January 14, 2014 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 120 On Leadership

It’s a funny old chestnut, Leadership. It sounds so grand and important. In fact, as a youngster I wanted it for myself. Those, it appeared to me, who were given such a badge of honour, positively glowed with the warmest of light. They were lifted above us earthly girls, fixed to the ground with our lack of leadership skills, our heavy lace-up brogues and our triple-layered (for safety) regulation greys, and they never came back down again. I met them in corners with members of staff, or prefects, or team leaders, discussing something important in hushed tones, corners I rounded in an un-leaderly, and often late dash to the next fixture in my school diary. They would both stand in a conspiratorial silence, one that positively burgeoned with importance, as I hurtled by, knowing two things for sure – that I would meet some disgrace for running in passageways, and that my bottom jumped around way too much inside those earthly greys.

When they said to me that they were sorry I was leaving the school because, did I realise that they were going to ask me to be Music Prefect next school year……I knew what they were up to, asking me AFTER I had announced with barely concealed joy, that I had now collected my 7 O Levels and was abandoning my brogues for ever. If I had said……Oh, ok then, I will stay, they would all have fainted clean away and I would have finally become a leader, one they may well have regretted inviting into a corner.

A few minutes later, as a newly engaged farmer’s wife-to-be, I pondered leadership once more. This farmer with whom I was about to spend the rest of my life, needed some serious leadership. For a start, he didn’t want to be led at all and most certainly not by me. Well, ok, I can be patient. After all, look at how he does what his mummy says, albeit now and then, but ‘now and then’ looked promising to an over-zealous young woman (child, really) with a fat sapphire on her forever finger and plans already laid out in the loft of her mind. He argued with every plan I brought forward for discussion. He made all the ‘big’ decisions with automonic confidence. He dropped his clothes on the floor, the ones he deemed ready for washing, which was usually two weeks later than my deeming. He wore white crimpolene flares. There was a lot of work to be done.

Leadership isn’t nagging. Ok, ok, so what is leadership then and why can’t I lead him?

Answer……he doesn’t want it and, listen girlie, he is as determined as you on this matter.

Once this sank in, was resisted vehemently, caused endless rows and overly slammed doors, removal of priveleges and absolutely no cake for tea never mind the honey, I remember falling into a black depression. My mother, who also tried to lead my dad, who also had no intention of being led, had the advantage. Dad was away all week so that she could lead all five of us, the neighbours, the butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker to her heart’s delight. Then, when Dad came home at weekends, she could probably just about manage to shelve her leaderly urges for two days until she popped him once more on a plane to Dubai or Italy or Africa or wherever his veterinary consultant skills were currently in demand. But my husband was always at home rejecting leadership, so I had to think sideways.

43 years later I have a crick in my neck and still no husband running along behind. I ask myself, is that what I want? And the answer (quick learner, me) is absolutely not. What I want is actually just to lead myself, not to lead, and not to be led, although that bit is very much according to my current mood swing. There are times, many times, when I do want him to lead me, and love the feeling of safety and protection his leadership brings. When it goes wrong are those times I feel controlled, which is, of course, the same for him. My tutting over dropped clothes, or whatever, serves only to make him feel controlled, and therefore to resist.

Aha…….now we are getting somewhere!

So, if I can’t control him and don’t want him to control me, and he feels the same, why does this need to lead still raise it’s discordant cry? Because dear sweet daft woman, it is yourself you need to lead.

Well how can I lead me? I am me and me is me and that’s three of us already.

Yes, and you can lead all of them, all the mees, as much as you like, to your hearts desire, knock yourself out!

Thinking, reflecting on this bonkers truth, opens many doors to me, to all mees present. If, in an argument, I only consider my own voice and the content of my retorts, my behaviour, I am in control. I am leading. I don’t need to lead the other (the one who is so obviously wrong) in this situation. I only have to lead myself.

Yes, but, will you listen to what he is saying! It’s complete tripe and EVERYONE would ALWAYS agree that he NEVER gets it.

Hmmm……so many absolutes. But life and love isn’t about who is wrong or right, always or never. It isn’t about what happened in the past and the past is only a minute behind me. It is about leadership of myself, and if I can get that right, after a few, or many clumsy crashings through the thorn and thicket of life, then I just may find, to my eye-wide surprise that someone is following on behind.

January 7, 2014 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 119 Do less and achieve more

Oh ho ho ho and isn’t that just the easiest thing to tell someone else?

I am reading Mindfulness for Busy People by Dr Michael Sinclair and Josie Seydel and learning much goodly-grounded advice on how to fly. Although Life throws us curveballs just when we think we are on a home straight (probably mixed up two sportsfields there….) it is really possible to live in the moment as long as somebody can show us how, and not just tell us.

As a writer I know the art of ‘show not tell’ and even the most lightweight reader (no offence intended) will yawn wide if an author reads like a schoolmarm. We are adults now and have spent way too much time being told what to do and how to do it. Adulthood begins when a child decides, not when we with saggy skin and a certain way of doing pretty much everything tell them they may now be privy to certain conversations, once whispered, or, worse, spelled out, in shady corners of the house.

