Island Blog

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Island Blog – Changerling

The tidal flow is gentle, exhausted, no doubt after the big Wolf moon whooha of the last week when the seawater rose like bathwater with my boys in it, slopping over startled rocks, wheeching gulls out of their lazy flip and flop and causing me nightless sleep, or sleepless nights, same thing by the way. It is a lovely peace, the after of all those frenetic celebrations and jubilations and chaos and tiny visits from longaways, the memories a trail of aftermath and clearing up, of taking down the tinsel and bringing up the energy to get the hell on with the next long bit. I read that Storm Bonkers is on his way, although not here and, knowing from the very inside of such storms how scary it usually is, I send my very best to those who are caught in the thixotrope of such a force of nature.

We on the islands have always known gales. I had a wee chuckle with a fine man over the phone recently, a man who lives somewhere in Englandshire, about gales. I could hear him astonished as I laughed my way through a long ago time, when we had to bring in Blossom the milk cow, Duchess the heavy horse and John the bull unto shelter as the weather darkened and wilded and out of nowhere. Himself always saw such changes coming, but had missed this warning. Perhaps it was Christmas t’ween New Years, possibly. Tackle up, he said, and NOW. I did and we went out, drenched in seconds, he striding ahead all yellow and booted and I, a skinny blowaway , had I not been a bloody difficult woman even then. Holding my ground, following his strength, barely able to see, we found them. Actually, they found us, mooing and lowing and whinnying, as we met at the arse end of a big field, so very glad to see us. They needed no harness. We led them to the byre, to hay nets, to buckets of cake, to peace. I remember standing there listening to the scream of the storm without and the inner peace within the thick stone walls. I watched the beasts munch, calm and settle. So easy to please and with not a single think in their beautiful heads.

Now is the time. The same and not the same, and yet the same. Christmas with all the anticipation, from mid October apparently, if not before, that build up for weeks and weeks, the expectation and overspending loud and allowed and completely fictional, as if everyone hopes that this time, this time, everything and everyone would transmogrify, translate into a language we might finally understand or transform into the one or ones who finally fit into the jig and saw we have them placed according to us. Never works. Never, because someone, the one, or the other one has bitten off a pivotal thingy that makes their piece fit, or has taken the piece away altogether, flicking it into the sea on the way home from the pub. I would have done that myself.

The Winter King takes hold now. Oh, we can deal with cold and gales with ridonculous names and slice and ice and snow and bad news and friends dying and the endless dark. We can rise all spit-polished, turn up for things looking pale and hopeful and overdressed and with chilblains and dry skin. We can warm ourselves, ward off coughs and snivels and the scary glen road when the council critter doesn’t grit, that long swingle of empty open single track with no mobile reception and a load of wild nothing going on all about us. We can be feisty and determined when there’s a ferry issue, when we know that we may be stuck, stuck, on the other side of the onewhere we want. We can because we laugh it off. We learn strength, determination, can-do, let’s meet, let’s have a whisky, let’s just bloody well get on with it, because we are not looking for any material help in our lives. We trust ourselves as the changling weather comes in because we have been learning for years.

I can see how the control works. It dulls independent thinking, dulls human minds. It’s soft, easy, the support services respond, bins, deliveries, timings, perfection. It’s not real. It won’t last. A lot like religion, control. We need to be the change we want to see. I pinched that quote by the way.

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Island Blog – Time after Time

I sang this at my African son’s wedding, beneath a tree and without a mike. It was hot, most of us barefoot on scorchio sandy scrub, feet tingling, so alive. I sang it a cappella , nervous, determined. All those guests looking at me. Me singing Cindi Lauper. A big ask. The tree, not a Fever tree but something stunning with a greeny peppered bark, big, twisted, old and with a handthrust of outer limbs all dizzily leafed up, dancing in the hot wind. That was a very big while ago but every time I hear the Cindi song, I’m back there in an African wildness, dancing under twinkly lights, hearing the music, the sound of cicadas,frogs and the dodgy others, the breath of the ocean in and out.

