobody can get to work. Well, I struggle to find the bad in that, unless, of course, you are an emergency service. In Sweden this is all carefully thought through and those who need to get about grow wings. Although I don’t want to say this, I do wonder at the flapdoodle this country gets into about seasonal changes, and I do shake my head. At Tapselteerie, if the track was impassable, we just didn’t pass it. Sudden holidays, lack of food, the power off, no phone, all meant fun. As long as the stock were fed, milked and checked, we were all quite happy to play. I remember once being at the hairdresser in town and the local police (pronounced poh-liss) popping his head round the door of each shop to recommend that those of us who lived ‘over by’ meaning anywhere but the town, should head home as the hill road was fast being wiped out. Being wiped out is exactly what happens. The terrain is just one hilly blanket and there is no way to tell where the road lies within it. I said to the poh-liss that I wisnae going hame with one side cropped and the other trailing over my right ear, and, by the time I did head overby, someone had already found the road and marked it out which was very thoughtful even if it did take two attempts to top the highest hilly bend with a neat short back and sides.

It seems to me that fear is the killer here. What on earth is there to be afraid of? It’s only snow and puddles after all, although not both together. Ice is a bit different though with its chameleon ability to become the road. When someone ahead of me scooted neatly off the single track road in the un-gritted glen, landing just under the nose of a startled horse munching hay, all of us stopped to help. We hefted and bumped and, on finding all that hefting and bumping quite pointless, popped the inhabitants into our own cars and trundled them home, waving to the horse as we drew away.

And, of course, there is always the promise of Spring. Crocuses are coming, snowdrops pushing into the cold light, birds looking for nest sites. But we should honour winter. There is a beauty in it, a bare stark beauty that should not be missed, like building snowmen, puddle jumping, making soup, wearing bonkers and unmatching hats and gloves. Longing for something to end just lengthens it I find. Our winters are unpredictable, unlike Sweden.

How versatile are you? I personally want to be able to bounce like Tigger (or move like Jagger) whatever comes my way, even if it does require forward planning and something to hold on to. And, there is always a temporarily unbouncing somebody who needs my help.

December 20, 2014 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 150 Space and Time

Last night I watched the International Space Station move across the starry sky. A golden orb it was, arcing overhead, just a tiny dot. Six atronauts are aboard. I waved. I know, sad really, but you never know what a welcome wave can impart across space and time. I’m thinking ‘butterfly wings. The illusion of ‘just a dot’ in the wide sky of a sparsely inhabited island would be no less to anyone who glimpsed it last night between high rise buildings in a big city. And, yet, six whole living people are aboard. To them, we, the whole WE, that is, the Earth, is also illusive. They know we are millions, we are legion, and yet, all they see is a rolling ball of mountains, plains and seas. They don’t see us and we don’t see them, but because of our vast technology, we know we are all where we are.

Let’s look closer.

Up there, last night, NASA emailed a racheting socket wrench. Well, not quite the actual wrench, but a 3D image via a 3D printer that guided the Commander to fashion one himself. It would have taken months for supply vessel to deliver one. Months.

When we look up, we imagine stars to be small sparkly lights dinging about when the clouds are away bothering someone else, even though we know that some of them are much bigger than our own world. Still, as we point them out to a little one, to gaze up in wonder, we don’t think of great lumbering planets, already dying, but of diamonds in the night.

The International Space Station travels at 27,000 km per hour at an orbit height of 431 km, and here I am wondering how long it will take to drive to Doune for Christmas with all that festive traffic. But, my place is down here, not up there, and here is where I need to remember the illusions of time and of space. We know both are always with us, always influencing our decisions, our routines, our days and our nights, but because we cannot control either of them, tame either of them, rule over either of them, we just have to let them be. We must walk with them, through them and around them as fellow miracles.

Now, we may not think of others as fellow miracles. In fact, some are way off miracle grade, in our opinion. But again, this is an illusion. I know that, at this time of year, everyone is ‘goodwilling’ themselves to death, smiling when before there was no smile, giving when we only take for the rest of the year, lifting our care-worn spirits and tired bodies in frightful jumpers and paper hats and telling ourselves it’s fun, and I never did understand why January is all about diets and New Year’s Resolutions. Why don’t we eat sensibly and employ self-control all through the year? Why can’t we give to those who need something we have, and they don’t, every single month? It seems we turn back to ourselves after this crazy happy festive season to face the big black hole inside every one of us all over again.

