Author: judyfairbairns

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Island Blog – Fog Horn, Wren Song and Ellie

Something woke me at 5. It was just light. I could see this ‘just light’ sneaking around my blackout curtains, the wrong light, the too early light. Just before I swore I heard the sound again, a low growly sound, long and breathy. A foghorn, a warning to mariners, although I doubt any of them needed such a warning. The landscape was erased and at sea that is very upsetticating indeed. I remembered, as I wheeched back the blackouts and as my eyes landed on absolutely nothing at all beyond the fallen over daisy-like blooms in my immediate garden, those times when fog had descended on a lone yacht on its way from somewhere to somewhere else. Very scary. The sea is still bulky and yawling beneath the boat, the rocks are still there, hopefully not ‘very’ there, the sky, if we could have seen it, is still there, but the way ahead is a complete blank. Even radar and the other whatnots that tell you where you are have drunk too much, or so it seems as their dials shimmy about between all quarts of the compass. Due north has gone on holiday. I just went below and cooked something at such times in order to halt my thinks. Thinks out there in the middle of an ocean you were watching like a hawk yesterday, one you could track, every wink and every malevolent plan at its inception noticed and addressed, and which now has laughed itself into invisibility, will create a negative spiral in the mind of the most experienced of mariners.

I haven’t heard the foghorn up here for a long time, although I did hear it often down south where the sea was crabbit and contained and it must be tough being a sea when you want to be an ocean, so I get it, the crabbit thing. But here the Atlantic has free flow for thousands of sea miles or kilometres and holds in her grasp depths nobody has every plummeted. Nonetheless, she fogged us up this morning, creating a strange white-light, the clouds following her lead and lazily hanging about all day like bored students. There was no windy mother/father/tutor to tell them to move on.

Back to 5 am and the waking thing. I came downstairs. I always know when sleep has left me and there’s no hanging on for more, made coffee, sat watching the fog. As the morning began to yawn and lift, I heard wren song, so bright, so clear, so pure that it halted me. It sounded so close and so confusing. The blackbird is the first bird, isn’t it? Why is a wren awake this early? The song was so near. I knew all my windows were open for the heat, but still……

She sang again. I turned, slowly. She was perched on a chair behind me. I went rigid. She paused, bobbed, looked right into my eyes. I smiled. Ok, I almost whispered. (Can you deafen a wren?) I rose as if I was in slomo, moved to close the 3 doors into the house and turned back to open the two garden doors, stood back, watched the battering flapping against windows, waited. With a frrrup of wings, she found her way out. She must have been inside all night, so quiet as I drank (there’s no such word btw) my coffee at 0500. All day in my work, in the crazy of visitors, lunches, clearing, providing, protecting each other, I remembered the wren and the fog whilst I thought of one young brave beautiful wren heading into what seems like fog, for now.

It will clear brave wee wren. You have wings, remember? And no fog will ever stop you.

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Island Blog – Celtic Sea and Me

We were born, before the wind, some of us. We are irrefutably connected to the mystic, although there’s nothing mystic about it, not for some of us. We’ve always known it. Trouble is, with all this concrete covering over earth, all that burying, that disguising, turns our land into, well, Pleasantville. Watch the movie. It has much to say about the falsehood of our lives. We, out here in the blast of the thrawn Atlantic, still bumping over tracks, still able to walk barefoot without (sort of) any fear of broken glass shards, used needles, cutting things, are still connected. It wonders me, as I think back to my time living in a flat in Glasgow after so many years in the wild, that pavementing damage to a human connection to what once was (and still is) so vital for a goodly life. Over years, over time, the strive for money success, the building over bones, over history has taken us up many miles by now. We are lifting ourselves beyond oxygen.

At work today in the cafe kitchen, working with the team, filling the quick-steam dishwasher over and over and over again (and more), we fried, all of us, but we knew we would, and we kept each other cool just by asking “you okay” a lot. It’s a very uplifting question. My thoughts as I sank my old fingers into the deepsinksink scrubbing pots and pans and kitchen whizzy things went to the oceans, the seas of the world. I don’t question my thoughts anymore, nor did I much as a young woman. I know I am connected and it is a warm bond, like a cord, like a chord. I saw and see what those caught on pavements may well, and do, dismiss, although not so much these days.

