Author: judyfairbairns

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Island Blog – Heart lift

Soft, loving compost is heaped on my garden. I made it myself and it is thunderous with worms, not that any of them will survive this new exposure to light. They are worms of the dark, of the fetid warmth and gentle darkness of a dialek bin, creatures of a season and doomed to face change, one they won’t like much. Robin, blackbird and thrush gather as if they know there is a feast for an early arriver. Within minutes these compostian beings will have dug themselves deep, dug for death.

Heretofore I had always shovelled, laborious shovelfuls into a big bucket, then lugged said laborious shovelfuls down the back steps and into the front garden. Then came muscle man. He just wheeched the whole dialek off the ground and shook him a bit to release the dark, wormy soft heap of live-giving goodness from his interior. I was impressed. Now he can do the lugging and he did, hence my thoroughly over excited flower beds. They are giggling. I can hear them even through the regular hail shower attacks. I see an eggshell, a bit of cauliflower stalk, garden cuttings and they smile me. Go to work my lovelies, I tell them and together, we wait, even though they know more than I about what is happening beneath their butts. It is such a quiet thing, this growing, this birthing of new life and the mystery of survival no matter what frollocks happens above ground.

Primroses are showing sunshine faces along the drystone walls. No larch buds yet but I can hear them whispering as I pass. We are coming, they say. Keep watching. And I will. I do. As I walk, I remember. This time last year I shut down, locked out the world, kept vigil for any invaders. How strange to still be thinking the same way and, yet, not quite in the same way. It isn’t that I mind locking down in principle. It isn’t that I am afraid. It isn’t that I no longer have anyone to protect other than myself. It is simply strange, as if I, like the compostian worms, have become accustomed to a darkness, one that has proffered an unexpected sense of security, and now I am not sure who I will be. All through this past year my lack of desire to go out, to meet anyone, to entertain visitors confirmed me as a student hermit. None of the lockdown, bar the initial fear of an invisible and extremely powerful enemy, phased me.

But I have had enough now. Rising, unlike the worms but very like the new shoots, the daffydowndillies, the tulips, the snowdrops and with new leaves twinkling at me under the weight of thawing hailstones, I want to keep rising and that means forward into life. My fed is suddenly up. I want freedom of choice once again. My choice to go here or there, to this person or that should be my own now. How clearly I see the way a revolutionary spirit rises within us. Living under any regime is everything inhuman and that’s what this feels like now. Enough Covid! with all your tentacles and your new names and strains, your machination against the human race, the one I belong to, by the way, the one I seriously care about! I want to yell. Actually I did yesterday and it felt good.

However, there is little we can do than behave ourselves a bit longer and keep watching for Spring. She will go a long way in saving us, for now. However it doesn’t stop the fury at continuous imprisonment. I think of the ones who have died and those who couldn’t be there at the end of a loved life. I think of the painful separations, the people who will suffer deeply from this enforced isolation, those living lives of deprivation and of constant pain. Who will lift them into Spring, I wonder? Here am I frapping about renewing my passport and then there are they, stuck, trapped, broken, sick, dead. It is humbling.

Best I can do is write. Best I can do is keep living. Best I can do is to watch for Spring. Sometimes others walk with me. Not weirdo dead people, although occasionally they do, but those I think about, the ones I don’t know and will never meet, the ones who have found this past year a deal more than merely inconvenient. Hey, I say, come with me. I can take you to the fairy woods, show you the elvish trees, now a bit stripped of moss for the deer are starving here. I can walk you through where wild garlic will flower, take you to eider nests, show you oystercatcher eggs among salty basalt, lift your eyes to a skylark, watch your face soaked in salt spray and old stories, and watch you catch them, the stories ,and even if you don’t understand the language, your eyes will tell me you have those stories in your heart. A heart lift. A change for the ever-ness of life.

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Island Blog – Woman, She Says

There is an old woman I know. She is not very old but she is definitely no longer new. She can feel it in her bones and her mind. Those arms that once could heft potato sacks from ground control to the bed of a lorry now find it quite enough to lift a few books onto a shelf. Her hair is silvering, with a stout refusal to do it uniformly. She hates that bit about ageing. Eyebrows salt one hair at a time, each salt hair stronger and with a complete disregard for the calm-down brush. She catches sight of them occasionally, when she has her specs on, and is horrified. Now she must, with specs remaining in place, locate said strong, disregardful hair, with slightly shaky fingers and her small tweezers. It really is not fair, she mutters, this unpleasant process. Recently she misfired and made a rather interesting gap in one brow. Huh! she says. See if I care, she says. I’ll call you a scar and own you. You won’t bring me down, she says, and once she removes her specs, the evidence has disappeared completely. A similar challenge arises at make up time. She is careful not to apply slap in the dark, or in half-light. The day must be well and truly risen before slap app. She remembers older women with orangutang faces, with MacDonald Red cheeks, lips loose with pink leak and alien eyes. She vows never to look like they did, just as they did.

