Island Blog

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Island Blog – Happy to Wash Up

Work today was wonderful. I spent many hours washing up, and I loved it. This task, the behemoth of cups and plates and tea infusers and cutlery and so much more, was my empire. It was my bag, to a large degree. I chose this task. I am, after all, the granny in the mix. Here, behind the dishwasher racks, the queen in charge of two deep sinks, the one in control of the water mix, I am calm as Yoda. When asked to step out of that safety, I felt a frisson of fear. It isn’t that I have a single problem about stepping out. You can put me behind a microphone, on stage, and before hundreds, and I will talk, sing, engage, easy. But this is different. It thinks me.

This bag is not mine. The young couple who have begun their own beginning in this beach cafe are my leaders. Perhaps there’s a thing in that. Years ago I ran a hotel, many guests, many dinners, many dishes, much baking, but I am not that woman now. That was another time, and that time has taken from me a load of skills and even more confidence. I am happy washing up. And that thinks me too. No, two and a half, if not three.

I remember, and clearly, the moment I decided to risk myself out there again. It was helped through observations of others at my time of life who appeared to accept their end game. I want to shout and yell and dance in the face of that. A wee walk a day. A visit now and then with a friend. A load of hours wishing the (very busy) kids will call, the grandchildren too; the hardly knowing who anyone looks like – it’s been, what months, since…….

I think the fight for the me in me is vital. I know it, hence my search for work, for c……connectivity, competence, confidence, connection, there’ll be others. I know that to collapse into the olding is an inevitable slide. I may be sliding, but, if I am, it will not never be because I let my old wrinkly self become my focus. Oh, no. My focus is out there, where life lives on and, btw, everyone needs a granny and someone who is more than happy to wash up.

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Island Blog – Winding my Way up

Happy Easter to you all. A new beginning, the chance to change direction, to question old thinks, spouted from mouths a generation or two old, and definitely dead because times change, and situations alter facts and circumstances. Thing is to notice all this, and to adapt as best we can, no, better. Let’s be honest here. Nobody has an easy stroll through life, even if we imagine there are those who do. They don’t. It just looks like it.

It isn’t easy to make a change, not one that appears huge and as far away as another planet. However, it is possible to stop, notice, think, assess and then initiate a first brave step. I don’t like this place, person, dynamic, circumstance, let’s say. I can already hear the fall down all those steps of expectation. Clunk, ouch, clunk, big ouch, and so on. Ok, there might be a clunk or two, or three, maybe four, but if we refuse to accept whatever control is controlling, we will find strength. I promise that. It hurts for a while, but once the light comes in, it really comes in.

In the wild, nature has a dynamic shift and shrift. I see it every day I walk in the woods, along the basalt and granite coastline, I see the way those who have landed in a place which no longer suits them change things. Wild flowers that lined the track, which, in the interests of wide-vehicled vehicles, were dug out and discarded, now appear further back on the bank, or, even between the stones of a drystone wall. I actually laugh out loud on seeing them, my smile wide as a banana, and I crouch down to welcome them, their tenacity, their sneaky over-winter move beneath the cold ground. They refuse to be less than they were, than they are. You will not take us out, they say. It thinks me, a lot, as I walk on.

This afternoon after a lovely uplifting church service with people and singing and words, I decide to chop some wood. It isn’t all that dry, to be honest, and needs chopping into notquitesplinters. I’m game. I check the stack, notice the twists, the tricky bits, the very wet collars around the fallen trees, because these measured logs formed big trees once, hosting bird nests, sheltering humans in rainfall, protecting mosses and wildflowers from sunburn. Respect. I select a log, fix it on my block, so old, so scarred, such a friend. Anyway, moving on. I position, raise my axe, whack it down. Ah, I know that sound. This is not going anywhere, but my whack, even now, is dynamic, ferocious, driven, and, unfortunately stuck. My efforts to separate axe from wood is a right battle. I had to employ a metal wedge and a mell.

This is not the point, although I did free all of us from this tricksy mix. What I noticed after was the twist and lean, the reach and the change of direction in this tree. You had no light. You noticed that. You decided to change direction. You wound your way up, so slow, so long waiting, so hopeful for change, so trusting in it.

You marvel me.

