Island Blog

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Island Blog – What You Say

I’m seeing a lot of smelling pistakes in Africa, many of which hilarious me. ‘We are sory but your fury friends are not aloud in our cafe.’ Thank goodnes for that, thought I. Fury friends, silent or aloud, are not easy company over coffee on a sunshine morning. Another reads ‘WARNING! Fasten bra straps and remove dentures. Very bumpy road.’ A third, outside a guest house ‘ Wanted – Guests to sleep with us. Thrid one free.’ There are so many of these misspelled, or just quirky, invitations, restrictions and warnings that to find one which makes sense, makes no sense at all. And it thinks me.

Back in the day when Great Britain owned half the world, doing nobody much good in the end, language and its correct usage was of great importance, any incorrectness tantamount to treason. Now, with the flow of peoples across the world, very little of which is ‘owned’ by foreigners, great or otherwise, language is learning to tango, to flex, to shift in construction, tense and meaning. Adverbs fly about the sentence, pronouns plural and twist, and everything from an ice cream to the discovery of a new star is ‘Amazing’. I am glad of it, having been made to stand in the corner for mispronouncing or misspelling or misconstructing my language enough times to wish me I spoke ‘monkey’ instead. I. learned that instead of listening to what I was saying, they were listening to how I phrased it. If I sounded like a young Princess Elizabeth, no matter that there was no flex, no tango, no music in my rendition of whatever poem or piece of literature I was outlouding to the class, I gained a star and a smile and a well done. One girl, Henrietta, O Du’Banjo, daughter of an African king, cried her eyes out after many stern corrections and it furied me. Her voice was her language, her phrasing that of her people, and this English teacher was endeavouring to dilute it. All wrong.

In South Africa, if I were to announce I was expecting twins, which I obviously am not, the delighted response would be ‘Is it? Oh Shame!’ I can just see my English teacher faint clean away at that. Admittedly, it makes no sense to me either, but that’s not the point. How they say what they say out here is how they say what they say and grammar be blowed. However, and there’s always one of those, I adore the English Language, am a committed student keen, always curious, delighted at the discovery of a new but ancient word, fascinated and excited by everything about it. My language is my work and my passion. But that is for me and not for everyone, nor anyone else who doesn’t enjoy it as I do. I read the wrong there,they’re,their and snort, I do, I admit it, but if someone (most people, actually) misuse the there/their/they’re in a sentence, I still know what they are saying, and anything beyond a private snort would be judgement, and on a person. So not my thing.

My granddaughter once announced, confidently to me ‘ Granny, I love dogs cos they don’t.’

I heartily agree.

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Island Blog – A Spangled Lacuna

In every life a little rain must fall. The trouble is that we, as negatively wired humans, tend to collect up all those rain days until the sunny ones get tired of shining, and all but disappear. Folk around us can say ‘Look on the bright side’ until our ears deafen, but it makes little difference. They can also suggest that we focus on the positives, but blind inside our fog or darkness, we just cannot find them. Am I a ‘glass half full’ person, ‘glass half empty’ or ‘no glass at all’ person? Oh please…….too much platitudinosity! In truth, we are all three of those, at times, all of us, even the ones who exhaust us with bounce, their faces always lifted, the lie a cloud in their eyes. None of us are Either, nor Or, Black nor White, for we are both at times. A million colours and a million greys at others. And to feel disallowed when wallowing in black is to feel corrected, fixed and re-routed which does little, if anything at all, to help. We long to be heard, listened to, accepted, befriended, our injuries noticed and respected, and only then can we decide to lift our heads from the ground. It is not easy to find such support outside of a counsellor’s cocoon, because, bizarrely, we all feel the need to elevate a ‘fallen’ one, seeing it as encouragement and inspiration when, in truth, it only serves to highlight the state they are currently in, stuck in mud, pale and lost, beaten down by life.

