Author: judyfairbairns

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Island Blog – Joining the Dots

When I first arrived in Africa, after the first flurry of excitement, I noticed how I felt unsure as to my part in the play. This happens each time I stay anywhere, to be honest, moving as I am into someone else’s life, home, timeline, routine. It’s as if the very air resists my forward motion, not that it is always forward, my restlessness and indecision tilting me left, then right, forward then back. My brain, so active, seems to collapse in on itself, a splay of wires and worms and it is then that the invaders invade, the ditherers, the undecided, the falterers, the wobbly arm-flailing, foot shufflers and my body obeys all of them. And, as if this wasn’t enough to confound the most confident of people, my fears rush up behind them like a second wave of soldiers, all with bayonets on rifles and determination on faces. These fears in Africa might be that the kettle roars and at 6 am will awaken my kids and make them furious so I’d better just have water. It might be that if I open the sliding door into the garden all five feral and definitely indoors cats will charge as one to disappear over the wall and into the mouth of danger, so I’d better stay inside. I can’t run the hot tap to wash up last night’s dishes because the water makes enough of a racket to waken the dead, trumpeting, snorting and coughing like an old man with lung disease. I shouldn’t go for a walk because that would let the dog out, the dog that always waits for permission and is fast asleep anyway. It is all, I know this, ridiculous, but I go through this every single time, me, confident, assured me. It’s as if my body arrived here but my spirit stayed home or is, hopefully, en route to join me up again like a dot picture.

After a few days I reassemble. I don’t feel it happening, like all my personal lego bits are now clicked into place, it just happens. I fire up the kettle at six, wash the dishes to a trumpet voluntary, open the sliding door and shimmy through the skinny gap watching the cats who watch me back, languidly, yawning, curled up, with no intention of going where they have never gone and do not miss. I go for a walk and the big dog watches me from between his paws. He may be hopeful but he knows the drill and besides, his beloved master has yet to rise from sleep. I can even put on a wash, now that my spirit has arrived from the UK, late but not damaged in any way, as the machine purrs softly once I have worked out how to programme it. The days mellow into routine with serendipitous opportunities presenting, for both kids work from home and are busy most of each day. I have ‘suddenly’ prepped and ready to go. In between meetings we can hop to the shop, go out for lunch, take the dog for a walk and it is always ‘suddenly.’ I rather enjoy that I enjoy ‘suddenly.’ I decide I am a ‘suddenly’ sort of woman, remembering the Tapselteerie days when every damn thing was ‘suddenly’. I had obviously learned the ropes and it gladdens me. When the flurry is done and they are back to work and I am back to whatever I fancy next, I smile. I ask for a list of jobs and write them down. Now I can varnish window frames at 05.30 if I so choose or oil the deck furniture before the temperature hits 33 degrees at 0900 and all the fears, ditherers, foot-shuffling undeciders have melted away in the heat. Even the fears have mummified. I look down at them and they look a bit sorry for themselves in that state. It’s because I no longer feed them of course, now that I know my way around this life.

And then I come home, from 38 degrees pre flying to 6 degrees in Glasgow and I just know the whole palaver will begin again. Even in my own home, things feel not of my making. I don’t have the fears but I have certainly walked miles inside the house getting mostly nowhere and this will continue, I know it, until my spirit, who did not want to leave Africa at all, returns to me. She may detour via other continents, of course, she’s a bit naughty like that. But I will wait for her, and when we are back together, all our ducks will be in line, our dots joined and our feet in sync, ready for all the new adventures we have yet to share.

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Island Blog – Homecoming

Oh I did not want to come home! The heat, the sunshine (dodging it a lot) at upwards of 30 degrees from sun up, the red sand, the bush, the Africa of Africa, the music, rhythm, even the mosquitos, all of it had become my familiar. After two months, that is understandable if you’re loving every minute. Washing dried in minutes, the dog was too hot to walk after 9 am, and my bare feet on the wooden stoep burned like there was a fire beneath them as I oiled, sanded, varnished and painted. I wanted to help. Don’t tell me to sit down. I can do ‘sit down’ for a while, and longer than a while indoors with the aircon blasting, but I will always choose to be involved and that whole involved thingy thinks me. I knew I was coming back to just me.

