Author: judyfairbairns

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Island Blog – Sunday

I’m not sure I am fond of Sundays. In my youth it was the dread day, the day of loud classical music and bad tempers. The day we children, no matter our years were confined to barracks. We had to stay. It was never an option no matter the twitch in our young souls or the calls from friends to go somewhere, be someone beyond parental control. There was church. There was the whole thing of Sunday Lunch, an always delicious feast but not an easy one. And yet, within the awkwardness of table behaviour and the longing to be anywhere but here, we found our places, we jigged in, we found play and we found fun.

I remember this, even now. I may even have brought this forward for my own children. I probably did, not having a clue, not thinking. It was Catholic in those days, Church of England in my own. Either or, still confining and defining. I feel a semblance of shame for my part in continuing the thread, the threads. It isn’t that I don’t believe in God because I do, but Man has so f*cked this up. I rest there.

This morning I work on my tapestry. I listen to glorious music, an audio book as I work. I watch the rain as it falls relentless against my windows, all of them; the rise and surge of more rain after rain shows me a more determined rain. I consider. Will I sit on the other side of this rain or will I walk out into it, engage, find my fury, pull up my hood, let the endless wet invade meunday and will I let it enjoy me? hmmmm.

I walk out, dog happy, and we paddle and skid and we keep moving.

Best way, especially on a Sunday.

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Island Blog – I walk beneath geese

This day runs smooth. Not all days do, not for nobody. I call a dear friend whose son has died. I cannot know this pain, this wondering, this confusion and guilt. We talk. We find laughter. I know her as a mother, for many years. I know how she cared, what she fought for, how brave she was. I thinks me. She is inside a storm I hope I never encounter. There are no awkward moments because I am clear that I am unclear about everything in her life. I am just a friend, a woman friend and that is more than enough. We women are good at friendships, our men an always puzzlement with their apparent inability to reveal their inner selves. We have many problems with that. I wonder at it and hope it will change, although I see no light on the change calendar. My own sons keep their emotions contained, pressed down, refusing to talk as if talking suggests a weakness they will not allow.

I walk beneath geese, strawn branches, leaf stripped by the recent toothy winds, biting and gone without a care for the damage they caused. I hear tits in the back-broken hazels on the shore, feeding on bugs or other things. I see a swirl and dance of redwings, mistle thrush, fieldfares, like a starling ribbon against the butt of a darkling sky, evening as a promise. They rise and swift, lift and dip into a shore pine, quick with cones, softened in the rain and now food for their hungry bellies. I walk over golden copper leaves, the wet lifting with a laugh into my old boots and I laugh along with the lift.

An hour of walk. Not that I am counting the minutes nor the steps as others do with their kilometre thingies attached to their wrists. I just walk, I just wander. I do remember being young, being the counter and the controller of my beyond. I do. And I smile.

I light my candles. Jig up the fire. Raise the music.

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Island Blog – The Nothing

It rained today. A lot. The track is more like a little stream despite the culverts, now all clogged with copper leaves, hesitating the flowaway. I stop to watch the trickle that should be a steady flow. This rock, this island, is good at sloughing off water and it needs to be for we would all drown otherwise. There is enough height, enough of the waters need to return to Mother Sea, to ensure we just require wellies and macs and a good attitude. Our skin is good up here, less drying wrinkles, more flow and adjust, much like the land upon which we live. I skim the puddles where the land lifts like a shrug, just enough to allow a sort of dry footfall. My old boots, my beloved boots, are more than happy to share the wet with the wet and I can often squelch homewards. No matter. Things can always dry unlike sad hearts, hearts that just recently have filled with salt tears with nowhere to go. Not my heart. Mine is dry as a desert and there may be a problem there, but this is not about me. This is about them, the ones who cannot see beyond the rain, cannot see the bright light in between clouds, the geese flying black against the darkling sky, the swing and waggle of some shrub grown way beyond its boots and needing a cutting reminder of its place in the garden.