Black holes. They’re in space too, and in time. Those who are lonely are often closer by than we might like, often in the family. In space, they eat you. As they do down here. For all the technology, the space research, the developments in education, social media, lifestyle (for some) and health care, we are still lost.

And yet, we are found too. If every one of us chose not to turn back in, to scrabble around in the illusion that we are not enough, not clever, not destined for greatness, not important, we might learn, bit by bit, to look out, to see other walking miracles, to learn from them. It isn’t easy for any of us. We all have black holes, black illusions. But those who do make a difference, who do become important, who are clever and definitely more than enough, are those little people who choose not to be consumed by self-pity, guilt and regret. Not one of them was born with anything more than the rest of us. There’s no magic here. Every single one of us grows a black hole. Once we acknowledge that, we can move on beyond it, whether we have ‘everything’ or ‘nothing’.

Another human illusion.

The people who have chosen not to turn back in are the heroes, the warriors, the fighters for life. And they began right here, taking one step at a time, one day at a time.

It’s a new day today. Christmas is coming. But Christmas will also go, leaving us behind.

What will you make of yourself when it does?

December 3, 2014 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 149 Fire and Ice

149 – another Prime Number – indivisable by any number other than 1 or itself.

I like that. That’s me. Others may suggest alternative descriptions of something or someone so resolutely singlular, not many of which would raise me high on any Christmas card list. Words like Selfish, Stand-Offish, Stubborn, Thoughtless, Narcissistic, Ego-Centric and so on and so fourth and fifth and sixth. You get my jist.

But (and there’s always a few of them) in order to carve a furrow along which I am happy to walk, I have to be the one to carve it. No, no, not that way! they might cry. Look, see, here’s a nice womanly path, one full of other nice womanly dudes with behaviour manuals and clean tea towels in their well-ordered drawers. One look is enough for me.

How I have managed to love love love being a wife and mother of many, whilst maintaining my singularity is a puzzle to me. Actually I didn’t manage that maintaining thing to be honest whilst living in the melee. It was a question of forward motion at all times to avoid being crushed, but now, with hindsight, I can see that my intense and consuming need to be singular, even in those times, kept talking to me – an internal sustaining dialogue, despite the requirements of hostessing, mothering, catering and, against humungeous odds, domesticating those in my precarious care.

Anyone who has forged ahead in life has to be of singular persuasion. Forging ahead and tidy tea-towel drawers probably argue with each other. Now, shall I forge today or tidy my tea-towel drawers?

Some might say there are those who could do both and in the same day, but I doubt it, because the whole thing about forging is that it decides not only what you do or where you go, but who you are, your choice of path. Consequences arise inevitably. For example…..if I choose not to cook supper because I am busy writing, which is important to me, this ‘me’ who is completely forging and not a bit hungry, I may well upset you who are:

a. Hungry

b. Not a little irritated that I have abandoned my post.

c. Alarmed at this turn of events, and concerned that, if ‘allowed’ this turn may take an unhealthy hold on me.

If I continue to walk this path it will eventually become the norm, expected and, to a degree, accepted.

Really? Well my mother never told me that and nor did anyone else by the way Jimmy (certainly not him), but it doesn’t mean I can’t learn it now. Anyone can learn it now, any now, however grey and worn and old and tired. People who decide to make a change will always find a guide when they need one. Thing is, you have to take the first and scary step.

When a volcano erupts, it doesn’t ask permission. ‘Oh, now, sorry to bother you, but would it be okay if I erupt next Tuesday night about 10pm, hmmm?’

When a glacier decides to move along a bit, causing masive tidal chaos, seals to flip overboard and huge ships to bonk their noses, it doesn’t check with anyone first. It just moves.

These are prime events, huge events with consequences for us all, and, of course, barely related to any human ‘forgings’, but they illustrate my point to a degree. If I wait for permission to forge, when my internal voice is hot enough to bend steel, then what on earth is my life all about? I may well be remembered at the wake as a Good Woman (with tidy drawers) who was kind to everyone, never said NO, and certainly not in capitals, and who always put others first, which, in my opinion, says only a small thing about me. The BIG THINGS are :

What did I do with my life?

How did I make a difference?

What legacy do I leave and who will learn some wonderful new freedom for themselves, by observing my work?