She loves flowers and colour, frocks and boots. She buys too many of the latter. There are three pairs of glorious boots that stand in anticipatory waiting beside her back door, polished but never worn. She has had to expand her wardrobe pole oftentimes. She does this by wheeching some frocks, unworn for well over a year but retained, just in case someone threw a ball on the island or invited her out for a formal dinner. In her heart she knows this is never going to happen, but she bought them anyway for their gorgeous folds and perfect lines. The flowers she loves pepper the drystone walls and freckle her garden. She arranges them in vases around the house and breathes in their fresh sweet scent. She watches them close at night, open at first light, just as she does, following the rise and fall of the sun. She plays music all day long. She loves music. Sometimes she plays Vivaldi, sometimes Radio Two, sometimes her own playlist of beloved tunes and songs that yank her into rememberings, or strum her heart strings with their lyrics, their cadences, their rise, rise and fall into a pool of golden warmth that brings tears to her eyes for no reason at all.

She loves her dog and the way the windows keep out the rain. She loves her new bed and the electrically inspired mattress cover that warms her all the way up to number 6 and which turns off in an hour. She loves the way the curtains breathe like lungs on a windy night and the way the light turns moody when a grey day morphs into a greying night. She loves clouds and grandchildren, the way they laugh so easily and cry without embarrassment. She love spontaneity and change, boiled eggs and wildness. She loves nature, singing out just for the hell of it, walking in the fairy woods and talking to trees, stones, the men who delivered wood just as she ran out. She loves sea salt and balsamic rice cakes, tsaziki, Barcelona and Africa. She remembers holidays, moments, weddings, births and deaths. She remembers her life, a yawling wiggly line of a million wonders, of pain, of divine intervention when nothing human could offer help. She talks to God. She reckons he is there somewhere. In fact she knows he is, or she is, because too many things have happened to save her bacon. She loves art, from Michael Angelo to Banksy and even further back. She can easily listen to music from all genres, depending on ear tolerance.

She loves sewing things for others, repairing and patching. She loves moving things around so the room takes on a new song. She decorates things, any things. A tall standing lamp reminds her. Covered from toe to shade in patchwork material and dangling with pretty lights, baubles and beads, it shines its individuality to the world. Well, no, not the world, says the lamp. About 5 people pass this way on a regular basis. Steady on old woman with the ‘world’ delusion. Okay, she says, you are right. But I don’t do any of this for others to admire. I do this for me. The lamp is silent. She looks around the room at the family photos, canvases of captured moments. She is holding her first granddaughter in her arms at a wedding. Their smiles are rapt. She is sitting in a cafe in Spain and laughing. She is in Africa playing scrabble in a welcome shade whilst zebra, giraffe and warthog wander by the stoep in an evening cool. She is singing at a wedding, dancing at a birthday disco, eating sushi, playing with grandchildren.

All is well, she says. I am well, she says. I am who I made myself and my life is every colour on the wheel.

She says.

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Island Blog – Monday, Monday

Mondays have always been the one day when I really felt like dressing up and going out. It seemed that the weekend fell about my ears most welcomely, bringing a drive of its own; the sleep ins, the pyjama days, the allowances. Then, well refreshed by all of that, Monday arrived like a stand-up soldier, bristling. I wanted to punch it in the face. No, I said, you don’t do this to me. You don’t ‘tell’ me I can’t want this or feel that just because, in your arrogance, you reckon you are Day One of a new week. All those groany rules. All those restrictions like you think its ok to pull in my stays and what…..I eat gruel or something in deference to your pedigoguery? This is World Women’s Day btw, so I am not playing, not that I ever did.

This Monday, as has oftentimes befallen me afore, I have a deep yearning to go out, to share a wonderful vibrant, candlelit evening with friends. I realise this will not be, as I spin fresh coriander, garlic, tomato and condiments into a bowl to mix with my pasta. Pasta again. Actually I don’t mind pasta again but on this Monday I absolutely do and a half. I remind myself there is a pandemic. Check. I remind myself that my dinner date is dead. Check. I remind myself that all restaurants on the island, along with the beautician and the hairdresser are shut on a Monday. Well, pants to that. I attempt to scoot my Monday longings into Tuesday but Tuesday is a very different creature. Tuesday is gentle and not combative. Tuesday is happy being where she is, after Monday. I would be happy too, if I was Tuesday and after Monday. Monday is a menace and she has way too big a sense of herself. She is almost male.