So, back to reading………….well, this writer knows how essential it is to read avidly. For me, it is a pleasure, a need, a drive because in reading other’s words I form my own, not as a copyist, although it has been known. I have decided that, should I find an angry ‘other’ at my door, spear raised, I will tell them they might think my pinching to be a huge compliment, and not a robbery. I take on other’s wisdoms so that my own reflections on what they have to say might shape into a new form, one that works for me. There are as many ways to think as there are thinkers, more, and we all must find that which will comfortably settle within our own lives, among our own circumstances – circumstances that will always change, sometimes drastically, sometimes in a more kindly way, but we can still learn how to ‘be’ inside each moment, each day, whatever the challenges may be.

Yesterday, or last week, or last month, life was in ‘this’ shape. Overnight, let us say, it flips and now looks upsidedown and most precarious, leaning (just) against the props that seemed tall as the cedars of Lebanon, and now look like my old washing line poles after a force ten gale. Let’s look at them – let’s just stand here and look at them and do nothing. Just look.

I can joke about it, to get a laugh, but the truth is, it is the only way, and not just for me. Whatever comes, whatever goes, it all passes. It cannot help but pass, because life moves on, with or without us.

As a young wife and busy mother, I knew I could not hold onto control and to a great degree, I let go. Perhaps I was lucky in that. Perhaps feeling out of control all the time, taught me to live by my inventive wits and to consider control a disadvantage. But, for all of us, this is possible, no matter how valuable our props might appear. In the event of extreme disaster, like your house slipping over a cliff, this way of observing and moving on is essential. I am not saying don’t grieve, or ululate for that which is lost, but there is a time for grief and a time to get past it, and not by force. Accepting some new truth, any new truth on our road is like letting in a new light. It is not something anyone can memorise by rote and commit to memory. That is for O Level maths (in my case) and it is impossible to retain that learning for long as I discovered on exam day. No, we must ‘allow’ the understanding to lightly settle in our bones and there is no other way to do that than to simply ‘accept’ the curveballs, do what we can, if possible, to make good from disaster, and then walk peaceably onwards.

If you are intrigued, I cannot recommend this book enough. Try it. There is absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain. If you say you are too busy to read, you fool yourself. When you are gone, what will you be remembered for? Being too busy?

I hope not.

December 30, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 118 Children I have loved

Now that Christmas is back there somewhere, and the hoover is choked with small and completely useless cracker gifts, bits of tinsel, fallen food morsels (where ARE you Sula??) and trinkets various, there is about five minutes of coffee and calm before it all begins again on Hogmanay and a New Year.

When we first moved to the island, I thought Christmas was IT, meaning, that, once the fairyland of it was done, we might just bask in its echoing warmth for a while, watch the twinkly winkly lights for a few more days and justify a wee whisky mac after a chilly walk along the 6 miles of Atlantic coastline, even if it was nowhere near 6pm. I always reckoned time was an illusion, and used to say so, on more than one occasion, sometimes missing the start of the school term altogether. But, once the tree was down, the lights and dingle dangles boxed and returned to the silent dark of the cupboard under the stairs, ready for the mice to re-format into comfy, albeit prickly, bedding for their Spring hatch, even I heard my voice sounding slightly desperate as I suggested a warming nip in the middle of an ordinary day. Because days do that. Become ordinary and far too quickly for my liking, perhaps for everyone’s liking. So how do I keep the magic going? Not with a ‘wee half’ at midday that’s for certain. Heading into work at the local school as a stand-in (not clown, but classroom assistant……ok, same thing….)and smelling of whisky, even if it is the liquor of the gods, would lose me street cred in a nanosecond.

When the children were little, which, for us meant about 25 years, I worked out a way of keeping magic. The secret lay in beginning again, but not with a big list of impossible resolutions, none of which ever made it into February. It was simply a daily decision to be a big kid, to look out at the world through the eyes of a child, and this resolution is sustainable, or it is at least for me and the island husband. It is absolutely nothing to do with cash in the bank, or a new sofa. It has nothing to do with dinners out and fancy wines or two holidays abroad every year. I can have not one of these ‘things’ around me, or even in far sight, because it has little to do with ‘things’. Oh, I’m not saying things aren’t fun or even necessary as basics, but we tend to look for the right things in the wrong places. We give our ‘love’ to the wrong things and it isn’t the fault of the tv adverts, or technology. The fault lies deep inside each one of us and the good news is, so does the solution.

If, on waking, on that pi**y day when I have to find my car keys, or bus money, in the dark, grab my pack lunch and take my place on the tube, in the car, on the bus, to re-enter those office doors and re-locate my desk in stiff backed shoes that pinch, and a skirt that sparks everytime I move (ah, that’s why it was so cheap), I say to myself….’I shall look at all of this, as a child would,’ then I have begun to change. Nothing has changed and yet everything has changed. A child doesn’t fret about what lies ahead, unless we show him how to, by fretting ourselves. A child, my children, bounced into days like monkeys or terrorists or pirates, or clowns, and the only thing that fussed them into a right panic, was probably me. Me and that old illusionist, Time. The only person who got cross with potholes was me. Everyone else imagined a trip over the rockies with Jeremy Clarkson at the wheel. The only person who imagined that if this child didn’t eat SOMETHING today, they were going to get rickets or anorexia, was me. The only one who couldn’t laugh as one child inflated a rubber glove into a a huge balloon and then pulled it over his head, was me, because I was too serious about what could have been fun, what was fun, through a child’s eyes. Running into a snowy afternoon without a well-zipped-up polar jacket was a given, and yet I would scream and fret about what………hypothermia? Jings woman, it’s just an afternoon!!!!!

