October 4, 2023 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – Thinksmith. She

Been thinking about thinking. We all have a gazillion thinks every day, but it’s the sorting of them that fascinates me, draws me in to the frickin web of itself. I can get stuck. Did you know that a spider web is the strongest of all ‘materials”? It can hold a floating astronaut, once duly bigged up, or so I read. So, these thinks, these random trollops (can I still pen that word?) invade a brain, invited or not, and, mostly so NOT. Howeversoever, they come from the moment we wake. The What To Do List is immediately available, the flat surface visible, and, in theory, doable. Doable? Is that a word now?

Back to Thinks. I wake with all of them and I watch them fly about my mind, then, on lifting into the morning light, into a new day. It’s noisy, the think party, yes, but as my body moves from the dream world, where everything is transient, falling, scary, I grab my huge man-jumper, a gift from an old and gone friend for whom I cooked and cleaned. sling it on and take my legs to the floor. Oh, pause on that. There are those, many thoses who can not do this, and never will. I take the stairs down for coffee, knowing there is warmth and power for the kettle. I flick on the fairy lights because it is so not dawn, yet, but the moon is owning the sky and she smiles me. Salut, Lady Moon. May you live long and prosper.

But, and there is always one of those, or, if not, it’s a bloody However. Another think. How else can a writer break from one statement to another, without a but or a however, or a coach or counsellor, or a friend who cares? We don’t talk right these days. We fire statements like rockets. We don’t invite and accept, on the streets of our lives. Now, I know I am an old island woman, so am not in the hub or hug of today’s thinks, but it seems to me that there is almost more fight for survival in the world of greed and success over others, than ever there was. And that thinks me more, even though I have no inside information on how the hellikins this world works now. Just this very day, I heard a young man tell me he no longer seeks money as his goal. Yes, he wants money for his own lifestyle but not for its own sake. He wants wealth in order to share it, to help someone else, to be random, to be wild with it. It thinked me good.

I can play with words, phrases, terminology, wordology, big thinks, random tiddleypom, the thinksmith, always, she.

October 3, 2023 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – Just Saying

My garden throws its colour to the sky. I know from the slow down of all those throwing blooms, that these wise creatures are saying farewell for another year. They feel the chill of Autumn, are bent tapselteerie by the sideways punchgusts of October, and they accept. They’re probably knackered anyway. I know how they feel. Pushing out colour and brilliance, every day and for months, is a demand and a half, for sure. Languid clouds in a troposphere of unusual calm, float like holidaymakers, pulling apart now and then to let the sun blast out his light, dazzling my eyes. I watch the season turn and it thinks me. I probably do that thinking thing a bit much, but everything fascinates me. On walks with friends, I point out the spot where deer have traversed the track. I see the flattened grass over here and then, look, a continuation to our left. I see where mice or voles or wotwots have nibbled at fungi, where birds have pulled off the buds that come, always too late, a nourishment as food supplies dwindle. I hear the change of birdsong. And I think about all of it.

What is it like to roost hungry, and how many days can any bird manage that? How many deer in this fold? Are there young? A hind and her healthy looking calf, stand just beside the track. I lasso the dog and avert my eyes. I mean no harm, I tell her, in my calmest voice, and keep walking. I look up now and then to see here black eyes fixed on me, her head turning as I move on. She is beautiful. From the look of her calf, she is a good mother. I remember that this is the rutting season, the big fight ahead for the stags. I will hear them roaring soon, the clack of antlers across the sea-loch and that will think me all over again. Survival is key to all animals, the continuation and strength of bloodlines. The old guys will be thrown out, or killed on those hillsides. It makes sense, in the animal kingdom. The males fighting, always fighting. The females protecting, always protecting. Who is the wiser, I wonder? Neither, is the answer. Both have a role, an essential role, and in the animal kingdom it is clear and unquestioned. Perhaps in the realm of humans, this is where we get in a muddle, because I believe that our men can feel very lost around all the powerful and assertive women.