I see the old pines out back, quiet now that the stripping wind has exhausted itself. Larch and pine needles thicken the steps up to the compost bin as I walk them today. The burn is loud and wild with peatwater, brown and luscious and thinks me of whisky. So fast it falls, crashing down into pools and slowing like a slug as it builds and bubbles golden froth in the waiting time. I hear it at night as I try to sleep, listen to its song. I love to hear living water, I love the tidal crash. I love the argument between land and sea and I love the way they work it all out. But it does think me of where something stops and another something begins, such as a life, a death.

As I diddle about with should I, shouldn’t I in the confines of Covid fear I think of those who are in the place I was over a year ago. They are there right now and I can do nothing to ease their pain. They will be feeling everything and nothing at the same time. They will be numb and practical, baking, cooking, serving, anything to fill in their moments, anything to keep their feet moving, their smiles bright. I know this place but I know nothing about their place. It confounds me, thinks me of the crash of the burn as it falls into a pool, almost a relief, about the slug in the waiting time. It is, in a word, tapselteerie and yet they will be fighting to hold on to normal because for decades normal was normal. Effortless. She knew who she was and he knew who he was. Now that he is gone, who the heck is she? What is normal?

And Nothing is waiting at the door. Nothing is but a bit player on this stage. But, for some time she will give him the limelight. As I did. As I still do at slug-froth times. My respect to her, to any of you who know what the heck I am talking about.

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Island Blog – Blow Back

As I write of the years, the caring years for me, the demise years for my husband, immediately a contradiction in perspective, I find my belly shouting in response, as if this old belly is hearing things anew. Did I feel the same reaction whilst caring? Perhaps, but I was too busy being whom I needed to be at any given moment, so, possibly, I flipped any belly talk away.

But now that he is gone, he is dead, he is buried up there on that wild hill where gulls wheel, eagles cant the wind and where sheep shit all over the grass, I see through a different lens. I spider-web connect with memories and moments. I can’t follow the strands, not now. They are the ones, blackened and dust-heavy I will point my Henry Hoover nozzle at just to know they’re all gone. But they are not gone, for they web again, catching me like a fly, and, I concede. And, in that concession, I find peace. It is as it is. What was, was.

Standing firmly in the present, with a strong connection to the past and to a ditherswither faltering reach out to the future, I welcome what comes at me. Sort of. I will resist but that’s my thing. Resist. Then I think. Then hmmmm, that Maybe. I love change until Change comes to me. I love Strength until it is required of me. I love an Upset to my timeline, my plan for the day until it swacks me in my ordinary.

In these days beyond him, I clear cobwebs, sell furniture I wanted to see gone for decades, old dark stuff, old dark memories that nobody ever visited, and that was weird to me. I visit them. I turn the leaves of ancient books, beautiful writings, precious memories in photo albums I can never explain to my, to our, children.

I’m blowing back, in case someone will want to catch my breath,

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Island Blog – Flowing Free

I hear the drips plopping into my little jug below the hole in the plaster. It used to infuriate me. Ach, another leak, even though it was not ‘another’, but instead the only one after years of buckets catching loads of leaks. How odd it is, when I think on it, that my leaking past jumps into my now, irrelevantly. I pause and rejig myself. Always a good idea and certainly for me. It is so easy to wear the gloom clothing, after all when Gloom is busy elsewhere and quite fed up with the fact that yet another human is calling him back. I wonder about Gloom. Is he actually an okay sort of person, one who had no idea when the gods gave him the Gloom job that he would be so busy and for so long? I have one small leak in a place where the rain falls like it just has to barf and the only place that allows is it in is here on the very Westerly West of Scotland; the last place before said rain makes no impact whatsoever in the wild expanse of the great Atlantic Ocean, an expanse of so much water that any amount of rain spill goes unnoticed. And we all want to be noticed.

I see the mosaic of infracted plaster overhead and I see art. Soon, I will need to pull it down, again. But, for now, it is rather beautiful and it thinks me. This morning woke me different. Yes, I had been up within the night, padding down for a cup of herbal and to leave my worries behind. Why they all tangle in the bed sheets is a mystery to me, but they do. If I walk down the stairs, I leave them behind and when I return, they’ve bored themselves out in the waiting and I can lie down without the damn things. I secretly believe they have no substance, hence the frishing away so quickquick. I have learned this technique over many years of believing they were the truth and holding on to them, thus allowing them to define me, to trip me up, to collude and to coagulate so that breakfast is always, was always, a guilt trip. To hell with that nonsense now. Here I am, dancing alone to Mr Beaujangles, in my kitchen, remembering the days when I could actually dance, catching my face in a passing mirror and seeing an old white haired woman who bears no relation to the one I know myself to be, and I rest and I chuckle. A So What, rises in me. And I like So What.

