Author: judyfairbairns

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Island Blog – Flexidextrous and Kate

Movement. Moving on, moving beyond, moving just moving, is it. It, by the way, is just a pronoun, and one to be employed cautiously. It cautioned, she, he, they, them, into places they were frickin fed up of being. I remember the rote, the quote, the confines of being a english lit student, and one who challenged. I wish I could go back to the 15 year old me, the one who disturbed until.

The until came to bite me in the butt. No matter, I got away from galoshes and Sunday Itchy Pants, my perfect companion, gone now, I remember her so very well. She galoshed me, in her Sunday Itc hy Pants over three long years and joined me in all the hijinks. We tore the ridiculous confines and restrictions into opportunities. Paper chances, and we employed them from Monday on. I miss her. Without her, I would have been so lost in that straightupnoarguament place, run by women who had no idea about sex, hoping for it, but, in their day, it wasn’t acceptable pre marriage. They were of their time. However, war loomed, men would go and not just be home for Christmas.

She was in the moment. Not stupid, not lost, strong. A voice, I can hear her now with her Hallo as she walked towards me near Battersea , and that pavement stretch was nothing. She knew me. I knew her. Neither of us have had an easy marriage. Who has btw? And we met in a wine bar and it was almost as if we were still the elves who, flexidexrous, confounded authority. I rest there, my lovely Kate.

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Island Blog – Authentically Mongrel

Talking last evening with a delightful friend, she challenged me about someone I labelled. Then, later, I challenged her back. Both of us, at each challenge, paused for thought. So much that dribbles out of our mouths comes from learned opinions, until, that is, we are challenged on a single word, a resolution, a definition, a dereliction. This child is…….this man/woman is…….my father was, my mother is. He can’t fit in because he is……….She is just a……… and so on. We were taught these labels by those who influenced us at an early age, and, without thought, we continue the line.

So, let us think. Let us notice. So very many of us, gazillions, I reckon, have felt out of the uniform kilter, like our underpants are showing and everyone is laughing, or judging, or turning away in disapproval. Crowd thinking, or Coward thinking. If you are like me, all you want is inclusivity, gentle acceptance, the chance to learn whom another really is, what makes them tick, because I know they have a story that isn’t mine and through their story, I can learn to be the best person I can be. Surely I am not alone in this? The current, and understandable (sort of) culture of fear around invasion on all levels, the one that throws we Ordinaries, into a big old D I Lemma, is here, whether we fight it or engage with it. We cannot stop it, and nor should we, because there is learning here, there are stories, life experiences, if shared, that can juxtaposition our ingrained thinking. We can lift above what was considered THE RIGHT WAY. I won’t fiddle in a yelling crowd. Nobody is listening to the new music in such a place, but I do believe that if just a few among the gazillions refuse to label and, thus, to marginalise, to exclude, there is hope for this blood-stained world of ours.

I spent my sentient childhood knowing I was different. Not a fitter-in. I knew not the language to speak myself out, and thereafter to stand strong, too swamped in middle class beliefs, in how girls should (SHOULD) behave, whom is acceptable as a boyo, what is okay to wear, etc. My folks I judge not. They were of their time and, with four pretty girls, they were probably fraught as hell, and for years. So I was ‘just’ a rebel’ and without cause. And, that is true. I just reacted to any confinement with an energy I could not understand, nor process. So, I was labelled. There was a relaxo parental breath around that. Difficult, is one word I remember. In other words, I wasn’t their fault.

And, yet, my mouth can still label. Although I don’t like it at all, swipe at my lips and twitch my head in fury as I hear what I just said, I cannot deny it flowed out into the evening. And how do I feel? Initially smug. Oh god, God, gods, that is so not who I am now! Hmmmm, respond the god, God, gods, and I don’t blame them.

There is a lot of something around resolution. In music, I know it well, when even a naughty musician adds an extra bar, or fricks about with an elongated ending, and, (I’m avoiding the But), it is all about finding the warm security of the finite, of the landing, and of putting an end to this thing. In my young days, nobody wanted to stand out from the safety of the crowd, and, everybody wanted to stand out from the safety of the crowd. We were longing to be mongrels. We didn’t want the middle class confines, even as that life gave us security and privilege. In my day, to conjoin (OMG) with those who were not from our ‘level’ was anathema. Not to us, but we were wild, and, I am happy to say, even in our years, we still are, but now we have learned to speak, to stand, to rejink what we say, we will not judge, we will not, we will not and, more, because of the way we have learned our lives, spat out old beliefs, and found our own voices, we will stand and fight for inclusion and acceptance.