Not that I pay any homage to the old ways. I have, personally fought against that load of nonsense, and with zeal and planted feet, but I do think that even our young men are in a spin. They learned a role, it was clear. And now, it’s as if they have been thrown into a womansphere, in which they might be forgiven for feeling that they have little space, if any. Perhaps we women might refrain from criticising men in general, much as we worked hard to stop them from critising us, and to, instead, see them as individuals, just as we women are.

Just saying.

October 2, 2023 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – The Past Perfect

Blustery, and the garden is dishevelled. Blown this way and that, snatched at and barely returned, the long legged blooms bend and sway, but do not break. Well, some do, and that’s my fault. I planted them late, the Spring flowers, asking them to do what they find tough. To be asked to bloom strongly in the wrong season is definitely an ask. I can relate. But just look at them, yellow, blue, red, beautiful, the whole fricken lot of them. They cut my sky, leaping up into the cloud talk, which, they well may hear. They offer a safety to the wee birds on the feeders, protection from a sparrowhawk. She is ferocious, fast as light and accurate. I don’t begrudge her need for lunch, but I don’t want to hand out a plateful of robins, finches, sparrows or blackbirds. It is a tricky kill for her, what with all my late planted, big ass stemmed blooms. A canopy. I wish I had had one of those in my time.

Today I called The Hub. I love The Hub. T’is a new thing. Heretofore, I called an answerphone with a lengthy tiddleypom of a preamble, finalising in press 1 for this, 2 for that, and so on until my arm grew weary. Not now. It seems, after I questioned this change, that it was deemed more reassuring for those of us with cancer, to have faster access to a human voice. So spot on with that. Instead of having to stand up once the automatic voice clicks into life, I feel heard and cared for, and so will all the others with cancer surgery and treatment ahead of them like a stop. I can speak to Adam, or Karen, after no waiting at all, ask my questions and have promise of connection and response. thank You Edinburgh Cancer Hub.

I asked my questions, was confounded at a few. Now I am here, in this wonderful Autumn wildness, with candles lit and a baked potato baking. The crazy west coast light is outside of me, and yet it is not. I watch it through my windows, can connect with it as I walk out onto the colding grass, and I feel alive. This is my home. My roots are here, even though I didn’t know. And those roots are strong. Planted late, growing, regardless of that, holding sway against the winds of time. Yes.

Ps. Can you still say ‘had had’? Is that the past perfect? I was such a grammar girl, once.

September 30, 2023 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – Rings

Today I called a nurse, took my kitchen compost up to the bin, felt the wind slap dunk me, the smell of other climes, other stories, blustery like Winnie the Pooh. He was pretty cool about winds, bees and troubles and he is my guide when I feel worried about pretty much anything. Calling the nurse was just about the jojo of jags for old people, covid, pneumonia (tough spell) and shingles. I said No to shingles. She said you’ve already had it twice, which makes you more susceptible. I had thought my trusty immune system had this. No Shingles Allowed. Not so. Anyway, I now have, it seems, to check with the cancer team about everything. Those jags, a simple visit to the dentist for a teeth clean. It rings me around.

Rings. I Love rings, oh I so love rings. Rings are the firsts in my looking as I press towards a jeweller’s window, the dynamics of a ring, the gold, the silver, the copper, the rose gold, the jewels, the dynamic twist and swirl of the modern artist. It all halts my breath and my feet. I think of the meaning, the intent, the power of all that ringing around. Then I remember control and I walk on. However, I have bought rings for myself, rings I try on, now and again, but rarely hold for more than a day. What is this ring thing? Capture? yes. Oh…..maybe I rest there.

This day, the ring thinks were loud in my mind. There is no reason for it. It just came. I laughed as I recalled a day on the island ferry, en traverse to the mainland, and himself angered me beyond my reaches. I was aloud and not allowed. I was at the end of my reasonable thinking. I was done. On the upper deck of the ferry, I turned like a wild animal, and took off my wedding ring, dramatically, and threw it into the sea. It was like taking off a whalebone corset, or, in my experience, removing a liberty bodice. Ghastly things, trust me, and inaptly named for sure.

