Island Blog

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Island Blog – Somebody Somewhere

Back from work and I love to work, particularly there, in the cafe above a big ass, wide sandy beach, white grains, old shells caravanned through endless crashing waves, longtime empty of their inhabitants, and, very possibly, centuries old. Landed here, the bits of sparkly life, ground down, still sparkling, all laid flat like a platitude, for careless feet to scutch up, for kiddies to rebuild into passing castles, for yet another tide to grab with oceanic multifingers, careless, tossing any grab into any wild weather, a constant swirl, no chance to find a home.

It thinks me. Up here, and away from the centuries old thing, there are humans. Weird ones, funny ones, lying ones, avoiding ones, shy ones, shouty ones; those who burst into a room, with a smile like Santa, those who hide behind a load of fitkit , those couples who can’t decide without each other. I notice body language – a closeness to the counter, a big voice, assertive – a pull back, shy, begging a welcome, an invite. I see young parents come in, tentative, with a wee one who just might kick-off. I so feel for them. I see indecision. Where shall we sit, in or out, here or maybe over there? there’s a deal of head snapping on that one, a whole dynafusion of questions. What is my place here? Should I take charge? Did I just take charge? Is that okay? Oh, dear…….The space before the welcoming counter is a whole flipping world of learnation.

I pull back, after having a gazillion chuckles with the frontal guests, fixing their orders and charging them 400 quid for a scone. Ach, it did have extra cheese and a delicious locally brewed seaweed chutney, but, nonetheless, a bit too much. I will work this pingy pay thingy eventually. However, the fun connection created when an eejit like me who never ever said she was ok with such scary equipment, erupts into a body relax across the counter, I know I am in the right place. I am seen, happily playing the fool, and they, I can see it, gentle. Instead of us (the workers) and you, the welcome customers, and this frickingly loaded counter of spectacular cakes and lunch options and just a few of us being very dynamic btw, and rules and that charging thingy, it’s just us humans, people, picked up and moved, tossed every which way by endless life-changing winds.

We are all somebodies, all of us somewhere, all of us trying to breathe.

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Island Blog – A Peppering of Sleep

There’s a spicy dance in that, in a peppering, and the dance is my decision. When others hit the pillow and soon are lifted into the warm embrace of many hours of forgetfulness and refreshment, I soldier on. Well, I am no soldier, btw, but there are times I can imagine myself one, although, and this must be said, I would have baulked at the confinement of that ridonculous uniform with its guttural limitations and the inability to bend at the knee and the fact that nobody ever imagined a real soldier would need to move light-quick. Which they do.

Anyway, I am in a nightdress, a long tee-shirt to be precise, and why am I spilling this irrelevance?

I go to bed at an early hour, one I remember, way back, as a Let’s Go Out time. Not now. I have my herbal tea, my book. I close the curtains on the summerlight, apologising and thanking. So far so good. I read awhile, feel my eyelids and concentration shutting down, and courrie in to the feather down warmth, the comfort of a solo bed, the space, the peace, the quiet. An hour or two later I burst up, wide awake, completely ready for a new day. I kid you not. I am raring to go. I listen to the love-call of a Tawny Owl (actually, it’s deafening, but delightful). Mother moon has thankfully chilled her pants now and is a wee Fadie in the star-crisp sky, clouds banished, or just tired of clouding for a while. No human sounds. No outlights beyond those daft mason jars full of solar beads outside my own door. You might think the world has gone out, but no. Geese mumble and croon to each other, to the gathering of vulnerable chicks, who, had they been mine own chicks, would have required a load of gathering and a ‘Muchlouder’ than any mumble or croon. Oystercatchers, always freaking out about something, trillett and dive about around the rocks. I catch them in the moonlight. A plane flows overhead, a dart, heading north. I make another herbal tea. I watch and I see.

Sleep is important, yes. But, and but, there are those of us who don’t sleep to order, and never did. There is a fear mongering around lack of sleep, a feeding of nonsense from the ‘higher-ups’ who might tell us we must have 8 hours sleep. In the times I have known and learned about, the people who determined to make a good life, may have done so with little sleep but with a brilliant attitude. I can dance, no matter, I can laugh, no matter, work, no matter, rise and rise, no matter. My heroes. There are too many lovely folk caught up in tired, in lack of sleep, and I was there, a lot, and for years, until I got sick of myself and the whining. I realised I was looking at the lack of things, of me, of life. Well, that’s only going one way! I asked, instead, What Can I Do?

No matter the tired. What can I do for someone else this new morning?