When I, rarely, flip through social media, I notice there are a gazillion ways to lift my spirits, wisely worded, some ancient, some contemporary, and they all make perfect sense. To my mind, that is. But this is for others, surely, not for me down here in the oubliette. I can see the daylight, yes, long for it to surround me as it seems to surround everyone else in this whole coloured-up world, but I cannot reach it. I am unworthy of this light, obviously. The platitudes and uplifting phrases are as irritating as bluebottles around my head, buzzing out my failure to keep above ground. Until, that is, my eyes adjust to the dark, until I can smell my own decay. I might look back on my life already lived and recall a flash of rainbow, a shift of perspective, and remind myself that I played a leading part, and I played it to the very best of my ability. It was I who made that choice, that decision, took that first step, activated a change. Nobody else did. It was all mine, and still is. Yes, I made mistakes, some ghastly, but I made something happen from nothing. My head lifts as the sun glides overhead and I feel the warmth brush my face. My shoulders soften, my mind gentles, the tanglewire now compromised. Yes, I have been weakened by this decline, but I am stronger too, because I am done with this darkness, and it is I who found my way here, and I who will raise myself up again, with new thoughts, a new energy, singular and vital.

It is precisely because I have become lost in this lacuna, that I have learned just how strong I am, how resilient, how much I want this one life to be all it can be. Others’ lives impact on my own, of course they do, and some have taken all I can possibly give, too much in fact, I gave too much. What was it that led me to give myself away, to believe that, in doing so, I could ‘fix’ all their manifold human problems? We are taught to give, are we not, that to be ‘selfish’ is to be a ‘bad’ person? We are also taught that everything healthy grows from self-love, without which we cannot effectively and wisely love others exactly as they are. If, however, we build ourselves from the amount of love we are given, and that is often lacking, we tell ourselves we don’t deserve it, anyway. We are easily hurt, put down, can feel judged and misunderstood, awkward, unseen, unimportant, invisible. Just as in the oubliette.

I see a rope, one I hadn’t noticed heretofore. The spangle-light dances off rocks, footholds. I rise and stretch my limbs, turn my face to the sky, and begin to climb.

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Island Blog – The Now People

November 11th and the Christmas Tree is up in the shopping centre. I know that Africa runs two hours ahead of the UK, currently, but this big-ass glitzy tree did stop me in my tracks. I am no sour grapes on this or on any other marketing decision, swallowing them and allowing a timeline settlement, plus the subsequent period of indigestion. In my day, this. In Nowday a very different this. Old people did it one way. The Now People do the same thing very differently. But do they, I wonder, in their hearts? Is this what the Now People want, this massive pressure on purse strings and expectations; the ghastly thought of all those hideous relations determined to arrive for the feast, with a suitcase full of grumbles and judgements? I sometimes/often hear folks my own age, teeth long gone, arches sunk, bewhiskered and still hoping their yesterdays will get better talking about the Now People as if they hadn’t a single scooby about how to live, work, raise children, break boundaries. None of us did, by the way, not one. We all fell at the first hurdle, and the second, and some of us, I included, fell at most. They got higher, that’s why.

Materialism used to mean, just saying, the gathering of cloth for a sewing class. I remember the feel of cloth, the weight of it in my palms, the soft ticklefinger of backthreads, the clogs and shawls saga depicted in the pattern. I thought of the initial design work, the dreaming and thinking, the thin lines spidering between one truth and another’s; the lift of a paintbrush or pen, the subsequent push of a needle point through virgin cloth. I saw the dying process, the scrape of lichen off magma rocks, salted and blasted by story winds from pole to pole. The beginning of mythos. I wonder about stories now, hoping, and I do hope, that the Now People ask about our time and the time before and before and before, because how life is for them in all that really matters, is not so different.

It is people who matter, not things, although things, and their acquisition, do seem to have topped the charts these days. On our yesterday wine cruise, through beautiful vineyards way up in the sharp-stoned mountains in an old tram with wooden seats, an open bus, also vintage, and ending on a trailer pulled by a more than vintage tractor (just like the one we used in the days of Tapselteerie), we met people. Guides, sommeliers, tram, bus and tractor drivers, waiters, other wine tasters……oh we laughed and talked and learned and said farewell. The dynamic day was done. We had tasted the best of South African wines, learned how one wine-grower amalgamates grapes, how another whose land stretches from sea to high peaks, plants vines to work with salt, with clay, with wind, with sun, with shade. But, the memories sugar spun into those encounters are what remains, because they are animiate, animated, alive, and inspiring. I watched black faces, white, coloured, bejewelled, simply dressed, awkward and easy, all smiling in the vine-world sunshine. I will forget the wines long before I forget that laugh, that smile, that little conversation with two women on the bench in front of me.