If the answers are Not Much, Didn’t, and Not Much, then all I have done is make a sandwich.

We are born of Fire and carved by Ice, like mountains. We might take a little trip inside ourselves and remind ourselves of that.

November 9, 2014 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 148 Dark and Light

We were talking, my small-panted grandchildren and I, about the dark. Was I, Are you, Button Granny, frightened of the dark? I was having a ying tong at the time (ying tong piddle etc) and she, the smallest pants, burst in, quite the thing with this fairly big question. Well, I said, thinking, or looking like I was…….I used to when I was little, and then, later, when I was bigger than little, yes I did. Why? she asked.

Good question. They ‘why’ bit always throws me unless it’s obvious, such as Why did you not put your fingers in the fire Button Granny? I thought more, albeit in a slightly compromised state (I can still think at such times, being a woman) and said, Well because I know the dark now.

How? she continued. Oh dear. Well, I said (what would we do without that wonderful word of delay?) I think that I know that, that……there is nothing to frighten me in the dark anymore. Oh, she said, and dashed off to complete her Angry Cabbages Puzzle, which, by the way, I do wonder at. If cabbages are angry in her little mind, then what hope is there? I had, earlier, read both herself and her bigger brother a story about an Elephant and a Bad Baby, who, together, stole two pies, two pork chops, with no thought for the poor pig, nor, I might add, the butcher, two ice creams, two buns and two apples, so I guess Angry Cabbages are small fry by comparison. I am consoled greatly to know that their parents think the book ‘dickerless’ too.

The dark is just the other side of the light. I remember my lovely dad saying just that, as I shook him awake, about yay high, my little heart beating like mad, my feet light and running all the way to his side of the marital bed. He rose and guided me to the bathroom, his voice soothing, regardless of his broken sleep, sleep he badly needed for his busy working day, yet to dawn, and laid a towel on the edge of the bath. He turned on the taps to run tepid water into the tub and then lifted me onto the towel so that my feet dipped into the soothing water. He talked about this and about that whilst I calmed, and then, softly dried my feet and lifted me back to bed with a gentle voice saying gentling things. I don’t know if he stayed till my eyes grew heavy, but I do know that I never saw him leave. He never asked me to tell him of my fears, just seem to understand them and then he washed them away. I thank him for that, although he is now long gone, a Marine Commando, another dad who never talked about the war he lived through, at least, not the dreadful bits.

As a teenager I was still afraid. Not outside, bizarrely, but within the walls of a house. Once, when invited at stay with a schoolfriend, the daughter of a pig farmer, for the night. I lay in the guest room, weighed down with warm bedding and I just knew there were rats in the room. I said to myself, Don’t be Dickerless, but the rat-knowing part of me stayed resolute. Then, as I began to doze off from complete exhaustion, the house around me quiet (which meant the parents were in bed too…..) a rat ran over my blankets. I saw it and I felt it. I spent the night in the cupboard and cried so much at breakfast that my poor mother had to come and collect me, effusive with apologies and, no doubt, embarassed for ever and a day. But I Saw the rat! I wailed. Uh-huh, she said.

The dark is something personal. To each one of us. Maybe it isn’t the night sort of dark, although it can be, but perhaps the inside dark stepping out. A fear of something or someone. Doubts can bring the dark. Crime on television just before bed can continue to play out and develop in our dreams.

Dark is the other side of light. As adults, sentient adults, we know this. But knowing something and it settling into our bones can be a universe, a lifetime apart. I know that when I am troubled, my dreams bring more dark than light. I have downloaded a Sleep App on my android phone (get me) by someone with the most boring voice I have ever heard, whose control over the english language would have sent my english teacher, Miss Machoolish into one of her dizzy spells, and it works, the boredom treatment, never mind the bright lights, the secret garden or any of the stuff he drones on about. I just want out, so I fall asleep.

Now, I love the dark. I know that, inside it, there is calm and peace. I also know that night creatures move at such times, but they don’t want me, they want mice or wandering birds, and, although I may, indeed be a wandering bird, I am way too big for their taste. I sincerely believe that television, for all its great dramas has bigged up the darkness with fear and we believe it. Although I do acknowledge that, living on an island, my dark is just dark with not much inside it to worry any of us, I still think fear as food is something we don’t need. We spend too much time, me included, looking at how things might go wrong. Why should that out-balance them going right? Perhaps more looking at the light in our lives would gentle the dark in us.