It thinks me. We do so much time after time. Boil the kettle, get through Christmas, change a nappy, do the school run, sort the tax return, go to the supermarket, pay the bills, go to work, send the birthday card, get up, go to bed, attend parent meetings, water the flowers, sweep floors, make beds, and so very on and so very so forth. Jeez it is frickin endless. Yes, it is. Always is. never stops. The beginning does not gentle on to the end. The midriff is fat and ghastly. It is. Let’s be honest. We celebrate beginnings, new love, and I am no cynic. I always hope. We all meet it, we do, the change when children arrive, money strife, the influential differentials between potential grandparents, the demands of work. So very much and time after time.

I sit here, writing, my absolut, my constant, my have to each day, after loading up five spectaculars into the world which now throws me often into a confuse. It is dark now, complete, no false light, no sound but the rickus of a feisty wind with some swear words in her mouth. I watch my old fingers. They still work.

Time after time.

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Island Blog – A Beautiful Share

It’s damn cold here, like freezeballs. A rarety for the West Coast where, to date, and over Sinkturies we have enjoyed endless rainfall, no floods thanks to upthrust rock formations and a very nearby Atlantic, happy to take on the slew and the wild of overexcited burns, rivers, swamps, bogs, lost wellies and various other waterswingles. T’was the island way. My kids made sure one wellie always got oopsed off some boat, some pier. We knew nothing of ocean plastic pollution back then in the 70’s. I wish we had because we met that problem so very often as we tracked and studied marine mammals and the unintended but immense blockages in their natural flow. I do remember the cold back then, but it was wild cold, the one you always meet out at sea when the wild is biting your face off and the swipe of waval spume would threaten your balls, if you had them. Out there, the fishers, they face a supreme cold. There is nought between their boat and the Antarctic blow, the wind snap from the East, North. A load of winds, cold, colluding, dynamic in what they decide. I’m not saying the weather chooses menace. It may sound that I do.

But that all thinks me as I shiver my way into a shower in a cold bathroom, slipping off clothes I don’t really want to slip off. My home is warm, yes. But this cold is new. I remember it and for 15 long winters on Tapselteerie, when ice frosted the insides of all windows with spectacular art and the iced carpet, about 3 feet beyond the frost catch, and when I just wanted to shout a load of abuse at the Winter King. This bit thinks me. The ones who live in places I don’t know, now I am warm. We change our levels of acceptability as we move on. I know it. I lived under a minus 3 all flipping winter. No hot water, mice everywhere, five kids, five vibrant and wild kids, not enough food, a load of making something out of nothing, their laughter, their spin, their don’t care about a lamb in the hypothermic oven, the calf in a nest around the aga, warm lamp lit. They slept through our wakening.

I remember a night, dark, no lights, no warmth. Hallo you, I said. I’d come down to make a cup of tea, sleep too cold for sticking. Me too, he said. I think I lit a candle. We toasted cups. Fuck the cold, I said, and we laughed a beautiful share.

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Island Blog – It’s All About The Hunny

I haven’t cried for decades, except that’s a lie. When Piglet almost got blown away in the Hundred Acre Wood, I did shed a few tears. It wonders me, as I watch everyone else leak a lot when shit hits. I sort of envy them that release. I know I am far from cold, feeling everything about everything and for everyone, but maybe I have some sort of cold in me, a woman in a life, one who wants no pity, no fixing, and one who has grown tendons and sinews like steel props. I just made that up. It’s probably ridiculous. But it does think me. Those of us who have pixillated themselves into another’s world out of choice, willingly at first and then through sheer stickability, find sinew and tendon strength. I don’t think it resolutes us, not all of us. Some grow bitter as old wine, vinegar, loose teeth and joy. Others choose the yellow brick road, the tricky walk towards a truth full of wonder and hope. Life is not a dream. Life is a dream. The Bothers, the Both-ers. We seek another and then that other just isn’t enough, nor are we for them. Two separates with too much of a gap for the mending, the amending. A sadling for sure, but a reality. We change, we learn differently, we choose what comes to us through a learning. And, we divide. And I know this, I see this, and I also see that the ‘stickability’ of the old pioneers has had its time, because in those times, nobody was their true self, not could ever, ever, admit to such. I lived there, so I know, albeit at the arse end of that limitation.

