Author: judyfairbairns

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Island Blog – Three Keys in My Hand

I have one, no, two meetings this week. One on Tuesday, a zoom with a writer friend, and one on Wednesday with my counsellor. In my opinion, many of us need to find someone just a bit more above things than we are. I have always found that a hand reaching down is a huge help, despite the initial shame I felt at asking for it. And there’s a thing. As this lockdown keeps us stuck/imprisoned/safe, there are many who are finding it super tough, whose mental stability is being seriously challenged. I get it. As one who has always been mentally turmoiled to a degree, and who sees that last week was Mental Health Week (as if one week would ever be enough) I am more than happy that the world is getting it, or, at least, the slowmovingrulemakers are thinking wider, perhaps. In my life I have met many who could flower but cannot flower within the confines of stigmatism and of what is socially acceptable. Hence the hidden pain. And the most destructive judge of all lives within. We are all flawed, broken to varying degrees, doing out very best to fit in without sticking out in ways that might draw attention to our faults.

Looking out upon the natural world is key, but we must also look within. As I have been a student of self-improvement for decades, I have absorbed a million positive phrases and still found myself not quite at home with myself, no matter how bright the epiphany. However, I am finally beginning to understand that time holds the second key and time requires my patience, my faith in the strength of a human spirit and my trust that the goodly gods are working for me, and not against me. When the world demands something I do not want or cannot give, I need this trust. If we were all meant to be the same we would be mere automatons. We are far from that, thank goodness. Although we are currently required to live as such, it will pass eventually. Confined to home, required to wash our hands a hundred times a day, separated from loved ones, stuck in the wrong country and so on, we have this time to reflect on who we are and on the life we want for ourselves once we are freed from the chains that bind. Think on that.

I watch the young birds fly through my little garden, feathers awry, all ruffly spot and unsure of where to land. New life learning old ways. For them, survival is the teacher. They cannot suddenly square up to a cat or challenge the dive of a sparrow hawk without almost certainly turning into lunch. But we can. If we consider our predators, our demons, our self-doubts and our fears to be in control of our lives, then they will be. Noticing every thought and questioning it is key number three. Even if I am uncertain of my path, my voice, the strength, or lack of it, of my own human spirit, if I decide to turn this thing around, to turn myself around, then wonderful things begin to happen. I don’t need to run from my doubts and fears, my thoughts and worries, I just need to about face and question. Do I really think this or is this thought thinking me? Then, if it isn’t useful, I say cheerio. I don’t need you. Every time I do this, I empower my true self. I am not controlled by my thoughts. I control them, and in this uncertain life when a single day can throw a tidal wave over my carefully constructed sandcastle, my thoughts are the only thing I can control.

I know what it is like to be in the darkness of depression. I know how overwhelming life can be. I also know how to rebuild my spirit and I am thankful for all my guides over the years. Not everyone finds their way. Some souls are lost. Most of our illnesses come from inner stress, manifesting in the physical body, sometimes destroying it. This time of reflection is a gift to us all, not only to make new ways to live for ourselves by taking a long hard look at our core values, our life choices, our work and our families, but to look and to see others who may need our clear and open friendship. Those, whom we might have dismissed before as misery guts or gloomy or bad tempered. Nobody wants to live like that. Nobody. But everybody needs somebody to lift them at some point in their lives.

There are less of us still breathing in the world today. This virus is greedy and it isn’t done with us yet. Let us make sure that the ones who will emerge back into the light of ‘normality’ even more broken, even more damaged and even more fearful of their futures, do not have to walk alone.

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Island Blog – November days, Petals and Butterfly wings

Today, November paid a visit, bringing with her a socking great gale and heavy rain. As I forget, mostly, the name of the month we currently inhabit, the last 3 being much the same as the one before, I did wonder, for just a moment, if everyone else knows it’s November and here I stand bare-legged in my cotton frocks feeling puzzled. No, no, don’t be a twit. You know it’s not November. But what month is it? The calendar on the wall will ground me. It’s still May, our island month of steady sunshine, warm nights, petals remaining affixed to their parent stems. Well, inside it is, but out there where maple leaves are scooting into the sky and birds are being blown off fence posts, I feel justified in my ditherment. The sweet pea seedlings I lovingly sank into the goodly ground just yesterday afternoon, the sun burning my neck, the ticks crawling towards me like I was a surprise picnic, must be very upset. I watch the seedlings flee this way and that, their roots holding, just. I had put off releasing them into the elements for way too long, thinking cheeky frost, and was understandably seduced by a few days of soft sunshine and calm. Actually it is not just the sweet peas who feel cheated. I’m feeling it too.