Dark is dark. Light is light. It is enough.

October 31, 2014 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 147 If Not Now

Today is Halloween and I already have a witch or two in my head, and if crossed, in my mouth. Not a really bad witch, but one of those ones that knows her power and won’t take any messing. I like her. She is a tad unpredictable, but we work together pretty well in the main, perhaps because I am also a tad unpredictable. Witches are really ‘storybook’ to me, I don’t do black magic at all, although the white ones are worth a second look. I pull them in and shape them up for whatever hurdles I need to cross on a daily basis. My witches are humourous and feisty, clever and quick, kindly but firm, independent, solo, and able to lift above any situation with a switch of a wand. They don’t sport warts, nor crooked chins, nor do they cackle unless it’s whilst watching the ‘bad’ guys fall into their own come-uppance, in which case, I cackle too.

My time on Skye was wonderful. Every time I travel to new places, I meet new people and people fascinate me. I watch them and I listen and I learn. I stayed as a guest in a lovely home overlooking a sea-loch that raged and spat for days, driven mercilessly into a right stooshie by strong winds and heavy rainfall. The rain travelled sideways, whipping into my face and grabbing the breath out of me. It was hard to stand up whilst walking two lively spaniels whose main aim was to find rabbits and chase them, not possible whilst held firmly on a lead, but nonethless, their aim. When we had the rare sighting of a car approaching along the single-track road, we had to bundle into the grass in a fairly undignified heap, the spaniels panting for breath and the blood cut off from my lead-holding fingers. Waving was tricky, lifting just my hand and not a whole spaniel into the air. I was treated like royalty and yet welcomed as part of the family and now I have new friends, new people to learn from, a new bond between us. Just as an aiside, I belong to the Scottish Book Trust who can sponser such trips and I am always delighted to be invited anywhere in Scotland to talk about Island Wife, to sing my songs, to reach out to people who relate to my story, in book groups, libraries, or at any public event. I know, shameless marketing!

Moving on…….

In every area of life, there are people. Machines do a hec of a lot to assist communication, its reach and the speed of it, but we need people or there is no heart. Talking of hearts, I believe hearts are inherently good, even when the outside of someone challenges that theory. Nothing is black or white, we are all both, plus all those rainbow colours in between. Of course, life can throw us from time to time, but none of us want to be remembered, or pidgeon-holed at such times, especially if the outside of us says different. But we can and do define people, if we’re honest, by their behaviour on a certain day/week/month or year. We may be asked to describe someone. We may say…..well, she is very good at her job but dreadfully overweight. Now why do we add that last bit? Is it that we must balance a good thing with such an unnecessary comment? It’s irrelevant to the profile of that person and, sadly, the one thing that will be remembered. Her overweight is something she doesn’t like either, we can be sure of that. I have heard such defining often and, to my shame, said nothing. I remember one of my boys saying once ‘I wonder why we don’t stand up for each other’ and he is right. Why don’t we? Perhaps we don’t want to be the reason for any awkward feelings. After all, we can just remove ourselves can’t we and think how judgemental that comment was and the person who made it. It’s easier that way. But aren’t we judging too by keeping quiet? It has a name this keeping quiet thing. Although we didn’t directly commit the crime, we affirmed it by omission. We omitted to stand and be counted. In this climate of not standing, we need to make changes. I have a rule for myself. If I wouldn’t say something direct to a person, then I won’t say it at all. I can’t always manage it. I am human. But what I aspire to, and practice, will eventually become a habit.

We are all doing our best to manage our lives. We fall, we falter, we stumble and we crack, but we are not china cups and we can mend. Not one single one of us knows what it is like to live another’s life. The saying that we should not judge another man till we have walked a mile in his shoes, is a good one. Even living closely with another human being tells us little of what lies in their hearts, what dreams are shattered, what disappointments hurt, what shame or oppression has done to their sense of self. Little choices make up our pathways, but we cannot all walk straight and tall if those pathways are not going the way we want them to. We redress the balance as best we can, and it takes time to find the normal, sometimes a long time, often a long time. If I have learned anything in my life it is that I am not an island. Although I love solitude and am happy on my own, I still crave a warm smile when life feels like it’s wrapped me in chains and thrown a tsunami in my face. Stopping to smile back, to ask How Are You? and to listen to the answer can lift me far higher than any job-well-done will ever do. I may rush by you, Can’t Stop, and you may understand my busyness, and I may complete the housework in record time, but, I am smile-less deep inside and not lifted up at all. Better, by far, that I dally a while with you beside the dried goods and coffees for a human encounter. We are dead a long time. Life is for us to live or it will carry on without us.