What we all long for is to be who we are, without fear, safe, recognised, welcomed. We may be years off that but I hope it is coming because for too long the world, often the religious world, has controlled and ruled through fear. The people believed and walked in blind deference, superiority and damning, like they had no independent thinking. Independent thinking got you hanged, subdued, dismissed. We don’t have that fear now and yet we still can’t be sure of who we are without labels. I am seriously hoping that for the next year, those with the courage to gently voice, with the courage to step out, to come out, to be who they really are, will find the strength to rise, to pioneer us into a truth which just might kill off the lies of centuries.

In all, in everything, in the daily grind, in the knocks and batters, in the sudden joys, the falls the resists, the hidings, the resists, the falters, there is choice. Always is, always, no matter the stricklies. New word. For me it is all yellow brick road and the hope and the courage and the determination and the honey. That choice is no nonsense. Try it.

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Island Blog – Rise and Make it Yours

This time of year is both wonderful and a possible shit show. Let’s be honest here. As we pull in, gather in the ones we want, and the others, we assault our thinkings. I’m certain there is a perfectoral word for each part of that deeply awkward and challenging thought process. We get through it.

But it isn’t enough, because we want to be seen as who we are within any dynamic, and no dynamic is an easy drawing. Not now, maybe not ever. I know I am old, but I see this as an exciting thing because someone, one one is going to rise, not like wildfire. I did hover over the button there.

So who of you might rise beyond? Stuck, confined, lost, cold even in a ‘comfortable’ relationship, a safe place which isn’t. Will you risk and rise?

A new year 2026. Make it yours.

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Island Blog – Wild Choice and I’m In

Family here, so flipping chaos and a lot of noisy fun, all twinkle girls and good champagne and hilarity. Such times give me a good peek into the lives of my children, although they aren’t. Children I mean. They’re parents, scrabbling for a way ahead, just as me and himself did a long time ago. Now that himself is up there sorting God out, no, not him but hie mummy, I have the peaceful mind they all long for. It will come, I tell them, although nothing will be gentle nor easy en route to that peaceful place. Stuff and regrets and inner failures and other ridonculous and fabricated memories will see to that. Memories, I have long learned, grow brambles. They do. Twisting and suffocating and blanking out the light, they persist like imagined dragons. They are not real, but they feel real. We all have them and especially those who say they don’t. I have gone to free a blaring sheep, entwined like a stairway in said thorns, getting too close with my bramble freeing gloves on, only to watch the wooly eejit pull away with nothing but a dump of shit left behind. It thinked me then and it thinks me now. Choice, the need for recognition, the power within an helplessness. I’ve been there, done that in my time. Not no more, not now I see the lack of efficacy in such, the damn weakness.

The thing is that nobody is going to, nor is able to, save anybody. Just me. I got that and by golly (can you say that anymore?) I learned this, that the world owes me nothing, life owes me nothing, my spouse owes me nothing, nor my kids, nor my work, nor my longings. It is up to only me. Everything is. This, plus that, equals power because I get to choose. It doesn’t matter when I finally understood this, no matter the crash and burn I had gone through, the shame, guilt, regret. Time is, so they say, an illusion. What I do now, how I live now is with choice in my always head. I can choose my morning waking, slept well or not, my progress through my day, because it is mine, my response to news, messages, invitations or lack of them. I can choose to be spiky, fun, naughty, mischievous or a grumpy shit with a gloom cloak about my skinny shoulders. I can rise or I can fall.