So, I fanny about with mending jeans, sewing things, watching birds, walking in the rain and making that coriander thing for my pasta. I also clear even more of my dead husband’s stuff and the binman waves at me and mouths something I don’t hear, but his smile is delicious and it almost saves the Monday thing. I check my geranium seedlings, haul in wood, mutter about the freckles on the butt of my car # toonearthepothole, respond to some lawyer emails, send a text, make tsaziki. I love tsaziki and it is an art form. Too sloppy a grated cucumber and it becomes mush. This one worked just fine and I flagged down my daughter-in-law on her return from school collection to give her some.

But I still have that yearning to dress up and go out. Of course ‘out’ is off limits and has been for considerable yonks, but it doesn’t stop the feeling, the yearning. It thinks me. I wonder, when this is all behind us, will we go wild? Will we have cowered in our darkened dens for long enough to have lost skin tone, pliancy and the connection with our wild spirits? Or will we, instead be much quicker at being ready for the excitement of an evening out with friends, even if it is a Monday?

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Island Blog – Dark Light

The past few days have shown me things. Things I welcomed, things I turned away from like a girl from a stalker. The morning came and eventually went, turning into another long afternoon. I find afternoons go on for far too flipping long, not least because some people consider the hour of 5 o’clock as being the fulcrum of an afternoon whereas I see it as a thank goodness it’s evening at last, and no fulcrum of anything at all but more a springboard into the warm waters of relief. Now, at last, I can turn my tired body into collapso armchairo, thus making it okay to watch Line of Duty or whatever. And my body does get tired, but only when I notice it. Before I do this noticing thing, I am simply aware of confusion, a confusion of bone, muscle, emotion and tension. I ask What is Wrong with me? Me says nothing for she has no answer in her mouth. Perhaps her silence communicates her lack of any answer at all. Perhaps she is mocking me, eyebrow arched, snort at the ready. You should know the answer, she might say, had I waited long enough. Should. That most unfavourite word, that remonstration, that inference of judgment, the one that always shoots me back down the snake to square one.

I went to church today for the first time in over a year. I had lost my something or other before lockdown and didn’t attend, couldn’t face people, concerned questions that would have demanded answers for these are good people, friends. I had nothing in my head, nothing in my mouth but spit and poison. He was dying by then, fading, departing and with such good grace, that good grace that leaves the one left behind with a shit load of stuff to sort, organise, plan and implement. And he was fine about all of that. I recall the biggest trouble in the home was if the local shop had run out of apricot yoghurt, full fat. It made for an indigestional return to HQ. It was all he ate.

The church is beautiful with stained glass images sensitively painted, a curved dome ceiling, decorated in colour and flight, old oak pews and warmth. We spaced ourselves (distantly) wearing our masks. The organist, a woman, girl really, danced her fingers over the keys lifting us and the glorious music into the perfect acoustical space. It was a gentle time, and I hadn’t wanted to go at all despite volunteering to write an opening prayer. People? Gathering? Driving down the road in this rain? None of it. But I am so glad I went, for it proved to be a something I welcomed in. The ridiculousness of waving at each other when once we hugged and blew laughs and stories right into each others’ faces; the way we sat, not together, sharing tales of the week, but two pews apart, all mystical and bonkers. I hunkered into my warm jacket, wondered if it was clean, if my boots had mud on them, if anyone behind me was wondering How is She? Only 6 and a bit months since her husband of almost 50 years just yoghurted out. I thought, How shall I sit so as not to bother anyone? Head bowed, head up, legs crossed, not crossed? Will I falter as I read this prayer, will the music unravel me?

All of that happened but it didn’t matter. Why is that? because, despite a year of tribbling and swithering about God being in his heaven or even if either of those big things exist at all, I was among my friends, those who care about me as I do about them. I come home in the rain feeling different. This unwelcome thing became a welcome one. It thinks me of dark light. I know dark light. I met it this morning at 3.45 am. Oh good lord, I said, then swore. You again. And swore once more only better. I got up, pulled on warm stuff and made for the kettle. I sat in the dark conservatory, no moon, no stars, slow clouds, no birds. This, I said, is the dark light poets write about, this place between night and day, between welcome and unwelcome, between me and the next chapter, between fear and action, between anxiety and decision. I know you Dark Light, I whispered.