If not now, then when?

October 23, 2014 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 146 Travelling Light

As I pack my bag for the trip to the Reader Room on Skye, I meet all sorts of thought tangles. What to take, what not to take and in which suitcase. The big stripey one or the smaller spotty one? Both have noisy wheels and both weigh too much empty. I won’t need much, will I? Just jeans and tops, a warm jumper, walking boots, books, notes, wash things, face paint, a frock for the night, leggings. The smaller spotty one will do. Until it won’t.

Travelling light is a dream of mine, almost a passion. I want to be light and flexible, easy to move along please, to glide through doorways, over metal bridges without needing CPR on the other side. I want to fit into that space the huge-suitcased lumberers leave between themselves and the dangerous side of the pavement or platform. To scurry, hurtle, dash with momentum and forward thrust. I want to be at my destination before half of these goodly folk have reached the ticket barrier. I catch earlier trains that way, denying myself the takeaway coffee, the creamy bun. I don’t push or shove. I am perfectly respectful of the Overladen, but my constantly working mind maps out the fast route and my feet take me on. I don’t mind queuing at all and must be the only Brit who doesn’t. I just factor it into my dash to wherever I’m going, and speed up where necessary when momentum is paused.

Travelling light, I tell myself, is a state of mind, a decision. Taking too many changes of clothing, just in case, comes from a place of fear. Will I have the ‘right’ thing to wear? Will I be too cold or too hot? Have I the right shoes? All of this is dithering and arrives me laden, out of breath, hot, bothered, and with a load of unnecessary vestments, not one of which gets beyond crumpling itself in the dark depths of my suitcase. But we all do this dithering, if we’re honest.

When I first decided to travel light, it was to a funeral in Yorkshire. I just needed the gear for the church, and mufti. We said bye bye to the kids, minder, collies and cats and left Tapselteerie. It was coming into York that we discovered we had left the cases in the front hall. As our life had always been lived by making good decisions quickly in the face of adversity, we dived into a dress shop and bought this and this and that, then shoes, and arrived at the funeral with the labels still attached. Nobody cared. It was enough that we had made the journey.

The second time was when I went South for a different occasion, on my own. This time, I did have my lightly packed suitcase with me, too heavy even when empty, and handed it over to the nice Easy Jet steward at check-in. I arrived, my case did not. Mum and I dashed to Sainsbury’s, picked this and this and yes, shoes, and off I went to my date. Nobody cared. It was enough that I had made the journey. My case arrived home ahead of me, minus a handle, rendering it completely pointless.

It has happened since, the careful planning, folding, fitting into a small space, all that I think I might need, in case of shipwrecks, strandings, sudden invitations to a military ball, a funeral, a heatwave in October, that my luggage has abandoned me. I have always found a laugh in it, after my initial fish wife impression. I have borrowed clothes I would never buy, applied make-up all wrong for my small pale face, shared toothpaste, boots and even underwear, but, most of all, I was given the chance to find my sense of humour and to lean on it as my support. In the absence of things, I found people, and people can rise over things every time. It’s boundless, the human spirit, warm and strong and constant. Their handles don’t fall off, and in the main, they do what they say they’ll do, and much, much more.

But we forget don’t we, as we live out our lives as islands. We think we must have everything we need with us, just in case. We imagine, with horror, the disaster of being cold, or hot, or lost, or stranded, of our train/ferry/plane being late or worse, cancelled, and yet, in all of those circumstances I have found human warmth and friendship. I have found team spirit, good attitude and kindness. In times of trouble, we look to each other. Sometimes we might consider doing that every day, troubled or not. It might make us less fearful. We might engage in sharing ourselves with others until it’s easy to do, natural, uncomplicated. All of us are alone, but we can travel side by side.

Now I’m going back to fret about packing, about the ferry being cancelled due to gale force 22, the bus breaking down on the way north, and, finally, me arriving on the wrong day.