Today my whacko son came for a coffee. I can hear many of you asking, genuinely, ‘Which whacko son?’ and I get that and feel so very lucky. I have four of them and all whacko, and a daughter who is the only whacko with girly bits. I have no idea where they learned this spontaneity, this ‘lets go’ thing but they have and I’m still up for lets go, so we did. We drove up a bit on Tapselteerie and parked. Then we headed to the shoreline which is definitely more tumble-stumble, wrinkly and sodden than in my memory. We laughed, slipped, negotiated through obviously very high and recent tides, the sprawls of bladderwrack, and other whitey, browny greeny and yellowy seaweeds proffering a wonderful opportunity for an arse crack all along the volcanic shoreline. He held onto me, helped me over and around and through the sink bogs, over the tumps and tumbles as we embraced the freesing blast of stories from the north. The spume and wave flight was white as snow, rising with the gulls, the clouds dark but moving fast with the wind, passing like thoughts which don’t deserve to last. The sea was so alive, the hail blasting at our grinning faces. And then the sun, a momentary lapse of reason, proud fire, until the clouds regained control. We loved it all, laughed through memories of his childhood and my motherhood with five whackos and their dad who thrived in the wild, the lunatic weather, broaching the thin places of an ancient island, spouting stories every time someone who is open comes along, someone who chooses to be tough, to find a way through, to let go, to find the mischief.

Always a choice. May 2026 fire a rocket through old thoughts, old ways. May the grey clouds get bored of hovering over the wildfire of someone who has grown tough through all the whatever shit, and who has chosen to be who they are, no matter the what, the who, the which, the when, the why. I’m in.

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Island Blog – A Gallus Vocabularian

I remember those who tried to scumper me with smart wordage. Not the individuals, just the slimy snake thing about them, as if they had swallowed the dictionary and spent hours, if not days, trying to sort that confusive vomit. I despised that tactic as it was only used to put me down enough pegs as to sag my personal washing line. I was a girl and a woman of my time, I know this, and the snakes were often men in those days, but not always. It is true, or was, that the biggest judges of females are usually other females. I am not sure that’s a ‘then’ thing. It allows itself yet, this upperhandedness, as if we still haven’t exhausted the desperate need to be better than another still feels old.

I didn’t know I would be a vocabularian. All I knew was that words and their usage fascinated me, drew me in, the way they can tip and bend a sentence into an entirely new meaning, with skill and a musicality. Words change their meaning all the time, becoming elastic, fluid, non PC, redundant, just worn out. And new ones come, across continents, through engagement with new languages, cultures, and colloquialisms, and I welcome them all. New ways of saying old things, old tired things, oft repeated around parental tables, invite new landings, new lands, new opportunities for the brave Worder.

When one of the last above does speak out new words, perhaps faltering and definitely feeling like Gulliver in Lilliput, there’s a big element of risk. But, and here’s my challenge, because if we don’t speak out just because we believe we sound ridonculous, what does anybody learn? I say my word. I am immediately corrected. What now? A sink back in my chair in defeat? Or, do I rise up and correct the Corrector. No, not that word but the one I already said. See, the thing about rebellion is about numbers. My Thesaurus is a tatterley old man, the wordage good enough, has been for decades but as I dive into the pages of it these days I find a lack, flack. I may be, as I indeed am, a Gallus vocabularian, t’is blood in my veins, but I am still wide open, wider, to listen to and to learn from new wordage, new words, new meanings to old words and to be okay watching the beginnings and endings of the longest words falling off the edge of the world. They need to go.

When I meet the arrogance of word ‘control’ the uppernance of entitled supremacy, I do two things. One is the overnaturally dissolution of self, that’s me in this, sinking back, folding, giving in, and then I remember who I am. I am not aggressive, no antagonist. But, if you’re asking, I’m holding my place right here, and peacefully. I won’t try to climb the ladder to your command of language. No. I am down here in the welcomes of new lands, new people, not having a clue what they’re saying, just knowing they hurt, they’re here, fearful and have lost everything and are bringing me a light into a new language. By goodness, we need it.