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Island Blog – A New Beginning

I started work today, at a new venture, or an establised venture, now in new hands, which means it’s new. btw. Moving into a new place, even if the venue, the stones and location are the same as they ever were, a newness is created. There are new ideas, changes, alterations, a personal stamp stamped. I always love new beginnings, have no problem with change, mostly speaking. We greeted, checked out the lay of the land, heard the ideas, decided to be dynamic. Let us go, I thought, as we did just that. I knew it before, the way it works, the flow and rhythm of what had been the been for yonks, shifting its gaze into a new sky. This, I said to myself, is a be. Not a been…… and I am in.

We worked, and hard, and busy, fixing, trixing, laughing, sharing, sticking, unsticking, wiping, washing, tide-fighting, tide-aligning, talking, finding out about each other, watching, checking. We are creating a new dynamic. There are wonderings, doubts, fickle-twiddles, stopstarts, upskittles, solutions flying in like birds through newly sequined window panes. Tables – juxtaposition, chairs too, wall hangings yet to be wall-hanged, or not, lights to be twisted this way, that, this something to be considered, this something else to be moved, or removed, all a considering, for now. It’s like a birthing, and I am at the business end. I have no idea what I am doing, beyond the obvious, the cleaning prep work and the beyond of the dance of mischief I will always bring to anything. However, there is no fun, nor mischief (interesting word if you. break it down……mis…..chief…….just saying) if there are no-ones to work with, to laugh with, through tricky stuff, when this isn’t working well and that isn’t working either.

We had fun today. My first day. I loved it. I’m as tired as the others, but so excited to be a part of this new beginning.

I thought I was all out of those, to be honest!

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Island Blog – A Fascination of Friendship

It grows, doesn’t it, a friendship. First, it is just a click, mutual, a connection, when it isn’t even looked for, a surprise, on a street, in a doorway, at an event, on a station platform, on a country walk. I’ve heard of liftetime stories which began thus. It smiles me, and I know it happens, such a friendship, as it has happened to me. Love at first sight is real, or so I am told, and I want to believe it – across a crowded room, etcetera. I have’t experienced that, but I do know the ‘click’, the sudden connection and the unwillingness to move on, to move away. I want to stay, to talk, to ask questions, to hear his or her story. Occasionally that has been possible, but mostly not, even as that face, that person may intrigue me, remain in my thoughtful wonderings for weeks, months, even years. I wonder what happened to her, to him, to them, and all of that creates a fiddlehead in my own mind, a swirl of unanswered questions with a backdrop of warmth and smiles. Is the power of these encounters, I wonder, because so many people don’t smile, don’t catch another’s eye, don’t dare to stop, let alone talk awhile, and when just one does, the whole world stops spinning for the split of a second, a moment, leaving their colour, voice, story, hover above us, leave us longing for the share? Perhaps.

I can connect anywhere. I am the smiler, the eyes searching for other’s eyes. I am she. It isn’t that I am needy, no flipping way (I really run from ‘needy’ unless I sense authenticity in that need), but, instead, because I sincerely believe that we are fast losing the strength in humanunity, on the street, in a bus shelter, on a platform, in a doorway. Actually, that’s not the whole truth. I am just friendly. I love to connect with anyone, and anywhere. However, and I have learned this, that, even when a friendship grows, something can change. I’ve thought about that, a lot, as I knit a blanket for a new island baby, or wander among sandpipers, oystercatchers, primroses, violets and wood anemone, the latter bursting out from drystone walls, grassy banks, even slap in the middle of the earthen track, which twiddles its way up and into the Fairy Woods. I have thought, a lot.

What changes is not cataclysmic. It is, more, a tiny shift, like, as I imagine it, a movement of plates deep down, miles down, beneath an ocean surface. Cataclysmic at source, but resulting in a tiny crack nearer the surface, a lift of tidal flow, an argument of salt water, a pause in cloud talk. It is, or will be eventually, all encompassing, a big gasp, but it doesn’t begin that way. It begins with a turn of the head, a question rising straight, then curling into a fiddlehead, enscrolling text or score as yet unknown, unread, as if all the usual has run clean away. Confusion.

I understand this now. I remember changing when my first son burst into life. I remember how I no longer held his father first in my love-list. I remember the tectonic shift, deep in the depths of our marriage, the tiny crack, the lift of tidal flow, the argument of salt water, the pause in cloud talk. I don’t think I am alone in this change. I also recall times when I put my children first, lead the team, watched ‘beforefriends’ melt into the shadows. I know I stood for a principle and found yet another ‘friend’ slip away. I don’t miss any of them, even if it hurt, the rejection, at the time. I think, only slightly, of those whose power and greed have bought them ‘friends’, and I know that world, I spent time in it as a teen. How lonely they must, eventually be.