Today I was moved to check my jewellery box. I kept one ring from my mother-in-law, an eternity ring, gold band, thin as wire, with, I think, battered dark sapphires as a surround. It made me look for my own, gold with five dark sapphires for five beautiful children, and I tried both on. My own will not fit me on my wedding finger, but my mother-in-law’s slim band fits nicely. It’s loose and easy. Maybe I can wear it, bear it. Nothing on that wedding finger has ever felt easy before. Rings contain, control, or they did it my life, even as I love them. I still love them, even though I cannot wear them for long due to my perception of ring control, as if it was a restraint, which it never was. My fingers have memories, it seems and one finger in particular. As I turn the ring around, I wonder what it meant to the old girl, and I make smile. It is a lovely thing, that ring, as is my own, which goes back in the box, too small, too tight.

Thoughts of my surgery rings me around, although I distract well and keep occupied. How can it not? I have a date now, not far off and welcome indeed, because this perceived restraint, the whale-bone corset of it, the ring control, is not for eternity. The surgeon is confident, thus am I. A short period of discomfort is just a short period of discomfort, and thereafter I will celebrate my freedom every single day, in this wild place. On the return ferry voyage, as we pass the lighthouse and carve our seaway home, I will stand on the deck (not burning) and throw the ring of cancer overboard. Not in fury, as I had when sending my own wedding band down to Davy Jones, but in joy and gratitude.Today I called a nurse, took my kitchen compost up to the bin, felt the wind slap dunk me, the smell of other climes, other stories, blustery like Winnie the Pooh. He was pretty cool about winds, bees and troubles and he is my guide when I feel worried about pretty much anything. Calling the nurse was just about the jojo of jags for old people, covid, pneumonia (tough spell) and shingles. I said No to shingles. She said you’ve already had it twice, which makes you more susceptible. I had thought my trusty immune system had this. No Shingles Allowed. Not so. Anyway, I now have, it seems, to check with the cancer team about everything. Those jags, a simple visit to the dentist for a teeth clean. It rings me around.

September 27, 2023 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – Thinks on Waiting

I love this time of year. Yes, it does rain most days, but if I wait and watch, I can pick an in-between space within which to walk out with Little Boots, the wee dog. I am so not a waterproofs woman, to hell with that crackling stuff. I am frocks and bare legs and would go barefoot if the track wasn’t so sharp with stones and wotwot. The in-between times show me chiaroscuro in the wide open sky, like a light show no human could ever emulate successfully. I love the touch of cold grass beneath my naked feet each morning, the thrill of the cold, the smell of it, the fizz in my breath. I love the sound of raindrops (not on those hideous waterproofs), the soft plunk onto grass, the tinkle of it on the roof of my warm conservatory roof, like a tap dance of fingernails. I love the feel of wind in my face, the way the (cheeky sod) lifts the skirts of my frocks, all layered up now, and flaps them wet against my bare legs. I love the sound of the current nonsensically named wind as it divides the limbs of beech trees, oaks, sycamores, larch and pine. Each sound is unique to each tree.

As I move beneath the rain-laden canopy, ready to duck, a wind nudge lifts a limb out of my way. I smile and speak out my thank you. The floor of the wood is not soaked, latent fungi leaping out in oranges and reds and snowy white and danger. I don’t know my fungi, beyond the chanterelles, so I just admire, no touching. I navigate the muddy puddles, or ‘cuddles’ as my grandaughter calls them. They are too disturbed to reflect the sky and too muddy because there is traffic on this track, workers on the estate, families who live here, passing up and down just like I did, endlessly, when it was Tapselteerie and it was ours for a while.

As I head for home, the fire already merry, the afternoon beginning to lay down her weary body, to hand over to the evening, I consider all those waiting. I think of people, all people, not just those I know. Waiting for answers, waiting for buses, for appointments, for interviews, for a plate of food, for a future, for just someone to acknowledge the pains of a troubled past; for a child to be born, for someone to finally die. There’s a whole load of waiting going on in this world. The sealoch waits, I watched it do that waiting thing, as one wind puffed out and the other (Arlene???) headed towards it. I saw geese peaceful, unfluffed up. I saw a sea eagle perform in majesty so high above me as to let me know it was probably dodging ice, wings wide, slow, dip, cut the sky in half, level and return.