The life out there, three long long flights away, plus a train and a ferry, is a whole different life. It has its disadvantages, for sure, the usual irritations, the added falafel of dodgy drivers, slow responses, (a lot of shoulder shrugging at any confrontation, plus a wide toothy smile), the heat day after day, the impossibility of finding parts for your car, the lack of Helmans Mayonnaise. I was a visitor. Visitors have no say at all in a place of lives being lived. They, we, I, have no clue as to the reality of the it of it. Just saying. I know, for example, how visitors here on the island for a sunshine week #rare, wax lyrical on the benefits I enjoy living here. I have no right to complain. My eyeballs roll every time. And it thinks me. On the way we perceive what we see, the snapshot of it, the processing, the decision made. Fumph. T’is thus. No. T’isn’t.

Anyroad, I take three flights, the first most pleasant, a slight rise in a half empty plane with comfortable seats, an old girl for sure but sassy and just for an hour. I am still in slight clothing. Then I get lost in Jo’burg airport. Possibly not easy to do but I manage it, finding myself in Baggage Collection when I should be (and soon) in Connections. I right myself, and speed up. It is only a short about turn and march and then another 3 miles to the gate. Which gate? The signs are now and then and mostly then so I, not worried at all, ask someone. He, an official with a badge, is super kind and walks with me to the appropriate corridor. he smiles, all black and wonderful and really cares. My strength of spirit returns. I arrive at Gate 10. I sit. Gradually, a lot more passengers arrive, all muslim robed. Because it is now 5 pm, they lay out their mats and bow to Mecca. I watch them praying, their devotion. It warms me. Not my thing but I still admire anyone with deep faith. More arrive, and more and suddenly I am unsure about my choice of gate. I rise and ask a sharpshooting black woman, official. She tells me, smiling, this is Emirates Gate. Oops.

I set off again. Good heavens this airport is huge, but I am not stupid. These muslims are heading the same way as I am, to London, so I must be in the right zone. I totter, yes, I am weary now, to Gate 14 and I find my people, I can hear the Glasgow accent, the banter, the tired voices, the helping of each other. I sit once more. We are called and because I am seat 20, I am almost first on. But as we queue and queue and queue on the ramp, I realise we are not the first. No, First is first, then Business Class, then us, lower case.

We walk by Business, seeing the beds, knowing they can stretch out for the 11 hours in the air, will have the taster menu, champagne et lala. And we take our seats. I am at the emergency exit. I ask the little lady near the window if she knows how to work it. She says she hasn’t a clue. Nor do I. And then he arrives, built like a cathedral, a professional golfer with tree trunks for legs and muscles that might challenge his flankers. She at the window sleeps the whole night. He, fitfully but so polite with his body. Me, not a minute. However, we didn’t have to employ his strength as we arrived safely in Heathrow. An unsteady walk to the next gate for Glasgow and into oh my goodness, the cold. From over 30 degrees to 6? However, there was a warm daughter to hug me warm again, a hot bath and a warm sleep. Home now on the island and so very thankful for the whole shebang. All of it. I learned so much, and I am thankful and curious and, do you know what, if you do nothing else to shape up a change in your life, just be curious. She, Curiosity, is a wonderful leader.

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Island Blog – It Is Enough

I am awake, early, before the sun is fully up, and I have slept enough. This day is my last in Africa and there is much to do. First off, I must needs park the panics, those fussy itchy thoughts as spikey as porcupines, the ones that demand an active hands-on riffle through and a smart shove into perspective. Will my hold luggage weigh too much? Should I find a tote bag for my hand luggage? How many underlayers should I have ready and about me for my arrival into a 30 degree temperature drop? What about liquids and such, which do I pack and which do I have ready for inspection in a clear plastic bag? And there are many more such flapdoodles to un-flap about, all easily sorted. I clear my mind of the swirling chaos, remind myself to inhabit the present moment and make coffee. I sit outside on the stoep and watch the sky, the rising of the sun, a warm pink backlight for a silhouette of trees. Birds call out, sounds I will not hear back on the island, African birds, coloured up like rainbows and speaking a language I don’t understand. A flash of electric blue, a wide span of ruby tail feathers, a butter yellow head, they cut the sky in two, these glorious creatures, an imprint on my memory.

I will love the change of things as I will remember the colours of Africa. Returning home to the island with its skinny roads and warm people almost happens without me. I step on a plane, three in fact, although not all at the same time, take my seat and up I go to cut other skies in two, many skies and one sky, crossing over continents and oceans, countries, deserts, mountains and rivers. A magical thought indeed. Someone might look up to watch the metal bird, heavy laden with precious cargo and, hopefully, my un-heavy hold luggage, as sunlight flashes off its belly, a pink contrail weaving a cloudline. As I doze or eat or read way up in the sky, life continues way down there, families together and apart, discussions on what to do or where to go. Dogs bark away the night or bark it back in again. Meals are prepared, lists are made, fights are fought, losses are grieved and new life is welcomed in. So much life everywhere, so much living to be lived.