My thoughts today as I batted away a persistent wasp sailed on the Celtic Sea. I love that name, feels me at home, my sea, although it isn’t. However I came home and studied a bit. This Sea, which immediately tells me it is confined somehow, like the `North Sea’ and thus, a possible grump. However, this sea, a big tradeline traverse, has the blood of the massive Atlantic in her veins and that smiles me. She will be feisty for sure. I check more. Celtic Sea, Basin Countries (the ones she bangs up against) Ireland, Wales, Breton France, Cornwall. She follows a tricky coastline and, knowing skippers (sons) who have launched into the Bay of Biscay in slight trepidation, she has a temper. She is also the minder of part of the Continental Shelf, where land falls away into scary depths. She curls around landfall, so she needs company.

I love her already. She sounds like me.

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Island Blog – Peppers Ghost

Last family gone now on a very long drive south complete with two girls, one sausage dog, one cat, one hamster, two bicycles, a ton of kit in back. Ten days of bonkers, of opportunity grabs, of endless and fun-filled action packed crazy. In other words, normal for my family. I have watched them fly huge kites, slice the sea-loch into tiny particles, wheeling and squealing and all the way up to sunfall, catch fish on the flow tide, barbecue, dig a fire pit, build dens, bond with a friendly deer, watch stars, straggle over rocks at low tide to gather big mussels for supper, and so much more. I have those memories. It wonders me that I have them at all, that they all still come. This island roots them all, even though they spin away into very different worlds. This is home and, as always, I am the one to wave them off. I’ve been doing this wave-off thing for decades, for ever, because I was always the one to stay home. It was as it was. And still is, certainly now in the autumn of my own life.

The silence is deafening at first. Any car passing by isn’t a goodness me here they come. I don’t hear the quad, heavy laden with way too many kids, careening down the Tapselteerie track. The sea-loch is calm and in one piece. The evening is gentle, soft, empty, and yet full of echoes, laughter, children, questions, invitations, halloes and goodbyes. My home is at rest. And, although my head quick-turns at an approaching car or at a tumble of high voices sneaking through an open window, or at a sudden flash of someone small. running, laughing, shouting something, I know t’is peppers ghost, an illusion, a memory, a wonderful memory, just one of a million and they’re all mine.

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Island Blog – And in they come

Flipsake, And it is a flip. There was one family until there wasn’t. Can I supply a mattress, space for a mum, what’s in the fridge, shall I bring milk? This is, and always has been, my family. We led this, me and their dad. We loved spontaneous even though it thoroughly irritated us at times. It was the mover, the wild blood in our veins. They say you find your own people, if you’re looking, and both of us obviously were. I wonder about the effect on our kids, not kids anymore, but parents. However, the spontaneous grasp on moments, probably learned from us, moments which could become slicedice and not always throwing a six – up here, out here in the wild west, even as they always brought a new something. New somethings were our thing. I never knew what would happen next as the mama of this loony troupe, nor even before they all arrived, thankfully not altogether. I had a bit of time to rest in the in-between.

The days spiral. I just watch. The big quad scoots by, way too many small kids aboard, laughter lifting into the wind, spinning out. Walkers pause to look at the colouring of crazy fun and smile. The boats push into the tidal flow, all aboard hooting mid sea-loch, spinning the bow into the stern, throwing the wee dog into a paws up. He knows the crazy and holds tight. I remember this, had forgot in the ordinary of my family gone, widowhood days. There is no moan here, only wistful. Was I there enough, working as I was? They ran free, my children, over miles of safety and wild. Their childhood was feral, inventive, but was it ok for them? Ach, I’ll never know.

I’ve watched them out there with their daughters, challenging tides, heading out into the Atlantic, bringing home a catch, salty, soaked, grinning, lifting, so happy. They, the last of the blast, leave tomorrow early. They will leave an energy in their wake, a reminder. Of what? Of what we begun, me and their dad, their grandad, the what we never knew would work.

But still they come.

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Island Blog – Fiddle Work

I was thinking about fiddling today. I was. We do fiddle about, do we not, with fingers, with ideas, with olding, with blockades, with the constant push against the barriers we meet on a daily basis. Should there be a question mark here? Honestly, the whole ‘how you do grammar’ thing was once my absolut. Don’t mess with me on that word. It doesn’t need an ‘e’. There are kids this day bothering about results on where the eff they place their ees, never mind their hyphens and dashes and please don’t bring up exclamation marks, which, btw, were just fine a few years ago, and which have now become a yawn. Turmoil at worst. Fiddling at best.