Authentically Mongrel. Did I just label myself?

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Island Blog – Calypso or Collapso

We deal with much, these days, in real time and online The online-ness of it all. Everything was fine for a while, until suddenly we have to update, or change, when neither of those demands are fine, at all. Someone wants your mobile or home details, and there is a suddenly in there, a stop, a halt, and then endless questions, most of which ask you if you are a dunderhead, an eejit, a left behind, even if those judgements are not voiced as such.

We are in a new era. We can go with it, learn new tactics, ask family of friends to guide us, or we can concave, we can bow to what we no longer want to welcome in, and rest. And I get that. But that’s not me. I am so out there with curiosity and barricades which thought they could keep me confined. Well, arf to that.

I meet many folk my age and older, and I just love them. Such beautiful folk with stories I wonder will ever be heard beyond my ears. I love stories. The why of this plant pot, the why of the way you make coffee, the how of your choice of dress for a ceilidh, the what of all of it.

And I meet choice, all the time, on the street, in the shop, as I travel this beautiful island. I meet it, There are those collapso. Then I meet calypso. The laughing connection to the wild, to hope and to the dance, the always dance. You know who you are my friend.

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Island Blog – Who Will Stand?

Opinions are easy to form. They rise like birds, or bile, and the moment they are heard, they create an emotive reaction. The one who hears, the one to whom the compliment or invective is aimed, is immediately affected. A positive or uplifting opinion is voiced from a place of love, a negative one from fear and a lack of knowledge. ‘You shouldn’t do that, or say that’ is gifted, invariably, by another who has never done that, nor would ever do nor say that, because doing or saying ‘that’ carries a degree of personal risk, particularly if delivered in public. I would be judged, for sure, marginalised, criticised and rejected, and who wants to risk finding themselves in any of those uncomfortable states? Safer to stay quietly in crowd thinking.

It is very different if a judgement is proffered. Then the forum is mine, because everyone is fed up of delays, costs, the weather, tourists, noisy children, the limitations and demands of work, of family life, of rules, rules and restrictions. Now I have the crowd behind me, the mutterers, the ‘angries ‘. I can lift my voice in this scenario, I can go flipping wild with my fists and my body and my learned beliefs around caste, colour, sexuality, the government, Calmac and the state of the NHS. I have wings now. I can fly with this, lording over all of you mutterers down there, muttering. Danger alert.

Just saying.

Have you noticed that any negative judgement or criticism is invariably delivered in a whisper, or anonymously? This is Fear in action. Sometimes a name is named, but the personal risk is slight because taking the negative stance is our natural leaning as humans, and there are many ready to agree. And why is that, I wonder? How long have you got? To distil……..poor housing, no, disrespectful housing, overcrowding, lack of staff, old trains, planes, ferries, Covid, Brexit, wars abroad and encroaching, flimsy governments, corruption, domination, lack of respect, lack of respect for every single one of us. I get it. I really do, from my comfortable home on a beautiful island. But someone has to ‘voice up’, and there are many such someones out there, the brave, the courageous, the risk takers, the ones who understand that the only way forward is not through fear, but love.

I attended a women’s business conference once, many years back, in Glasgow. There were a lot of women there, and many good speakers. The attendees came from diverse backgrounds and varying levels of success (so called). High heels, perfume, smart suits abounded. We settled. Success, so called, shouted from the stage, women who commanded businesses, entrepreneurs, food chain giants, those who had noticed a gap in a market and who had dived right in. It was exciting, dynamic and, for me just a show. I was never going to be any of those hard-nosed focussed female leaders, even as I loved their stories. The last speaker talked of giving love out, or walking it out. A very different presentation, and, ahead of it’s time. She was ahead of her time. Because it was just after the first Afghan war, there were mothers, sisters, even grandmothers in the audience, and giving unconditional love caught like a knife in many throats. The crowd grumble rose into something scary, so I left, but I still got it. What I got, was that I, in my safe place, had no idea what these angry women were going through.