I waited all day yesterday to hear the results of my recent tests. I had a friend here and we both had notepads full of questions, ready, alert. Our alertness began to dive about 3pm. We couldn’t walk Little Boots together. We had to be beside the phone. No call came. So I made contact this morning and received an almost immediate return call. It’s good news. There is still a tumour, yes, we know that, but there is no second, just an extension of the original, like a tendril. All lymph biopsies are clear. Plan is to insert, under local anaesthetic (eek) a Savvy Scout, which will grab all the floaty bits, apparently. Then, a short while after that is done, surgery. I still don’t know what, as I still haven’t spoken with the surgeon, but I am not worried. I liked him, trust him, and his team. It looks like towards the end of October when all this will come about.

I know waiting is tough. For birds who want feeding, to those awaiting decisions on scary surgery. It is exhausting, and I am as tired as I was in the days of Tapselteerie. And I am also thankful. I know I have massive support and love from my family, from friends, from all of you and I cannot tell you how precious that is, in the times of worry or confusion or just plain shatter. And, this, too shall pass. Whatever comes next, I know the sensual joy of really living, of my connection to nature, of the sound of music, the lyrics of songs telling me I am not alone; of books and stories, of my own and the impact it had on hundreds of others; of this focussed and caring cancer team; of the ferry that still runs, of the rain, of the light in the sky and of the full moon, of clouds and light and the fact that I have plenty frocks all for the changing should I get caught in a deluge of cloudal tears.

‘She is one who can laugh at the things to come’. That’s a bible quote. I like it, very much. And I can wait, as long as it takes, with humour and sass, even if I have no idea of what for.

September 23, 2023 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – Tumbletast

I’ve had many thinks about mental wellbeing, since forever, in truth, even when I was just considered ‘difficult’ and ‘strange’. And I was. The tumbletast of me scooried my brain into a storm. What was/is wrong with me, I wondered. Well, everything, pretty much. But see this. I was a girl and young woman of my time, a time when everyone would only whisper the word ‘mental’ as if the head bore no relativity to the body, as if a good person, aka, someone who obliged themselves into a nothing, a bland beige, almost invisible, was a female accepted. Now, in these times, we know better, but I do think about all the rest of those who spent their whole young life paddling backwards, bowing and scraping, apologising through gritted teeth, teeth that spent the long hours of a troubled night grinding together until they lost the ability to bite.

Now that I am old and gay (woman of my times), I chuckle at my flat top teeth and all that turmoil of youth because I now know that I, and others ‘of that time’ are strong fighters, and those who didn’t survive, well, I grieve their demise. I certainly do. What I met, or, rather, who (or is it whom?) along my journey of madness, were one, two, three, maybe four encouragers, older women and men who really saw me and, what’s more, liked and respected what they saw. It wasn’t family members, probably never is, but random meets, sudden lifters, a connection, and I could feel myself begin to flower. I no longer felt like a big clod in frilly frocks and hefty boots, but, instead, a young woman, a beautiful young woman, with a voice, one they wanted to listen to. In short, they believed in me. In me? It was an astonishing moment, one I barely trusted at first, awaiting a put down, a ‘go away you fool’, but it never came. My questions were considered, valued, and answered with an upwards inflection, inviting continuation. It was heady. It was random, It was only now and then in my tumbletast but I could feel my inner spin slow to a confident hum, even to a stop. I didn’t have to be who this person wanted me to be, expected me to be. I was allowed to be myself, not that I had a scooby who that self was with her mental bits totally off piste. I felt enchanting, intelligent, bright and lively. When I laughed too loud or said something that completely missed the point, nobody laughed, but only smiled and explained, without being patronising, or showing their own need to diminish another in order to elevate themselves.

I know I hide my madness well. I know, even in these times, that I am mad. I rather like the title. I see it not as a label, but as a recognition of myself. I am who I am. We all are. And what we need, like water, is for someone, now and then, to tell us, through eyes, smiles, connection, that we are just the one they want to talk to, to collide with, right now. It may be random, a bus shelter, a queue in a post office, a doorway to a hotel in the rain, and, you know what? That is exactly when it happens. Life is such that she proffers the random, and it behoves us to clock that, no matter the rush of the moment, the have to get through, have to watch for the bus, have to check my phone, have to this, have to that.