Let’s fiddle. Fiddling requires finger movement, dynamic finger movement, in the fingers, that is. Limited, yes, unless you have learned how to. In the mind, different. There’s a wildscape in that head which (not ‘that’,….never ‘that’.. #grammarqueen) can spiral the brightest mind. You might go low one day and all the old stuff rushes in as if a tide has suddenly turned on you. It stutters, physical momentum, there are stumbles, hesitations, pauses, a want for hiding. Other days, and for no particular reason, the fiddle mind plays a wonderfully dynamic tune, and your heart is light, your clothes feel right, your make-up worked, the path ahead clears like a walk into bright opportunities and surprising serendipities. What you expect, you will attract. I know this. It is a fact and proven. So what is the thing about days when your fingers tangle-damage your scarf, when, in irritation at said tangle-damage, you wheech off a precious gold chain, breaking it; when you forget your keys, can’t decide what to wear for an important something or someone or when your ego is way below knicker level, in fact it’s ankle deep and asleep? There’ll be days like these. Mama said.

I had one today. I know these days of old. They’re trying to be the seventh wave, and maybe they are. They do piss me off, nonetheless, because I never gave them permission to diffuse me into a spread I feel incapable of. I wanted focus, a strong light ahead, a clear path, and now you straggle me into a general illuminator. I don’t care who else can see. I just want light for myself. Ah! there it is, the conundrum. So I don’t appear to be the master of my own days. Instead there is a force I cannot see which confabulates my story, my plan, me.

When I arrived at work, I felt as if my outside, all uniformed up, didn’t belong to me. At the door, I pulled up, said some stern words to myself, got to it. But it didn’t shift. I listened to the laughter from my delicious co-workers, chatted, heard their news, cleared tables, engaged with customers, laughed with them, loved their dogs, filled water jugs, cleaned endless kitchen equipment (inventively), but I still felt I was limpish . I thought ‘tired.’ I thought ‘old.’ I watch my fingers type this out and I laugh. Tired, yes. Old yes.

Ach, wheesht! Fiddle on. Always fiddle on.

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Island Blog – Wild, the Willies, a Tee-shirt

I’m not sure how to begin this one, because there are so many levels around storms with ridonculous names, not that I have a problem with the actual names, but up here, they are just frickin storms and they never, btw, stop long enough to exchange pleasantries. The levels….well, we know a storm is coming. It’s in the clouds, the yellowing of the sky, the way things suddenly feel more acute, a turn to look at what isn’t there, but which is heading t’wards us bullish and quite without an explanation. The air, pre storm can catch in our throats, a silence but one which causes us to look left and right, a heart gasp on a street mid shopping.

Another level comes in the shape of concerned others outside of said storm. A fear driven but loving message, and I completely get the fear driven thing because (about to rant) the news is always waaaaay over the top and it does make me mad, as if we, who live, and have lived, here for decades and longer don’t know how to sort out a thing like another storm. And I am the same, if one of my beloveds is in a ‘storm’ I am not there to experience.

Anyways up, it was wild walking under threatened branches, the West zinging in by the time I got my boots on this avo, a complete shift from the morning massivo gusts, and they were huge, a slam dunk, a heart gasp. I watched the conservatory roof lift and luff and I did pray. Don’t leave me. That’s my prayer. Hold tight, as I will. Stay close as I will. I still get the willies. I do. My thinks are thus…..when I feel the fear, tickerley, (family word) when it is dark, power off, winter, cold, the alone of me rises like a she devil, mocking. But I have learned to cant flight with her, and I am dynamic in the wild, I know it, I am just me but that doesn’t mean I am nothing.

I can still see the fear, the alone, the dark, and what I do is this, once the power comes on again and the storm is losing breath, I upstairs myself for a shower and a change, and it isn’t just clothal. I do change, I add different earrings and, today, I chose a tee-shirt (my favourite) in red with a message.

Bloody difficult Woman.

I love it.

