July 22, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 83 Travelling

Most of the time life is predictable to a degree. Not a huge degree, out of choice, for me, but there is something calming about a routine, until it becomes boring which is quite a different feeling altogether. A lot of us, I notice, live alongside ‘boring’ doing everything we can to cheer it up into a fizzbangpop now and again, to add colour and texture with a weekend social or a new frock, or, more recklessly, a Wednesday dinner date. For the rest of the time, we allow the long chain of endless weeks to pull us along in a sort of mindless stupor, our eyes searching the week-day gloom for a glimpse of the weekend- those two short days when we can really be ourselves.

It is hard to be myself in an uncomfortable suit, one that grabs at various bits of me whenever I sit down and overheats and confines me until I fear I might have turned into a lizard. I must bow and scrape to those I don’t even like, never mind respect enough for any such bowing and scraping. I must hear things I don’t want to hear, witness unkindnesses about which I feel I can do nothing, and, finally, at the end of this day, I must push my way home for a short rest, if I am lucky, before doing it all over again the next morning.

Now, I know this doesn’t apply to those who love what they do and have made their life into the right shape for them, but I really believe these people number few. What they have done is to say ‘ How can I make life fit around me?’ and not ‘How can I make myself fit into life?’

Everywhere I go, when I see someone out of kilter with their work, their lives, I will ask them what they want to do. Many will shrug and say they have no choice, are in too deep now, too committed with a mortgage or debts or schools or whatever, but I will challenge that. It isn’t always a popular challenge, and I am not in the least bit surprised. When a person challenged me, at a time when I was trying to squeeze myself into a life two sizes too small, I would flap them away as I would an annoying wasp. And all because their questions touched me deeply, threw me off balance and into a black hole from which I could see no way out.

How do I go from here, where I don’t want to be, to somewhere else, when I can’t see my way ahead? I don’t even know what I want to do, how to make my life fit me. All my clothes are two sizes too small and I have no cash to buy more. Nor do I want to admit the defeat I will inevitably feel when my friends challenge my crazy idea. It just isn’t sensible.

How do we define sensible? Is ‘sensible’ just a word made acceptable by the world we live in now? A hundred years ago, the way we live now would have been considered completely un-sensible by every living soul. So, which meaning do we choose to believe?

If I know anything now, I know that if a person lives with stress that leads to unhappiness, they will become unwell. Learning to manage stress is saying ‘I am not important enough to honour myself and how I want to live.’

It takes courage to make big changes. The fall-out can range from disapproval to downright rejection, but this blows away in time and is forgotten. Whenever I find myself doubting on the shores of a new ocean, I remind myself of the time I walked away from work with no income. I remember the reactions around me.

I also remember the smiles and admiration from the same people when I made myself a new life.

If this is the encouragement you need. Take it. It can be your truth too.

July 20, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 82 Light and Dark

In the sunlight everything changes and not just the light, although light is always good. But what about the other side of light?

Is it ‘dark’?

Well, I wonder…….

In the life I lived as Island Wife, and the short wifely part before the Island came to me and I to it, I learned about the circles.

Circles of life and death, or dark and light, of hope, humour, faith lost and found and lost and found and round and round we go again.

And again.

In the very olden times, long before Christ, long before me, people were here. People who lived and loved and lost and found, just like we do. In ancient times, ancient rites of passage, the circle of life was felt, sometimes sharply, sometimes like a warm and gentle breeze. The taste of it was on every tongue, it’s sound in every ear as days, seasons, months, years and generations rose and fell and rose again. Circles, carved into stones marked the way over mountains, through thickly wooded valleys and across wastelands.

Sometimes I meet a stranger and just know that his or her circle has just bumped into mine, overlapped, even, and we speak as old friends. It has little to do with anything. I may know nothing about them, nor they about me. We may not appear to share very much common ground, nor life experience, and yet we both feel it, this connection, and we see it in each other’s eyes, as we touch on another’s very soul.

Coincidence, is a modern word. Not one that any of our wise old, land/sea-living forebears would ever have felt in their mouth. Minds knew little about their own mathematical design, but were honoured and accepted as a vital part of every person, from young child to old crone. People were listened to and heard in the quiet sway of life’s sweet turning.

Oh, I am not saying life was a breeze, far from it, but inside any hardship a man or woman would take their place and work it for the best. Music and dancing, laughter and conversation, sharing and visiting, all these played an essential part. We, in this life, have crowded our heads with our own loneliness. We have filled the air with raucous pings and beeps that drown out the birds. We walk with headphones on looking straight ahead towards our goal. We miss the ‘gentle.’