Hallo, said Dark Light. And we chatted for a while until the sun hefted his ass above the horizon. Can you tell me something? I asked, turning back to my companion. But he was gone

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Island Blog – Standing, The Silent Tree

The trees are still today as I wander through them, beneath their arms, limbs and twigs. They appear to be waiting for something, or someone. Perhaps it is me. Here I am, I say, you know me for I am here every single day. Not every day, they say in a stilled silence. Not every day. Okay, maybe not every day. Some days are too cold, too wet, too dark, or have been thus for some months. But where are your voices now? I trunch through a boggy bit on the track, my eyes down, focussing on not getting my sauncy boots coated beyond the plumb line. They are still still. The trees. Not a murmur, not a whisper beyond that reproach at the bend where the track moves with the bedrock. Nothing. Rhododendrons giggle each side of me, stupid infiltrators who never did understand their beginnings, their birth home, who think nothing of claiming all the available space and the space not available too. The Tapselteerie estate manager can spend hours, days, chain-sawing these bullies down to their tippytoes only to watch them rise again the following Spring. They push even now through the others, the residents of this wood, between the oaks and the plane trees, the hazels, hawthorns, beech, larch, pines, birches and the jinks trees, those twisting ballerinas of the woods, the hornbeam, who find space that isn’t enough and bend and twist and lift to the light like some women I know.

The light is held this day, caught in the cold grip of loud cloud, penetrating like a voice, holding the room all the day long. I pull on leggings for my walk, boots, fur lined, a scarf, jacket and woolly hat. I notice how I pick the right colours for this walk, blending to match my current frock. How ridiculous. I meet nobody, nowhere, never, or, rarely and if any of the rarelies bother with my kit, they never say. I plan to walk further but my small wee dog stops at the cut off for a short one. I know she isn’t behind me as I push on through the silent trees so I turn. She cocks her head. This walk, she says without a word, is boring today. There are no dapples of sunlight, no word from the trees, no sway of the grasses and. even the tidal flow is being politely quiet. Let’s go home to the fire. And, so, we do.

Back home and still with a million steps left to step, I decide we will clear out more of my dead husband’s stuff. I cannot and will not chuck a lot of it. I want to wait for this flipping virus to die off so that his children can come calm, wander, reflect and choose. I could be waiting another year, I know this. However, I do plan to have his office repainted and carpeted as a child’s room for the familial visiting I hope will come. I sort, clean, lift, drag and box. In this afterworld of death and responsibility, I have been confounded, silent like the trees this day, standing, waiting. In one moment I just know what this son would want, this daughter, how each individual child might, might have connected with their dad, but what do I know? What I do know is that not one of them is easy around this thing, this waiting, this silent stillness. As in this room now. His office, one he demanded and one he never used. Very ‘man’ in my experience. I get it now, now that I remember and understand how impossibly impossible it is for any man to remain himself in the face of birthing his own children. What appeared a dream became a nightmare. I get it. It still pisses me off, nonetheless.

The room is all but cleared for the painter. It is a silly, pointy room with one small window and not enough air flow. It will only ever be good for a child sleepover, a child, or children who do not yet bother with air flow, lack of sleep, confined quarters. At least it is there for them when they come and I am glad of it, even if it is going to take Henry a while to suck up the ancient cobwebs. I touch the grease mark on the wall, once made by my lovely father-in-law for he slept here towards the end of his life. Hallo, I say. Old Tree. Old Silent one. I did love you and you knew that. We winked at each other over bossy controlling heads, didn’t we? You saw me a friend. Didn’t you?

Yes I did, he whispers. The silent tree moves.

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Island Blog – All Rise

There is a rising. There always is one of those for we who believe that nothing and nobody stays down for long. Even the dead rise in spirit, lodging in our hearts and minds, refreshing our memories, balancing them. We rise from bed, from a chair, from grief, from a dark season. The moon is half herself this morning, shining like a beacon in a flip-flop sky of pink clouds and blue promise. In my garden green things are pointing to the heavens. I have no idea what some of them are, only remembering in a vague way what bulbs I sunk six inches deep, and where. Surprises appear daily and I stand at the window watching a little more green, a little more bulk, a little more determination to sprout in the goodly earth. Birds lift and flit among the emerald leaves, land, peck at the seed which will insist on falling off the bird table even without a wind blow.