It has blasted on the whole day and is still blasting. This gale is enough to send boats a-scatter, lift waves into grabbing hands, turn underpinnings, left on a line in the sunshine cocoon of yesterday, into cotton-mix butterflies to land who knows where. Nobody will ever admit to owning them anyway, not once they’ve made public the size and width of the owners bottom. You could hardly Facebook’ Has anyone received delivery of a pair of baggy greys that once were white about ten years ago, or a bra with reinforced cups for the sag factor? No, indeed. I should have gone to M&S a while back.

This crazy November mayday has something to teach me. I look out through the rain-bashed windows and whisper to my newly planted seedlings, as I did to my children, so long ago, You can survive this. You can grow, you can fly and precisely because of this November gale in the May of your life. Many won’t, but you will. You might flip backwards off a fence post you thought gave you a solid base (could be a friend, a work colleague, a boss, even a route home) but you have wings. The thing about that blackbird I saw who spread his wings at just the wrong gust and who flipped like a tiddlywink into the fist of the wind, is that he knew he could fly out of it, find the temperate safety of low-below and who could gather his feathers again. We can all do that. We just need to remember we have wings too, not visible, but there anyway. The drudge listening of the factual news is all about how we will ‘cope’ after this lockdown time is done. I shake my head at all of it. Cope? Are we victims of this time? I say No. I say we are marvellous and colourful inventive humans who will find wings we never knew we had on our backs. I say we may be scared, because ‘out there’ now is not the ‘out there’ we hitched our wagons to and that is fine. It’s ok. We are so ‘flipping’ resourceful, it is almost embarrassing.

Let us consider this. In the swatch of material, that little square we cannot escape for now, the flow of colour can make new swirls; the limitations of the square will never confine us. We will out. We always did.

And we always will.

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Island Blog – Bloomers, Sunlight, Lacklight, and Tatties

Walks for me are meditative and questioning. I cannot sit still for more than five minutes nor pay serious attention to the in and out of my breath without getting the giggles. My breath works just fine without me paying attention to it, as does my heart beat steadfastly on without me bothering it. In the wee small hours I felt about for my heartbeat once and all was silent. Well, I thought, that’s pretty cool. My heart isn’t beating and I’m still alive. I always knew I was different.

Back to meditative/questioning walks. As I wander I notice, stop, chat with or admire something I missed yesterday, or something that wasn’t even there yesterday such as a new bloomer peeking up through the grasses. I see the burst of emerald leaves on an alder or the delicate fingers of Lady Larch, HRH of the Woods, dancing in the warm breeze like the wings of bird flight. I watch blue sky through the branches, squares, diamonds, circles, striations, fingers and whole swathes above a treeless bit, an artistic dash of cloud splitting the sky and in a hurry, it seems, to get to somewhere else. I contemplate it all and then me and me have a conversation. Look, I say, this side of the tree is in full bloom and that one (I indicate the inside of the wood) is only just coming. Why is that? Well, this side has the full sunlight. That side is darkling buried, its allowance of sunlight controlled by A N Other, or maybe a few A N Others if the wood is densely wooden.

It thinks me. If a tree can be affected by the amount of light shed upon it, how much more a human? If I am to bloom, I need light. If I don’t get light, I don’t bloom. If I don’t get light for decades I am in danger of turning the colour of mole, even if I am naturally infused with positive attitude and born with a natural propensity for fun, beauty, joy, laughter and dancing. Eventually my need for light in the form of real love, kindness, to be cherished, complimented, accepted, understood, admired and listened to, will require fuel from A N Other. If the light I am receiving is in A N Other’s control, and if it flashed on and off at will, then I may begin to mole-up, or is it mole-down?