But, the good news is that we can change. Not as a collective, but as individuals. Wherever we live. And, if our life is slowly taking us further and further away from all that we know we need, we can change it.

Trust me, I’ve done it.

One day years back, we arrived at the ferry a little late, a little fraught, our long journey in our minds and mine full of what I might have forgotten to pack. The ferry was delayed. Murphy was out that day, for we had deadlines, as the others in the big queue may also have had. As we walked up and down the line of cars, we could feel the irritation, the frustration. People sighed and tutted and kept checking their watches, their mobiles. Suddenly, through the open window I heard a fiddle. We went to investigate. A group of musicians were playing a jig and people started to dance along the pier. Car doors opened, people came out with their mouths open.

And we danced. As the ferry rolled in, passengers lined the decks, smiling and pointing.

And us? Well, we had become the music and, as we circled and spun, not one of us remembered the delay.

July 18, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 81 – A Different Day

One day I’m feeling like a snail. Everything is heavy and troublesome and there’s a lot of can’t be bothereds hanging around the house. It’s nothing to do with weather or the daily round or because there’s nothing in particular to look forward to. I just wake up with it and it gets dressed with me and follows me downstairs. I can feel it on skin, taste it in my mouth and, although I can and do distance myself from it by refusing to engage with it, or even mention it, it won’t sleep till I do.

The next is completely different. I follow the same basic routine. I’m not going to meet anyone for lunch, or to browse the shops or to have my legs waxed. Nothing exciting at all, in fact, and yet everything is. Today, it’s fun to plan – what to cook for supper, whether to walk now or later, or both, which radio station to tune into. The cobwebs of yesterday, that hung like black reproaches between everything that doesn’t move, are all but invisible, and I didn’t move them.

When I walk, I almost dance along. The flies still bazz about my face, but I don’t mind them. I notice the trunks of the ash trees and think they look like giraffe necks with their polka dots of lichen. Yesterday I wouldn’t have seen that at all. Yesterday, they were just the same old trees.

Down on the shore I watch the flood tide rising ever so slowly, the meniscus line curving against the black basalt, trembling in resistance until the force of salt water behind it is too great, and I can hear it sigh in defeat, as it lifts another centimetre or two. Then is does it all over again and will until the sea spills onto the land, claiming it for herself. For another six hours, these shells, these otter-crunched mussels, last nights goose droppings and these bunches of thrift, now past their bloom, will disappear. The sun-dried sea-weed will fill again with water, whereas now I can turn them to powder between my fingers.

I haul a broken ash limb to the side of the track, and stop to wonder why it suddenly parted from the trunk when there was no storm to tear it away. I follow the tracks of the night creatures, the deer, and a calf by the looks of those little light hoof prints. I watch the triangular bees (they’re not bees, but they are definitely triangular) dip their long tongues into the vibrant purple blooms of the wild thyme. I look up to watch as a group of noisy Shell Duck run all the way along the surface of the sea loch, their feet barely touching the water. Where the loch widens, they sink into a gentle swim and grow silent. Above the high water line, marked by deep deposits of blackened kelp, seeds of gorse pop like corn and, somewhere behind me, a bird dashes a snail against a stone until the shell finally breaks. A small fishing boat speeds in through the narrows after a fishing trip and, as the men sort the catch, a bicker of gulls dive and swoop for the scraps, upsetting the water, until all is gone and the sea lies down flat once more.

All is still again.

As I wander home, I can make no sense of the difference a day makes.

July 16, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 80 Acorns

Let’s say I have a dream. Not one that requires a fairy and a wand, but more like I’ve felt a change in the wind and I need to tighten my sail. Oh, I’ll still arrive at the next shore in the end, but I could make all the difference to the quality of that arriving, if I made a correction or two.

Well that’s fine. In the bag you might say. After all, my big and agile brain has come to this conclusion. I can just sit back now and watch it happen.

Wrong.

As the day begins I am a veritable bounce of good intentions. I go about my list of tasks in the way I usually go about my list of tasks, but this time my step is lighter and my inner movie is definitely Disney. I reel in the line of hours, wind them around my spool. Done.

Ahead of me, I can see the old habit coming closer. It’s part of the pattern, of course, so it will come closer and closer until it is right in my face and looking at me expectantly.