Hard to find love in such a place. I will not ever experience what another has experienced. I know that. It doesn’t stop me, however, because we need to stand, to speak out for renewal, for hope and for the true meaning of love. It isn’t only sexual, or even familial. Love is just allowing, accepting, non-judgemental, all inclusive, no matter colour, sexuality, choices, directions,space issues. None of those, none.

Perhaps it is a gentle allowance, even as that word sounds patronising. Eish (African word) I don’t know, but we must do something to bring Love back. In any form. Who will stand?

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Island Blog – Ceilidh Craic In it

Two days ago, I drove the looooong single track drive to the South of the island. To be honest, I wondered if I would ever arrive, or if, instead, I would keep going until I fell off the world altogether. It is only a couple of hours, agreed, but because it is single track for most of the way, and tourist and local traffic is relentless, I got really good at swinging into passing places. Over and over and over again. Most tourists in their wide-hipped or shiny modrun ( a scots word) vehicles with electronic everything, including passengers, acknowledged my swinging thing, allowing them to slide by me without braking, but many didn’t. I thought about that, my smile wide and my warm hand held up in a hallo, you’re welcome, fingers moving like seaweed in gentle tidal flow, but in my belly there was, I confess, a switch from I LOVE THE WORLD AND EVERYONE IN IT, to YOU WERE NOT BROUGHT UP RIGHT. I did say it was a confession, and I am not proud of that switch. It is not how I choose to live. I knew who were the real locals, the farmers, fisherfolk, familial cars bent into unusual shapes and with a pause before I swung into safety, just checking which one of us would initiate a convenience to the other. I also noticed the resident young, and I was young once, in a damn hurry and with my fed right up with all these bloody cars littering a simple and gently winding road to home, to my home, to their home. I allowed their own switch to ‘Roar’ as they buffeted my Pixty mini so that she shook from an intensive rap, finally slowing to a Bob Marley. We breathed together, she and I. And we smiled. The world is going too fast, I said. No, she wiggled her last, not the world, the people innit. I laughed. Innit? You imitating Sacha Baron Cohen? She paused (I’ve now let 5 fast tourists create an almost whirlwind around us, and noticed a stand-off up ahead as the bus sits like a planet, refusing to cowtow to a silver Mercedes opentop). Woodentop, I mutter. What? Sorry, Pixty. Innit? You were about to tell me.

In it, she smirks and if she had eyes, they would roll. I watched the plovers on the scarp beach, the granite rocks shining with salt water, catching the white light, for there is no sun evident. Seaweed lifts and lands, lifts again, and people are here, enjoying a picnic, laughing with family, taking what they so need from this wild and electric place. I wonder if any of them passed me and Pixty, acknowledged, or didn’t, my swinging. I remember tense new journeys, fractious children in the back, dogs panting for escape, my own belly in a twitch. Keep positive, keep positive, not much. further children, nearly there and all that shit. I remember.

The Ceilidh craic was spectacular. A real community fund raising event, and I remember them too. We don’t really have them here, in the north, in the north which (or is it that) has moved into the too fast life. I saw, again, the familial bonds, the inclusion of children at a ceilidh dance, I shared the craic with those, many of whom I didn’t know and some I did, who have stories, valuable stories, precious stories. I loved every minute, working in the kitchen, bringing out cakes, baked by a woman who marvels me. I met sisters of my husband’s carer, who lives nearby, and I could see the likeness long before introduction. I watched young people pipe, fiddle, sing in Gaelic. I saw and heard young life holding on to the stories, their history, the story of Mary Macdonald who wrote the tune, Bunessan, thereafter made famous as Morning Has Broken, the reason for the fundraising ceilidh. Her memorial is crumbling and needs cash to restore and protect.

Songs and dances abounded. Strip the Willow, the Boston Twostep, the Canadian Barn Dance, and more. Bloody Chaos on the floor, very few having a scooby about what steps to take, but up there, anyways. Cakes were consumed along with endless pots of tea. The children kept pace. I watched the smiles, the laughter, the sharing and the bond these folk share, so remote, so many passing places t’ween them and a shop, an ambulance, a surgery, a chemist. And, as I left the next day to homecome, they stayed in my thoughts, because the strength of that community is something that draws me in. In it.