For now, for today, I will take in every moment. I will pack, unpack and repack. This is irritating but a part of the procedure, a sort of resistance to change, to leaving what has become the familiar. However, I know of old that we people can quickly establish a new familiar in a surprisingly short time, so capable are we, so adaptable, despite all those hours of flapdoodle. Imagining the worst always first. Lord knows why we do this but I decide it is a perfectly natural amygdala thing, a sorting service provided by our big brains, processing fearful stimuli, a nudge to encourage intelligent preparation before entering a state of change. From there we decide whether or not the fear is real, such as a truck or a leopard coming at us fast. Needless to say, my fear is a bundle of nonsense – do I have the right clothes, yes, adequate sustenance, yes, the right footwear, mindset, passport etc. The way we can muddle ourselves with fear is daft but we all do it at times. I chuckle at myself. All is well you flappy old woman. Just prepare, calmly, and then set your sights on the moment ahead because you are playing a vital and important part in that moment, and the next, and the next and the next. All you have to do is show up. And I will do just that but not today. Today will be itself and I will be entirely and wholly present as the gift of living lights me up like sunshine. And it is enough.

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Island Blog – Fanacadoo

Do you ever arrive of a morning having travelled into weird worlds all night long? Or so it seems. All impossible things, unlikely people, extraordinary happenings happen inside the hours of sleep, none of which would survive five minutes in earthly mode. Beyond the borders of ‘possible’ lie these worlds, a convolution of stories read, tales told across a table, films seen, random encounters, daydreams, worries, fears, doubts and delusions of grandeur. I can fly. Sure you can. I can save the world, blow it up, murder (in a good way) stand watching a happening without moving into action, put out a forest fire all alone, win a house in Malibou, all possible in the depths of night, when my mind, which was programmed to sleep, chooses her own adventure series and plays it out all the way through.

Of course, I barely remember a sequence of plausible, believable events, oh no, but just patchy catches of the whole fanacadoo. As I lift from bed and move into the day, the images scatter, fractal, smokey, spiralling into the bedroom only to skinny through the gaps, as if they never were at all. Could this nocturnal experience be a helpful clearing of a cluttered mind, I ask myself? Or, was that unpleasant image, still inside my head despite my attempts to turn it scattered, fractal, smokey and spiralling off to skinny through the gaps, some sort of prophesy or warning? Over the years, I have learned to decide for myself the answer to those two questions. I say that I am not at the mercy of either of them, horns as they are of a dilemma, a waste of daylight to finger through such confusion with no chance of an Aha moment. I decide that my subconscious mind is a superior being and not in my control as I might like. If it can produce unbelievable scenarios in such brilliant technicolour, structured on nothing I have encountered, nor ever will, then it is at work on my behalf. Although I know that, at times, my own piddling worries and concerns can leak into my dreams, the costumes and scenarios fantastical, I trust there is a point to it all and not one my tug-boot daylight person is ever supposed to understand.

How freeing it is to address the night larks thus! I can dress and prepare for my day, knowing that a deal of fanacadoo has been addressed and processed. None of it is my business. It’s as if an inner counsellor has beavered away as I fitfully slept, lost in the story of the night. She has tidied up my mental loft. It is done. My remit is only to allow, accept and move on into the ordinary. But, with different eyes. This is important. If I can fly, save the world, turn into a mermaid, murder (in a good way) or even stand rooted and impotent in the face of something horrible, then I am delighted all this gets sorted in the safety of my bedroom. What I will never do again, having done it for many years, is to believe I am a bad person at heart, that, by dreaming this way I am showing my true colours. I refuse to accept this. I know who I am and how I will be around all other people, so that, even if it might be fun to turn into a mermaid, or to save the world single-handed, I do not relate to the backside of those (im)possibilities. My subconscious was simply filtering out, clearing away, processing and settling the who of me, the how and the what of this small human woman. I have a very vivid imagination, that’s all, and it is the work of the night counsellor to level my balance once again so that I can rise from it all with a chuckle, forget it all by elevenses and, most of all, know for certain that all is well, I am safe, my mental attic is swept and clear. This doesn’t deny the night stories, oh no, but it does put them in perspective, and one more thing………instead of moving into the day saying I didn’t sleep well, I say, instead, and mostly to the dog, What larks Pip, what adventures I had last night! She may look at me blankly, having curled into a slumbering danish, fast sleeping till a yawn at dawn, but I know how it was and I was there, I saw them all, even as those midnight images slip away like the steam from my coffee..