I think of those who have told me of such lacklight. In the workplace, in the home, in school, in neighbourhoods or in family relationships and I have done what we all do when we don’t stop and think. We encourage this person who is turning the colour of mole before our eyes to look on the bright side; to look at what they do have; to count their blessings, to go for long walks, cook, listen to music, sew something……. none of which helps one jot, because what this sad person needs is not advice, but light. And we can shine it upon them just by listening, understanding, caring and walking beside them. We cannot change their circumstances, but they can, and well they might once they start to feel like blooming again. We can be the fuel they need, the sunlight they crave, by doing absolutely nothing.

In the garden, in the woods there is fierce competition. It is no different amongst we humans. Everyone wants to grab as much light as possible, but there is room for us all even if some of us are late bloomers due to lack of light; late, that is, until someone saw us turning the colour of mole and moved their branches just enough that we could feel the warmth on our skin.

I decide it is time to put the tatties on to boil. It’s 4pm after all and Himself needs food early. Why do you need to put them on to boil? asks my other self. In order to feed a human. I reply, eyes rolling. Why do you need to feed a human? Because I am one. Ah……ok….better get the tatties on, then.

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Island Blog – A Dalliance with the Dark

In spite of a strong ability to focus on the light in everything and everyone, there are times when the shadows band together, creating dark. I can see it coming, feel my arms begin to flail and my happy heart turn tearful. The inevitable is coming and I know it will pass, as everything always does, but my own core strength is no match for it. At first, I feel irritation at things I had thought were completely accepted, in a state of order like soldiers, rank and file, and under my command. Then I might react, verbally or with tuts and sighs to those irritations, my cheerful voice dulled, silenced or delivered in a minor key. Dammit, this shouldn’t be happening. I have been in control of me for so long now. I must be falling back, losing my grip on things. I search for reasons. It’s because I am weary of this, of all of it; of the endlessness of caring, the fight against a strong desire to run for the hills; Groundhog Day, over and over and over and, by the way, there is no sign of it ever being truly over; The domestic round, the isolation, the fear of Covid 19, the washing, the cleaning, the lack of excursions, meals out, coffee with friends or the chance to jump in muddy cuddles with my grandchildren. A collusion of reasons to fall into darkness.

But I don’t want to. However, at the point, ie now, that I accept such times as perfectly normal, as times other people go through just like me, that it is not my sins finding me out and the Great Judge is not jabbing a finger of blame in my direction, I can begin to relocate the light that never really left. In accepting such times as understandable, as reasonable, as justifiable, I stop beating myself up. Although the days roll on ad infinitum, it is fair to say that only Mary Poppins could sing through such interminability. An ordinary human will falter, the inner tantrum will rise from time to time because we are not fictitious characters nor are we robots. We are remarkable, indeed we are, living through this with our best attitudes and most inventive brains, but we must also allow ourselves to grow weary of the drudge, sad at the lack of ‘out there’ opportunities and picnics on the beach, fed up of the same four walls, the same encounters in doorways, the brain-numbing battles of will over the same issues over and over again. Without external encounters our thinking remains just that. Our own thinking. Sharing tales, stories, ideas, laughter and recipes in a sociable situation will always lift a flagging spirit. We miss that and sometimes, very much indeed, no matter how positively we are living through this strange time.

So I am not failing, nor falling. I am still a sunshine me. I choose not to be the Great Judge. Instead, I will settle the stooshie inside my heart with kindness and empathy, stepping as lightly as I can into yet another day.

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Island Blog – Lock Down Light

Well you can’t do that. Lock down light. Light will seep under a doorway as you sit in the dark, catch you in a flash of lightning, astonish you as you meet it in someone’s eyes. Light will out. And we love it. The thrill of light can turn a dark moment/person/situation/problem into a new possibility and, even if we can’t explain ourselves at that time, or after that encounter, our sub conscious minds will surely find a way. The only way to lock down light is by putting it into a dark and sealed box. Then it is no longer light, but darkness, and so it seems to me that we are the ones who decide on the existence of light.

We use the word ‘light’ in so many ways. Things are illuminated by something, or someone, else. We throw light on something…..in the light of this new understanding, this reflection, this memory…. We choose to stand in the light; we find light in a dark time; we share our light with another who keeps crashing into things; we accept light as a gift when we ourselves are fumbling about looking for a metaphorical candle. Light is us and we are light.