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Island Blog – The Atticus and the Reflexion

I’ve been allowing a whole load of thinks over the past days. They swirl in like twimbly waves against the atticus that stands strong, stoney strong, against any natural flow, like a frickin blockade, salty confusion and a whole load of ineffective slapping at a finite. I got sick of this. To slam at a solid truth is to waste energy and intelligence. Although most of us, if we are honest, keep swirling twimbly waves at a solid something we don’t like one fricketty bit, by the way, until we eventually blow out of breath and energy. And we see the pointlessness of such a flagellation. As I have done, thank the holy crunch. I decide to employ reflexion, a different word to the one with a ‘c’ and a ‘t’ and with a shift in meaning, if not a complete one of those shift things.

I can see behind me, beyond me, I can see from whence I have come and this damn atticus is right in my path, if waves can ‘path’. And I have been slamming at it with full ocean saltforce, without intelligent thought. I suspect this is normal, whatever that means. It isn’t just me who confounds, surely? And then I find reflexion. It’s a flexi word, dynamic, inviting and entirely appropriate. It is ‘the phenomenon (I’m already in with that word) of a propagating (again) wave of light or sound, being thrown back from a surface’. Don’t you just love that! Opportunity, choice, intelligence, all so dynamic. However, I do know what it feels like to be on a boat in wild weather and facing an atticus, and it took a brilliant skipper to draw us all safely away from a slam dunk that would have so pissed me off down in Davy’s locker, as dinner was all prepped and the fires lit and the candles just squatting there all ready to fire up the evening. The undertow in an ocean is never to be ignored, not for one minute. Just saying, and maybe my just saying is saying something. Overboard, and you could end up in Venezuela for Christmas.

I know atticus is always a sudden. I also know how reflexion can tumble me over and onwards to fret another shoreline, to tingle more little toes, to whisper over other sands. But, without an atticus, there’d be no limits, no new startings, no haltings that help us to consider our choice of direction. We are in control of our own boat. I just got that. Once again.

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Island Blog – Outsea, Stamina, Vagabond

Normally, I write to music, a background of brilliant lyricists to an accord of well-depthed musicality. Beats and all. I am a rhythm dancer, know the upper levels of vocal, surface level instruments, worked with the best. He could hear discordance, dis, cor dance, in any recording and said so, when he could. And, through walls of children noise, of egg boxes, baffles and plywood confines, so did I. I was curious, like Alice, wanting to learn through my own imagination, my own stop, no, maybe, no, yes, thing. I could hear it, as he did, and still do. Any poor combination dies quickquick. The depth must be there, from the bottom to the top, or it will never grow legs.

However, this writing to music thing, is a tad poorly ce soir. My phone, which has been shouting for backup, for a couple of days, has now laid down with a ffs, refusing to connect, without a load of huffy repercussions, to my so-called smart speaker. Thus, it is silent here, in this sunshine island home with a view that stops every single passer by, and is the envy of all those who don’t see it, don’t know it, as, well, normal. It isn’t mine, nothing is mine, no ownership of land ever grinned me, not never. Land is land, land owns land, no matter what man does in his/her attempts at ownership.

I digress, big time.

I’m thinking about stamina. I knew I was always, and still am (ish) a sprinter. Can do short distances, then flop. My daughter is a long distance woman. I didn’t know her at first, once she showed her colours. How can I advise, recognise, guide a female from my birthing, who is so different to me? T’was a thing and a half, for some time. I took my mother fingers off the control button, watched her develop, away from me. I searched for a connection and found it, eventually. The Sea. It is in her blood as it is in mine and we have connected in ebbs and flows over time. She lives in the Outsea, that place where no swoosh and lap is in earshot, where Sea is a dream, a longing, where trees and insular roadings and confines, vagabond her mind, where the call of home, of gulls and the wild, of crashing storms and the loud of it, the fear and uplift, dynamics her.

I had no idea I was going to write this, in silence. I just read Stamina, and in she came.