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Island Blog – Remember

I’m fingering through my ancient Thesaurus to find a different, a more appropriate for this ‘remember’, and also laughing,hand to mouth as I see more of this agist tome. Once-this-was-it, but such definitions have no place in the today of today. However this book is my friend, falling apart, yes but one which has seen me through every angsty write. The pages are coffee coloured, the seams twitching to release any page. It’s a right combobble to keep this book together. It learns me, and also divides me big time from the awfulness of what was once acceptable. Moving on.

My search is for the word, Remember. Interesting that, in this old book, the page takes me to, and in order, Sage, Fool, Sanity, Insanity,Madman, and then Memory. We were of our time, not that I concur with most of the sequence. What looks likes no was a judgement in those days, but has no place in the now. Back to my point. I am not sentimental about deaths, but I find myself remembering my dad today, his would-be birthday tomorrow. I’m listening to fingers on jazz pianos, hearing his, as we did all through childhood. We learned the 12 bar blues, we knew the up and down, the hesitation, the pull and thrust of pretty much everything jazz. Our dad dazzled everywhere he went, even through the war and for the troops who so needed our dad in the horrors of Burma, back then. I can see him, cigar in mouth, brandy or whisky beside, that smile, that invitation. Once he agreed to play, the room was his, and so were we.

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Island Blog – Escape, Inscape.

Today was a Wednesday of exception. Actually, we were run off our feet, trays flying, clearing, washing on a hot and constant roll, and for a big load of time. Soups, two, quiches, two focaccia sandwiches, 3 flavours like roast veg, goat’s cheese, salad, Mull Cheddar with a musical dressing, I forget. It was diaphanous. There was a lot of eye rolling in the Washeroo, which, btw had three busty thrusts of plates, cups, glasses, little pots of little potness, small pants hot chocolates, dough bowls, teapots offering every sort of herbal tea. Balancing is a thing here. Not just the trays for the wishdosher, but for us all. We keep checking. You ok? you ok? Bosses do the same. They are the best to work for, so intuitive, so watching, and I know that place. Nice, nonetheless to see it in the young uns.

As I arrived for work this morning, I parked below a willow. Love her, We have great chats. Ahead of me, t’other side of the car park, stood a camper van, a big one, doors open. Too early for a cafe opening, but they were waiting. I walked by, we smiled, said hi. Nothing happened.

And then, it did. I wash steamed up, eyeliner gone, washing and washing and a man came in, saying he had backed his camper into my mini. He could, so easily, have driven off. He didn’t. So many good people in this broken world. We talked, smiled, tried to fix things. Nobody died. We agreed on that, and the damage did not stop me driving home from work. We exchanged insurance tiddleypom, and all that it fine and dancey. However, it thinks me.

scape,inscape,love,happy,There I was, finding this Wednesday as a loud haler, shouting, you are too old for this stuff. I did. I spoke it out, my body bending, my arms, thumbs, whatevers drooping like a load of nonsense. This is not me. I love my work. I love this cafe, my co-workers, my canny bosses. Today, the mini crunch, the family connect, the random of it. Driving home with Ellie, such a dude, btw, we laughed about the beeps on my onboard computer which has no idea at all about the relevance nor location of itself, thus requiring a shut the eff up with your beeps, and watching her, Ellie, walk up to her home, I thought a think. We escaped today, the insaneness of today. We’ll go there again, oh yes we will. The inscape of it all is many more thinks, no, perhaps observations and reflections in the gentle quiet of an island evening.

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Island Blog – Faith

I wake into a ‘meh’. Most unlike me, but I can feel it trail my feet, sludge my steps, halt me in my walk to the bathroom. Actually, no, stop, it bothered my sleep too, waking me with anxious nonsense. Anxiety is always nonsense, I know this, because the images are those of fear, of what hasn’t, and probably will never, happen. I do remember, inside one of those nonsense moments, actively rising in the very dark, and walking around my bed like some circling eejit in the hope that I would lose the damn thing. I didn’t. These things are sticky. I also remember lying there, staring up at nothing, seeing nothing and wondering why it isn’t possible to take off a head, mine, lay it on a chair, preferably in another room and behind closed doors, maybe even locked, and then sleep headless, just body resting without the interminable nonsense of a rollocking mind. I don’t know about you, nor your mind, but mine is a terrorist, or can be, a rebel with no specific cause, a vandal, a schemer, a troublemaker. I do not recall requesting this as a child. Is it a punishment? And yet, the other side of this grubby coin is a brilliant thinker and I am she. It seems, she sighs inwardly, that the light requires a similar dosage of darkness.