Worry is the killer and another is fear and yet another, the almostworstone, is ‘what will others think of me?’

Let’s say that you go into work with a smile and a chuckle at the ready. Worst thing that can happen is that someone suggests you don’t take things seriously enough. Well, good for you, say I. The only things we need to take seriously are the serious things and, trust me, you will know your own list well enough. Then, another someone might suggest you have an easy life. And so you might, but then again, you might not, but whose business is that might I ask and what does it have to do with anything?

Some of the most cheerful adults I have ever met have the biggest pills to swallow. They wear a smile, and more than that, they look for the fun in everything. They are interested in you, in life, in the magic of what might happen next, for, although you and I may have a routine, a dull daily routine, there are opportunities in every minute, just waiting to be bounced like balls, or thrown like frisbees across a room. What we allow, and this is an individual choice, is for someone gloomy to bring us down, to feed our guilt. This is not their fault, but our own, and, as I said before, the solution lies within.

I remember such encounters with les miserables in my long life, and what I found, after some reflection, was that they were really reaching out for friendship and not a caustic comment. If I asked them about their life, their likes, their Christmas, I could always find their smile. Now, it wasn’t up to me to keep it on that gloomy face, but I could show them something that touched their heart and that was friendship. When my kids found themselves stuck with such a person, in school, in college, or in the workplace, I always suggested that they try swimming upstream, towards the crowd and not with it: to see another as a whole human being, not a miserable old g*t. Each one of them has been glad of that advice and have their own stories to tell after they extended the hand of friendship and found the smile within. They met extreme lonliness, social ineptitude, fears and self-doubts. They met inadequacy and rejection, and in that darkness, they met their own.

Children grow and are children no more, so they tell me, although we must be well behind the times, the island husband and I, because we can still have a pillow fight, make fun out of all the leaks in our home, the smoking chimney in a big wind, and it has absolutely nothing to do with life being easy. Life isn’t easy, but living it to the full, is simple indeed, as a child will tell you.

If you ask.

December 19, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 117 Animals I have known

It’s cold here today. I’m looking out across the sealoch through a hail of white bullets. A huge white-tailed eagle has just flown past the window, pinching all the light. The trees are quite stripped of any whisper of autumn, thanks to the endless storm force winds that plunder the nights. Last night the roof tiles danced as if there was a load of Gene Kellys up there, singing in the rain. Sleep gave up on me around 4am and I woke to a lime green glow casting weird shadowy shapes around the room as the curtains fought to stay connected with their moorings. Oh hallo moon, I said. Full she was and quite chuffed with herself sitting there all alone in the sky, quite the big cheese. I checked my clock, though what for I can’t tell you. There was nothing to be learned whatever it said, with it’s luminous hands morse-coding the passage of time. I suppose if it had read 7 o’clock, it would have meant I could get up and make tea. But 4am is not the right time for anything other than going back to sleep, which I didn’t manage.

On summer mornings, when I wake early, I can bounce (quietly of course, although I bounce a bit more noisily these days) down the stairs, make tea and feel warm and excited about the day ahead, as I write. In the sleety wind-battered winter, the very thought of pushing back the duvet and stepping into the chilly room is enough to remain me beneath the goose down. So, I lie there thinking about things like sealing wax and kings and sundry other daft forays into the world of my imagination. One such journey showed me a mouse, made of velvet and the colour of chocolate which is very swish for a mouse by the way, and I bet you’ve never seen one.

Animals often appear in dreams and play large parts in whatever drama unfolds before my eyes. It has always been the way of things and not least, I imagine, because of all the hundreds of animals I have shared my life with. I remember the working horses in the flatlands, those gentle chestnut giants with slow gait and kindly eyes, with broad backs and feet like meat plates. I remember watching them pull a plough, bracing their wide chests against the harness and leaving, in their wake, deep straight lines across a field that reached to the horizon. After their work was done, we unclipped them and turned the huge collars around on their thick necks to give them some relief. The children, just toddlers, always wanted to ride them home to the stables and a welcome bucket of nuts. They looked like coloured dots, perched high above the rest of us, and clinging on tightly to the wiry manes, laughing with glee as they rocked and rolled their way down the track. We never had to lead the horses, for they were weary and only looking for food, water and rest. I remember someone making a hoo-ha about the danger we put our children in and it made us laugh out loud. They never fell off, couldn’t fall off, not with that width of back beneath their little bottoms, a back that could have hosted a small tea party quite safely.

Then we had collies, labradors, hens and cats, one, named Cosmic Creepers, whom we found with a rabbit snare embedded in it’s neck. It was wild and had a set of extremely sharp teeth that it enjoyed sinking into arms and fingers. Mum and I spent ages snipping the wire, bathing the wounds and minding our fingers. Cosmic Creepers became part of the family, as did Isobel the hen as you will know if you’ve read Island Wife. Isobel was also wild, but, thankfully, quite without sharp teeth. We had pet calves and lambs who always got daft names. Mint Sauce, for example, and Bovril, and Lamb Chop. Once we had a crow called Jim who lived in a cage in the barn and smelled dreadful. His wing was hurt, and after he was set free, he hopped around the garden as if he couldn’t quite remember what to do next.