Ok, morning is a stretch. I’ll ask again once you light-lift my looking, when the owls, geese and oystercatchers shut their wheesht, giving way to a blackbird, a thrush, the dive-dart of a woodpecker, the flutter of siskins and goldfinch. A new beginning. Another one. Lucky, lucky me.

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Island Blog – To Pace Myself

Not writing a blog feels like not breathing right. I’m all staccato and pixillation. It’s been busy – I’ve been busy with work, people, emotive tiddlypoms, opportunistic dynamics and sunshine. I complain about none of those but they do demand a new attention, one to which I had, heretofore, not thought about at all. Truth is, I forgot that I am now over the 70 hurdle and that does make an infuriating difference. I don’t ‘look’ my age, or so I am told, and when I see others bent over big midriffs, stick in both hands and with a list of ailments so long that, were I to ask about them, Wednesday would turn into Thursday.

It doesn’t seem to matter how actively I make my brain work, with scrabble, wordle, writing, reading, good conversations on interesting subjects, nor how much I walk, row, bend, strengthen core muscles, a body will demise. It’s a right p in the a, and no mistake, but that’s how it is. Three days work in a busy cafe takes me four days to recover from, even though I love it. The whole getting old thing, in my opinion, is of faulty design. Surely the whole person should age concommitantly, brain and body agreeing on a strategy and just getting the hec on with it. But, no. There are those whose body continues about a million miles beyond their brain, and vice versa. Who ever thought that was a fun idea?

So I doze a lot, catching snatch-sleeps randomly, but not on work days, obviously. I tell myself this is newish, that I will get used to it, and I hope I will because I don’t remember a time when I had this much fun. Buzzing as a team member, laughing, serving, joking, teasing, washing up, chatting, moving, helping……all so uplifting. I have more energy than ever raised within the past 4/5 years. I laugh more, and easily. I see the fun in pretty much everything. I matter. I am seen, valued, important, and what I think is this……..

There should be a shop (do I have to write ‘store’?) for oldies who find a new purpose and who are on the hunt for a new body, one that isn’t carrying all the sharps and damages of decades. I could flip through the items for sale, check out the general strength, the state of internal organs, the power in the arms, hands and fingers, the vertebrae, the hips, knees and more, the versatility of well-toned muscles and the ability to bend from a strong core. A bit like buying a wedding dress, but more long lasting. I would keep my face, heart, mind and beliefs, however, because it was all of those attributes that got me this far in my crazy bonkers life and I love my life.

Perhaps I need to learn to pace myself, whatever the hell that means.

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Island Blog – A Squeeze between Cows

Driving the switchback to the harbour town, to where the Co-op’s shelves are diminished,thank you, hackers, I coast down the brae. The town is buzzing and there is nowhere to park. This island harbour creates a welcoming curve of safety for its people and the fisher boats which, once, filled the pier, canting together, double, and sometimes triple parked (sorry, moored) as they unloaded their catch. I remember, way back in the days of Tapselteerie, driving in to negotiate a box of prawns, crabs, lobsters, to feed my guests. Fresh today. No better selling point. A load of work for me indeed, but I felt engaged with a process. These fishers spent many hours out there, in all conditions, hauling, hoping, moving here, moving there, searching for their income, the cash to feed their families, their sense of self, of success. The winter months are long and lusty, no chance for a slide into a kindly Atlantic, not then, for she is in a frickin tantrum and all the way up to May. Respect.

I was going for a Covid booster. To be honest, I dithered like a fairy in the wings dying for a pee. for days before. I don’t know why, still don’t. I set off anyway, lacking any answer to my swither/dither, meeting the usual. Cows, lumber, chestnut bodies, slow, pink tongues, road block. I actually love that. These cows are beautiful creatures and their calves are just gorgeous, prinking and bouncing and all over the flipping place. The mamas can fill a single track road, sidey-on. And, they don’t budge. Oh, they might slink you a look, as they cud on, but that’s it on acknowledment. You can hoot, as someone did, as my eyes rolled, as I turned off my engine, but hooting is for owls, not for cows. Wrong language. Me no understand…….

In the Booster Lounge, aka, the scout hall, I went for a pee. No paper. Oh, to hec with that! I went on a hunt, pushing open doors, finding a kitchen, checking cupboards, grabbing loo roll, sorting the situation. Well, isn’t that what you do, when you think of the next person who might feel very upset about the no loo paper thing? Into the Booster lounge, a line of awaitees, no speak…..nurses ready, positioned around the hall. These are people, but everyone is awkward inside weirdness. I know this. I sat in a seat. The last time I was in this hall, I said to a complete stranger, was when I delivered my son, who now is the father of two, to Tai Jitsu. She laughed, but asked no questions. I must be scary, I thought, but no, not that. People just don’t ask questions.