To move on in life, to stick to the moving on thing, which, btw, can feel so dam tough at times, and, I know that, to do this moving on thing takes guts. I salute you all, if you find yourself hesitating and doubting, because it is so much ‘short-term’ easier to be whom others want you to be, and just for their own sense of peace, it is not you.

It is not you.

I can sit back now, in the late sunshine, with a view to captivate (I will never say the other thing), with a glass of good red and remember my difficult choices, the times I rose like Boudicca, and the times I drowned like Ophelia, and the in-between Cowed Woman who did nothing at all, but just hid in the shadowdark. We are all many people inside just one person. We change, shift, lift, fall, cry, hide, rise, pretend, come clean, like oceans, like clouds. I don’t know if we ‘find ourselves’ eventually, but I can say that having the guts to search for self, and the finding of friends on the way, is, well, fascinating.

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Island Blog – To Evince the Singular

Here’s a Friday laugh for you, but, first, the backstory…….I love a backstory, me.

I have a small corn on my pointy finger, my DO NOT SPEAK TO ME THAT WAY EVER AGAIN, finger. My Go To Bed finger. My No Way finger. My I Love You finger. To be honest, this finger is exhausted with all the work I have required of it over many decades. However, it still works on the keyboard, over the ebony and ivory of my piano keys. It can also, still, stop a bus. It can still say I See You, without a single word. It can say Go! but only when required. It can also remind me, once turned, that I am seen, I am important, beautiful in my years, wrinkles and all, that I am still someone. It can also remind me of mistakes. Ok, that’s the backstory done.

In my dealing with said corn….(who on this goodly earth has ever had a corn on their pointy finger?) I read up the dealings with such an irritation. It hurts to sew, to knit, to push down a plug, to twist a cork. Sandpaper, I was advised. Well, blow that slow process. I need quick fix. I need to be well, to be able, to be fit in all areas, including the sticking out bits. So, I dashed (I did) up the stairs to locate my heel rasper. It’s a grater, in truth, big metal sharps in a rectangle with a. goodly handle. I rasped, and rasped and found relief as the endless layers of skin disappeared. It felt good. I can still point, after all. The remainder of the digit is still active and responsive. Until…….

I tried to log in to my laptop. Now, there’s a thing. It seems I have eradicated my fingerprint. Will the skin know how to grow back in the same sworls? Who knows? There is a chuckle in this, and I am chuckling. What will be, as I have always known, will be, and the best I can do is to discover new ways around every single blockade. I’m glad I learned this. I may, momentarily, be stuck with a gasp and a panic in my throat, but it never lasts. We are so much more inventive than we know. Our brain knows it too. It’s just longing for us to catch up.

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Island Blog – The A Words, with a C or two

Apocrypha – are biblical or related writings not forming part of the accepted canon of scripture, some of which might be of doubtful authorship or authenticity. In Christianity, the word apocryphal was first applied to writings that were to be read privately rather than in the public context of church services. Interesting, that……….it calls to the rebel in me, just saying, and not just about bible wordings. It thinks me of any authoritative body writing rules and things and with a big power behind its butt. For me, for always in my life, this sort of sedentary, (smug) pronouncing sends my feet light and my flight inevitable because the such of this ‘such’ grew from the wrong place, a place of boardrooms and secrecy and nepotism. Not that I disagree with the latter, not if I am honest. I would give my children, and theirs, priority over others. It would be hard not to. If a friend is looking for a leg up (can you say that anymore?), I would be doing the lifting. We choose. All of us.

Acedia – Acedia has been variously defined as a state of listlessness or torpor, of not caring or not being concerned with one’s position or condition in the world. I get this, particularly in the face of the above. For me the list is long. Parents. Expectations. School/s. College. Society. Culture. Appearances. The Uninvited Role of a Female. History. Ages of Me (you can’t wear that…..you’re too old). And. More. We slide, or I did, into the abyss of many abysses yet to come. I doubted myself, the wild in me, the natural and curious me, the only one I really knew. Rising, politely, into either A, in clean knickers and with a rictus smile, I kept on trying to be the ‘who’ which was acceptable for the time, and the gathered mob. I confess to landing in the ludge of Acedia or Accidie. I like the words, even as I never liked the blob I allowed myself to become, the one who, when asked out, spent agonising times in front of my long mirror, one, I am certain, was one clearly out to inflate me. I allowed this. And, that statement is an important one. I know it now. There is no blame in my heart. However, I do allow that I did not know how to challenge the apocryphiles in my life. They stood a head taller than me, or so I thought, and thus they afeared me, big time.