In this lockdown time, light is being shone on all aspects of our individual lives, those of others, and on the whole world. Although the problems #the dark of our lives were always there, we could ignore them, to a degree. We could move over them, overcome ourselves as we acknowledged they were here to stay. In short, we fabric-ed them into our normality, accepting them with varying levels of grace and grit. But not now. Now, it’s if someone with a Big Pen is highlighting those things and we are being forced to look at them, all yellow and luminous in a sea of black text.

This is a good thing. This chance to change is on offer, free of charge. Only in a crisis do we humans stop to pay attention. All those years of accepting this, or doing that the way I did is up for questioning, and we cannot avoid it. Nor must we. There are small businesses going down, people losing homes, work, lives, family. This is a light throw on our whole existence and however uncomfortable it is, however painful, it will show us a new way and will keep us safe in the end. Those who, right now, think the world is ending will discover it has no intention of abdicating the throne. New opportunities will arise for all those goodly folk who feel they are permanently broken. As long as they remember the light, and, when they forget, someone will bring it to them.

I am not one of those unfortunate people and my heart aches for them all. It must be terrifying. But, having lived as long as I have, I know the feeling well and it passes. It passes because we humans are strong, resilient, resourceful creatures with marvellous brains. We are Light. We can think. We can reason. We can flip our whole life if we decide to. Many have. Many have changed everything and, in doing so, become light for the rest of us.

The light of the lockdown will not be contained inside a box and turned into darkness. It is showing, instead, how much we want to give, how enterprising we are, how strongly linked we are to the muscle of survival, and not just with plans to survive, but to thrive once more, shining out new light into a new order.

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Island Blog – Self Seeding

When I awaken at silly o’clock, my mind is full of thoughts. In no particular order, they step up to the microphone to tell me things and the critical thoughts are the pushiest. They invite me to revisit my choices and actions from the previous day/week/month/decade, taking care to highlight any such choices and actions that might have been done ‘better.’ I tell them they’re fools if they think (even with my magical powers) that I can turn back time. Other thoughts scatter, flitter, dip and dive about, thoughts on tonight’s meal for himself, whether I need more bird food, who’s trending on twitter, what Boris might say today. They’re like butterflies, these thoughts and pose me no threat. They simply require action.

However, I am disappointed to realise that after all these centuries of life on earth, most of us, if we’re honest, let the ‘could do better’ or, worse, ‘could have done it better’ thoughts take the stage. We actually listen, pay attention, greedy, it seems, to sink ourselves into a bog from which it is surprisingly hard to self-extricate. We don’t talk about these thoughts, not out loud, anyway, and certainly not to A N Other. It would be a confirmation of truth, would make the judgements real and we would run the risk of outside confirmation. So we do everything we can to shut them up, take them out, bury them. Ah…..bury them……well, that’s a mistake, I have discovered because, like seeds in the ground, they can rise into bloom after decades of darkness, alive and spreading. So how do we get rid of this propensity for self-judgement?

There are many ways to do this, and one of them is to let those critics speak out. I sit with mine, once I realise they won’t go away of their own volition. They are ancient voices, after all, rising from childhood, school, marriage, friendships, and they show the other side of my coin, the one that doesn’t really want to be seen. They can tell me I’m all kinds of horrible. I know the guidance that teaches me to feed the white dog, not the black one, to water the seeds of self-love, not those of anxiety, doubt, fear or judgement, but the actuality of each awakening, each morning, can confound me in a nanosecond if I have not watered the right seeds. It is a daily practice and not just for me. Understanding that, even with my magical powers, I cannot turn back time is understood at a logical level, not an emotional one. I know it is a true fact. Nobody can turn back time. Good, that’s that sorted! No it isn’t, because those critics from my long ago past made a scratch on my heart and that scratch is still there. I have to learn a way to accept those scratches, to remember that pain and to then allow them to heal rather than picking away at the scabs. I do this by recognising they are there; that they do not influence who I am now, beyond a whisper memory. I see you, I hear you, I tell them, but I no longer need you in my life. Thank you for reminding me that life was tough (as it is for everyone growing up) and I survived; more, I blossomed, rose like a spitfire into the sky, nurtured my family, loved with all of my scarred and battered heart and although I am nowhere near smug about who I have become, I can see she is rather wonderful and thoroughly deserving of all things good.