In my perfect world, life would slow down, marketing would calm its britches and those who demand complete ownership of workers in the workplace would be required to swap shoes with those souls for one year. Just one should do it.

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Island Blog – I Just Need To Be Me

I was scared, I was. The thought of an airport, just the one was enough to skirmoil me, and that was just Edinburgh. Just. Edinburgh. Change enough. For starters, I had to have the right suitcase, hand luggage, shoes, coat, stuff in handbag for all possible sniffles, awkwardness, etc. At home, I had fretted a lot about the weight of my big suitcase. I knew, yes, 23 kilos. The conversion still confounds me, being a stones and pounds girl. Noneltheless, I weighed myself, stepped off, picked up seriously heavy hold luggage and weighed again. 71 kilos. I am damned and going to hell. I am so overweight it’s not just embarrassing, it’s rude. There will be chaos at the check in desk and what will I do?

I flung out this pretty thing and that, which is all I could do as time had come to depart for the ferry. All the way down to the airport, in spite of the knowledge that my daughter would be seeing me safely off; in spite of knowing that all would be well, the tension built. How can a suitcase possibly weigh 71 kilos? There was no body in there, no stash of concrete, no lignum vitae sculpture, just frocks, knickers, teeshirts, etcetera. It was the suitcase itself, I decided, somewhere near Tyndrum, damn thing, four wheels and enough steel connections to hold up a small bridge. Why on earth did I buy it? Yes, it is hard shell, and yes, if I had to trundle the thing for miles I would need all those go-any-direction wheels and the pull-up handle, and the wherewithal of all of those will obviously require attaching somewhere in the bowels of the thing, but 71 kilos?? I’ll get rid of it, once the embarrassment of being told I am seriously overweight has passed, all those tutting people watching and judging and muttering, not to mention the suspicion on the face of the nice girl at check-in.

I am nervous as it gets to my turn. Big smile, eye contact, ever hopeful, keep moving, Good afternoon and how are you M’aam, she says, and I proffer my ticket, lifting, with extreme difficulty the damn suitcase onto the weight thingy. I can’t look. That’s fine she says and I look at the luminous digits. 19 kilos. Wait, how can that be? Does a suitcase lose weight? Mum, says my daughter. Did you subtract your weight after you both got on the scales?

Well, no, obviously. It thinks me. All that stress and tension, the sleepless night before flight, the imaginary fears of being refused boarding, punished and marginalised, or, worse, forced to open the damn thing in front of a whole airport, to hand over loads of frothy kit to my girl, or, worse still, to have to put it all on over whatever I was already wearing, was a ridonculous waste of energy and thought. I do try, and I am learning how, to tell myself that all will be well, that I am not an old fool. I accept that any big changes, such as flying alone to Capetown, will discombobulate most people. We all make mistakes and therein lies the choice to either berate self or to have a jolly good cackle about the whole thing. I choose the latter and this is why. One life, that’s what we have, in this particular time and place as this particular person. If we are all here by intention, not accident, then I am here to learn humour, to work hard, to find the fun in everything I do, to love others, to give freely, to be brave, vulnerable and humble. So I don’t need to get everything right. I don’t need to be sensible according to the bizarre expectations and rulings of the world. I don’t need to be organised, like her, or without fault as he likes to believe he is. I don’t need to make no mistakes.

I I just need to be me.

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Island Blog – Denim Skin, and Off I Go

It’s weird, this feeling, as I literally plonk through the day, you know that plonk thing……..a one fingered kid before a keyboard, no clue of how to play. I had packed, unpacked, packed, unpacked, remembered, forgotten, remembered again, added, removed, placed, argued with space, all of it. My case rests now. I rest my case. My frocks are few, and tatty (never clocked that till folding them for packing) two pairs of shorts, a few tees (they were tee-shirts in my day) various other things like a cardy, the obvious underpinnings, not that they would dare risk underpinning me, and an old dress. Ah, my favourite. She is frail, long, beautiful and always commented on. I can see the sun damage on her denim skin, the loosening of seams, the hole which reminds me of that time, I leapt a fence in the dark, in a moment of wild, not wanting to be left behind, which I wasn’t. I patched that tear, tare, and love the story in this dress. I remember her as she remembers me, showing up again and again, and, the sassy minx, always inviting recognition.