When I got back to my Spinny Mini, she was completely stopped by a delivery van. That’s ok, I thought, I know he is on a schedule, wanting to get his deliveries done so he can get home across the sea to his family, his home, his rest. The sun was a beat, the soft warmth of a hug right around the harbour town. Smiles were everywhere, shorts, sunglasses, bare flesh abounded, folk dondering along the single track road, laughing, easy, happy. It is rare here, this longevity of sunshine warmth, but we’ll take it, we will definitely take it.

Homing…..I get behind a driver who slows, brakes, at every passing place. My eyes, not under my kind-gene control, roll. I pull back, but just for now. I won’t do this all the switchback way. Various diversions and limitations abound at this time and I get it. The Road Boys are doing Road Things, and the result, I just know it, will be a marvellous thing. But, I know this single track, every single wheech and slide, the places to peel off, the safe landings when anyone meets a terrified tourist who knows none of the above. We can be kind. I am kind. I have a sporty mini, I adore her. She can wheech like no other car and can park in a bird cage. Just saying.

Almost done, almost home. Sliding around the multiple bends, coming down from the lift of the high lochs, the sun hits my face and the view out to the Isle of Coll sharps me. I can touch it, this Long Island, this familiar, this Far Away. The village comes into shift and then……Cows. There’s no track (road), just cows. Lumber, golden red, beautiful, right across any chance of passing. Mothers holding the space. Youngsters bright, bouncy, all over the place. Camper vans rising from the below. A load of gear changing. A meet. Nothing can be be done. That’s what I’m getting from the nothing that comes from the cars before me and the camper vans aft of the rise. I sit a bit. It’s nice in the sunshine. No idea what’s going on in those cabs. Just as I huff enough to decide me to get out of my sporty mini and go gentle these coos away, one old mama moves, and the rest follow-ish. We squeeze between cows. I like that.

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Island Blog – Feelings Left Behind

We can lose years of feelings, yet remember moments burgeoning with them. When someone died, or was born, we know the date, but have quite forgot the feelings around that event. We get a glimpse of joy, of sorrow, of relief, of anger, of being there, as a person, remembering, perhaps, what we wore and who was there. Feelings flitter away. The sense of presence, of engagement, of inclusion, seem, to me, to float into the already past of such events. It thinks me.

How many of us can accurately come up with a date, when asked, one which includes lockdowns? Not me for sure. I start off answering a question, one that requires a datal fix, and I founder. It was four years. No, that cannot be. ok, 6 years. No again. And. I trawl, literally trawl as through a whole expanse of ocean, sky, time. I can feel my arms reaching back, lifting as I try to gather in an answer, wanting so much to gain a hold on ‘that time’, but I cannot. Then, when some semblance of datal knowledge (did I just invent a word there) arrives between you and me, I find myself alien to the facts, because I cannot find the feelings. This happened. I know it did. You just told me it did. But i am not there without feelings, so, basically, I am not there at all, although I was. I did get a glimpse (stupid word btw) of a sudden rush of something, but it was gone in a second, and I couldn’t hold it back.

There are so many memories I want to haul in like a fisherman, to pull ( with my own strength) into the boat I am now captain of, and to spend time bobbing in the salt, the wind, the sun, the storm, picking through those times, feeling them in my fingers, remembering them as I was then, as everyone was then. A memory bank, like other ocean banks where living is visceral and immediate, and time is but an illusion.

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Island Blog – A Capacious Confusion

There’s loads of room in there. In fact, acres, hectares, whole countries. When I find myself tumbled into such a state, unexpectedly and completely unprepared, my thinks go viral. Something, or someone, I knew as in a confirmed state, the shape of it, or them, suddenly shifts like a new weather, from sun to cloud, from known to strange, from confidence to pull back and run and I do tumble. I have been good at such tumbles over the years, although I am no acrobat. But, I can resume a stand-up and pretty quick. Things change, things break, people change, people break. It wonders me, it does, because it seems to me that, in this culture, in the the now of now, change brings in a desire to destruct, and I don’t mean, necessarily, to take apart and reassemble, not if the break is a person, a living, breathing strong, and wonderful person who is, let’s be honest, in the evening of their life, and for whom a switch has been switched. They gave no permission for such. It isn’t as if their battery ran out. It is just one of the many things unexplained which took a foothold. just when they were about. to make some great adventure. What I mean is a a desire to control.