Living with animals is never dull. They teach me. If I only think as a human I miss something, an extra dimension, for animals are quite honest and rather definite about their needs. They don’t fanny about wondering if it’s convenient for me to serve up dinner, they just whinny or moo or march into the kitchen, which is okay-ish if we are talking Hen. A working horse might have caused a bit of a stooshie, had she got indoors, but I caught her in time. She just followed me back from the stable and……well…..kept coming. I fed her a carrot and turned her smartly around. She did wander back, but not immediately, deciding to visit the farm veg shop on the way for a big mouthful of winter greens. I could see them hanging out of her mouth as she sashayed up the track, and wee Polly, who worked in the shop had to go home for a lie-down.

I always thought of myself as a wild horse. I said so, to the island husband one day. He snorted, which was a bit rude. No, he said, not a wild horse, oh no definitely not!

Okay……….thanks for that……….what then, if not a wild horse?

A hen, he said and thought it was terribly funny, for quite some time.

December 17, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 116 To See Darkly

I saw this large white thing on the sealoch, pushing the water into a triangle with the rocky shore as the third median. I peered for a bit through the paint-spattered windows as the cover of the night slid back to reveal a new morning. I always do this ‘peering’ thing first, actually not just first, but second and sometimes third, in a vain attempt to kid on that, overnight, my eyeballs have grown young again. Ah, halcyon days….. when I could see so much more, often too much, and sometimes that which would have been better not seen at all, and certainly not by me!

Anyway, I waffle away from the large white thing.

Before it disappears completely, travelling at a fast lick through the frothy tide line, I grab the hefty set of Zeiss binoculars, or ‘bins’ as I gather they are fondly known, and nearly fall into my coffee with the weight of the things. I don’t believe any bird watcher ever held these up to their eyes for long. I would need to consider the employment of a personal trainer for at least a year just to manage a period of time longer than 35 seconds. However, being a woman, I can achieve a great deal in 35 seconds, so I stick them onto my face and focus quickly, to the usual no avail, because why? Because, as well as giving me instant arm ache and the beginnings of a shake in my ulna, well, both ulnas to be honest, the flaming glass bit mists up as my hot eyeball challenges the cold lens. Vital seconds pass, as does the large white thing, into the trees that overhang the near shore. Hmmm.

I call it a Snow Goose. It was too big for an eider duck and too small for a swan or a flamingo. Snow Goose it is. There! I feel dead chuffed and highly priveleged and can live this fantasy for days. I saw a Snow Goose today! That’s what I say in the shop to a resounding chorus of envying OOhs and Aahs.

It makes me think. Of how we can see things that aren’t there, and not see things that are there. How an un-misted glass lens can show us something we think we can explain, and how a misted one can talk complete pants to our human brains. When we ‘see’ something through our eyeballs, we bring a process into being. First, we see, then we fix this vision into a place, and then, without any conscious decision, we pad it out with all manner of daftness, imaginings, past baggage, phobias, indoctrinated beliefs and hopes. When I see a beggar on any street, I see someone calling for help, and I will always give something. I follow my own heart in this matter. When another sees the same sad sight, they may feel angry, begin to judge, or see laziness, bad choices, weakness – in other words, they might look down on the beggar as less than human. It’s called ‘perception’ and it is in every one of us, however much inner work we might embark on to learn humility and compassion. We can’t help it. It is part of who we all are.

When I decide, which I sadly do, now and again, that someone else is heading in the wrong direction, I say so. And then I learn a new fact or two about them, and regret, deeply, my hasty judgement. I work on, to soften my perceptions, or, rather, to shut them up, but they can rise unbidden, un-called for, and always at times when I am not mindfully in control of that sneaky little set of wires that run from my brain to my mouth.

One area of perception, that never fails to cause a stooshie, is that of Boundaries. Whether it is between black and white, the Ukraine and England, England and Scotland, or the African States, there is this thing about boundaries that could curdle milk in a nanosecond, one that everyone has an opinion on, based on personal perception. Oftentimes, I hear folk talking heatedly on a ‘boundary’ subject. It can wire up a whole shopping queue once it gains momentum, but what saddens me is that I so often hear not what any individual really thinks, but what someone else has said on tv or written in a newspaper. When you actually consider the other human beings involved in these situations, with only theories posturing as reality, how can anyone opinionate?

My world may be laughably fantasmic to some, even to many, but if we all (and I believe we all do) want a life of peace and neighbourly-ness, then our arms must be open, our hearts too and, one day, our countries. Voltaire said, ‘It is sad that, if we are to be a patriot, we first have to make an enemy of the rest of mankind.’

I think a different way to you, and you, to me. I feel differently about the whys and the hows and the whens of things, but this can either be a glorious Snow Goose pushing through the saltwater of a new tide on a new morning – or, it can be ignored as something I couldn’t quite see, through my glass, and darkly.

December 13, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 115 Primary Three

Thirty Three years ago this morning, a child was born. A boy. The Third Boy – 3 being the first prime number, the lucky prime, the only prime triangular, the triad, the noblest of all digits, and the only one of five to be born on the island; the only one to spend his first night on this earth in matron’s bottom drawer.