The plonk thing. Back to that. I have to be prepared for this big travel, the flight thing, the squash of people all scared and stressed and fussing and taking up all the room. We are reduced to a serious invasion of personal space and for over 8 hours, in the dark, breathing recycled air. I get the fear. So, I was packed and unpacked etcetera, and then there was breakfast, lunch and a wood delivery and gifts from two friends, well-wishing, and then what? The mist out there is beautiful. I focus on the mist, on the tearlet glisten on nasturtium leaves, on the barely-there maple, on everything in the garden that is standing still. I look at those rigid stalks, actually, we had a chat as I went out barefoot just now, and I ask them how they feel after Wind Ashley or Whoever, when they were blown right over, wheeched from their roots, blinded, stripped and, basically, denied any chance of a ticket to the Species Survival Ball. They chuckled. No, seriously, they did! I heard it through my bare feet on the sniggering grass. It’s safe down there. They, the Long Tall Sallys know that this is how it is, that it may be again, may not, but, trust them, they will work a way, and will not just survive, but will flower magnificent next time Father Sun bothers his butt out of bed.

I am wistful about leaving here, the mist twisty and soft, the rain, a skin treatment. I leave my best friends, moments I will miss, in the street, in homes, in the village, on the island. I will not miss, wheelie bins flying like missiles, ferries cancelled, roads skid risks, the sharp coldsnatch of everything you touch outside of heating. I won’t miss the materialism of Christmas, the sales that elevate at this time of year, a begging, a siren, You Need This. I will miss the warm loving go of people here, the ready to help, the offering, the turning up. This is my place, my home, and I know it. When I set off, tomorrow, for the drive away,the beginning, I will feel elated, excited, and scared. I will check in, find my airport way, find my seat, say hallo, and then, if I could see it, which I won’t this time, over three hours of desert, more, of Africa coming in to say hallo, eventually. And I remember the sounds, the trill, the shrill the thrill of a sudden encounter with a very big wild creature who wasn’t backing down. I remember.

I won’t see them this visit. Different location. Different fun. Off I go.

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Island Blog – Misty, Clarity, Beyond the Veil

Dark morning – yes, of course, with this nonsensical time change thing. I watched the clock dilemmas, worked them out, poor confused things, as light annihilated the dark, blinding it. There’s a misty thing going on across the sea-loch, a sort of translucent mesh hiding the pines, the backsides of hills, a strip, moving, lifting, expanding, thinning. A bit like a bridal veil. I never had one of those, but they are pretty. You can see eyes, a vague facial shape, the red of a smile, if there is one, and there usually is.

The mist has retained her veil control, all day. I walked in it, not through it, noticed how, what was clear before, is more of a shimmy, a sort-of, a possible. The autumn colours, fallen or yet branch-held, were bright, as the artist in me might have made them so, with a good gloss medium over oils. Nature does it without any of that tiddleypom.

This evening, the sky is pinkling strips, reaching down, very soft pink. Gone now, the mist, the veil. Now clarity. It thinks me.

From the bridal veil to clarity. Take this lightly. I am no misery guts about relationships, but what I have learned over long time, is that if we look for another to fill the big darkness within, we will always be disappointed. It is up to each one of us to find that hole-filler within our own forgiveness of the past, of self, of whatever damaged us. That clarity will show us more than the backside of anything or anyone, and we will stand strong as one who can see beyond the veil, as the person we really are.

We can play misty a whole lifetime, or we can be brave and stand up and say, No More. I have no frickin idea who I am, but I do know who I am not. A good beginning, I would suggest.

I love the mist, to walk through it, the touch of its fingertips on my skin, the gathering of it on leaf fall. I also love clarity. I can do both. Beyond that contusion, I can heal.

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Island Blog – Itchy Knickers, Mary, There is Life

I send my mind out into the world, and pull it back quickquick. The thinks, the sheer expanse before my mindal eyes, the troubles I can’t even spell, rise into a swirling fog. Maybe a good thing. I know about the corruption in governments and want to smack all of the leaders. Did your mummy not teach you anything? In the pull back, I focus on the immediate, on where I am, on who I am, on this very minute. Oh, that’s easy. Let me think. Ah, instead of sinking into my current bog, let me find another someone who might love to hear what I I think of them. Avoid superlatives, an early lesson from my English teacher. It hesitates me. Superlatives are basically lazy speke. Amazing. Wonderful. Excellent. The Best. And so many more. They’re like uncontrolled dribble to one who considers how much spit goes into intelligent consideration. A little at a time, that’s how. And those superlatives can apply to a packet of crisps. Just saying. Hallo, I begin, You are just short of amazing. Let me find the word (that is just short of amazing). Doesn’t work.