My issue is with the response to such a dynamic shift. Because it comes a-sudden, just when, ach, please, no, ‘I don’t need this thing’ blasts in on a new wind, not one anyone had heretofore noticed, and which now is very and loudly here creating confusion, at first. That’s shock, and I get it. But for those who can think beyond their own convenience, and for those who can swipe away any talk of confinement or control, there will be renewed freedom for the changed one, and for everyone else. Someone else doesn’t know best. The person who has experienced all of it is suddenly falling into the mercy of others, having never been at the mercy of anyone, and for decades. It saddens me. There are so many rooms in this situation, acres hectares, whole countries.

Why would a person who has lived over 7 decades want confinement, control? Would you? Oh, I know we might need help with bigger letters on our phone, with a stick, with kindly neighbour watch, with lifts to a doctor’s appointment, to a farmers market, even to check we didn’t have make-up in the wrong place. This is life, and this is the autumn of a long one. Not many of us get here.

I get that a change is Confusion. Think Capacious. there are so many rooms, acres, hectares, a whole country, for the intuitively wise thinkers. Even in your busy young lives. You’ll be here one day.

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Island Blog – Consequences

We say things, we look this way, away from this way, away from that, towards both. We just do it, not much thinking, nothing conscious. We have, or may have, little idea of the result we just cemented in time. I so would like for children to be taught this, about body language, about what is never communicated via vocal chords. However, that is another thing. Let us elevate from the depths of wisdom, for now.

Saying something, doing something, any something has consequences. I remember learning that word, behind a scratched-on desk in the afternoon of a very long room, and being determined to know it for ever, even if I had yet to grasp the meaning of it. It was a big long word to me which meant nothing, but, I knew it, had a forward grasp.

We learn as we fumble our way through life, letting dreams what slip through our fingers, fighting for space, unsure, and, if we are open to our own possible failings, we can rise again, recognising our wrong choices, whether intentioned or just the result of carelessness, lack of research, or thought, and we can still clean up and take control of the next step.

There is never an end. There’s just a stop which leads to a new and informed, humbled,open beginning, thinking this. Whatever I do, or say, or act upon, all of that brings consequences. All of it.

Have I thought about that?

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Island Blog – A Royal Visit and Perspective

I went into the harbour town on Monday, relieved, I was, not to be travelling the switchback road today, Tuesday. I knew that Prince William and Princess Kate planned a walkabout, and I just knew. No parking, Chaos, Road Closures. Angst and Grumps. A lot of capitals there. However, my beloved son called me to say his big fancy yacht was coming in to harbour on the Visit Day. Oh…….

It wasn’t really a conversation with myself, not when one of my darlings are nearby. I would drive anywhere on any switchback to find and hug said beloved. As I spun along the almost empty switchback, up hills, around endless corners and hardly meeting a single visitor, whom, we joke here, has no idea how to reverse, and on a single track road, I hoped and prayed for a parking space. My mini is tiny, easy to park, I could perch anywhere. I turned down into the town, saw the camera crews, the newspaper journalists, the big mikes with those fluffy tops, the tourists all regailed in summer sparkle. The sun did shine, the air warm. I arrived to witness a serious and furious altercation on a parking space, and thought, no, this isn’t for me. I spoke to my lovely friends in the Harbour Garage and asked if they could advise me. They did, and I applied my mini, sort of, around a couple of vehicles with serious issues, neither of which were going anywhere this day. Then I walked, no, I danced through the thronging crowd, as if I was somebody, down the Private Pontoon, to this classy ship,and there he was, chatting to the lifeboat crew. A cup of tea, no, two, and a good catchup with a man who was my middle child, still is, but who is now a husband and father of five and just marvellous. I heard it today from the guests aboard. I’ve heard it hundreds of time before. He is calm, he is intuitively connected with the vagaries of this Atlantic/Island conflict, and is decisive and respectful. That’s him.

Anyway…..I managed to escape the harbour town before the roads were closed. I am thankful. Not just because I escaped, but more. How on earth do these young royals cope with no freedom, endless security restrictions, no chance to say Hey, let’s go for a picnic, let’s walk down the street, let’s do any damn thing spontaneous? I heard murmurs about the Royal Family as I fannied about with parking, as I walked down the pontoon to the superyacht. It thinked me. It is easy, no, possible, to be so unvisioned in a life as to make opinions and judgements based on fluff, no experience, no research. Not sure that’s an opinion, nor the basis for an intelligent judgement at all.