I recommend just looking around. I recommend saying hallo, and sharing a smile, and then asking Where are you going? or Hey, I love your smile, frock, boots, suitcase, handbag, whatever. We, of our times, who have got through Brexit, Covid and the ripples from the Russian attack on Ukraine, know in our hearts that connection with other humans is our survival. Only through that do we learn about them, about ourselves, and, as we pull apart and go our different ways, we will be holding each other in our thoughts. And this is so powerful.

My randoms changed my thinking about me. I had about four, in a 70 year life, but the power they lit up in my ‘mental’, has carried me all this way, and I thank them. I wish you all the same, with all my heart. I really, really do.

September 22, 2023 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – Fire and the Kitchen Mama

Well, today was an experience and a half! I had, previously, attempted to light the Esse oil-fired range, the mama of the kitchen, the heartbeat of my home. She has been resting for many months, but, I need to know that, for my friend who will be staying here and looking after little boots (small dog), and who knows how long, that the warm kitchen mother will be a comfort and a welcome when the days snap your feet off and challenge your attitude. So I did. Light her up. She coughed and spluttered and pushed out fumes and a very small attempt at the whole Light Up thingy. I shut her down and called the calmest man on the island, who happens to be a friend, first, and second, my chimney sweep. He came. And, that may sound like a small thing but it isn’t, not here, maybe not anywhere. Those with trade skills are so in demand that they are probably old before their time and so in demand that they begin to question why on earth they didn’t try for the bar.

So, the kitchen mama cold and quiet, he came. Shall we light her, even though the last time I did it, dancing like a demented fairy, holding the oil soaked lighting whatsit and flicking the match and thinking that this may be my last moment on this earth because, although I have done this so many times before, she puffed like a dragon and made smoke and then gave me the cold shoulder and I was alone in the home. However, I am now the dancing fairy, alone and fearful and it is high time I pulled on my boots and racked up. I should probably have a question mark there. But I have lost it. So, he came, the calmest man on the island and we lit her up and oh my godness ,the flames came from everywhere and not one of them in the right place. He asked for water, as I stood like a fool, and I obliged. He delivered said water. I profered fire blanket, extinguisher, even offers to call 999. He said, it’s ok. For now. I watched the flames. Even extinguished, they lifted again. Down inside the belly of the mama, through the light hole thingy, out on the floor of my kitchen. Terrifying. But only I was terrified. He wasnt. We flapped out the flames, turned off the oil, shut everything down.

Now I have to find a heating engineer, who will be ‘too busy’, who won’t respond, who might not come. But, in my world, he just might be right there for me, before winter snaps his jaws.

September 21, 2023 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog. – Present, Alone and Safe

Oh how I love my home, the warm, cozy, safe happiness of these four stone walls surrounding me and my wee dog. Since himself upped and died, I have not felt safe here, concerned about loneliness and boredom and the fact that those who needed me, every single minute of every day, every month, every year, no longer do. It has taken all this time to be comfortable with that. At first, it felt like abandonment, I was abandoned, and I was, abandoned. I remember thinking, as each child left home, that gut twisting ouch, like a punch, that one of my beloveds had chosen to leave me. It sounds mawdling, arrogant, even, but what loving mother feels it any other way? I dont know if himself felt it too, but I do know that he still had me and that was enough for him, but he wasn’t enough for me, and that’s my raw truth. When they left, I longed to go with them, even as I knew I never could, nor would. A young life must learn through living it out, and a mother in tow was never going to be me. I knew one of those, my mother-in-law, and much as I respected and needed her, I didn’t admire her hold on himself, not once he had a wife and family. However, reflecting, this was a two way need. I get that.

It rained today. No big deal. T’is the norm in this glorious place, the wettest in the whole of the country, and that is saying something. To be the Best Wet……. goodness, demands a medal, or, maybe several medals distributed among all of we islanders, not that you would ever see them beneath the layering of wools and waterproofs. The rain can be slanty or stick straight. The clouds must be exhausted, or perhaps not. Perhaps this place is the only one offering regular employment, and clouds are fantastic creatures, lifting, shifting, colouring, turning Colgate white, spreading out their arms to each other, conjoining, merging, changing, always changing. Clouds can teach us a thing or two, at the mercy of Nigel or whatever daft and ordinary name the weather folk have decided to give a force of nature that begs no name at all. It is just a gale, I want to tell them, just a wild creature of magnificence and power, and you want to what……turn it into a small thing, a something you can label and tidy away once it has moved on? It ridiculouses me.