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Island Blog – Grammar, Flying and My Name is Judy

There is a thing about things that thing me. Now, there’s a sentence for you. I remember English Language classes, the emphasis heavy on grammar and sentence construction. Rhythm, beat, phrasing, verbs in the right place, ditto adverbs, adjectives (steady on those), spelling and please do not use made up words, slang or swear words, however covertly disguised. Blimey! Throttled from the start was I, were we. It seemed to me, and seems still, that bothering overly much about the correct words in the correct order is like wearing a whalebone corset for gym practice. I want to flow, just roll those glorious sentences out, quick and slick and without losing the storyline. I don’t want to feel verbally, rhythmically or phrasically constipated whilst I spill out the words from my, apparently, overactive imagination. This was actually penned in one school report. An overactive imagination. What my well-corseted English teacher was really saying is that I was disruptive. My challenge of her she took personally and I cannot blame her, she who seemed to have nothing much more exciting in her life than the ‘correct’ structure of sentencing with the odd thrill of a hyphen or a colon.

So I play with words. Punctuation, however, is a different thing, not that I am perfect in the way I employ the marks, but it does bother me when I read an official document with glaring errors. It’s means ‘it is’. Its denotes ownership, ‘its tail, its banana, its wings’, and so on. It’s, on the other hand would precede a sentence such as ‘It’s hard to believe that Mary had a little lamb’. ‘Their’ applies thus. Their home, their choice of venue, their problem, whereas ‘they’re would mean ‘they are’ in a squish. They’re going on a train to Bandalouche, they’re in trouble now, they’re a right pair of idiots’.

My dad, a stickler for all things Language, taught us all and corrected us when necessary. I believe one of my sisters actually had her letter to him returned, corrected. It did us no harm, but stood us in good stead as women moving into the world of men. We knew how to speak, how to phrase, how to construct a sentence. What of the girls nowadays, as the subject of grammar recedes into the background? I obviously have not a scooby as to whether this applies to all schools in the whole country, but just going by the evidence of what I see written down by young adults, it isn’t encouraging. ‘I never would of thought of that.’ Really? ‘I never would have thought of that.’ Ah, yes.

I sound like an old stick-in-the-mud, I know it and I really don’t mean to. I am the first to make up words, to play with the fold and random flow of rhythmical phrasing, but I believe that a person has to learn the basic mathematics of anything before they can fly off piste. Drumming, piano playing, singing, dancing, writing, painting, scientific exploration, mountain climbing (no flying off piste for this one, not literally), plus a zillion more disciplines, appropriately called disciplines because of their grounding in just that, discipline. I completely loathed discipline in pretty much all areas of my life, but needed them all, the gravity of them holding down my scatter feet, a springboard for any future leap.

They say knowledge is everything, which is a tad sweeping for me even as I can taste the truth in the cliche. If I am unsure about any area of my life, anxious, perhaps, I know it is simply because I don’t ‘know’ enough about it. My imagination takes me into a future that doesn’t, and probably will never, exist. I must needs investigate the subject, thus imbibing knowledge which, in turn, grows my confidence, shifts my perspective and stabilises the chaos within. I am anxious about my journey back home. What is it about said journey back home that feels me this way? 1. Getting lost in the airport for weeks. Follow the signs and ask someone. 2. I will miss my connection. Catch the next plane. 3. I won’t get through security. Check hand luggage and remove all weapons. 4. I am frightened of travelling alone. Ah, now we get to the nitty gritty. Well you won’t be alone, not with 300 other hot and bothered travellers and the pilot will be fully trained, plenty stewards on board, you can ask them for anything. There will be food and a movie of your choice and when you land you will be in London where everyone speaks in a tongue you understand. The fact that you aren’t on speaking terms with any of those 300 other people is entirely up to you my dear. Hallo, my name is Judy. that’s all you have to say and in that sweet and simple introduction, you are no longer alone, as you perceive it.

It seems so easy, once a fear or anxiety is questioned and gentled apart all the way down to its core. I can spend weeks with my knickers in a knot of anxiety, but now I have learned to notice, question and then find solutions to each individual aspect. It’s freeing. Its hold on me lessens, loosens and, eventually, lets go. I can still feel a frisson of fear but can quickly refer back to my solution list and breathe in the adventure, fill my lungs with it, fly with it, curious as a child.

Hallo, my name is Judy.

(Oh lord, she’s going to talk the whole flight) Hallo, I’m Simon, Mary, Lord Fauntleroy.