This is when I begin to tell myself that the whole commitment thing is pointless. Who’s looking anyway? Who cares? I am still dashing along with verve and vigour, sails full, ahead of the game, aren’t I?

But I know different. So how to make this change, that’s the question, and the answer is, baby steps. I just need to correct my sail once, just once, and then to feel the shift and tell myself, Well Done!

Then, do it again the next day.

People we admire are always those who overcome themselves. We all know what it is to be ‘ok’, doing away, not bad, and other such beige states of being. We also, I think, imagine that those who overcome themselves, and therefore the mountains that block out their sun, are just lucky.

Lucky Schmucky. No such thing.

You don’t get through to the Olympic team by luck, nor to Wimbledon, nor to the finals of The Voice.

What those ‘lucky’ people chose to do was to tighten their sails every single day and often during it. They pushed themselves when others sat back in the sun with a pint pondering the meaning of life. Over long lonely hours, they kept practising over and over and over again until they stepped out into the light with a Da-dah! and we all marvelled at their superhuman-ness, something each one of them would deny with a derisive snort.

I may not want to play at Wimbledon, join the Olympic team or sing on TV, but there will be something in my life I just know I want to change, if only that fairy would appear with her wand and make it happen. If I do nothing, nobody will know. But I will. And when the fat lady sings, will I know that at least I tried?

We found an acorn and planted it in the woods, just pushed it into the soft peaty floor and moved on.

So did the acorn. Now, it’s shade from the sun and shelter in a rain shower.

July 14, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 79 On Waiting

There is something about waiting that can create an internal chaos.

Waiting for a train or a flight. Waiting for a day to come or a person.

Waiting for life to change, or start, or end. Waiting for seeds to grow, for my turn to come in or to go out. For guests to arrive or leave.

For a new baby. For test results.

That last one has to be the worst.

I knew a very old lady, once, who had been a maid all her working life. She was deeply proud of being a maid, and would make sure you got it right, the title right, if, perchance you got in a fankle over political correctness. This woman had no time for such malarky. Just say it like it is, she would say, wagging a bent finger under your nose. Maid is maid, however you try to say it.

She used to name certain days, waiting days. These days, for her, as a country girl, were usually connected with the weather. A waiting day meant the sky was shut, the wind all blown out, everything just standing there or hanging there……waiting. Of course, the weather matters a lot when your family are land workers, which hers were. Whether to plant, of plough, harvest or lay out in rows to dry, all dependant on the weather, and if the weather was waiting for something to happen, it never explained what. Could be rain. Could be there was a kick-ass gale in the planning, just off stage and hidden from human view. In her day, there was the wirless, but no fancy satellite information about high pressures over Iceland. Just the local yokel out with his moisture meter – or his eyes looking up and his own gut feeling.

On her waiting days, she would do something. Clean the silver (not her own) or pull out the beds for a good ‘doing’ or tidy handkerchief drawers, that sort of something. Anything, basically, to fill in the waiting time, and, in the doing of something, she might calm her own anxieties.

We can learn from her.

If, whilst waiting, we focus on what we are waiting for, knowing with perfect clarity that, in doing so, we make absolutely no difference to the thing, but only serve to discombobulate ourself into a right stooshie, we might consider a different approach. Of course, if the thing we wait for is scary and deeply buried in the underworld, such as the results of a medical test with an alarming set of possibles attached, we will be unable to erase it completely from our thinking. But the mind is quite easily led, I have found, and can be eased into a different place, at least for a little while.

I agree that giving the silver a clean, supposing we have any in the first place, or pulling out the beds for a good ‘doing’ are hardly exciting options, but that, I believe, is the key. Dullard tasks can soothe our brilliant and dangerous minds into a calm humdrum.

It doesn’t take the worry away. It doesn’t change the end result. But it does ease the path from breakfast to lunch, from hour to hour, from Monday to Friday. It won’t be a smooth one, nor easy, but when the demons trip us up and make us fall, the best we can do is get up and try again.

July 13, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 78 – Reality Check

I have sailed the seas in a ship made of diamonds

pearl coloured sails and the moonlight to guide

I have swum in the depths and played in the shallows

felt the child in my womb jump for joy in the night

but wherever I go, that’s where I’ll find me

there’s no running away.

For I always need to come home again

even if voices may beg me to stay.

When I write a song, I just let the words flow. Nonsense a lot of the time, but this doesn’t bother me. Nonsense never did. What bothers me is what the world calls reality.