I light the woodburner to ward off the morning chill. It is light already. I recall those endless darkling mornings, mornings that never seemed to un-darkle all the way up to tea time. They are behind us now and I am glad of it. Going too is that bitter cold, the threat of chilblains and spine shivers, frozen fingers and numb toes. We are rising, all of us, together, as we move into Spring. We are brave enough to come downstairs barefoot, leaving our fluffy slippers under the bed; soon we will no longer need our thermal vests, socks or pyjamas and we will be able to talk with a passerby without risking hypothermia. It is a good thing, a much needed thing, a promise, a rising. We have come through the longest winter I have ever known bar one – the first winter on Tapselteerie when the cold froze itself, when it was warmer to be outside, when the vast halls and walls of a mansion house tried to break me. She did not succeed because I was determined to rise, will always rise, no matter who, no matter what. Just like you. How marvellous we are, we humans, we risers, in spite of the ground shifting beneath our feet, the storms tearing us to shreds, the rain calling us to drown. We are fractals in Euclidian space, individual elements, but we are also unconfined, wild, feral, unpredictable and there is a glory in that, a rising. Something or someone tries to keep us down but we refuse to stay down. Against all odds we will always push out new shoots, always point to the sky, always bloom and flourish, even from a dying bed, even from within a prison, a castle of cold and unforgiving walls. We are invincible because we are in complete control of our thoughts and our thoughts can rise us from the darkest places. I know this. It is my firm, immovable belief and it always has been. Oh, I have fallen, believe me and oftentimes, but I have not stayed down. Life is such a beautiful and precious gift and we only have one.

Let us keep rising into whatever this beautiful and precious life offers. Let us see with wide open eyes every tiny gift that comes our way, no matter what. A smile, a conversation, a zoom, an unexpected kindness given or the chance to gift one, a word or two of encouragement, a helping hand, time, love, compassion, empathy. After all, not one of us will survive this life and we are a longtime dead. The time for rising is right now, this minute, this day.

All rise……..

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Island Blog – Words, boundaries, life

It is quite wonderful how things can change. From the lowest low to a gentle rise of goodly spirits. This morning, the first day of Spring, I wake to birdsong and the Snow Moon. She hangs in a misty sky, a rainbow corona surrounding her not-quite-full circle, lemon yellow and bright as a lighthouse beam. She smiles me. The garden slowly lifts in response showing me new shoots, tulips, daffodils almost in flower and snowdrops by the squillion, survivors of some sharp frosts, the plucky little mites. Much like me, like you, for if we have survived this past year, we are indeed lucky and plucky.

2020 saw this home locked down on March 16th and I can barely believe a nearly year has moved beneath my scurrying feet, for they did indeed scurry over such great swathes of time as I took care of the one who could no longer take care of himself. I look back with pride and no guilt at all for that time even if I was sometimes angry, upset, frustrated, snippy and downright exhausted. In that time I learned how to build my boundaries, stone by heavy stone. I would take the work, accept the demands, work with his confusion and upsydownsy mood swings but I would not take attack of any sort. I was ready behind my wonky wall for I am no construction expert and there were times when a stone wobbled off to land with a laugh at my feet. It took concentration and dedication to detail, to the logistics of wall-building but I did learn and my wall stands firm now. It is not to keep people out nor to keep me in, but simply there to remind me of what I will take from anyone and what I will stand against with words of my own truth, my own respect of self.

Reflecting back over the years, I find memories of times for which I am not proud, times when I wasted precious energy on trying to persuade a rigid thinker that my way was better than his, or when I defied, lied, pretended, gave up and ran away. But it is a soft reflection. From this distance I can see what I did and what I didn’t do, how I twisted myself into storm enough to upset the whole family or worse, when I turned in on myself and everything went black. I thought, back then, really believed, that I was solely at fault, that if only I gave more, did better, complied with everything, life would be wonderful. I know better now. I know that when a couple fall in love and decide to spend a lifetime together, they are stepping into a world they cannot possibly imagine. It begins, usually, with the first child. Suddenly mother is no longer the girl of my dreams and father is decidedly lacking in his ability to support effectively. We both spend many quiet moments, hours even, wondering what on earth went so wrong. Of course a child is always a joy and more, a thankfulness for his or her safe arrival and healthy body and mind, but how to hold onto these truths in the face of sleep deprivation, constant demands, endless screaming and lack of experience, is oftentimes impossible. We weather the changes and if we are able to deny ourselves all the freedoms we once enjoyed, and together, we have a chance to hold on to each other through the shit storm. But many of us change too much. Many cannot let go of the ideals we began this whole adventure with, those certainties. We will be fine. We won’t do it that way. We are invincible. Well, we all thought that.