Do you like flying?

(Here she comes) Not much.

Oh I love it.

Good.

And if that’s all there is, it’s enough for me not to feel alone.

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Island Blog – Blue Gin and Sleeping with Ants

Happy 70th birthday to me! It bizarres me that I have arrived here at all. 70, in my experience of parents and grandparents, is an age for sensible knickers, shoes and rigid opinions. I relate to none of those. I still feel mischievous, my sense of fun and the opportunities for seeing the fun in pretty much everything and everyone, is childlike still. The very thought of becoming sensible, according to the world, is enough to send me up the curtains, in my mind, at least. Life is such a glorious adventure, a troublesome pain in the ass at times, yes, but I will not focus on those times, only learn from, and survive, them. People keep saying Life is too short, and then spend endless moments, hours and days, worrying about a future that hasn’t even arrived and probably never will. Such a ridiculous cliche and meaningless when you think about it unless the core truth of it is imbibed and digested.

This past weekend in Africa, I was feted and celebrated until my smile threatened to dislodge my ears. Taken out for lunch, out for breakfast, gold and white helium balloons and golden streamers dangling all around the big open kitchen; champagne toasts, lovely new friends over for a wonderfully daft evening with good food on the braai, good wine to drink, shared anecdotes and jokes, conversations and laughter tossed into the sky, high enough to join the stars, which, I might add, are in all the wrong places and tilting dangerously. Even the moon is on her back, the saucy madam. Something to do with the Equator or an attitude to Latitude or whatever.

Although I knew bits about what might be happening, I didn’t know it all and it felt odd at first not being the one to organise a surprise, the celebration of another. Let go, I tell myself, and shut the dufus up. You think you don’t deserve to be celebrated? Stupid woman. Look at your family, friends and other animals, how they keep coming back. This, my dear, means something. Drink your blue gin and be thankful. And I get it and I am. I loved every single minute of the weekend, gathering up the memories like wildflowers, saved into a file in my head to be enjoyed over and over again when I return to my little island home.

For the past couple of warm African nights I have not been alone in my bed. A large contingent of ants has chosen to join me and we cannot work out where on earth they come from, why they are in my bed and what ion earth they are up to. Ants are intelligent wee critters so this is no random invasion just for the hell of it, just to upset me, not that I’m upset. I studied them the first night, my miners lamp on my head (in case of power outage overnight) and my goodness they looked busy. I pulled the duvet over me, brushed a few stragglers away and wished them well. In the morning they were gone. However last night I believe they lost their moxie a bit as I noticed a lot of dithering and fleeing aboot, all the way up to me. It tickled me awake. Okay, I sigh, clock says 01.15, and I want to sleep. I wished them well and took myself off to the couch, a very comfortable ant-free zone. It is still a mystery, this incoming tide of small black busybodies, and one I hope we can solve without destroying their lives, but none of us speak ‘Ant’ and nor do we have feelers to waggle, so a mutually agreeable result is only a possibility for now.

I could easily freak out over this but that is not my style. However, if we were talking scorpions or poisonous spiders, my moxie would also be challenged, I admit, and my curiosity wouldn’t even lift its head to engage in any study. But these harmless wee people are a fascination because there is such intent and dynamism in their ordinary little lives and they very obviously do not want to be in my bed. Something has disturbed them and they are de-camping. Solid walls are preventing this, or so I guess. I wish them well and I wish them gone, obviously, but I know what it feels like to be unsettled or discombobulated and I also know that in this so-called short life of mine, sleeping with ants is rather an unique situation, a story for the telling sometime when I am home again.

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Island Blog. Mosquitos don’t fly in Sunshine

Just over ten days to go before I fly back home and I really don’t want to leave. I feel so at home here, with my young, in the heat of certain sunshine, the warmth of African welcomes, all the new people I have met, talked, and laughed with over delicious meals beneath jacaranda boughs all festooned with twinkly lights. I have risen with the sun and sat beside the pool as day gives way to night, a glass of good wine beside me and my skin covered in anti-mosquito spray. I won’t miss them, the mosquitos, silent and determined and always under the table. I have helped with many small tasks and a few big ones, as my young prepare to move house, sanding, oiling, stripping tables, painting walls, and occasionally cooking the evening meal. I have walked in the wildlife estate, thrown ball for the big soft dog in a dog park, laughed at the antics of many cats and shared worrying moments when they came. In short, I have engaged completely with every aspect of life in Africa and the buzz word here is companionship.