If I set off into reality, to scrub a bathroom, say, or plunder the veg counter in the local shop, I can call it whatever I want. If it’s me, which I usually am, I will find faces among the brassicas and patterns in the legume basket. Bananas are definitely grammar (( as are the full stops of blueberries, although the mushy ones could be commas. In the bathroom, I can set up quite a rhythm with the loo brush around the bowl, and a serious counterpoint if I add the squirts of cleaner at just the right moment. Over at the basin, there is a splendid piece of art going on with shaving foam droplets and toothpaste in a lovely concave composition, one I almost don’t want to wipe away.

Downstairs, the new washing machine having finally laid down moorings (I found the spirit level), hums and sloshes and the washing powder tin on the shiny white top, thrums a little to itself. In the kitchen, I can whizz, chop, stir fry or simmer. The fridge, faulty, bless it, but still going, hums and burps and emits sudden gurgles, much like a happy baby. When the man of the house makes a sandwich, the floor takes on a wonderful speckle, that looks as if we had an early flurry of snow, and when the little dog laps her water, the spilled drops reflect the sunlight and sparkle like jewels.

On the line, the breeze pulls and pushes at the washing, slowly, at first and faster as the water moisture lifts back into the sky, whence it came, via the tank in the loft, of course.

I have flown as high as the geese and then higher,

burst like a seed through the hymen of space

I have watched a star explode into millions

new lights for the darkness, in patterns of lace

But wherever I go, that’s where I’ll find me

there’s no running away

for I always need to come home again

even though voices may beg me to stay.

lucky that.

July 11, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 77 – On a Wire

Yesterday I decided to make the trip into town first thing, before the sun turned Miss Daisy into a hot chick. I set off with my list, a short one, and Sula and my water bottle. Fleetwood Mac exploded from the speakers and as I sped my way over the hills and round the bends, I sang along, my words whipping out of the open windows to startle Oni’s slow sheep. They face another day of seeking shelter from the heat, poor things with their flanks heaving and their faces attacked by clouds of flies. There was almost only me on the road, apart from an early harrier hunting in the heather and high high overhead, a golden eagle, lazy on the thermals, sliding across the sky.

In the harbour, the sea mist had erased all the boats. Although the sun would soon burn it off, for now, the bay was mysteriously empty of all but the crying of the gulls. Parking spaces were plentiful and I watched people in their summer clothes moving along the pavement, in and out of picnic shops, excited and smiling, with the sun twinkling their eyes. Today, I thought, it is easy to forget bad weather, troubles, niggles. Today, beneath the wide cerulean blue, we can all see the best in everything, even in each other. I met some people, greeted old friends, shared snippets of my life with them, as they did with me.

Weather affects all of us. When it is bright and sunny, we smile and laugh and feel like we can take over the world, our own little one, anyway. When the cold bites our very bones and the rain threatens to dissolve us, we notice things we never bothered with under the warm sun. Bad weather can be a synonym for the bad times, the times in our lives when we face demons, disasters, worries and fears. The death of a loved one, the cruelty of unkind words; illness and despair, debts and doubts. Bad weather. These times come to all of us. Nobody escapes them, but I have observed very different ways of living those times out, and I have wondered to myself……….does this person just have a natural ability gene, one that lifts them from despair, and, therefore, is it just a question of having this lucky gene or not having it?

I have decided not.

So what is the key? Glass half full, glass half empty? Yes, I know that one, but those whose glass is half empty rarely recognize it in themselves.

I believe that working through the bad weather times requires a certain attitude, one that does not expect life on a plate. These people understand that bad times will come, and have learned not to take the good times for granted. I am not talking about squirreling away bags of wonga for all those rainy days, nor any other form of holding on, but of quite the opposite.

Of letting go.

Of generosity of spirit and heart. Of sharing both a feast and a famine with others. Of a welcome in our eyes, whether sparkled by the sun or the rain. Of giving and giving more, not materially, but of ourselves, our time, our compassion, our love. And when the piddling niggles about who ate the last piece of cake threatens to bring back a storm of ancient grievances, we might lift ourselves onto the wire and look down on our little lives and ask ourselves this:

What will I be remembered for when I am wiped out like the boats in the harbour? Did I shine warmly on others, enough to lift the mist?

I missed Jimmy Molloy as I drove out of town. I remember him in the sunshine, his twinkle, his kindness, his cheeky remarks. He shone enough to lift any mist.

July 9, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 76 – Webcage

This morning, early, I took my camera outside to capture what looked like froth covering everything. Trees, long grass, bushes and the fence. Closer up I recognized the froth.