As a gallus vocabularian, I can almost feel my rebellion red beret.

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Island Blog – Inspiradiater

I watched the cloudal shift, the way a lemony sun blasted out at every chance, and it laughed me. I tipped my head towards it, and it was gone. I felt like a photograph. Is the sun looking at us as we look at him? As nobody can answer that, I’ll take it as a definite possibility. We know so little of everything beyond the acceptable colour of baby spinach and the fact that we are certain we will recognise our own children as they barrel through the door after school. Thing is I love the Mystery of life. Yes, there. are many givens, but also a continginous load of give-ins. One extra vowel, not by chance an ‘I’. Now there’s a think. Hyphens, just to say, arise like diving boards, differenting over Timelines and Thesauruses, and for one who does the best leap from the side of anywhere, that hyphen proves oftentimes to be an irritating restriction. I think I wanted me as an English Language tutor. What fun we would have had with all we angry, curious, unlimiters who just wanted to fly with words like birds, lifting sense and fixtures into a cloudal shift.

Visiting a beloved friend this morning, bursting in, flumping onto the sofa (so good) I settled to talk my head off and then to ask about her. We are 47 year old friends. Together we have gone through babies, teen angsty shite, hurts, losses, births, sadness and joy. We are easy with each other. When I left to drive through 400 potholes, aka half a mile if that, I remembered old times, the terror of being ‘Christmas’ for a big family plus blow ins. Everything had to be perfect and that meant I had to be perfect with timing, precisional cooking, a massive weight in itself, and never mind the arrival of the inlaw grandfolks who hosted grandventures effortlessly, or so it seemed in the telling. I was all itch. None of my clothes fit me as if I had morphed into Morph overnight, although it wasn’t overnight because I had been shapeshifting for weeks. I was so tense you could have lit a candle off my skin. I was the inspiradiater. Someone had to do the heavy lifting as those around felt fine about shuffling the slow waltz just because the cloudal shift means more rain and the ferry isn’t running and the turkey isn’t dead enough and arthritis has flared up again and it’s dark and cold and so bloody on.

But when you are born with more mischief in your veins than blood, there is a calling, and never more so than at Christmas. I am certain I was birthed in Faerie. Now that my mum is dead, I wish I could talk to her about that. Ach, she would have batted me away and said,….You were always weird, I have no idea where you came from, and many many more appearingly dismissive things, but she loved being with me, chuckled a lot. My beloved friend today talked of her. She was full of mischief, she said, and I stood a moment, laughed, yessed in my heart. For all the difficult times, she was an inspiradiater. And so am I. It’s a choice, tell you why. Many come to a Christmas gather, bring a wrapped gift or many, but once the wine flows and more, the welcome, warmth, the sharing thing, out comes the reality of a life yet unlived. It takes an inspiradiater to work that one. Not to dismiss nor deny but to hear and to listen. There are too many who feel unheard, unlistened to. It takes no study, no qualifications. It is just sitting with another, saying nothing, being there.

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Island. Blog – It Rains Down and Big Red

Well, obviously, although on the island it can shoot up your trouser legs, nae problem. I used to take it personally, on Tapselteerie days when it was my turn to quad myself out to the arse of beyond pulling a trailer of sheep food. The mud threw up shoulders of peaty mud just for me, ridging with a ‘let’s tip her’ thing. It was a heavy quad, right enough, a solid beast with attitude and held together by rust and bloody-mindedness. She lives on although the demands on her have changed. Now she. is just a Wahooo for kids and grandkids as they break the speed limit and probably challenge the sound barrier as they skideroo around the estate which, thankfully, is no longer ours. Now it is a beautiful place to wander through, old pines, beeches, bent-backed hazels, birches, all telling their stories of how damn tough it was to find the light, to survive. Some are so twisted, they’re feral, corcksrewing out and then up, seeing a chance. Such patience, such syncreticity. We can all learn from that, the willingness to enter a dynamic and to gently, softly and with intent, find our way into the light.