Since himself decided to abandon ship, I have felt very alone, even though, towards the end, he was mostly in his own world, I in mine. But he was a presence in the home, a familiar. Navigating the uncharted waters of early widowhood was uncomfortable at times, unsteady, rough too, but I did not capsize, not me. Friends and family are all anyone needs beyond the obvious, like an inside toilet, money for food and bills and four stone walls to surround and protect. Connecting, however, was strange at first. I would say all is well, I am fine, et la la, but inside I felt, at times bereft. I didn’t want himself back, not as he became, but the familiar, when removed in any life, will cause a disturbance in the atmosphere, a fractal cracking of a heart, yes, a split in the ground beneath feet, a stopping of the old turning wheel. Advancing can feel like an impossibility, but very gradually, all this stopping and cracking becomes irritating. The human spirit is tenacious, the inner sprite knows how to itch from within, like a mosquito bite. Now I notice my skin, now I see the red rise of response, now I need to do something, find someone, get off the couch, get living again.

We all take our own time inside this process. There are no rules, no timelines, even if those who have not experienced a fractal cracking decide there are both. Meaning well, but unknowingly feeding the inner judge, these good folk encourage. Get out more, join a club, take up tango, anything to create motion and connection, they might say and to it all I said No thanks. Although I understood that there is a thin line, blue I think, between natural grieving and indulgent collapse, something in me just knew it would take me the time it took me, that eventually my fed would be right up there and I would, naturally, lift myself into a new life. And this I have done. Africa is a healing place for me, mosquitos notwithstanding, and I will miss the soothing balm of easy family companionship. However, and there is always one of those, the flip side of the coin, the other face of the moon etc, is that I have had a long time here. I have inhabited each day and still do. I have engaged with small and ordinary tasks, ready for adventure even if it is just a shopping trip for food, and this because of the surprisingly wonderful serendipities that might just appear in conversation. Familiarity can allow openness, the freedom of precious sharing, whispers from deep in a soul, voiced and floating, beautiful and fragile as butterflies. A new encounter perhaps, a random meet in a shop, smiles swapped, news exchanged that ripple out in a mind for the rest of the day.

I love to live alone, now, but I also know the power and the value of companionship. I will fly back to my much loved island home with a wealth of memories to nourish me. I will recall flash moments and long conversations, reflect on how my time here has affected my young and myself, how we all might feel encouraged to move forward in something previously stuck on ‘hesitate’. Perhaps we have discovered a reset of values, of beliefs, of perception and will, over time, absorb that learning into our lives. Distance is just a plane journey and distance cannot disconnect connection, not in minds, not in spirit for we are linked in ways no force can sever. We change and grow, learn and discover, share and develop because of each other, all of the each others in our lives. Each day offers a gift, the chance to learn something beyond the familiar, something unexplainable, silent, invisible and flowing with light and lift.

I am thankful for each moment left to me in this place, looking forward to what may happen after breakfast, and extremely happy that mosquitos don’t fly in sunshine, whereas I, most certainly, do.

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Island Blog – Ordinary Knickers

Today I went to buy new underpinnings. T’is a while since I did this. What I wear beneath what I wear is functional and, although an important, nay critical, part of the dressing process, I rarely think about buying new. Unless, that is, I discover exhausted elastic or a seam falling apart. My reason for yesterday’s adventure into the lingerie department, a terrifying place in my opinion, so much choice and with so many consequences, is because I have purchased a white dress. It isn’t see-through per se, but bright turquoise knickers would definitely be making a loud statement. I need white. I have no white. White knickers are for children. My teenage longing for something of colour beneath my clothing is a feeling I still recall, even now. However, needs must. I take a deep breath and dive into Lingerie.

I’m like a little girl in a strange world. I study the various bras in amazement. Every consideration has been made, it seems, to provide endless and puzzling results, to uplift, separate and transform what is into what isn’t. Just looking at these things is enough to squeeze the air from my lungs. I cannot imagine wearing any of them for more than a minute. Head down, I scurry through the weapons of torture and on to knickers. Just white pants, that’s all, white, cotton, functional, medium at a guess. I wander through high-leg, low-cut, no-visibility, full-cover, high waist, post-birth, thongs, mid-rise, none of them either suitable or white. I search for Ordinary Knickers. I glance over to the pay point. One young man, deeply inside his mobile. I decide not to ask him for Ordinary Knickers. This is Africa, after all, and we would both be embarrassed, my voice loud in the almost empty department and he, stumbling for words, an unsettling image in his mind. It wonders me he is here at all. I dive back into the confusion. There are no Ordinary Knickers it seems. But wait! In the budget section, I spot packs of 3 and one shows me a glimpse of white between ‘skin-colour’ and ‘black’. I purchase hurriedly and leave, gasping in gulps of freedom air, relieved to be leaving the terrifying and bewildering world of Lingerie behind me.