October 13, 2014 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 145 Standing on Wasps

This is the time of year when our little home welcomes (not) a host of eejit flying things in search of food and warmth. They find warmth sure enough, more than they bargain for as it happens thanks to our electrocution chamber, set high on the kitchen units. It’s blue light bars are obviously very seductive and we often stop our daily round in response to the fizz and spark a fly creates when making contact with 100 volts. We know when a wasp has made such a choice, because the fizzing and sparking goes on for yonks, backed by an appalling stink of burning flesh. Sometimes the shock is enough to spin the fried creature to the floor and my bare feet must be careful not to walk on wasps.

I know this all sounds deeply cruel, but it is mostly pretty quick, although not for us with a good sense of smell. Prior to the installation of this high voltage addition to the kitchen white goods, we were inundated with bluebottles, greenbottles and all other bottle-named egg-laying irritating summer visitors. I could rarely leave any bit of food uncovered. We don’t really understand why, as we don’t live next door to a chicken farm, nor are there horses in next door’s garden. The house is kept reasonably, but not obsessively clean, and the kitchen bin is small and emptied often.

This morning, as I woke to the first frost of winter, white-laced fingers of cold stretched over Tommy’s field, I thought about making choices. Yes, I know it’s a bit far-fetched to suggest that a fly with huge eyes and a very small brain could possibly say, with hindsight, that perhaps diving into the fire was not it’s finest decision, but, we could, for we have small eyes and a huge brain and thus decide our own fates, to a great degree. I thought about all my poor decisions, and ran out of fingers. Fortunately, I cannot remember them all, for there were many and will be more. Thing is, we make choices based on not just the situation, but how we feel about it. Sometimes it is mighty difficult to be objective in an assessment of those two uncomfortable bedfellows. Assessing a situation, well, that’s okay, I can do that. You may not see it the same way, but at least we both have something visual, something solid to poke at, to give shape and form and texture to.

But how we both feel about it, well that can change everything. You might say I am wrong to feel the way I do, referring back to the situation, the physicality of it’s form. Even if we both completely agree on how we see it, a different emotional response is inevitable, and those emotions are what guides our hearts.

Perhaps the key is to keep quiet and say nothing. Perhaps this keeps us all safe from attack. But surely, if I keep quiet and you keep quiet, how can we move on, with all those emtions racketing round our insides like trapped wind? I don’t have an answer. Many of my poor decisions involved speaking out, and thereafter spending whole days in regret, madly trying to pull the foot out of my mouth.

What we choose to say and choose not say is up to us each one. Speaking out is an action. I remember being urged by one son to ‘hear the words behind the words’ when I was raging at some comment aimed at me by Granny-at-the-gate. She just said whatever she wanted to say, and I was sometimes in the cross hairs, but the real woman was a flaming marvel. She was loyal, supportive, funny, creative. A woman who taught me a great deal of things through her wisdom and experience. He, my son, saw her words as one thing, I, with all my hang-ups and a deep sense of always slightly falling short of the mark, as another. Without his view on things, I might have spent all week walking on wasps, whereas Granny-at-the-gate had forgotten it all by coffee time.

Back to the flying eejits. Although I have killer white goods in my kitchen, I also have compassion. If I see a flying insect caught in a spider’s web, I will leap up to free it. I know, it’s ridiculous of me, especially as I am so fond of spiders. I just hate to see anything trapped and struggling to escape. I feel the same about humans, not that I see many of them caught in spider’s webs.

Compassion is the key here. However differently we see a situation, however polar our emotional responses, if we have compassion, we can allow that difference. The situation doesn’t change, but we do, and, in the wake of that change, we meet the peace of acceptance.

And then we can look up to the great wide sky of things once more, and move on.

unlike the flying eejits.

October 8, 2014 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 144 Cake Wrecks

Okay so I fell out with my almost new mixer. To be completely honest, it was mutual dislike at first sight. You see, before this alien arrived in the tanned arms of Dennis the Delivery Boy, who left boyhood a wee whiley back, only nobody wanted to upset him by saying so, I had an old Magimix. It had worked for the dangerous granny for years, even had a customised red gingham skirty drape made to pretty it up on the kitchen counter, and, for the life of me, I cannot think why I moved it on at all. It was still working fine when I did, which makes it even more dreadful. I generally never move things on at all. They fall apart right here on my patch and are flung in the bucket, unless there are some attractive parts that might serve as bird scarers or dingle dangles for my mobile collection. On the rare occasions I have moved something on, it would have been something I no longer, nor ever would again, need – such as 8 inch platform PVC boots or tooth whitener (way too late), or perhaps a box for buttons marked Buttons which I never unwrapped, being an olympian button owner and requiring a school trunk at the very least for my supply.