I spend the day completing a tapestry. For me, there is a story in every one. I give them away. I don’t sell. If someone identifies with the mountains, the tidal flow, the moon, the little home tucked away behind rocks, a safe place, then their story connects with mine. It was all I ever wanted and I got my dream. I am lucky. Folk say that we make our own luck and I agree to a degree but they miss the point. It is gratitude I am feeling, communicating, and the rest is just semantics. Words change, meanings change over time, over generations, and all of that is just as it is. Flow is key. Moving on with whatever comes at us, no matter how much value we put on the past of our past, means we don’t die wishing things were as they were. And I am so not doing that. Was is, not is. Can never be.

I walk inside the sheets of rain this afternoon as the light dims with two friends. We laugh in the rain, the diversity of dogs and their boundary shouts. To be honest, the only shouter was Poppy, but, thankfully, my friends were kind about her issues with any dog walking on what she considers to be her patch and her patch alone. No matter how often I tell her we do not own these lands, she is strong in her confidence, but it slows and calms quite quickly and so we walk together through lashing rain and bright fallen beech leaves coppering our path, larch needles like exclamation marks, crushed rowan berries, blood drops beneath our feet. We talk of village matters, of a strong and wonderful man who died yesterday, and, at that, we pause. This man is gone. His wife is in shock. We are not in that place. She and her children are not in free flow, but we are. We cannot change their situation but we can change ours because of their situation. We do it as we come through the kissing gate. We hold the news, together. And, in a few seconds we rejig our own lives, our own petty angst and we flow again, we flow free.

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Island Blog – I’m Watching

The sky louds as it darks, suddenly. Of course it is no sudden thing to the sky but only to us, captured in the time change thingy. I look away to make a mug of tea and there it is, the dark, closing in and rushing me to gather wood for the fire, as if I was an auld fool who had forgot the hours. Awkward and for a while. I remember it inside my young motherhood, remember rolling my eyes just knowing that babies and other young things work on body clock, not clock clock. Crows still rise at dawn to damage lambs and babies yell for mama when the same mama has only just laid herself down, after the grate clearing and ironing of napkins and table cloths for the breakfasts. The dark came suddenly, still does, with a swoop and yet I am loving the light in the mornings. For a bit I have felt I was the only one awake as Orion showed off in the Eastern sky but now, as if in defeat, he fades as I sip my coffee and I find myself glad of that.

In the now of my my now, I feel at peace, mostly. Obviously, there are sirilous moments (make up word) when I founder; when I walk from room to room looking for, looking for. That sort of crazy. But I like crazy. It fits. I am grounding inside my home that was his home that was our home (ish). I move barefoot always. Learned that connection from my beautiful sister, my brother’s wife and I still do this, no matter how cold. Barefoot. Do we ever do that thing? It isn’t weird. It’s real connection to our earth, our world, ourselves.

This night I see Orion. I follow the line of his belt to Venus. I think. I have tried to upload a star gazer app, being one who really loves stars, only to find daft music and a load of fiddle-di-dee that shuck my head.

I watch everything. People, stars, skies, moments, all of it.

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Island Blog – Quietation

I could write this. ‘As the leaves abandon their mother ship, as the track is littered with jewels of gold, red, green and brown, as the cold snips at my bare legs, still bare-legged for as long as possible, I don’t mind.’ But I do mind these widow days. I pretend I don’t for everyone to see and to hear. That’s what I do, what I learned from other widows, from my granny, from my mother, from his mother. The widow lot is barely a patch of earth, not enough to grow a new house, a new home. No. We, who are suddenly alone when alone is not what we ever wanted, not for one minute even as we longed for alone just once or twice when the significant other was driving us daisy crazy, are now alone. With hours, mornings, breakfasts, afternoons, god bless the length of those feckers and with the rest of our lives.