Later, I see how my islander friends greeted the young couple, the smiles, the touches, the obvious conversations. And I am glad. They came to our island for peace and I hope they found it. They did their visit thing, they were gracious and approachable. They didn’t choose to be born, but they have grabbed it with both hands. I cannot imagine how tough that is. I used to be furious when the father of my endless children wasn’t home by six.

Perspective.

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Island Blog – The In-Between of It All

We learn how to live our lives, following, whether we want it or not, the echoes of what we learned in our childhoods. Hoods. Like coverings which deny our looking out. This is normal. However, as we age in wisdom and, hopefully, with a measure or a deal of independent thought, we might lift those hoods and slip into an (heretofore unknown) crevice, an in-between. It’s a weird thing, that slip, that fall, and it can happen anywhere and at anytime, particularly when we think we know who the heck we are. Especially then. It’s as if my clothes don’t fit. As if the chair upon which my butt is perched is, all of a sudden, the wrong shape. As if I suddenly want to run from this place and into the new understanding of me, but don’t, because I am half way through a starter and the running might make me look weird and deranged. After all, only I know what just happened, how what someone said connected with me like a dart to my heart, literally. All this occurs in complete silence, even though an entire planetary explosion has just shot me from whom I thought I was, right out into space without oxygen, no space suit, no map.

In such an in-between, I am inadequately dressed. My shoes are not for climbing out of this deep and rocky divide in the land I thought I knew so well. It’s cold and I have no answers. But, but, I can still see the sky. I can still hear the swash-slap of ocean whack against the rocks I do know. And I know that this sudden realisation is going to be my pal on the road. I just know it. Oh, I could, and many would, flap the whole thing away and find a way back to what……reality tv, the projectile misery of the daily news, the poison and the lies of social media; a comfortable landing; what happened was just a thing; a No Thing; the thing that clicked with me there, really halted me in the everything of my life, meant nothing, it’s nothing, I’m fine.

Thankfully, I am not one to not notice such a spontaneous and unexplainable crevice fall. In fact, I invite and welcome one, because life is not a straight line, nor is it a following of old echoes, of parental control, of school experience, of hurts and damage and disappointments. Life is lived from Day One no matter what age nor stage. I ask myself this. Who do I want to be? What do I want to achieve? When will I finally like myself? Why not now?

The in-betweens will come. They always do. I’ll leave that with you.

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Island Blog – The Elbows of the New Moon

Back from work, I’m watching the tide ruffle, lift, push against the rocks, elbows out. There’s a moon in this, somewhere, I know it, and there is. A new one, yet another, and isn’t that a wonderful thing? I mean, well, the moon catapults many of us who recognise her influence, sending us into haphazardness – and many more who justify their bad temper and bizarre choices to something else, like work, or her, or him, or school, or envy, a hightened sense of failure, or of a choice made in faith, hope and love, as being a grave mistake. Hmmmm.

Because of the discomfort, a big tide brings in, it reminds me. Living all those years on Tapselteerie, we would, or I would, walk my way to a ‘spending beach.’ Such a beach, almost a wee cove, a cup of catch, like a hand grab at whatever might come in, a something of value which might be held and captured. Then, it would be plastic, the weariness of toil and spoils, ropes and hopes thrown overboard, en route to somewhere after fishing, playing, not-caring about the ocean and those within her depths, who, btw, don’t want any of that sh*t. It hasn’t changed, but worsened. We gathered, cleared, unleashed, yes we did, seal pups from rope strangulation, setting them back to the ocean, scarred, disorientated, already time-separated from their parent, their safety. However, the beauty of a tidal flow is like a photo to anyone who has no idea of what really goes on. I won’t lecture. But, having seen what we are stupidly doing, does, I confess, alter me. Plastic blows and goes up with any passing wind.

Back to the new moon. She’ll have some ridonculous name, for sure, as if she could be tamed like a terrier. I see what she can do, the lift and luff of her influence over a tidal flow, big, lush, swelling, feisty, sexual. Her voice quiet. And yet she moves, grows, with no care for a sheep stuck on a rock, no care for uninformed canoeists who set off in all the gear but without respect for her. She is wild as the wind, stronger, more powerful. In fact, I think she controls the wind, brings it on, shuts it the eff up when required.

For now, in this balmy soft, sunshine evening, on this beautiful, grumpy, shifty, awkwardly weather controlled outscape, this most westerly point, this wild and wonderful place where folk gather to celebrate anything and everything, I am just going to sit quiet and watch the elbows of the new moon widen and spread.