This mixer and I growled at each other a lot. I even resented the fat smug way it’s oversized bottom took up way more room than it needed forcing me to squash up my vitamin collection, spice and herb racks and the butter dish which now doesn’t stay in line at all, jutting out like a naughty dinghy in a race line up. Every time I walked past this disorder I felt cross. I did try to make peace, at first, but the flaming bowl would never assemble without making a HUGE fuss and resisting any connecting with the launch pad. ‘The motor will not work unless the bowl is fitted correctly.’ I know this. I know this a LOT! Finally we make some sense and the damn thing is correctly fitted and I am moderate to fair backing gale force 8 but, nonetheless, we are running and although very little is moving beyond the slicing blade, I am confident we will become friends one day, or, at the least, unhappy colleagues.

At least ten times, during what was a quick whizz in dangerous granny’s magimix, I must twist off the lid and free up the glued on cake mix from the sides. Ten times I fit the bowl incorrectly, twist on the lid, turn the knob into a long silence (all the way up to 6), turn it back, twist off the lid and fit the bowl….well, let’s say eventually I get it right. By the time I have added the eggs, and flour and gone through the whole gluey infuriating process again I have gone right off baking. As the cake rises (probably in a temper) in the oven I wash up 37 pieces of a mixer I loathe with all my heart and re-connect it with its large bottom, cussing like an old fishwife.

After a reasonable cooling off period I try again. Cake tins are empty throughout the land and folks are beginning to revolt. Well, himself is, anyway. I begin. Nothing has changed. This mixer has no shame. Half way through the dreadful process the motor dies. No correct fitting tactics work. I am apre eggs and pre flour. In other words, a sloppy curdled mess. I make a decision. Tipping and scraping out the yellow goo into a big bowl I march the offending mixer out to the wheelie bin and throw it in with all my strength. I then march back to collect all the attachments, the dough hook, the meringue beater, the juice extractor, the julienne, if you don’t mind, plus all other disks and the instruction pamphlet in 17 languages, none of them English, and throw them in too. Feels fantastic.

My next attempt at cake making, is ably assisted by my lovely neigbour who lends me his super duper Kenwood. It purrs along, sounding quite in control and not minding much about being fitted incorrectly at all. I turn the speed up just a tad, turn my back and turn it back again mighty quick at the flash, the crash and the smoke pouring from the motor casing. Not only have I blown up my lovely neighbour’s super duper Kenwood, but I am, once again, half way through a cake. I will have to make amends for this expensive disaster I know, at some point, but, for now, I must carry on regardless and not give up, however tempting that may sound. I select a large glass bowl, pour in the mix, grab my wooden spoon, flex my muscles (I kind of remember where they used to be) and begin to beat. It’s flipping hard work, by the way and to think our grannies had no choice! After one bout of fast battering, the bowl falls neatly in half, the falling half landing squarely on my bare toes and spewing floury contents all across the kitchen carpet. (Never go for kitchen carpet. It’s got to be lino every time).

Now this is me – undaunted by such ghastlies. I scoop the carpet-flavoured cake mix into a plastic bowl this time, adding the rest and beat on, quite admiring the red flecks of carpet and inspired to add cherries and almond essence for the hell of it. It can hardly rise, this unfortunate. It doesn’t, well, it does for a while, then sinks like it’s worn out putting on a face. They said it tasted weird, but none was left over at the end.

My lovely neighbour was most understanding, albeit sad to think of a cake-less future. I, for one am happy my cake-baking days are over, for I will not beat by hand again, and nor will I spend a fortune on a load of futuristic rubbish that makes a huge stooshie out of everything it does, or doesn’t do, and then dies when it feels like it which is just after you’ve thrown away the packaging and receipt.

Oh Granny (that’s my granny, not the dangerous one), how I wish I had never ‘moved on’ your lovely wedding gift of a Kenwood Chef with it’s clundering attachments, big sturdy bowl and great attitude!

Does anyone have it?