I finished a jigsaw, started another one. No, that’s a big fat lie. I laid out the 1000 pieces, covering most of my big oak dining table, tiny pieces, god so bloody tiny and dark, darker than the bright picture on the box. I left them overnight, studied them this morning, these pellets of impossibility, and snorted. There is no way I will, would, want to, enjoy putting you together. In fact, you are a big fat chore and I don’t want one of those. I gathered all the pieces up and returned them to the box without a moment of guilt. I shall take this one to the library. And it thinks me.

As I move beyond the loneliness and the boredom, and the pointlessness of me, I find a strength, a new confidence. Had I been the old, bored, lonely and pointless me of just a few months ago, I might well have battled with that horrible jigsaw, out of a sense of duty and because it might, just might, have filled in an hour or two. But not now. Now I can feel the amazon (not the company, but the woman) awakening. I can, and will, choose what I will do and what I will not do. 50 years of not having much choice about anything much is becoming my past. I will put myself together in a new way, even if the pieces confound me at first, and it will be I who choose the picture. And my head is full of colour and light and clouds and skies and fairies and walks in the woods. I can feel the Atlantic swell in my heart, and she calls me, the minx that she is, and I find myself yearning for that wildness, the not knowing and not understanding, the turbulence, the storms, the sudden calms, the snow geese flight overhead, the swans coming in, the autumn bluster. It all chuckles me. I am woman. I am strong and, I am rising up to laugh at the days to come for I am made of cloud, woods, ocean, light and dark, and I am here, present, alone and safe.

September 20, 2023 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – Chiaroscuro

To be honest, all I think about is cancer, the lurk of it, the silent creep. At the back of my mind, of course. because the front is dead busy being marvellous and shiny and cheerful and wotwot. I still frock up, dye my old boots crazy colours, just because. I go here, go there, do this, do that, but the murmur of it is still there, murmuring. A conversation, in fact, and, I confess to no engagement at times. I want to say Go Away and be heard, and obeyed, as if I was the school marm in this classroom tangle. Which I am, obviously, not.

What are you doing, cancer, whilst I put together a jigsaw, drive to the shop, meet a friend for lunch, as I did today? I watch her face, her mouth as she speaks, the love in her eyes, and the murmur mumbles on. Another friend, all crazy and theatre and hugs, arrives and we share a few moments of chat. Her life is not a straight line. In fact it is so wonkychops right now that I want to be there for her, but this damn murmur holds me to my chair, a grounding, four legs, no, six, beneath me, support, I suppose, but I cannot move. I am bland. Words dont even stick in my throat. They don’t rise at all. The rain blatters the windows as soup arrives. A smiling deliverer explains the what of the soup, beautifully presented. I sit across from my old friend. She is not old and neither am I, but we have known each other for decades, so ‘old’ works. Hurricane Nigel is slam-dunking the island with his (her) stormy tantrum, punching muscled fist punches of wind that suddenly tips bins, (I cleared three wheelies off the road home), tree limbs, frail people. I love this time of year. Not because of the tipping thing but because of the thrill of it. The sky is as dark as the cancer growing within me and then, in a single moment, lifted into light, the chiaroscuro a perfect delight, is a gasp in my throat.

I notice the hold a retreating season has on it’s own, as the ‘invader’ nudges, or, in this case, bludgeons in fighting, gloves up, strong after a long rest. They’ve done this changeover thing for decades, for goodness sake, but still they hold on to their moment, their time of power, of confidence and, yes, control. I get it. If a life can be divided into seasons, birth, childhood, youth, parenthood, middle age, oldness, then I want oldness again, jaunty, a dancing old woman, upsetting nobody (mostly), happy to spend hours reading, battling 1000 piece jigsaws, god help me, wandering calmly through the woods, remembering fairies, little ones cavorting like loons, sudden capture moments, the light on raindrops, the dart of a butterfly, the hum of the bees, the wild of a storm, the ebony and ivory of my piano, the flicker light of my candles, the wave and warmth of my neighbours, my home, my dog, my view of tidal flow and my watch of migration, of arriving, of leaving, of it all. In truth, I want to hold on to the season when I thought I was well and free and well.