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Island Blog – Levitas, Obeisance, a Foundling

I’m about to challenge all those words, although I will, for this sentence, acknowledge their dictionnary confines. Since the whole hooha in my life, at this late stage of said life, but not lacking a single moment of sparkle, and, as I solidify, with great resistance, I notice words. They flicker about my head like the swallows, all of them going somewhere too fast for me to follow. I watch them flit away, catch the tail end, reach out to catch what I can never catch. Fleeting are they, and so are many things, many people, it seems, and I know it, have known it for decades, had forgotten it in the steady dusky trudge of olding. I had. I really had. When I reconnect with the students we had working with us over a decade or more, I hear of families, even of teenagers, of the birthdays and failures, the surprises, the moments, and I am confounded. These wee ones were my wee ones, once. They arrived all full of promise, fists up, (particularly the girls) and with intelligence we really needed in order to create a huge charity that still lives on today – The Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust, one committed to benign research in Atlantic Waters.

I remember walks down to the pub after looooong days at sea, doing this research thing, my own boys as crew, or skippers, eventually, and the buzz, oh the buzz of being recognised and invited was so exciting. I thank them all. I get that this sounds ‘all about me’ and that’s another thing I would blow out of the water, given time. It’s dismissive and judgemental and, ok stop there.

To the point, or points. Solidify gives me indigestion, the word, that is. It sounds like sludge. I don’t do sludge, even though these past few days of what, of coping, no, of moving on, no, of understanding, no, I sense a sentence barking for ‘in’. I may not be such a writer. The confluence of contradictory wordage can split an understanding. I think I need my dad here. When, let me develop this……the challenge is made (weak word), the challenge accepted, the pistols at dawn are an inevitable. And, although I’m unsure of that word too, I kind of like it. Hearing it, or reading it, gives me fight.

I was fine as I was. I was in sludge, I now know. I was thinking, I am over the hill, now. I am 71. I know I am feisty, I know I am strong, I know I am lonely, I know I am, what? I know obeisance. click. I know levitas. click.

And here is where I challenge, Foundling. With the deepest respect. I am she.

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Island Blog – Lemons, Zest and Loving

I was angry, and anger, in my life has played two roles. One confounds and limits, sinks me. T’other fires me up like a rocket. I have heard so so many people tell me, intelligent people, I thought, who told me any anger is a BAD thing. Much research and even more inner work has taught me this is not the truth. Anything in ‘overdose’ is damaging, yes. Any emotion without reflection, introspection and direction is damaging, yes. But with inner work, intelligent work, and with a heart that does not want to entertain any controller, and certainly not the control of any emotion beyond the timing of its natural flow, anger can turn into a flower garden, a new path snaking through old undergrowth, old limitations, old beliefs, old stuff. Anger is random, sudden, a boom to the gut, the heart. It traverses a whole body and not just then, but perhaps for days, weeks, months, but if what a goodly loving and trusting human being wants are peace, dance, chances and a new path, the latter will reveal itself. It always, always does.

Yesterday, and, if I’m honest, the day before, too, I just wanted to sleep. And so I did. Although Sleep and I will never be easy bedfellows, separating many times during the hours of darkness, whilst the oystercatchers make a right bloody fuss of pretty much everything down on the shore, I could sleep these past two days. Not all the day, but in bits and bobs for it was necessary that anger calmed his boots within me. He is calmed. I went to work today feeling quite the thing, as they say on this lovely island, and I know, now, what I know. I let go, or try to, of self-hatred, of the sting of rejection, the confirmation that I am not the vibrant, exciting and fun-loving woman I believed myself to be for a few short weeks. Well, I try to let them go, tell myself to let them go, insist in fact that they bloody go, and they do for a short while until they curve back to me with renewed energy. It is hard work living alone when that is not what I want. Others have confirmed this belief. In order to be cheerful, I have to start the process. In order to see a friend, it is I who must make the call. In order to laugh, I must pop one into my mouth prior to a visit to the shop or into the harbour town. It is, oftentimes, exhausting, all this DIY living. If I want to build a new life, I must find the tools and get to work, I know this, and, before he came to mess things up, I was actually finding my stride. Now, back at the start, I have to summon up enough get-go to get going all over again, erasing, as best I can, the memories of happily shared days, of conversations, of plans and of companionship.