All good so far you might think. Back home I try on the white, size medium, and sigh. The shape is not my shape, the waistband which isn’t at my waist, too tight. I pull on the dress. It works. The underneath of the overview of me is invisible, although sitting down creates a skin-fall mid body, but, I suppose I can bear wearing the damn things for an evening. I guess they, like all my ancient colourful knickers, will soften over time. I also know I could snip around the elastic, not right through, of course, I don’t want an embarrassing knicker-fall, but just enough to give some give.

I make coffee and think a bit. I do understand, and vaguely remember, the delight of new underwear but as my young and middle life demanded functional clothing, a farmer’s wife ensemble of tee shirt, jeans and a jumper, I didn’t spend much time choosing what to wear underneath, didn’t give it much thought at all. I remember my first bra, a little white thing, a most uncomfortable restraint and one I resented daily. Not much has changed over the years it seems, and now relieved at the thought of another few years of not having to brave a Lingerie department, I move happily into the rest of my day.

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Island Blog – How we really feel

The day dawns fresh-breezed and sunny and we have jobs to do. We bought sticky tape, non-sticky tape, varnish, oils, turps and scrubbers, many things hardware, for we are preparing this house for letting and leaving. As the lists are made, we see how much there is still left to do, and remind ourselves how much we have already achieved. The five indoor cats watch us through the windows, follow us from room to room, sensing some change is afoot. The jacaranda trees beyond the walls bend and flip in the breeze whilst vervet monkeys leap the branches, sure-footed, swinging like acrobats. Perhaps they watch us too, curious but uncaring. Sunlight lifts the newly oiled deck boards into a shiny conker warmth, one coat complete, a second to reapply, hot work under the broiler in the sky. Various bits of furniture are advertised and sold, little holes filled in, taps re-washered, walls brushed and touched up, door and window frames varnished to a shine. Moving forward, ever moving forward. Sometimes a task presents as too demanding so we break it down into smaller parts until the whole thing is complete. At others, we sail merrily along, buoyed up by sharing the process, bantering, laughing, pausing for breath, discussing the best way to achieve the end result. We allow for rests and diversions such as going out for Eggs Benedict with avocado and strong coffee, or a trip to the dog park to throw ball for the big soft retriever to catch and chase after. And all the time we talk on many things, not cabbages and certainly not kings, but on concepts and reflections, mind-mapping and acceptance of self, gatherings and solitude, our observations on everything Life. We have always talked that way. Not for us the idle chatter of wasted words. We are sentence makers, thinking people, curious and interested in a new way to see old things. We ask each other, How do you see this, or that? and then we listen to and consider the response we hear.

When we join others, I sit and listen to their discussions on what appears superficial to me. It isn’t that I judge, because I don’t but when the subject under the lights is only about a situation they all know and inhabit, the words just seem to circle pointlessly to me. Unless there is curiosity and reflection, the subject remains solid, unmoving, stuck in time, with the inhabitants thereof stuck with it. There is no right or wrong in the way we converse, but I always want to dive beneath the surface, to discover the depth, texture, movement and flow of this subject. It could be all about bin collection or the lack of it and that could take up a whole evening, resolving not at all from where I sit. It could be any number of similar issues under the microscope, until the minutiae has been thoroughly talked out and absolutely nothing has changed and my legs are itching to move on, to move beyond the tiddleypom and out into the wide open spaces, curious like Alice.

Sometimes I think I am an onlooker in this life. I love people and gatherings, conversation and laughter, sharing a meal and so on, but give me anytime the meeting of true minds, of thinkers and wonderers, of those who live on the edge of all truths accepting none of them and all of them at the same time. I am a loner, a weirdo, different, odd. So be it. Although I have met only a few differently odd weirdo loners, we know each other immediately even if we never met before. We connect instantly and then, as is our nature, break apart. I used to want to change myself, to find complete happiness in evening-long conversations about bin collection or lack of it, but I cannot change so instead I accept who I am and who you are and it is a peaceful warm place in which to live. And, over time, I have learned that to initiate a conversation by asking the right question can result in a shift in direction, in content. I can ask, as the chat on buying carpets is wearing me thin, Have you ever made a carpet, dyed wool, walked barefoot on a silk Persian rug, been to Turkey, or anywhere else, for that matter, to watch a carpet story being assembled in full technicolour? Oh yes? How did you feel watching that, do tell, all the details please. Ah, no, not facts, not facts, not pronouncements, but feelings. How did you feel?