Let me paint the picture……….It was a wild and stormy night (which it was) and I was determined to miss the last ferry. I knew a-plenty about birthing by then, had already had 3 labours (one being the Only Girl) and did not want to be inside a hospital. The first two had been home births and the process is straightforward enough anyway – I mean, there’s only one direction to go down, and all I have to do is swear a lot, push when told to and trust in the doctor and nurse, both of whom I knew well. So, in the middle of this gale, and in the darkness and in the crankitty old landrover with its binder twine door hinges and sheep food in the back, we rattled to the old folks home and Mrs MacFlorrie’s bed. Not that she was sharing with me, you understand, but was, instead, shunted down the corridor to bunk up, temporarily, with another ‘old folk’. That is how it was in the olden days, for we had no island hospital back then.

He was small and stayed that way for a while. They suggested a growth hormone, but we said..

‘Leave him be. When you have this many children, it’s handy to have one you can just pop in your pocket. Whilst other boys are growing and talking about how big they are, Rhua squeezes through the gaps. he is as wiry and as fast as Spiderman, and just as fond of heights. Look at me! he shouts, aged two and half, from half-way up a cliff face, or from the top of the massive old oak tree, and we all do look, just to keep him quiet, and we keep looking, although I must have looked away at least once, as there is another baby on the way.’ (Island Wife Chap 17)

When he came home to Tapselteerie, he spent any sleep times, never longer than 20 minutes, day or night, in the tea towel drawer, whilst I worked in the kitchen. Because the house was so huge, I could never have left him upstairs, just below cloud level, for goodness knows what he might have got up to. He was the one who tipped all liquids and powders from all bedrooms into the loo and mixed up a cauldron of seething bubbles and curious smells. He is the one who left home aged six in the dark of a wild night, with only his toys as luggage. He is the ‘chef’ who signed up for trial of a deep fat fryer, one that arrived in the back of a big lorry. The delivery man did not believe me when I tried to send him away, saying it was a mistake. He would not countenance that he had driven all the way from the depot in Glasgow to this isolated place, with moon rocks and pitfalls and nothing but sheep and heather for days. I had to show him the 6 year old chef, before he would even consider returning to base camp.

It was this third boy who rose from his short sleeps with a head full of ideas, and a deep sense of purpose. I found him once frying bacon on the aga, start naked, aged 2. For our breakfast, he said. He had already laid the table, with brandy, bread, salad cream and red sauce, tonic water and chocolate. It was hard to be cross. How he managed to lift the heavy aga lid, without nipping his manhood in the bud, still amazes me.

I took to sleeping outside his bedroom door, lying across the narrow landing on the servants floor (no servants to be seen) in order to save us all from this boy’s nocturnal ideas and sense of purpose.

When he finally grew into a young man, he hit the world with a force it might not have been ready for. Wherever he went, wherever he worked, he was enthusiastically bonkers, and very successful. And now, as a father and husband, and broker in the flatlands, he still is, but it is not the outward success that matters, but the man he has become. A man I respect, admire and adore. One who makes me laugh, whose heart is huge and strong, who can blag and wind up, who can reach too far, fall down, and get up again in a nanosecond. Although he is born of me, he is himself as are all my kids, and each one of them delights and surprises me.

I remember the illnesses, and the times of trouble. I remember the nights of worry, the fears and hopes, the dreams dying, the prayers a-plenty, but when I look at them, at any of them, I am so very proud. All we ever wanted for our children, was that they find their own way into a fulfilled life. I know this is not a thing that comes gift-wrapped – indeed no,t for it is a process, and a long one, but to see young people on what appears to be the right track, is indeed a blessing for any mother, or father. We couldn’t give them life on a plate, or expensive tuition or finishing school in Switzerland, but we gave them Tapselteerie and we gave them adventures and memories.

‘From the mound of dogs and kit, they(the children) marvel at everything, and, in their marvelling, I can taste the freshness of seeing things for the first time, the elation and sparkle in that seeing, like having lemonade in your veins and butterflies in your head. There are no seat belts in the back of the Landrover, and no law to put them there, so the children bounce and whoop and flip like monkeys, free as air, as the car rocks like a boat in a storm.
Suddenly, my head is bursting. Enough! I roar, causing everyone to freeze mid-flip, and Alex to swerve. He is not pleased.
Why are you shouting? he asks with a frown across his face, deep as the Limpopo River.
I don’t bother to respond, enjoying the sudden silence. Instead, I turn to fluff up a very flat collie and to settle my sons the right way up.
What are you going to spend your money on? I beam at them.
Jake is buying a Lego set, one of those big ones with enough pieces to block the vacuum every week.
Rhua wants an Action man. Well, that figures.
And Solly? Well, Solly wants a gun and chorus.
A gun and chorus?
Yeah! Gun and chorus, like Duncan’s at crayboop.
He is getting upset, as he always does when we have no idea what language he speaks.
Okay, okay Sol, that’s grand. We’ll find one.
Cassie, seeing my predicament, pulls her finger from her mouth.
It’s a dinosaur with flashing eyes. Duncan’s got one and he brought it to playgroups. It’s called a Gunnacaurus.
She says all this in a monotone, staring straight ahead, like a code breaker in a spy movie. I wonder what we would all do without her translation skills.
I bend my head down to hers. Where do we get one? I ask.
She looks at me in puzzlement. A dinosaur shop, she says.
Of course! Silly me. (Island Wife Chap 21)

So, to the First Odd Prime Number I say…….Happy Birthday!