But, (again) I have fire, yet, in my belly, fire for life, for a good life, for the one I want, and no-one can extinguish that fire, unless I hand over the water bucket. Which I will not do. There is too much zest in my thoughts, my heart, my imagination, my brilliant brain and strong body. I think of others who have been rejected, of children, teens, older women like me, men, boys, those whose sexuality brings in black storm clouds, the marginalised, the unwanted, the extras in this game of life. I am fortunate, indeed, to have so much loving support from family and friends. And, one day, I will laugh at this, at myself, my reaction, my sinking into negativity. I will say, Oh, this happened to me, once, trusting me, loving me, and, believe me, time will heal the cuts. There will be scars, but scars are beautiful things. Scars hold compassion, empathy and understanding. Love your scars because, one day, you too will laugh at this pain, and you too will be quick to hold another who has been rejected.

This is how we love the world.

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Island Blog – A Man, a Horsefly and the Itch.

He came into my life like a complete surprise, as, I believe, I was for him. A random and unlinear sequence of events collided us. It was exciting and wild. For a week. He spoke of a possible future, at least while we got to know each other. A mid country meet here, a trip away there. We laughed a lot, moved easily around each other, shared many interests, and appeared to be on the first part of a journey. We are not teenagers, not fools, both with a long and, at times, uncomfortable past, a lot of which we shared. I felt a flicker of hope, the chance for a new adventure with, possibly, him. I had believed that my life with a lover died with my husband. So many years of caring, of being mummy and nurse to a man who, once, could just look at me and I would melt. I had tidied her away, that ‘on fire’ woman, that reckless abandoner of anything sensible. My body worked as she should, but she was just functioning. I had even resigned myself to a lonely old woman line of same-old, making myself rise to bright and bubbly, to being the clown around those who needed a laugh, to uplifting everyone, even though my trudge boots shouted at me to chuck them in the sea-loch, just to put them out of their misery. I didn’t dance so much, rarely sang at all, performed domestic tasks with a sigh. Who needs this getting old and lonely thing? I would ask my Marigolds, my blue hoover, the birds in my garden. I found it, at best, tiresome and quite unnecessary. We should be shot at such a stage in life and if another person tells me that I have a lot yet to give, I just might be arrested for my response.

A week of holding hands, of walking on the beach, of lunches out, coffee in the sunshine, a nice Rose at sundown; an emotional sadness at leaving. His. Then, nothing, but the odd text. Still, I knew he was working, and in areas without mobile reception. I knew that, because that is what he told me, and, the dutiful little woman understood. In fact, this dutiful little woman, on reflection, missed a lot of hints, but, with hindsight, it is often easy to join dots dismissed at the time as just dots. After work was completed and I still believed in the ‘let’s meet mid country’ or the ‘we could go away for a few days on a trip’ I was firmly dumped via a text, one I have deleted. It was so teenage, so self-absorbed, so dismissive and disrespectful and did not justify any response at all beyond a snort of laughter. However, this is a first response. I know that others will follow, anger, sadness, the confirmation that I am a complete idiot for believing at all that any man would find me attractive at 71. Etcetera.

But, and there is always one of those, all this teaches me, and teaches me well. I don’t mean the nonsense I have heard from the man haters, because I do not hate men at all. I think they are wonderful, love to be with them, hug them, laugh with them, listen to them, and the latter is how it was with this man because he only ever talked about himself and, I recall, rarely asked me a question about me, my loves, my passions, my dreams and hopes. Man is man, for sure, working very differently to women, but most men I know are strong, sensitive, and emotionally intelligent creatures, even if they cannot find the words for good communication beyond golf, boats, science, things that function with a motor and the vagiaries of spotlights, cars, politics, economics and how bluetooth works, to name but a few. And they can learn to ask questions and to listen.

Last year a horsefly bit me. That bite, as you may remember, led to danger, to cellulitis and possible sepsis, and then to the revelation of breast cancer. Had that horsefly not carelessly bitten me, I would, definitely, be growing a cancer right now, one that doesn’t show in a lump, but in a silent spread. Since then I have embarked on a fitness programme, the right food, exercise, and, most importantly, a re-understanding of how precious my life is to me. This man inspired the same, the man, the horsefly, the catalyst, a lead into more and better and, importantly, a reset of boundaries and the opening of, heretofore closed, doors. I dance again, suddenly, sing more, feel alive and beautiful. And, I am.

The horsefly and the man. Both bit me. But I grow stronger for those bites, however much they itch.