Spider webs.

They got me thinking.

Yesterday, in the hot bright sunshine, I saw not one of them. They were all invisible until this morning’s heavy dew painted them clearly for my eyes to see. And that is the whole plan. If I was a fly, this could be dead dodgy. I could ping into one of those sticky tendrils and be lunch in seconds. If I was a wasp or one of our honey bees, I might be dinner instead, for no spider will attack things with stings immediately, for very obvious reasons. And they always know, the spiders. I have watched, many times, a stinging thing fly into a web and become part of it whilst the spider dashes out, stops dead and dashes back again to wait. Things with stings have more time for an escape plan.

In life, we all know the feeling of being caught in a web. The ‘spider’ in charge may be bigger and more powerful than us, or half our size, but this fact matters not one jot in the end. Once we are trapped, and held fast by the web, we can either struggle ourselves into an even tighter fix, or we can work ourselves free.

It might be our job or aspects of it that spins an invisible web to catch us. It might be a relationship, or aspects of it. It might be habits, contacts, colleagues or our own mistaken need to repeat old patterns. Whatever is holding us, weakening us so that we ever so gradually dull our own wits and lose purchase on our freedom, we have to recognize it, and therein lies the rub, for we will blame anything and anyone as our wings grow weak and our fears take control.

As a result of becoming trapped in a webcage, I might take on and develop bad habits. I will probably grow fat or I will grow thin. I will become a bit manic (if it is possible to become a ‘bit’ manic) about a fitness routine, or my own private space or the way I like things done until I can no longer see anyone but myself in relation to the rest of humankind. What I will not see is that, if I just rest a little, I can probably work out an escape, because resting means dilemma to me. I cannot stop moving, because if I stop moving, I will have to think and the inside of my unhappy head is the last place I want to spend any time at all.

But this is exactly what I need to do.

Someone, possibly more than one someone, once said that in order to find a way out of the pain, we have to stay inside it, engage with it, to accept it, and to move on beyond it. It sounds ghastly at best, but from experience I know it to be true. The alternative is a lifetime of running, and not from one bad situation to another, although that is exactly what it will be, but from our own self.

What we all need to do to free our wings is to stop and say…….ok, Pain, talk to me.

If our job/partner/lifestyle is slowly killing us, we must find the courage to acknowledge it and take action. Yes, it is scary, but I have done it and felt terrified in a strange land, one I now know well with views and spaces and light and fun; not one of which I saw before I acknowledged the dark pain and fear, reminded myself that I have wings and a sting,and rose myself up and away into a new sky, trailing a strand of web.

July 8, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 75 – The Show goes on

When we are little we are all taught good manners, how to be polite, how to be giving, although no-one can teach us how to want to be polite or giving. This doesn’t seem to bother our elders and betters whose main aim is to make us look like we are genuine in our giving, so they won’t appear lax in parenting skills in front of the family or, worse, Uncle and Aunt Grumfuttock, who live next door and who claimed visiting rights the day they elevated themselves from plain old Mr and Mrs.

There can be a chasmic gap between giving and wanting to give; from saying sorry when it wasn’t your foot that got in the way of Aunt Grumfuttock’s stick but the other way round, thus making it NOT your fault that she now flounders at carpet level like a fat walrus on the rocks, to offering very small crustless sandwiches around at tea time to women with orange faces and big bottoms and answering inane questions about what you want to be when you grow up – something you no longer plan to do – not if it involves any more of this giving, which looks more like giving in.

What to do with this gap? I told my kids it was absolutely fine to think one thing and say another, after all, they didn’t feel in the least bit sorry and nor did I think they should, although I went through the ghastly mother-motions of enforced sorryings, in order to keep some equilibrium. What I wanted to do was bop the Smug Adult myself, but that would have caused no end of on-going problems, especially if the SA was a teacher or policeman or relation which was usually the case. I had turned the process into a fine art myself, long ago losing the initial false guilt that the world so happily heaps on our shoulders. What you do is this……..imagine a different ending for the old so-and-so who won’t back off till that Sorry word falls out of your mouth They could explode, for instance, or fall into the sewage works, or be filled with helium and float all the way to Australia. They might take the biggest cake, the one you filled with laxative, or disappear down a rabbit hole and come face to face with the Red Queen. You could make a mouse run up a trouser leg or, better, a sheep tick. Let your imagination run free.

Another gap is between helping and interfering.