December 10, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 114 Two Shadows

Well well well – here I sit to tell you that I have done all my Christmas shopping, wrapped it and posted or stored it under the skirts of my easy chairs. When Sula was alive, that would have been impossible for she would have joined them, cooried in to the crackly nest and torn the cheap skinny wrappings into a gorgeous cosy nest. I would have heard her, of course, but probably not in time. I would have grabbed her waggy tail and hauled her out, whence she, astonished and alarmed would have embedded her sharp claws into the soft winciette pajama bottoms or the fine weavings of an expensive cardy, exacerbating the situation skywards and threatening me with spontaneous combustion, for which, at this time of day, there is only one cure. The Chilean syrah.

I am mindful, as I wander into houses where most of the inmates wear very small pants, that their days were mine, once. The only large-panted members of the Tapselteerie clan, numbering one, (that’s me) were far too sensibly grown-up for such fun, hence the elevated size of pant. We, or, rather, I, would never have bothered tiptoeing around by torchlight to rustle, as quietly as possible, under any skirts in search of a label with my name written upon’t. Certainly not. I was the one, with the megaphone and steel toe-caps, who stalked the dark reaches of the baronial mansion house, in search of rustlers. Even the island husband could be caught snooping, although, to be honest, he could, quite easily, and did, lose a chainsaw under a sheet of A4, so he was never the leader in this shenanigan. It seemed to me that everyone worked in secret, as if they didn’t want to be caught by anyone, let alone Miss Trunchbull. I would find them, red-faced and jabbering with guilt, often in gumboots and hand-me-down jama bottoms, pretending to me, their Trunchbull of a mother, that they were looking for a book to read. Like I was going to believe THAT!

And yet, a wistful part of me longed to be them. Being sensible is deathly dull on a good day. As my pant size changed, it seemed I had to become my clothing. As a child, pulling on just something to get me down to my cornflakes was all I cared about. How I looked meant absolutely nothing. I didn’t consider what would happen if I was cold or if my shoes didn’t go with my outfit. I didn’t consider my outfit at all. I just yanked off my nightie and pulled on something a little more robust for my descent into the day. I don’t recall wondering what I might feel like if the milkman caught me without a good 2″ of slap across my face, or if my jumper might be too warm for the time of year. I just got dressed.

Admittedly, there were times, many of them, as my pants got bigger, when my mother might smirk at my bonkers assemblage of gold sequinned jumper over hotpants, but it was only her smirk that upset me, not the clothes upon my back. At Tapselteerie I fussed like a hen over my children’s casual attitude to clothing. Wear a warm jumper out there, I would say, trying to thaw out the collie dog currently frozen to the ground by her girly bits. She only sat down for a minute. But they ran out, wild and skimpily clad into the day, into every day, and there were times I hated my job. My Miss Trunchbull job. At the shore, they swam in the freezing sea any time of the year, emerging sapphire blue and making wonderful percussion with their teeth. I couldn’t even catch their jumping knees to rub them dry. There, I said, now NEXT TIME……….. but next time was just the same as the last and still they laughed at me. I think they probably still do, because I still do it. If they had listened to my fears, they would be locked up by now, terrified by the voices in their heads, portenting doom if they so much as open the fridge.

Now, at my big pant age, I think back and I wonder. What if I had just shut the hell up? Well, I will never know what the answer to that, and I cannot change the past, but I can make a new future for myself. I watch them with their own children, letting them fall, letting them burn a finger or two, warning quietly, then letting go. I watch other people, other nations, like today at Madiba’s memorial service in Jo’burg and I see the wild musical African women, bopping and singing and ululating, and all in very much bigger pants than mine, and I see a new freedom. I also see the stiff backed British sitting with stiff backs and not letting go at all. Well, it isn’t British, is it?

There are times, many times, as I find myself in a train station of grownups, or a shop or just walking down a street, when I have the intense desire to spin around, to begin a song and to sing it right through. Not for an audience to boo or applaud, but just for me. The other day I went out at dusk in Glasgow, to collect something from a shop. As I walked back among other grownups, intent on their mission, their Iphone, their deadline, I had this feeling and just spun around, my arms wide. There was a fingernail moon in a clear cold sky, and, as I walked back feeling very delighted withe myself, and smiling like a loon, I saw two shadows on the pavement.

They were both mine.

November 25, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 113 Secrets and Mindfulness (plus donkey)

Inside us lies a world of secrets. Secrets we share with one or two trusted people, and secrets we never ever tell a soul. There are secrets we won’t even share with ourselves.

I am learning the wonders of Mindfulness. What it asks of me, this Mindfulness thingy is that I pause long enough to notice my responses to any stimulation, any event, any person, any words aimed at me, and so on. For instance, if you say to me something like ‘ I wish you wouldn’t always kick my donkey when you walk through his field’ I might respond angrily, especially if it wisnae me in the first place, but just some woman who bought the same red jacket last Autumn. If I did kick the donkey, then I might respond defensively, maintaining that the donkey is bad tempered and sly, watching out for me crossing his field and making sure he whaps my shin when you’re not looking.