There will be someone reading this who knows exactly what I’m saying. We are all unique, spectacular beings doing our very best to live a good long life. We might remind ourselves of that and go water the seeds of self love.

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Island Blog – A Different Summer

Looking back on life, I imagine we can all remember one particular summer, for its joy or for its unjoy. Perhaps it was that one, as a carefree youngster, first in love, heady with dreams and hopes and madly keen to escape the confines of diligent parenting. Perhaps it was that memorable holiday, the colours, swirls and shape of which are ingrained in a mind, body and soul. Perhaps it was the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, the time the wisteria went crazy up the walls, dropping sweet perfume and amethyst blooms every time you walked underneath.

This one, the one we are welcoming right now will surely be a collective memory, one we will talk about, write about and think about for a very long time to come. By definition, ensuing summers will still be summers but might appear ordinary, now that we have met extraordinary. I love this time of year. Less clothing, more colour, bare feet and crisp salads; sunshine skin and long bright evenings; new life all around, birds, animals, flowers; brown babies, freckles, picnics and barbecues. Everything in me shifts with the rising warmth, reflections of green at the waters edge, the sound of Earth singing us back to life.

Okay so this summer is different and although each summer is different, in that we have all moved through the winter and, therefore, learned new learnings, this one is more different than most. But, even as we are refused access to each other, to dinners out, lunch al fresco at a local restaurant, long walks together or parties on the lawn, we can still summer. I know that the isolation can chip away at us, because, as humans, as social creatures, we long to share. Witnessing something wonderful, something new and delightful all on your own is just not the same. There will be many, like me, who are talking to themselves. I tell me many things throughout the day, share jokes and stories and me is a good listener, wise, too, sometimes irritatingly so. I remember learning once that inside me are as many as 25 others, all still me but different aspects of me. There is the Judge, of course, the poker-faced harridan with a lemon in her mouth. She is the most vocal, but as her repertoire is unimaginative and predictable, I can soon shut her up. There’s the little Alice in Wonderland and I am very fond of her. She always wants to play or shrink or sup tea with the Hatter and, together, we have great adventures. Then there’s Mrs Sensible. She is the wise one who keeps me from sailing out to sea without a compass. There is the Wife, the Mother and the Grandmother, and together we are quite a team. We are the ones who move through each day in acceptable clothing and with a well-ordered mind. Keeping a balance of the females inside my head is sometimes tricky. Sometimes I want to run riot, to disappear into my imagination, to break the rules of the well-ordered daily routine. And sometimes I do.

We are all having to search ourselves to find the fun, at times. And, for all the worries and concerns that have cut us off from each other, we have the chance to learn something wonderful from this summer. How we live thereafter will be directly aligned to what we have taken the time to study and consider. Great things will grow from the ashes of this, much like the flowers are doing right now, just outside the window.

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Island Blog – Anything I Want and Magic

Out walking this morning, something came to me. It made me laugh out loud, which thoroughly startled the air around me, sent little birds bursting up like fireworks and caused two doe-eyed rabbits to hurtle into the underpinnings of the wood. It was this. I can do anything I want in this lockdown time. There are no checkers with opinions popping their heads around doors at random times of the day. I don’t need to close the loo door when going for a pee. I can wear my frocks inside out, put my pants on my head, cook in just a pinny, drink 3 bottles of wine with lunch and sleep in the same sheets for a month. This freedom is a chuckling thought and my imagination is already running wild.

So, what did it mean before this, before all checkers with opinions were checked out, and for some time to come? Well, I reckon I may well have kept my standards high precisely because of their startlement tactics. If I thought someone might catch me cooking in just a pinny, or appear as the third bottle of wine sank to the dregs, it would think me, and more than once. This structure is/was a good thing, and it will be again, once we are all free to check on each other once more. In fact, I could feel rather unhinged if I considered the possibility that I might never be checked on again. Being checked on created me a discipline, a structure, a blue print by which to navigate my daily life. It kept me upright and moderately sane, grounded and with a strong idea of how things should be on any given day. Does this mean I am now running rampant like a rebellious teenager? No, thankfully. I did that once and it brought me no end of bother, not least because I had no idea of where I was running to, and had I kept on running I would have fallen off the edge of the world. Eventually.