I think that navigating a world where language and street rules change so fast has never been easy for me. I’m the girl, now woman, in the wrong kit. I remember arriving to a poetry challenge at school, all elecuted up, strong voiced and in itchy knickers (uniform), wondering, as I did, how the hell all those other ‘gels’ managed to look part of the landscape. I saw many smirks and although it irked me, I longed for whatever bonding they had with a) their itchy knickers and b) their ability to be an easy dot in the pattern. I could see the connection. And then, there was me, all tumbelshift and awkward. Or that is how I felt. The fact that I was chosen for the poetry rendition, that I came away with the silver poetry cup, meant zip, at the time.

In this time, the autumn of my life, I kind of get it, mainly because if I don’t get it now, what hope do I have of ever understanding the point of me? A rhetorical question. Looking back to that super lost, itchy-knickered girl, I smile. I have found my people, here, on the island, for sure, and that has settled me, given me place and point, to a degree. Perhaps, as my lovely wise sister-in-law told me, it isn’t wrong to feel out of kilter, as she may have done. Rest in peace Mary.

Sometimes I scrabble for purchase, when I see others step out in confidence and the furies rise in judgement against me. Their eyes are wild and bright, their confidence evident and overwhelming, but I’m a daughter of the moon and the tide, I (whine) tell them. I continue, itchy knickers and all, I feel everything, sense so much, notice every tiny shift in this breaking world. I don’t know how to explain anything, have no shape nor map to guide me, but I feel it, see it, hear it, all of it.

I remember Mary saying to me, once, way back when she was vibrantly alive and wise as Merlin, that I would have been in danger when any girl or woman who sensed moon change, tidal shifts, changes in nature around them, people becoming irritable, a slip slide into anger, a rise in the river, was doomed if she spoke out, or was noticed noticing. I am thankful that, nowadays, writers write about those who can see the beyond, and anyone can btw. We just have too much noise and too little belief in our skills.

On the cusp of a flight to Africa, I watch the skies, the moontide, the chat in the clouds, the copper comment, the wild shapes. I see the raindrops held on branches, like showing off as the sinksun sequins and sparkles. I see the straggle of shrubs, climbers browning, the flood in my garage. I feel the rainwater, the hill rain under my bare feet, the chill of concrete. I feed the woodburner. There is life and I feel every moment.

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Island Blog – Ordinary Life

There’s still a lot of waggle and shiver going on here. Shrubs slewed sideways, drunk on the gale, tree limbs felled by it. It wonders me, that felling thing. Obviously the fallen were already showing an inner weakness, unseen by me, or anyone else, for that matter, but known by the tree. The limbs fall higgle piggle, downing others who, or is it whom, were probably astonished at the invasion of their space, and who(m) were not ready to fall off their perches quite then. There are always innocent victims. The shrubs, well, they had to go. When you are already stemmed up to three feets, you don’t lookd good at all, collapsed like a load of young vicarious hopefuls at a hen night, blooms bashed, squashed. I am so glad I never had a hen night. The thought of one of those sads me. Just to think that any about-to-be ‘bride’ is already missing her freedom makes no sense to me at all.

I went today for lunch with a wonderful friend. It is the last week of this fabulous cafe being open for the so-called summer. I love my friends, our meets and chats and laughs. From our ordinary lives, we lift into an hour or two of random, when anything can happen and everything can be said. And then, we part, and return to our own ordinary lives but with our thoughts changed, shifted, eased, recognised. A powerful time. We all have troubles, but in the talking of them, in the sharing, even in the not sharing, just that connectivity is dynamic and changing. I come home along a road (track) that dips and dives, the sides deep enough to sink a mini, watching a waspish sun-god pushing (I can see it) against cloud bullies, his light diamonds sparkling on the surface of an incoming tide, all salt and salmon hope. And I am home.