In both these cases I am holding a secret. The first one will be that I think you are a stupid smug donkey-owner and I never liked, nor trusted you one tiny bit. You are a gossip and probably spreading no end of rumours about me down at the shop. I don’t tell you this, of course but hold this secret within my soft interior, a secret that rises like bile in my gut every time I have the misfortune to meet you in the road.

The second one could be that I do sneak about kicking donkeys, even if they do mind their own business and are astonished any time my boot makes contact.

I appreciate that the above example is a tad silly, and I would also like to state, for the record, that I have never kicked anyone’s donkey, even though anyone’s donkey most certainly has kicked me. But that’s another blog, another time.

My thoughts, my private thoughts are my secrets. I like them, but there are times when I must allow them to fly away because holding onto them will harm me.

Anger and resentment for example will make me ill, or, at the very least, bring me lower back pain and plooks. Oh I know, absolutely know that people who say anger is a bad thing have never been angry enough. Fear of anger, my own or just anger in general gives the powerful emotion very bad press, and quite wrongly so. Anger is an energy, creating adrenalin and heightened strength, and, mindfully employed, can achieve remarkable good things – lashing out with sharpened weaponry not being one of them. If I can accept and be thankful for this surge of anger and think about why I felt it so strongly when all you did was break my favourite coffee mug, I will eventually be able to understand the root of it all. In the current climate, someone will probably tell me it’s all my mother’s fault, but I must look beyond her. Although she is a convenient soft landing for the punch of blame, she won’t be the whole reason I can promise you that.

My over response to unkind words, or of being abandoned, rejected, accused or blamed will have its roots in childhood. Could be at home, at school, anywhere in the playround of youth. Often, the lineage of those roots is untraceable back to source. So what? Mindfully I can accept this and move on, but not move on and hold onto them. I must move on and let them go. I don’t need them, they weigh me down and make me secretly kick donkeys and over-react to broken mugs. I know I don’t like unkind words, but I also know that you may not have meant them they way I heard them. I know I don’t like the accusing gossip in you, but you very probably don’t like much in me either and, as we don’t have to meet, let’s not. I don’t want to be rejected or dissed or ignored or abandoned, but life is going to throw all of them my way at some point. If I am mindful of my response to any of these as they cross my path, I am going to hear my own secrets. Instead of pretending that it is all ok and that I don’t hurt at all, I will be able to honestly allow anger to rise against the pain and deal with it all by myself. I won’t need to snap at anyone, or kick a donkey. Then, when you break my replacement, replacement, replacement coffee cup I will be able to say (and mean it) that it doesn’t matter one jot because it’s only a cup, and can be replaced (providing there are any left), whereas you are irreplaceable.

November 20, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 112 Chrispepsia

Still on the subject of Love, I find myself in a wee panic as I suddenly realise how close we have come to Christmas. In the olden days when all my chicks lived under the same roof, it was comparatively simple in that I knew exactly what they wanted and did my best to find it. Christmas lists were read and laid to one side as they usually contained expensive new toys, noticed in other’s homes or found in television adverts, and quite out of the pocket-question for us. Now they are grown and gone, parents most of them, and I have no idea what they want. Even buying for their little ones throws me. I know them, in that I would indentify them in in a crowd, but what little ones want and like and, most importantly, what their parents will accept or allow leaves me standing quite still and staring out the window, my mind a scummy blank.

Clothes. They all have a zillion clothes, from chic inter-familial hand-me-downs to outfits bought by a parent who knows that this one can’t wear nylon mix, another goes red in the face above a tight polo neck, yet another adores Peppa Pig, Lightning McQueen or Angry Birds and that’s three different little ones. And which has just lengthened by a few inches, or grown larger feet? Toys, from my recent check online at either incredibly expensive six times over or offering total rubbish that needs batteries they don’t even bother to supply.

What I find now, as I have always found, is that strange arisal of guilt inside me. It is called Chrispepsia, a word sandwich merging Christmas and Dyspepsia. I want to give…….. no, to show by my gift, that nobody is more important than another. I have never succeeded, not once. Somebody is always disappointed.

When I buy a gift, I buy what I think they would absolutely adore and am surprised when they don’t adore it at all, never mind absolutely. Hence, a list. But there is a part of me that doesn’t want to be given a list, but who wants to surprise. When I overhear an adult asking a child ‘So what is Santa bringing you this Christmas’, I inwardly tut, especially when the answer is An X Box, or a Mountain Bike. Don’t they know there is only one Santa and a vast world-full of children? We surely don’t expect the old chap to set off multiple times because he cannot fit onto his sleigh more than one or two bikes at a time, do we? And how does a mother explain to her child who only got a few trinkets, some nuts and a tangerine in his stocking, that Santa doesn’t have favourites, when one schoolmate got an X Box and another, a Mountain Bike?

I have said, until the room falls asleep yawning, that Christmas is a time for giving, not getting, but it is clear to me that nobody paid the slightest attention. So, back to Chrispepsia. I’m right in the thick of it now and as lost as ever I was. In the past I have made things, things that undoubtedly fell apart by February, but nobody said. This year I haven’t made a thing, other than an impact on a lot of readers of Island Wife which doesn’t get me out of Chrispepsia.