But considering this thought is leading me to all sorts of things. What I am doing these lockdown days is pretty much what I always did. How encouraging that is. For a woman like me who is prone to fantasies of flight on a broomstick it is hugely reassuring to learn that I am grounded in an ungrounded sort of way, but grounded enough to be continuing my standard of living. In truth, it is an elevated one. Now that all the caring is down to me and I am well occupied with an endless list of exciting tasks, I find I have raised the bar. My husband, the sheets, the floors and dishes within this island home are all polished to a shine. Does this mean that I don’t need to feel answerable to anyone but myself? Absolutely. Why didn’t I realise that when checkers with opinions lurked around my peripheries? I cannot answer that, but to understand in the mind of my heart that I am complete, that my conscience is my true guide and that it is I who can give me all the answers, is very refreshing. It means I can talk to myself, always a delightful interaction and most revealing in that I know how me thinks, what irritates me and which way the pair of us want to go.

I am not saying I don’t miss the chance of new light being thrown on an old absolute from the mouth of a friend, but I can still source that via the phone. What I am saying is that this morning I understood something I have preached to both myself and others for years, the fact that I have all that I need for me right here inside this brain, this body, this place, this situation. I just need to go within to look for the answers. They have possibly been waiting for ages, patiently, rolling their eyes every time I expected someone else to bring me the magic I needed. Now I know its inside me and that is a wonderful thought.

We are all enough for ourselves. No, not just enough. More than that. We are completely complete just where we stand right now. And we are the Magic.

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Island Blog – Sunrise, Nature and the beginning of Humanity

It’s 5am. My favourite time of the day. I used to say it was because there’s nobody about, but now there’s always nobody about, so it’s not the truth anymore. I consider how many other absolutes will lose purchase on my mind and will just drift away, like the will o’ wisps over there, floating on the ebb tide, backlit by sunfire. They remind me of water sprites, beneficent creatures, transitional, made of water and to water they will always return. Black-throated divers fly by right on time, turning pink as they head into the sun and the sea beneath their wings glows like rose quartz. Anyone rising from slumber later than this will miss it all. But not I said the island wife. I have always been a dawn raider, greedy for everything my eyes can gobble up, catching every spark and twist, every snatch of colour, every bird flit or cloud shift, each start of new beginnings, life whispering into life.

Walking along the Tapseteerie track, dry-cracked and steady underfoot, I feel the weight of the canopy. This horse-chestnut has never been so abundant with huge green leaves, richly bottle green, a strong spread of gratitude, for whilst we desist in our race to disaster, we gift back life to nature. A robin flits with me, from branch to branch, tree to tree, telling me something that sounds wonderfully joyous but which is beyond my understanding. Bees and other buzzing creatures fill the branches, all of them. I have never heard such a buzz and it smiles me. New mosses adorn the floor of the woods, some emerald green and star-tipped, some gathered in perfectly smooth igloo shapes, the colour of lemon sorbet. I can see the tracks left by deer in their darkling wander, the grasses flattened by hoof-scuff. They will always walk this way, along this ley line, the ancient wander path, following the ones who learned it before them and then taught it on.

Flowers watch me pass, their faces tipped to sunlight. Wood sorrel, violets, primroses, anemone, bluebells, campanula, and stitchwort. Tiny alpines cling to cracks in the drystone wall, feathery ferns, arched like question marks, will open this day to spread their soft fingers wide. Orange tip, tortoiseshell and brown spot butterflies dance around my head as I move through the warmth of the morning. Everywhere I look, there is abundance. Wasn’t it always so and I just didn’t see it, or is it true that our land is healing herself? I believe the latter.

As I turn for home, a flash of silver in the tidal flow shows me a big fish, a salmon, perhaps, or a sea trout on its arduous journey to find a place to spawn, and then to die. Gulls shriek overhead, little gulls, black backs, herring gulls and other gulls I cannot name, for they saw it too. No doubt the otter did as well. I know she is down there somewhere with her kits and soon I will see her on a still morning from my bedroom window as she teaches them to hunt or to play touch-tig.