After a few blank stares and some throat clearing, my gaze fixed firmly on my target, a tentative response trickles out and I finally get to hear the voice of the person before me instead of the repetitious rote, the factual quotes, the I-agree-with-him platitudes. I get to the real beneath the mask. It’s exciting and informative and suddenly I am engaged, fascinated and gently questioning further until I see you, oh there you are, just you, no pretence, a warm lively interesting human being.

How easily we bend to a shape in order to fit in, with our statements and judgements, and yet how soft and vulnerable we really are, and how very beautiful we become when just one person shows true interest in how we really feel about something.

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Island Blog – A Bee, Curiosity and Instant Solutions

How do bees manage to fly sideways? In this African garden with its ebullience of fragrant blooms, I am of interest to the bees. One or two come over to me, perhaps beckoned by my floral perfume or perhaps I just look like a blooming shrub in my colourful frock. On the trajectory towards me, the bee flies straight, but once it arrives a few inches from my face, she swings from right to left, left to right, sussing me out, eyeball to eyeball. How does she do it? I google. It seems that a bee’s wings, both pairs of them, not only flap up and down but also can twist and rotate. How fantastic is that! It thinks me.

How flexible am I inside this life of mine? Do I flap up and down, moving either forward or back, or do I have the mental wings that can twist and rotate, thus allowing me to visit any situation or encounter using a lateral flow? I like to think I can laterally flow with the best of them, and I believe it to be a truth. I visit the sideways of things a lot, particularly when I am unsure-footed, continuing forward, but determined not to go back, because going back over old ground in any situation is not going to show me anything new, after all, now is it? However, there is often the temptation to replay the movie, to berate self for any trip ups back there, to wish I had done or said it differently, a thoroughly pointless exercise, a waste of mind energy, and fruitless, but we all do it now and again and some of us make a life of wishing the past was different.

Logic and emotion can be poor bed mates. I can know something, a fact, a truth, a way of behaving, but if I cannot feel the truth of it, know it in my heart, that ‘truth’ means little to me, much as the bee thought I was a blooming shrub. However, it’s deeply frustrating when that belief lasts only as long as it takes for something to trip me up, like a half-concealed boulder in my new path, the one I absolutely know to be the right one, logically speaking. The number of positive and upbeat wisdoms, particularly on social media, are beginning to irritate me, all those goodly truths serving only to tell me how often I fall short of their perfection. Learning how to accept that each ‘truth’ is something I need to experience personally as I keep moving along my path takes a degree of patience, not something any of us find easy. I want it now, this new understanding, not in ten years time for god’s sake! Other people get it straight away, so what is wrong with me? Your thinking, m’lady, that’s what is wrong, not you. Don’t think, but just keep buzzing along, use those wings to twist and rotate, work the muscles, fly sideways, checking out everything and everyone along the way. Be like a bee. And if a shrub turns out to be an old woman in a loud frock, so be it. Move on.

As I approach 70 years of age, an astonishment for me as I never thought I would pass 60, I take a look down the road from my past. 60, in my opinion, meant bad temper, lipstick smudged, hair, weekly permed into a helmet and sensible shoes and I wanted none of that. Nowadays, however, we are younger than our parents were, in thinking, in opportunities, in attitude and in engagement with younger generations. I don’t feel old at all and plan to remain not feeling old until I fall over for the last time. I have also found, eventually it seems, a confidence I did not have when younger. Although I cannot state with any lofty words that I know where I am going, because most of the time I do not, I am happy with that. If we stay curious, fly sideways as well as forwards, the occasional look back allowed but only to honour all we have gone through and survived, we birth ourselves again. We have inherited DNA, yes, but that doesn’t need to define our choices or actions today, right now. I am truly thankful for my ancestors, what they gifted me, the good and the ‘bad’. I am also deeply thankful that I am not a bee. My eyes are open, my limbs flexible, my curiosity a daily fascination as I can arrive in a strange place just like that, my mental wings ready to twist. I don’t wear lipstick nor do I have a permed head. I am not bad-tempered, nor do I own a pair of sensible shoes, running barefoot most of the time. I am prepared to face whatever the olding process sends my way. I will continue to read those uplifting truths because I never know which one will settle in for keeps, and, best of all, I no longer believe in instant solutions, because the only instant solution I can trust unequivocally, is me.