I went to UFOs today. UFO stands for Un Finished Objects, a crafting, artistic group, the chance to coffee up, cake up and to gather around a table in someone’s home. Around this table we talk, about our lives, our stuff, our worries, concerns and planned adventures. We reassure, kid on, tease, laugh and sympathise. In turning up we meet the unknown, even as we all, intentionally or otherwise, bring our own daily scrabbles into the light. We redimensionize. It doesn’t take away from our own angst, just re-jigs it, thinks us in a safe place. A shinglestropper. Think on this word. Not mine but that son of mine who is definitely related to Roald Dahl, Dr Zeuss and Terry Pratchett, not that I personally knew any of those men. Walking over Shingle……..can be tough if the Atlantic has anything to do with it. Stropper, strong, elevated, in control, as in the right shingle boots and with a good hold on the sky. So descriptive.

Back to the sheep. I head out in a circular rain with intent. Ridges, done that bit. I race through growly Galloway cows (don’t try it) who, or is it which, have all decided they were, in fact, sheep. After opening and closing endless gates, soaking like a ginner each time, and shouting them off, because, and you may not know this, a gather of Galloways is much like facing a brick wall with the thrust and speed and malevolence of a tsunami. Okay, so through the angry unfed cows, all chasing me to the next gate and through to the next, I do confess a doubt or six at my choice to become a farmer’s wife. Heading for the sheep, all baa-ing and sweet and completely manageable, I offload barley straw, cake (not our cake) and stand a minute as their heads dunk into the troughs. I look out. I can see the beyond of forever out there, the sea lashing the ancient rocks, the sky, wide with clouds and strata and greys and flips and shapes and big conversations and I am drenched. I have no idea how to turn Big Red around, not with a trailer and those humpy ridges. But as I head for home I just know. I don’t want to live anywhere else.

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Island Blog – Shmoodleflampers

Words can turn into a new magic. to describe feelings or nounage within a sentence being described in a moment, arms flying, the right word not there for the grasping and suddenly a new word can swing in like a risk. This word aptly describes what, in the dictionary, might touch on a ‘melee’, but more, it brings in confusion, wild weather, an abundance of something with an authoritative ‘shhh’ finger upheld and a willingness to do nothing about anything, whilst the arse of it shows freedom, the don’t care flip of a. dolphin’s tail in the middle of a massive ocean.

Many of my made-up words come from my wordsmith son. We talk often in this language and as we curious our ways through language and the wildness of it, we find no boundaries within our conversations. We fly out there, laughing, playing with syllables and making verbs into nouns, nouns into verbs. There is no right and no wrong in this play. Dr Zeuss knew this place. It thinks us, thinks me. I can’t speak for him, but for me, I am a boundary fighter, a limit fighter, a don’t tell me where I stop and start woman. There is no aggression in me. I have no interest in what others see as confrontation. I am a peacemaker who likes to push limits and boundaries, gently, respectfully, curiously, definitely.

It rained today, and rained and rained and there’s a winglewangle for you. Cabin fever, yes, even though I had a wonderfull long walk this morning, sans cloud dump, with a friend and two gorgeous labradors, but, by afterlunch, the rain steady and proffering handcuffs, I had to get out. Local shop, loads of laugheroo, pulling out on the skinny village road, peat fires burning, lights ready for Christmas, I pulled into the pub. Twinkly winkly lights, gentle music, a glass of house red and a good chat, the exchange of info and warmth just perfect. Home now, wood burner aflame, candles lit, a meal ahead.

Not for the feint/fainthearted living here but here still lives the wild. It’s brutal, but so dellictrous.