I walk beneath shiver trees, gold and red, or what’s left of all that spectacular. We never enjoy the autumn colours as others do in places where the gales have no room to flex their full span, nor expand their blow. Our leaves are stripped quickquick here. It thinks me a bit. We have trees here. At least we saw a bit of autumn colour. I have been to islands where no trees can grow, and not far from here. And I am thankful for the glimpse of such beauty. The sky is a wild grey bonkers, clouds shifting sideways, wind pitching like a bowler. Kids barrel noisy home from school. Folk walk by. Ordinary life.

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Island Blog – Bejabers, Cludgie, Coorie Doon

It’s wild here. The tidal rise took fishing boats level, no, above the pier last night, challenging their keels, and the road flooded, fishermen, coastguards, police and firemen out all hours to save their boats, their means of income, their passion. Parking would have been interesting. My mini would have been challenged, her sump drunk on seawater. But, for all the danger warnings and over dramatisation of this whole who-haa in the News, we islanders get on with it. We have met this before, and oftentimes. I read the panic in the media and I snort. After all, we have been aware of a climate change for a long time, and pretending it won’t affect us is mindless stupidity. I am very thankful for all that I have already experienced on this westerly outscape and for decades, for it has brained me up, big time. We know, here, when it is safe to go out, when we might drive to the ‘toon’ for food supplies, how prepared we must be for (dire and dangerous)weather shifts, for autumn and winter moons, for gales and haphazards and everything in between. I know folk here roll their eyes at the loss of Common Sense, but it isn’t common and that’s not the people’s fault. It’s the denial, the pretence, the invitation to get lost in an instant fix, as if fairyland actually exists, as if by denying change we can stop change.

Today was wildish. I went out to clear up the fallen. Thank you, I said to those big-ass yellow things I never could name, but which entertained a load of bees, and for weeks, to the forsythia tree, felled because it grew too tall, to the maple, now almost stripped of leaves. Thankyou, because you stood tall for as long as you could, until the punch of power decked you. I cleared a coup of oak, a three-fingered limb, from the track. Touching it, hauling it out of the way for others, I felt the latent thrum of life and death. I’m cool with life/death. I’ve seen life and death, and there are different emotions attatched to each one, I am so glad I have done so. A lamb, an ewe, a calf, a horse, a parent, a husband. I started small there, you can tell.

So, when the bejabers are sucked out of me, and others at times, maybe gales, heavy rain, death, loss, frightened responses to scans, and other shit, it thinks me of people. On the island, we are many and strong, and from all sorts of places. Voices, accents, lifestyles come together before a whoopass island fire, warming, welcoming, a coorie doon.

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Island Blog – Whipskittle

So there I am, all whipskittled in the ferment of some dodgy brew, pushing on, not seeing anything much to left or right, just the forward thingy into mist and fog and sludge. I like the forward thing, just saying. Backwards, oh, seen that, see that, way too much. It seems it leads to an old and disappointed state, and I will not go there. I know, it is clear, to me, anyway, that, at 71, oh please let’s not go with the nonsense of the world….. we are old and that is that, no matter what social media or the current culture slams into our faces, making us feel like we should what…….dress as 50 year olds? Pretend we aren’t who we are? No. Thank. You.

Moving on (hopefully). Today I took my whipskittle to a wiser one. We talked, easy, for over an hour, in an island place, the waves smashing the rocks, the birds wheeling, the garden bobbing and cowing against another rising gale, the sun slipping out for a quick reassurance, cloud consumed in seconds. You had to be looking, and there’s a thing. I have to look, all of the time. Could be the face of the kindly driver who allowed for me to reverse fecking scary feet arse up to the sky for quite a few coils. He smiled and waved and I couldn’t help my wave of thankfulness, a lot for his kindness, but more that I hadn’t fallen off the cliff, which I really could have done, all the way down to the crash of the Wild Atlantic and the basking sharks, sadly missing this year. I love this place, the risk of the it, the dynamics, the wild and the crazy. T’is in my blood.

She talked with me, the wiser one. For me, she is. And I think that when I am whipskittled, I would always seek out a wiser one. She asked me, who are you? I confounded myself at that. And we talked on. I honestly think that I can get stuck in who I was. But, widowed and all the rest, I am not the same. Who am I? I don’t think I have ever been brave enough to ask that question. What I do know is that I am fecking tired of whipskittle, much as I love the word.