There are forward looking folk who will already have wrapped and labelled all their gifts, planned their festive dinner, and may well be considering erecting their Christmas Tree. These goodly people have a clear head, strong decision-making powers. They don’t fanny about with the ditherers, whereas I am right in their midst. And, even when I have decided, bought and labelled each gift, I still feel unsure. On the day, as they begin to open it, I want a big hole to swallow me up. I don’t think they feel any concerns at all. It is just me and my Chrispepsia.

I have worked out, after a bunch of hours staring through windows, that I must measure my love in a material gift. The fact that I give in so many other ways during the year before, and after this great day, disappears like smoke in a westerly gale. And yet, my chicks and their chicks know how I show my love. I show it in actions, in written words at times of trouble, in spontaneous acts of random kindness, in patience, understanding, acceptance. I walk it. Any distance, any time. And I always always will.

So, you big twit, what’s the problem? You can just turn up, bring wine and cake, plasters and patience, fun and nonsense, ideas and iodine. Bring your hands for holding, for easing pain, for cooking supper. Bring your voice to encourage, sing, talk things through; your imagination for games or to develop a conversation; your skills to help, to share a burden, to celebrate another, to lift spirits.

Ok so I’m the gift for Christmas then?

Yes you are……..we all are…….plus the odd trinket of course.

November 12, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 111 Love Defiant

‘Love is giving someone the power to break your heart, and trusting them not to’. Some wise soul said that, and I pinched it.

When we fall in love, we fall into infatuation at first. We can think of nobody else all day. Their face and voice lift us up to heights we never knew before. Every time.

When I looked up Love on the interweb as my old ma calls it, every link on the first page and beyond guided me towards young love. Now, young love is not just for the young. The ‘young’ adjective describes Love, not the people feeling it. We can fall in love at any age, and thankfully, we do or the world would be chock full of lonely old people, who have loved and lost and find they can love again. But love is not just a feeling. It’s a verb. In order to maintain a love between two people, both have to work, sometimes, very hard and over long periods of time.

So what is love, the verb?

Well, after the first overwhelment of love, hitting us right in the heart like a meteor has landed there, things slowly change. Is this, we ask ourselves, the death of love? Did I make a huge mistake? Is the ‘honeymoon’ period over? Hopefully, yes. Now we are getting real.

You may have made a mistake in your choice of lover, but you also may not, for at this point comes commitment, a cementing of a love, a choice to grow it into something long term, something that will sustain both people for the rest of their lives. Ok, so we ‘commit’ whatever shape that takes and on we go. At first we can allow things to irritate, because we are still floating on cloud nine and, as we know Love is blind. But, when those things that irritate don’t disappear, we begin to wonder, because our initial plan to make the other person into a carbon copy of ourselves, isn’t working.

This is the uncomfortable bit.

‘Vive la Difference!’ is something we can laugh about and nod our heads to, but can we actually live with it?

There is another saying, that ‘Love means never having to say you’re sorry’. Well bin that one. I believe that saying sorry and taking appropriate action thereafter is precisely what Love is. Otherwise we can just go on with our irritating habits, expecting the other person to get over themselves without considering their feelings and that is not ‘love’.

‘Don’t sweat the small stuff’ is another. However, the small stuff grows into big stuff if left unattended and, by the way, the small stuff is in the way every hour of every day is it not? Dropping socks on the floor, nagging about who does what, harping on about slamming the car door, not helping with the shopping/kids/accounts etc.

So how do we un-sweat it?

Honestly, I can’t answer any of it, for this subject is one discussed to death all over the world in many languages. What I can say is that Love is a journey, not just a feeling. Beyond the chemstry, the longing to get home to a loved one, the daily joy, is a great depth of other things, essential things that, if applied with patience, will grow into a lifetime love.

But what about all that small stuff? Does he/she get away with it all? Hmmmm. Jury is out on that. I have made all the mistakes, harping, nagging, moaning about my lot, and you already know that, if you’ve read Island Wife. But, what I have learned, thankfully, is that love is not about getting my own way in everything. It is not about a clear stage, just for me, with himself prancing about like a dancer in tights, to lift me up every time I feel like a pirouette.

No, love is about Compassion. Kindness. Loyalty. Friendship. Affection. And each one of these is a choice, NOT a feeling. In fact, feeling them is unlikely at first, given the small stuff sweats. These depths of love are something to do, to work on, to write down as reminders. It’s like going back to school.

Goodness…… that sounds old and boring, even to me who knows all this first hand. But, as nobody can explain the truest, deepest meaning of Love, its high price and its long term rewards, then we just have to believe in it, even though, as a rule, we really only believe in that which we can explain through logic.

Love is not just about those first fiery weeks/months or even years. It’s not about agreeing on everything (which is fortunate as we hardly agree on anything)……nor is it something to be taken lightly, thrown away without deep consideration and every effort made to find it again should it appear lost. It’s not real in movies or romance novels. It’s not just for Christmas or for days when I feel good about myself. You won’t find it winning the lottery, or being promoted or writing a bestseller. You find it by making daily commitment to it’s development and growth.

And my last word, learned through experience, is this.

Forgive, even if nobody says sorry.