And now Spring has come once again, as she always will, as sure as eggs are eggs. New growth, new hope, new light, new freedoms too if we can believe that one. I have read words he wrote in his diary. I know how he felt as I pulled away and immersed myself in motherhood. He doesn’t write much but even a short sentence can reel me. I suppose I knew he was feeling the way he did, but why didn’t he say? Why didn’t I ask? All I can remember is being exhausted all of the time and furious with his inability to change. He adored his children, there was no mistaking that. He adored me too. But his way of communicating that adoration was not my way and often clumsy. Neither of us was in the wrong. We just struggled to find mutual language. I allow that thought to float about me as I continue to look through the things, the words and thoughts he left behind. And I think this:-

We loved and we lived. We raised five extraordinary individuals who made us both proud, made us laugh, made our life as colourful as the rainbow corona around the Snow Moon, and as circular, endless. We survived right up to the end of it. My work now is to hold those memories, thoughts, words, good times, bad times as precious gifts, to bring them into my own days and nights and to fashion a new ground for my old feet to wander into a newly enriched life.

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Island Blog – The Other Side of Things

Walking, I know Spring is coming. She is right behind me and before me and that is quite an achievement. For the last few days I have walked in a different way. Slower, more present, less turbulented by inner thoughts, thoughts that were back there, at home; thoughts of what this and what that and where is this thing and do I care? I realise as I walk that the natural world is able to spirit itself into my senses, alerting them and altering them. My feet and my body are both discombobulated, momentarily. You can tell I love long words. Oftentimes I must needs dash to my dictionary in order to explain the word that came to me, unbidden, unbound, as a challenge. Ok, it says, you dragged me up from the depths as I slept, as I have done for many years and now you must define me, explain, make me fit into your sentence. The last time I breathed air I was with Dickens, Samuel Pickwick, the Brontes or some other dudes who fashioned long words into marvellousness.

Walking, I notice my boots. They are fur lined even if the fur bit is a tad thin. I bought them in Shetland in the best shop ever, many years ago. I had gone there because my son asked me to join him. Oh such a beckoning. Who could refuse such a welcome. He was training fish farmers on their boat licences and he asked me. Me. Me. Whilst he trained in February waters in the wildest of seas, I wandered the streets and found this boot shop. My thing. I turned in and met an open warm space and just me with two boot assistants. The lighting was warm, the space open and in I went. They are still my favourite boots even after all this time and despite a random dog pinching one whilst I was respectfully barefoot in house and chewing its peripheries, I still walk with them. I tell them, you were born in Shetland and you think this walk is difficult? And we continue.

Beneath the trees I hear spring birdsong and the wind, the wind sings me a different song. All winter I have heard the fierce ice winds burning the skeletal trees with a stripping menace in their various voices, mostly north and east, but this song is different. It is softer, a bit. Today I don’t hear the snip clack of broad leave wind blow. No. I hear the soft wave pulse of wind in the pine needles. There are no leaves yet to snip or clack, but they are coming and I feel it today. I see kill on the track, a dove I think and I pause. You were here, I said, you and the hawk that took you down. Life and death, my favourite cycle. Sunshine dapples the spreads of space, spreads that will soon enough be taken over by bracken. Let us love it, this space, this looking beyond whilst we can. I see the sea-loch. I think of the oyster farmer down there, the fishermen out there and beyond ‘out there’, who now cannot find a buyer for their catches and who are flipping scared.

I see an old fallen beech. You’ve been down a while my friend, I say. You fell like a starburst and I remember when you did. We were still at Tapselteerie. You fell five limb wide, and so politely. In the night. You could have taken out a whole village with that spread but you didn’t. Such is the kindness of nature. And, now, you may well warm new hearths, or you may melt back down into the earth that birthed you. Its is no longer in my hands to decide that for you. But I do see the wild honeysuckle that winds her tendrils over you broken body and she smiles me. Your skin is silver and pocked and so very wide. You stood for hundreds of years. Salut, my friend and thank you.

It thinks me of death and dying politely, of Popz who did exactly that, and I know that this evening will be a tough one for the missing that will overwhelm me on my return home. And here it comes like a sledgehammer. No amount of thinking happy thoughts, or of dragging up those upbeat wisdoms stops the tsunami. Well, if they can’t then nor can I. Best go with it. I eat something whilst listening to dancey music and try to bop but my legs refuse to engage. I drink one too many glasses of Ribena and just know I have made things worse. My sleep is poor and sketchy and I wake at 4 am with a lead balloon in my belly. No point turning over you stupid idiot for sleep has left the building. It is dark as soot out there and there are many miles to go before morning opens her eyes. I shower, dress, make strong black coffee and sit with my slit eyes and my lead belly and my regrets. I don’t cry, cannot cry, for there are no tears left after last night’s flood. I miss you, I say, you old goat, you stubborn, immovable, controlling so-and-so. And I have so many questions I will never get answers to such as What is this thing with a plug at one end and a doo-hic at the other? Why are there three drawers of wires that look up at me, dazed when I pull them open? Who the hell are you? That’s what they ask me. I close the drawers and can hear them muttering to each other, the yellow ones, the black ones, the grey ones and that single pink one which is probably the only girl in the camp. Good luck to you, I call over my shoulder as I leave the room, and, I continue, just for the record, I shall be throwing the lot of you into the wheelie soon enough.