So what is the rest of the whole nonsense? Is it padding about in slippers till midday? Is it frocking up for nobody to see, no matter how many frocks and how cautious the layering? Is it cooking for one when every mortal thing in the shop caters for two? Is it knowing that nobody will ever ask a widow to join them for supper and a load of wine because then they, the nobodies, will have the added trouble of making sure that the widow gets home without battering a fence or ending up in a ditch, her with her car and its slant towards the eastern sky no matter how canny she may or may not be with the wheel for steering?

I laugh at myself. I know, I know, that all the young folk, all those snatching at the skin of their ‘other’ have no idea how lucky they are. To have that argument once again, that nonsense that only ever arises from two, one of which who thinks they are ‘one’ and the other who is certain they are not and will never be, would be grand.

I quiet. There is a lot of quiet now. I will find my way but even as I write this I know I will ding up like a firework in the morning, just to make everyone else feel good.

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Island Blog – The Wild

I walk this day through copper gold and spandangles of sunshine. The track, wet, muddy from all the rain, dapples into light, peckled with mosaic, the light glinting off the water spots, the puddles, and lighting up the prints of yesterday walkers. I watch the down, erstwhile forgetting the up until it calls me to me in blue and gold. Me and the Poppy dog keep the beat, or I do, for she scoots and slows, sniffs at pretty much everything, oftentimes right before my feet and it thinks me of tripping. Old folk do think of tripping. I never considered making such a foolish error before, but now I do. How odd that tripping, a simple fall that comes with an answering bounce back into the upright, now holds menace. I could be here for hours, days, should I allow this tripping thing. Then I wheesht myself, saying, out loud, Nonsense, and loudly enough to startle a quiet other walker with his terrier who rounds the bend in a way that wonders me. Is he a ghost, so quiet is he? No, I have seen him before with the same little terrier, politely held on an unstrained leash. Hallo, I say, unable to quell the launch and startle of the Poppy dog, the gap between me and her ears being too great to prevent a situation. I say Hallo in my quietest tone, in A major, I think, and muted, so as to calm things.

He is unfazed. We talk. He suggests unleashing his dog and I nod in agreement. Dogs are always better off without the strangle-throat of a leash. Always. At best, they will sort themselves out in moments. At worst, the one who knows they are about to be dishevelled, right here on this peaceful track, can get away. Humans always cock things up, these sorts of things, their fear, their ignorance of the animal kingdom. It rolls my eyes and often. Just let them spar, just let go, just let. But not everyone gets that ‘let’ thing. I suspect my life as a farmer’s wife has loosened my desire to control something way more powerful than I. The animal instinct is definitely a ‘let go’ thing for me. And, I have a lot of opinions around the rules of controlling wild animals, even dogs or cats, but I keep it all to myself. Anthropomorphism is a big deal in the human world, and practised to our detriment, but try explaining that to someone who thinks their pet is their pet.

We humans forget our wild too. It is a big mistake and one we can rethink. During lockdown a lot of folk bought puppies and kittens for their own pleasure, to entertain and to fill a lockdown hole. I am really hoping that most realised they had taken on a wild creature, no matter how domesticated they may have been over many decades. The wild is strong, it never goes. It can be battered into compliance by fear but the worm will turn (whatever that means).

I can see a happy and respected dog or cat immediately. Any cowering, any slink back when a hand is raised, speaks me volumes. A canine or feline who is loved and understood will walk straight-backed, will wag a tail, will merry a look, be curious and open, like the terrier and his man I met today in the dapples and around a quiet corner. A good man, a happy dog, a merry, and a bit shouty, encounter. I thank him. He knows the wild.

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Island Blog – Holdlight

This night, this evening, the sky is tricksy, moving light, crazy wild risings of gold, blood, fire, purple and umber, never an easy mix on an artist’s palette. A storm coming.

I watch it. I catch it. It enthrals me for some time. But I already feel the sink of it. It will die, and dark, it will fade, it will turn me back into the domestic of my life. I was there, yes I was, but it lasted for what…..moments, ones that a load of folk missed as they busied around kids and dinner around traffic cones and parking restrictions. But I saw it, and still I am lost when it also is lost.