And so, and so, I am living still as one who must (never should, never ought) work with the palaver of my mind because this damn thing is of use to me in a million ways. I can write. I can speak. I can influence. I can encourage, facilitate, lead. I am fearless on behalf of others. I can stop to sit on pavements without embarrassment, to talk with someone else held in that place. I do not bother about comments, will not judge, will sing in a toy shop if a song comes to mind, even dance with an ambulance driver out for a smoke when someone begins a fiddle tune. My mind is my friend, and my not friend. I remember ‘not friends’, at school, at work (although I only lasted a few weeks in that job) and I took myself off. I did. But when my ‘not friend’ is my own mind, without heading (sorry) into the impossible, I am stuck with her.

We moved through the day, me distracting with music, an audio book, a load of looking out, even more ‘noticing’ until we were all exhausted with the whole thing, me, my mind, my body. There are three of us in this thing. We shopped, snoozed ready for the four day work shift ahead, listened to a story, moved a few cobwebs aside, cautiously, checking for the mama house spiders (I won’t hurt) and felt alternately shit and okay. But I think my bonus ball is that I have faith. That tomorrow will show me a difference, that my eejit mind is exhausted and will shut the eff up tonight, that the roses still bloom, that day will dawn, that the sun will rise and dip, that my children will continue to fly.

T’is more than many can say.

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Island Blog – Silence and She’s Green

I found my old mum’s mood ring today. My jewellery box is mostly full of stories and not worldly wealth. I like that. I am not interested in worldly wealth, nor ever I was and nor was himself. We were all about stories, learned from them, made our own, spun them out into other times, other lives, like frisbees. Catch if you want, if you can. I put on the ring, a little finger fit, and noticed the changes, from green to blue to black to purple to amber and that was just one morning. I thought some about what goes on inside my mind and heart, and paused to notice and reflect in the early morning light. To be honest I have eschewed any rings and for a very long time, even though I love rings, because, for me, they denoted a control over the self of me. They actually itched and had to go. I remember being on a ferry back to the island, yonks ago, and an elevatory conversation between me and himself on the aft deck, and I flipped. I yanked off my wedding ring and tossed it overboard. A moment. Will you replace it? he asked. No, I said. I know I am married. I don’t need to show that. I never wore one again, but did stay married and for decades thereafter.

There’s a gap in my noise thing. I listen to Radio 2 and mostly love it. As the afternoon shifts into a difference, birds flying out, flying home to roost; as the tidal shifts and swifts, bringing in new seaweed, new fish flow, a change of the sea-mind, I listen to silence. Visitors may drive by, but mostly everything stops on the cusp of dinner plans, everyone showering, dressing up, timing departure for the table booking. I watch it, distractedly, as I make a new salad dressing with a load of inventive stuff. I also sense the tense of it all. I wish I could say I remember it, a family with young ones, but I don’t. In the days of running Tapselteerie, we went nowhere much. Five kids and debt will do that for you.

However, I did learn and that learning has held me up ever since. I notice everything. Everything. In the absence of television, no wifi, no mobile phones (none existed) there comes a deep need to find something beyond self, beyond the washing of plates, the providing of experiences for others. The Self demands a voice. I took myself on walks in the wild and at crazy times, and suddenly. I thank my reckless and colourful self for pushing me on, in the wrong boots, ill-equipped for the slam-dunk of west coast weather, in the silence and the shout of blast weather, among wild and growly cows, over lichen-slip rocks, over shell beaches, squishing through bladderwrack, kelp, sugar kelp, dabberloks, all wonderful as I sink into their gush of salty tannin. No nowadays visitor is going to like this. I love the connection. They will just angst about stain. I’m watching this happen, the distancing from the real, even as I know there are those who will listen in the silence, who will research, who do care about the beyond of worldly hoo-ha, the strive for monetary wealth, the need for ownership. the hunger for dominion. I know it.

I watched a young Osprey today, being hassled but gulls, all full voice. I saw it dip and flip across the sea-loch, giving no aggressive response. It thought me. There are times we just need to accept that the hecklers win, and we move on in silence. I look down at my mood ring. She’s green.