I am different now, and the only thing I can do with this differentness is to spread it wide, like petals. I can tell my grandlings, mostly females, that they probably have to tow the history line, suck up the rules and regs, for a while, because, and I tell them this, their parents have experiential learning. They know their bruises, feel them still, remember the hard knocks, the shocks, the blocks. They also, and I did too, bring to the table their own fear results. Don’t go there, don’t say that, don’t risk this. T’is human. I try to bring a new intelligence into the mishmash of life. Pause, I suggest. Think, breathe, find a question without aggression in your mouth. What you have, and will always have is….

Choice and Control. Not over others, never that, but over yourself. You can go left when some apocryphal someone shouts Right! However, the learning which lifts accidie up and out of the abyss and into the light of a newness takes guts and intelligence and a very good ego control. Ego is useful but it’s the jester in the mix. I learned that too. I fell into the apathy of accidie often. It eats away at a soul, did mine. Jumbled thoughts, not my fault, I’m a victim, that dunk in the sludge. Perhaps it took me a whole lifetime to understand that I always had Choice. I always had Control. I didn’t believe it, too conditioned, too a product of another time, another culture, anotherness. Whatever.

I choose now. I control myself now. And, I have to say, admit, that I really wish I had done it sooner.

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Island Blog – Talk About Kindness

We talk to friends, to family, neighbours and those who sell us something from behind a counter. What we find difficult is talking to strangers for no apparent reason. We didn’t collide with them in a doorway, causing them to spill all the apples from their grocery bag. We didn’t stand on their toes, nor were we asked for directions to the toy store. And so we remain close-lipped, avoiding eye contact, as if we are ashamed of who we are. We want to invisibilize ourselves, don’t want to be stopped or bothered with a stranger. Why do we do this, I wonder? It thinks me, a lot. We are all lonely, after all, not everywhere but certainly somewhere. A lot on our mind means we are thinking circular thoughts, endlessly twirling the how-tos of a problem until even the mind cannot think rationally. And, as we rush onwards we miss the very thing we need most of all. Human contact. There is a huge wide world out there and, further in, there are cities and towns, villages and settlements, and all of them peopled.
It’s easy, isn’t it, to pull our own life in around us, like a shell, thus becoming too embroiled in our own issues and needs. To be open is for the confident folks, the sociable ones, those who find it easy to communicate, yes? No, unequivocally, No. And those who are shy or feel awkward around conversations often hide their light within their shell, when their story just might help us find the answer we need. Something they say, or the way they say it, their smile, the look in their eyes might tell us that we matter, when most of us think we don’t, not really. We may not even mention our problem, but somehow, and this is the invisible magic of connectivity, they up-skittle our circular thoughts into a straight (and often obvious) line. Offering up our seat on a bus, letting someone go ahead of us in a queue, moving to a smaller table when a big family comes in to a cafe, even though we lose the view, all these and more are little beginnings. Suddenly, ice melts and here is the chance to say something nice about another, their coat, hat, the book they hold, their dog, the weather, anything at all. Kindly words exchanged begin something, and doors fly open. We learn something about someone else, something that stops us chewing over our own problems, something that expands our minds as another’s story, spoken or unspoken, revives us like a cold drink in a heatwave. And yet, and yet, for some bonkers and unintelligent reason, we think we are stronger alone. Let the ‘masses’ get on with their unimportant lives, whilst I manage my own important one. So much rubbish and so isolating, so lonely. To be vulnerable, to risk rejection, to reach out in kindness is a brave, strong thing, one that brings magic in, loads of it. Because if we do this reaching out thing once, we can do it again, and again, and the rewards we will reap will not be a bigger bank balance, but a wider mind, an inclusive life, a feeling of connection and the reduction of loneliness. Some of the loneliest in the world consider themselves rich, living behind security lights and locks and boundaries and minimal communication. And those who do ‘risk’ encounters with strangers, anywhere, everywhere, are the richest of all because they have become an integral and important part of human kind. And, if we could all risk being vulnerable and open, making eye contact, proffering kindness no matter our problems or perceived pressures, the world would be a very different one.

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Island Blog – Thing is…..

We all have to deal with today, the to and day of it, and it can stretch out like a frickin slimy mud walk through slicktastic brown sink. Or it can be a dance over a chalk-easy dance floor. Mostly not that in my experience, but I have danced that way, and that dance needs remembering. It is so easy in a life to forget the times when we did dance over easy, only remembering the sludge trudge.