Writing about the beauty through which I can walk every day is not something I take for granted. This lockdown has gone on long enough now, that’s what I think, although wild horses wouldn’t drag me back among people, knowing as I do, how easily the virus can spread, silent and deadly, invisible to the naked eye. So I consider this. If I, who have barely had to change my life at all, am feeling this way, then what about those whose entire lives have been full-stopped? Starved of social oxygen, meetings, encounters, business flow, cash income, school friends, loved ones and options for free travel, what life are they, you, living now? Many, I am sure will thrill to the peace of it all, perhaps all of us do, some of the time, but when I am told I absolutely cannot do something, it is the thing I want to do most of all.

When I write about my encounters in nature, it isn’t to gloat, but to show to others, who last saw nature in 2019 on a country break, that life is still living on, whether we can see it or not. In fact, the regeneration of this earth is a wonderful thing to hear about, and perhaps it makes the sacrifice worth the pain. I had no idea the ozone layer could heal. I thought it was already dying and so were we all. But it isn’t true, for it is healing, repairing itself and offering us another go at a good life. And so, I write on, a witness to the changes, sending anyone and everyone who is finding this all just too much, who is frightened, lonely, depressed or sick, my deepest respect and encouragement to stick with isolation until we can meet again, and once more walk free.

This could have been the end of humanity. Let us hold fast and make it the beginning.

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Island Blog – Natural Colour

I am seeing people, the ones who walk by, changing colour. I ‘m not saying I see auras, because I don’t, but the colours they send my way from 6 feet away remarkable me at times. I knew them as one colour, or one set of colours, and, now, they have changed. The look in their eyes has changed. No surprise there. One month of lockdown is manageable; we know we can do it. We can do dry January, after all, or Lent which is even longer, and we can see the end. Not now. We have no idea when the end will come and it is beginning to bother us. Maybe not our innate tigger mentality, but deep inside, we are changing colour. We look out, feeding like greedy, on the the new life, the migrant birds returned, the lush of wild violets, the unusual spread of primroses, anemones, wood sorrel, trip tides, new moons, that twisting eyelift chance of an otter in the saltscape. But we can tire of life, if we are not in renewal. Long term, anything dodgy can become a prison warden, bad relationship, wrong home address, a lockdown. I watch faces as they pass. They look at me, and I at them and we see different. And, you know what……this is good. The chasms in between mountain ridges make us pause for thought, and think we must.

Early on, in this lockdown thingy, we brought out all our colours because that is who we are, and who we will always will be. We saw and loved the alpine frocks of pink and blue, clutched in the fists of a crevice and holding on to life by a skinny holdfast, and we smiled. We saw the insect life, the colours of beetles, the jewelled flit of butterflies and other beautiful things without names; we watched sky born spectaculars cut the sky in two on their way to somewhere else and we snatched their colours for our own heart palette. We thought we could use them, and we did for a while, but now is the tough time, the time of pall and frustration, and all of us feel it to some degree. This is the long haul, like mid term for schoolers, except they know the end date, whereas we do not. Now, it is, that we must go back to those colours and remember them, notice how they have changed, as we have all changed. As the whole separation from loved ones takes root we plant new seedlings in our gardens. We decide to hear, anew, the rise of a wren song from a random fence, watch the flounce of goldfinch in fight, see the slowflow of a gannet draw a wavy line across our looking, because we must continue to find the beauty in everything around us.

Before she whipped our ordinary lives out from under our feet Mother Nature sent all these glories, free of charge, to every one of us. Perhaps we see, now, how much we took for granted, for it has been a long time, and as Mother Nature knows only too well, we are impatient. Not yet, she reminds us, not yet. Stay well and just breathe. In breath there is a rainbow. Let us consider this. It may be a long time before we can walk out again, never mind fly, never mind colour up, but Nature is working with us, not against us. She is Mother, She is Earth and she knows more than we do. We are down here, small, fretting, bothered about chasms, but she is not. We can trust her. And, if our colours change as a result of this new way of living, then that just may be in her long term plan, and we are wise to thank her for opening our eyes to our precious earth.