I practice the same mental acrobatics when someone tries to be helpful and is quite the opposite. I tell myself that they have never really landed inside their own lives which is why they invest great effort in fixing mine. Initially I admit, I feel a prickle of sweat on the back of my neck and the need to rise up and defend my choice of action, one I mistakenly shared with them. I should know by now that to keep quiet about what I plan to do is the only way to avoid unhelpful opinions, but I am consistently foolish, sharing my ideas with one who just can’t help but leap in to fix me.

Picturing funny endings frees me from growing a mental garden of resentment, anger, bitterness, hate. If I can picture Aunt Grumfuttock filling with helium and floating high over the rooftops at the same time as she is glowering at me through her mean little eyes with her pudgy paw held out for her stick and her apology, I can say whatever she wants to hear and turn away with a wonderful picture in my mind and a big smile on my face. If a person steps over the boundary of helpfulness (because I asked for it) given freely, and without obligation, or so I thought, and becomes overly ‘helpful’ (when I didn’t ask for it) given at a price, I can still be gracious-ish whilst thinking what I like.

We all face people every day who ‘make’ us feel we need to protect ourselves. Instead of taking it seriously, taking it on, I say take it off and make it fun. There is so much ‘wonderful’ in our lives to focus on. When someone grows tiresome we may need to find a way to point out our boundaries, but, in the meantime, the picture of Aunt Grumfuttock, floating like a UFO among the stars with a sheep tick inside her bloomers, will do.

July 5, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 74 – Spontaneous Adventures

I rarely plan adventures. They just happen to me, swooping round corners and whopping me in the eyeballs.

Here I am ! Look at me!

And there it is, the adventure, full frontal and blocking my path.

I could, of course I could, step around it. I could cite a whole gamut of plausible and dull reasons why I can’t take this adventure by the hand and let it lead me astray; like it’s nearly lunchtime for instance, or I must catch this ‘dry’ for a load of wet sheets, or it’s only Wednesday and nobody adventures on a Wednesday.

But, I say, and but again, the best times I have had in my bonkers life have been spontaneous adventures, when logic is wheeched over the fence leaving ample room for imagination and emotion to fill the inner void. Then, and only then, does the adrenaline fizz like bubbles in my veins and my head feel light as goose down. I never get that fizz hanging out the sheets.

Yesterday we were planning to turn left. The day had arrived in its customary shapeless grey but as we walked the little girls through the woods that climbed into the sky, we noticed a patch or two of blue. Avoiding as best we could, the manic desire to search for more, we found a bridge with fast-running peaty mountain water and looked down to play Pooh Sticks. We went under the bridge and sloshed over the slippy rocks, and climbed up the banks till our knees were brown as caramel and we were dizzy with giggles. When we looked up again the day had shucked off the shapeless grey and the sky smiled blue and gold and warm.

So, instead of turning left for home, a sensible lunch preparation and an even more sensible change of trews and wellies, wet on the inside, (overly enthusiastic Pooh Stickery), we turned right and headed up and over the hill on the skinny track that first laid itself down, hundreds of years ago, beneath the feet of animals. We turned up the tunes and sang our way up and down again, stopping only to remove a jumper or to admire the view or to encourage a mother and lamb to step onto the verge. We passed by the little school shed with its beach hut stripes (The Square Rainbow) and turned down the track to where the little ferry would take us over to lunch. We pulled back the slide to reveal the red square, and the little boat cast off it’s moorings and began to move towards us.

Lunch, as I have said before, is a really delicious experience at the Boat House. The welcome is warm and gentle, the food superbly prepared and presented. We sat outside, watching the seabirds, and eating fresh prawns and I don’t mean those piddling shrimps most people understand to be prawns. I mean island prawns, big and meaty and you only need four to be quite filled up. The bread was straight from the baking oven with a lovely crust, the salad crisp and fresh and the dressing delicious. But, it is not just the food that makes this place, run by Becky and Emma, so very good. It’s the light in their eyes, the passion and enthusiasm for their business, their island welcome, their no-fuss-about-anything attitude. They think outside the box. They don’t say NO. In fact, there is not a single NO visible on the island – such a joy to see in a world where NO is the most overly used word in all public places.

On the way home over the hill, past the Square Rainbow, we stopped to buy fresh strawberries from a roadside stall with an honesty box. It was the last bag and as we put our money in the little till, and I saw the amount of cash already there, I thought…. how wonderful it is to adventure, to take risks, whether it be leaving an honesty box by the roadside, or opening a restaurant on a tiny little island or simply by turning right instead of left.