At a certain age, I have noticed in this brown sink/dance easy life, that I am watching my agers fold into a complicit fold of flesh and obeisance. It confuddles me. I also get it. Thing is, choices in life have an a habit of (apparently) removing themselves. It can seem, and this is not just about olding, that individual authenticity puffs into the sky, losing gravitas and voice. Who am I in this time? Who was I ever?

I know those questions. I have rolled and sparred and fought with them for years. This is what I think, mostly for my peace of mind, I confess. There are those who rise above the concrete of their lives and keep shouting. There are those who don’t mind the concrete. There are those who do, but feel they don’t have the strength, voice, power, to push through, and, let’s be honest, concrete is a big opponent.

I watch my children. Strong and feisty questioning Fivers. I know their lives are not easy, not plain sailing. The tought times, I remember. A child is born and there’s a load of shenanigans at the pub and mucho celebrations, and then reality kicks in. And it goes on, and on and on, and then some.

As a septuagenarian……jeez, the length of that…….I have finally learned to greet every day with thankfulness. I say thank you to my bed as I rise. I salute my cafetière for my strong black coffee. I say thank you that I have purpose for the day. Thankfulness for every single thing seems to lift me. It encourages me to grab any opportunity.

It really helps.

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Island Blog – A Purfling Convolute

Travelling back from a sad thing, being upbeat en route, offering, inviting, welcoming, does not deny the inner truth. It just holds it in stasis, no, not that, too final, more like a controlled pause. Arriving home, to a safe place, however lonely, proffers a safe house, short term. I say that short term thing, even as I could have wished for just one single short term in the yawning tedium of my long terms at school, or should I say schools, of which there were a few. None of those changes were my fault. That’s me convulting up my crimes, and I’ll say more. I was of that green and awkward period of evolution in the so-called middle class bollix, when who you looked like told everyone who you were. There were so many lies underfoot, it was hard to walk without 6 inch heels.

It thinks me. We’re still doing it. Oh yes we are. I knew and moved among those with big money, estates, privilege, command, all of that. I never believed in any of it. If we believe we own land, we are already lost. The wise know this. However, there is, as always, an in-between in the changing times. And In that in-between, there is loss, fear, I get that. I could ask, where is the support for those who only knew a purfling convolute, the pretence, even if the young knew nothing of any pretence?

In art we like to present an image with a surround. No matter the purfling of the inner message, we like a frame.

Why is that?

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Island Blog – A Puckered Life

We all live one of those, times when the material beneath our feet is straight, taught as Oliver before Fagan. Others when the ripples and concrete risers trip us up until, despite our best intentions, we fall, smack, face down, bruised and bloody. Some pretend they didn’t fall, tending towards a fluff of tissue, many dabs, a flappy hand, I’m fine. I don’t buy into that flappy thing, the ‘fine’ thing, not when the fall is mahousive, even as I do get it when the fall is a nothing much. In which case, why bother mentioning it at all?……hallo old age. Back to the point.

I witnessed last week a tsunami of grief, was there, stood beside it, kept close. This is a real fall. Standing witness to such a mahousive time-blast was like standing in a storm on a cliff with no clothes on, the tilt-wind pushing overness into a done thing. I could feel the fall, smell it, touch it, even hear the music of it, the angst singing through every moment. I am glad I was there. (I’m currently looking for an alternative to the word ‘glad’. It’s so slamdunk, so, well, concrete.)

There was a big crowd, There were singers, solo and choir, readers, vicars with spice and pink hair. There was line after pew line of those who valued this woman’s life. In short, there was a tribute which blew me away. Today, at a very happy meet of friends around a table, all of us crafting something or other over coffee and cake, we talked of what we might like to be said at our own funeral. We spoke of where and how we might be buried. We laughed, obviously (gallows humour) about what we might want to wear once our spirit had left us like a butterfly. We also shared times in our long lives which had tried to trip us up, and failed.

Life is beautiful, and I just took it for granted. Oh, I’ve met the puckers a lot, and often, but I had the feet to run, the body to lift over any ruts, the strong arms to gather up my children, the mind to accommodate, and the resilience to, not just survive, but to make magic in the present for those I love. One big life is gone. What do I owe her?

To live on. To bring magic, as she did. To welcome everyone, to lift when I can, any stumbler over this puckered life.