Sorting through his effects, that’s what brought this flood thing on. I have been sorting all week and it seemed like a good idea to clear, organise, clean, label, name as best I can, and then to divide the mementos by five children, five more who know about the missing. But in handling what he held in his own hands has risen up many memories, many feelings in my heart, confusing emotions, doubts and anxieties as I worked. Feeling guilty for he never shared his ‘things’ when alive, I keep going. I remind him of the times I asked him to share and I remember that rigid look on his face. No, he would say (or shout), these are MY THINGS! Not any more old man. Not any more, and I am almost done, bar that huge collection of shirts and tees, jumpers and sweats. I have no idea what to do with them, not yet. One day I will.

Today will be a slow one and I will stick on my smile, brighten my face with make up and tell myself the game is on once again. One day at a time, don’t think too much, just keep moving. It works even if it is all pretend at times. I think of others who ride this roller coaster with me. Hallo to you. We’ve got this, you know. We may fall but we get up again. Spring is coming, the light brightening, the pandemic losing its power over us and we have so many reasons to be grateful and happy even if somedays it takes a miners’ headlamp to find a single one. Keep going friends. Never stop long enough for the doubts, fears and anxieties to catch up. Fight them off and laugh at how easy it is. Laughing, just one guffaw, can send them all into space, such is the mph of laughter. Try it. I plan to.

by

Island Blog – You First My Friend

Lockdown, schmockdown. Time gentlemen, please! It is almost a year since this whole stay home thing began and it feels like it may never end, even as I know it will. Of course winter hasn’t helped in our slow trudge back to what we took for granted so easily before. This time has made us think, stretched our inner resources and taught us new skills. Some of us have become bakers, some painters, some just good with the management of Time which, to be honest, has turned into something we all notice and some of us, minute by minute. To say ‘I am Too Busy’ are words for caseworkers and frontliners but not for most of us. Most of us can spend ages staring out at the rainy dark wondering what on earth we can do to turn this day into something other than a trudge.

I know we must wait. I know not one of us wants yet another lockdown as the restrictions lessen their grip on our days. I know this, but knowing something and living it are two very different things. So how do we continue when we feel fed up with the prison we are all in? One day at a time, that’s how. There is no other way to face this. Many of us, if not most, have hit rock bottom a few times over the past year and for good reason. Not being able to hold and hug, meet and talk, visit and touch are all alien concepts for a human race. No travel, no lift share, no hand holding, no gathering of friends around a table. And, for some, the death of a loved one. It abnormals us, all of us. And yet we must abide and we all know it. However, the damage done by such restraints will show once we re-emerge into the light of ordinary life, it has to for we are not all strong like bull. Some of us, isolated with our fears and doubts, our imaginings and anxieties, will need a hand to walk again. Some of us will have lost confidence around more than two people, two we know well. Strangers may appear even stranger. We may be asking ourselves, Where have they been, what have they touched, who have they met with? The natural reach out for a handshake may be compromised, a hesitation freezing our limbs and stumbling our words. We are going to need help.

Let us who are strong like bull consider all of this. In any mix of people there will be ‘outsiders’, folk who hesitate, who are shy, afraid, unsure and compromised by this long incarceration. Emotionally we may be damaged and damage takes time to heal and then only with help. Let us remind ourselves that odd behaviour may well emerge alongside the damaged ones and let us keep our hearts open. Let us wear our coat of empathy in our rush to the shops or the cinema, theatre, concert. To consider all other human beings is to be truly human. We are, after all, a team. Together is the word for the future, not alone, not any more. It didn’t work after all, now did it, this alone thing? I beat you to the front of the queue might have felt good at first, been reflected in a higher salary or the best parking space, but the elevation of such ‘success’ will never sustain its position, not for long, and it brings no lasting peace, not to the winner, not to the ones left behind. How much more benefit might be felt if I was to turn in grace to another and to say ‘You first my friend.’?

You first my friend.

by

Island Blog – This Woman, Risk and Fear

I have always loved poetry, not that I can write it, not like those who can distill waffly thoughts into 3 words that say it all, enough to gasp me. As a child I remember my mum making up ditties and rhymes, fun poems, poems that rhymed and made my feet want to jig along with her words. My dad, a wordsmith for sure, would entertain us around the Sunday lunch table with limericks that had us in stitches. He could think ahead as his mouth spoke out the line so that the follower came just like that in perfect rhythm and rhyme. He loved the iambic pentameter too and was a big fan of Shakespeare. Words were everything in our home. Words of remonstrance, of encouragement; jokes at our expense and jokes we could share. One game was that someone began a poem, oftentimes a limerick, There Once was a Bandit from Neath, for example, whereupon all eyes turned to the unfortunate required to come up with line two. It always ended in laughter.