It lurks, the cancer. I see it as darkness inside the light of me. Chiaroscuro.

September 18, 2023 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – Window Clown

I am home again after a weird but wonderful weekend. My eldest granddaughter turned 16, all excitement and hormones and friends over. I arrived on Thursday, driving Miss Pixty Forkov (feisty daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Palaver) who is throaty and fast around corners, holding the road like she owned every inch of it and refusing to let go. I am always anxious about journeys, for no good reason. I know the road, so does Pixty, and the drive is lovely as long as I can bumble along, not that my car does ‘bumble’ very happily, preferring, instead, to roar past everyone like an Arab filly. I hold her back.

On Friday I travelled by train to the hospital, grabbed a delicious pesto wrap for lunch and marched out to find a smiley taxi driver. No distance, and I was in and settled when my sister arrived, she who knows about breast cancer and has more than ‘survived’ it. We met June, a ward orderly who remembered my sister and hopes I am in Ward 6 when I go for the chop. I hope so too. We reminded her (and I think she remembered) years back, when I had asked her who cleaned the windows. They were filthy. She said, Not Me, and so I asked for a bucket and water and a cloth, climbing onto the wide sills and bringing in the light for all those brave women in rows, in beds, survivors, I hoped. On a high now, and literally, I moved along all the wards. Hallo, I am the Window Cleaner, I announced, all smiles and bucket, receiving welcome smiles from pale faces that still could lift one. As I consider my own possible time in that ward, I hope there will be a window clown for my stay.

Needles. Loads of them. Anaesthetics then biopsies, then two more markers as another dark patch, a possible cancer lump, and joined to the other one. Then a mammogram to photograph the markers. I am titanium woman now. There’s a song in there, somewhere. I await results next week, and, hopefully, a decision or, at least a suggestion as to surgery. The original lump has grown a tiny bit, and, in truth, the lump itself is barely visible to the naked eye, but because of the proximity to a nipple, and if a lumpectomy might leave me with the Ochil Hills, all ups and downs and a right frickin mess, I may choose, or they may recommend, a mastectomy. Ectomy. What does that mean?? Sometimes the fanciness of word endings makes me laugh. So much pomp and dictionary when most ordinary people just want plain language.

It is glorious to be home. To walk in the Fairy Woods, to watch the leaves fall, to notice foot tracks on the narrow track, human, male heavy, woman dance-foot, deer, dog, all of them leaving their marks on this wonderful Earth. Hazel nuts and acorns scatter the ground but no conkers, no conkers, no shiny balls of smash and clash for children. My husband, canny as you like, would soak conkers in vinegar overnight to make them hard as iron. He always won, or so he said, back in the days when there was no such thing as a ‘device’ to lure a child into a world he, or she, had no real understanding of.

The 16th party was wonderful, even as I was too tired to join in, watching through the window. The fire pit lit the night, as did the lights strung through trees. Snacks and dips were laid out as the 16s arrived, the boys and girls on the cusp of adulthood, beautiful, gangly, brazen and funny. I said hallo, then disappeared upstairs. I heard them singing together, playing rounders with a luminous ball, dashing off to hide and to seek in the big harvested field, returning for pizzas and fire poi, trying their hands at what is way more of a skill than they realised. At 11 they left, bar the girls, who slept over. Slept? No. No slepting at all. I reckon they chatted and laughed till 3 am and it reminded me of my own 16 when life was laid out like an endless and beautiful carpet, riddled with rips and tears but still laid out. I saw the ease with which my daughter and her husband talked and laughed with the 16s, having known them since toddlerhood. I remember that ease with my own kids.

Ah…… the memory of time passed is a beautiful thing. All those parties, all that confidence, all those rips and tears, all that colour, dance and light! A view from the window, now, but I will always be the clown, breasts or no breasts.

Trust me.