I light candles, flight up the fire, warm a meal, lift the volume on my playlist and still I watch the dark because the dark will always turn to light. Always.

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Island Blog – Natural Friends

It is one thing to find friends among other humans and quite another to make a friend of Circumstance or Fear, of Change and of Time.

To elucidate, I have finally cleared out the last of his shirts, the plaid ones, the ones I kept just in case. In case of what? I asked myself, somewhat irritably, just yesterday morning. In case he returns from the grave? Well no, I hope not as I doubt he would be in good condition after all these months in a wooden box. Well, why then? I find myself infuriatingly persistent at times. I thought I might cut them into patchwork squares for my baby mats, I say, whilst flicking through the big pile of clean and folded items, all blues and reds, lines of colour running through, the material soft and warm. Time steps into the room and lays a gentle hand on my shoulder. I know, I whisper, not turning around. Time is invisible after all and isn’t expecting me to look her in the eye.

I go downstairs and pull out the last black bag. She is right. Time is right. Time is my friend and kindly even if she does nudge me forward when I often want to stay stuck in the mud. I take a deep breath and begin to load up. Black is a good colour for this task as I don’t have to see any of its contents once swallowed up by the dark. I tie the top of the bag and harrumph it into the little reading room. I still have to drive it to the charity shop but that will happen when it happens. You can’t go back to it, warns myself as she stands in the doorway like a prefect. I bat her away, head back down the stairs and prepare my bagel, avocado and poached egg breakfast. The first mouthful sticks a bit but I keep going. Thank you Time, I say.

The wind has howled and battered against my windows for days now. Wind at night, that big, noisy crashbang of a thing, has always scared me. Fear comes up to attempt sleep when I do and she stays all night long, waking me often. She, Fear, is an insomniac after all. Everyone knows that. By the morning my bed looks like I hosted a wrestling matching it, the sheets all twisted and the duvet turned around until the fixing buttons clack against my ear piercings like a tap dance. I avoid thinking about the night ahead, the next night in this hooligan of a wind. I lash down the wheelies, close the garage door, watch the birds ding about like shuttlecocks, pretend I’ll be fine. In other words, I am resisting Fear, pushing her aside, singing la-la-la a lot.

My little sister calls. I call her that even though she is a grandmother twice over because she is a lot younger than me and the size of a dart, tiny, feisty, accurate in her projections. She talks about the full moon, how it upsets her sleep every single month, how her fed is right up on all things moon. She asks me how I am sleeping and I tell her just fine, well fine for me which means about 4/5 hours of a night. No moon trouble for me because I’ve got her number. Great! she comes back. Send it to me so I can tell her to eff off. I chuckle. Ah, No, that’s not the way. You have to befriend her, not fight her. She tells me she slept fine the following night.

It thinks me as I realise that I am fighting Fear of the big wind and this is what wakes me, scares me, upsets my sheets and twists my duvet around. I listen again to my own advice. Make friends with the moon and she will stop bothering you. Ha! So if I make friends with the wind I will free myself from the Fear of it. I do exactly that and, although the wind, which must surely be exhausted by now, keeps up her crashbang, sleep comes and stays a while.

Then my mind turns to Circumstance. I think she is a different matter altogether because of her unpredictability and her tenacity. She is going nowhere, no matter how much wishing and whining goes on. She is no respecter of wealth, colour, age or choice. She is solid and she is flighty. To make friends with her requires a lot of inner thinking, because to be able to accept her inevitable presence inside a life is the key to peace and we all love that one. I have enjoyed glorious visits from my siblings and now they have gone. My days are my days now and I must approach each one with a Tigger and a Pooh in my mind. I will begin a new landscape tapestry. I will settle forward into my solitary life once more. I will walk the Poppy dog, catch a falling leaf, watch the colours rainbow as they die. I will laugh at my imaginings and write down the ones that laugh me most. And, every time Circumstance or Fear, Change or Time appear at my side to ruffle my feathers, I will say Welcome, come in, let’s chat my friend.