But my favourite poems are those about life and loss, pain and rising, hope and despair. Short lines, no punctuation, thus allowing me to drift down the page all the way to the end. Some poems rise instead, beg to be read again and again so that I undulate the page and find that it doesn’t matter where I land for the lines themselves are each an ending, or a step to the next line, but not necessarily. It thinks me for I have noticed something about me in these times. I want to play my piano but I don’t. I want to paint but all I do is cast a wistful glance at the stack of canvas, the brushes still in their plastic wrapper, the paints quiet inside the dark interior of the kist. I want to write my second book but I find endless reasons. and excuses not to even begin. Why is that? I have found an answer. There is something, some part of me, deep within who does not see the point. If there is nowhere for this new song to go, this painting to go, then why would I bother to begin? If I start this book, how do I know I can still cut the mustard, or is it custard? I forget.

Although I know, and preach, that it is the process that matters not an end result, perceived and imagined, I find my own self stultified and frozen at the starting block. It is indeed a block. So what to do? If I believe that anyone can write, paint, write a song or form a poem, which I absolutely do, and if I maintain that the only difference between a successful writer, painter, poet and the rest of us is practice and the refusal to stop trying, then what the heck am I doing sitting on my lardy arse being wistful? It ridiculouses me. But the block is still there no matter the logic I employ for what I am facing is the fear of failure. I am basically saying it is better, safer, for me to say I cannot do this than it is to peel off my armour, to be vulnerable, to risk. After all, my armour, despite being heavy and restraining, is comfortable. I have grown used to it clanking about me, learned how to move with it. It is my concealment, my hiding, my protection. From what? Failure, that’s what.

Back to everyone else. Someone said yesterday I Can’t Paint. I Wish I Could. The feeling part of me rose like Venus from the waves. I asked her this. Have you tried? yes, she said, but I just made a mess. So did I, I said, at first, but with determined hard work and the refusal to give up I suddenly (!) found my paintings in galleries all across the country. Really? she said. You must have a gift. No gift, I said, not me. It was pure determination and the refusal to give up. Oh, she said, then tidied herself up. I don’t have time anyway, she smiled, but I had heard the timbre of her longing. Wisdoms tell us that we can do anything we set out to do whilst Life says Sshhhhh to that nonsense. Look at you! You are so busy, so old, so compromised, so restricted, so disabled, so poor at grammar etc etc. And we listen and we concur. After all, isn’t it true that only young people can start something new, learn the language, play the instrument, write the song, or other people who have time, space, the perfect environment, the supportive partner, and the right level of self belief? No, it is not. When I wrote Island Wife I sat in this room whilst my husband padded around me. I was freezing cold and had small spaces of peace and a lot of interruptions. My drive was simple. I am sick and tired of not doing what I want to do, of waiting for the right light, the perfect environment, the ideal room temperature, the permission from a partner. Lunch was late if served at all, the phone disconnected, the doors shut and visitors shunned. I won’t pretend it was a comfortable time, not least because I had shucked off my armour and it was February and most of February was inside the house. And I had absolutely no idea of this book’s success. All I knew was that I was going to show up every single day, take the flack and the crap and focus on what I wanted to do. My achievement was not in the end game, but in the process, the work, the grit of determination against real and imagined odds.

So, clever clogs, why are you not sitting at that piano and working new songs? Why are you not throwing colour at that canvas with no end result in mind? Why are you not writing your next book? Because I am afraid of failure. What is failure to you? Is it not being published, not having a body of astonishing artwork to display to the public, not producing the song that will go viral on Youtube? Seriously? Well, yes. So, continues my feeling self, what shall we do about all of that? Shall we sit here wistfully till life folds into death or shall we pull up our long johns and begin something, risk something and then fail and fall, get up and try again, over and over and over till we create a momentum that takes us who knows where? Is life a daring bold adventure, even now, or is it nothing at all but a clean house, a silent piano, an unused voice, an unwritten book and an empty canvas?

My Hobson’s choice indeed and not just mine. If there is something anyone wants to do but who lets the naysaying voices win over, I’m with you. However, this woman is not listening any more. This woman is about to begin something in the face of fear, of imagined failure, and of being armour-less, vulnerable and scared. Risk is everything. Take one.