Island Blog

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Island Blog – The lift of memories

This needs saying too.

Although we would never have spoken this way when you were here, I am free now (and independent!) to say whatever I like to say.

I remember you, strong and lean, tanned and muscular. I do. I really do. Although for a long time I have only seen you as a difficult, sick and compromised old man, this was not always the you I remember now. You could flip my heart with just one loving look. You could melt me into soft putty. I would have fought all those who said you were no good for me and with all my weaponry. I would. I did. Even when you upset door knockerers, random visitors, anyone really who came without an invitation to our huge and freezing mansion house, even then. When I challenged your attitude later, you could turn it all around and bring me into your arms. I miss that.

Since you have left the planet, it seems that freedom is allowing my mind to open and my earlier memories to float in. They come unbidden and randomly and often very inconveniently. I suddenly find myself tearful and having to pull in when a song comes on that reconnects me with the you who, in truth, died years ago. Not that you ever went with lyrics. To hell with the lyrics, you said, batting them away like a buzz of bluebottles, I just hear the music. And you did. That is how you managed to balance so artfully the depth and dimensions of many musical instruments in the way you did. There are bands who honoured you for that skill. But me? I am a lyricist, through and through, although I do need good music behind those lyrics. If the words are great and evocative and the backing music skinny and full of electronic bips and clatters, music so obviously not composed by those who know how to physically play an instrument, then the words lose gravitas, at best and are quickly forgot.

So, images of you, bringing in the cattle, driving the sheep, recording behind your desk, all concentration and frowns, or smiling at me as we begin our escape for a break away, are coming to me now. I never thought they would. I never thought at all. We began our adventure as adventurers. Then we met Life and she tripped us up, she confounded our plans, she altered us, divided us. She didn’t mean to. We were just unprepared, two dreamers without feet on the ground that claimed us. Thus we lived on and we never ever talked about who we were in our shared past. Not once. But I can do it now and, oddly, there is a freedom without you because you would have flapped it, bluebottle style, away. I know you would. In my new life, my life without you, I am good to go, free to wander back, free to cry new tears in passing places (lay-bys for you non-islanders)for an old life so very far back in the past and yet somehow so close by now.

I am glad of it.

“Who am I, you ask?

I am made from all the people I’ve encountered and all the things I have experienced. Inside I hold the laughter of my friends, the arguments with my parents, the chattering of young children, the warmth of kind strangers. Inside there are stitches from cracked hearts, bitter words from heated arguments, music that gets me through and emotions I cannot convey. I am made from all these people and moments.

That is who I am.”

Ming Di Liu

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Island Blog – I would tell you

This is for you my one and only husband. As you know (I am sure the angels will have reminded you) today is our 49th wedding anniversary. I can barely believe either of us stuck it out for so many years. I see you smile at that. Neither of us had a scooby about such an intensely complex relationship, speaking out the vows with all that enthusiasm and emotion and blissfully unaware that things would change. That we would change, not at the same time, which was always deeply inconvenient, but singularly and fully expectant of the other to adapt immediately, without a cross word spoken. How naive we were, how trusting in our own set of plans, dreams and expectations. We said we would do it different, remember that? We would never alienate each other, never endure long periods of stony silence, never break apart, never run away, and yet we did all those things. And we survived it all. Did our children, I wonder? Do any children? They are so aware of parental strife, of tension within mother, within father, it cannot leave them undamaged. I suspect we are all damaged, bringing into all our relationships the breaks and black holes from our pasts. As much as I look for the ‘perfect’, there is none.

I would tell you these things. Today I walked beneath the rain-heavy boughs and caught the raindrops, the water from heaven. I cupped them in my hand from a delicate larch limb and drank in the rain. I watched the grey above me, saw the light over the Isle of Coll, open as a window into the sky beyond. A beckoning of light. Look, I said to you, can you see? I wonder how it looks from wherever you are now. How I look, a pinprick dodging puddles in my favourite boots. Did I tell you how hard I have looked for a repeat pair? I find them nowhere. I found five orchids beside the track, no idea what sort of orchids but that doesn’t matter to me. Pink and sudden, for they weren’t there just yesterday and to see an orchid is to find myself in some foreign land. The walk today was the short one. I find walking in the rain jacket a cumbersome sort of walk. My frocks are curtailed from their desire to swish and they mutter beneath the waxed waterproof coat thing that weighs a ton and is far from a pleasant covering. As you know, my slim puffa jacket is as ready to absorb the rain as a sponge might be, although I have donned it pre a rainy walk purely out of vanity and respect for the swish of my frocks, returning drenched.

Then I showered and changed. In other times, this would have been in anticipation of an evening out to celebrate. Not this year. I walked barefoot through the garden to pick myself some flowers and you would not believe the rose you planted some years back, the one called Wedding Anniversary, the one that has heretofore only ever produced 4 or 5 buds. This year it is heavy with blooms and I hope you can see them. And I have been remembering past anniversaries, even as I do have to dig my way back before dementia to find the happier ones. I remember you saying, we are going out at 7. I held the excitement all day long, thinking about what I would wear, what we would talk about, where we would go. You were always the best at celebrations, thinking of everything. Even during dementia years, when you could barely eat, let alone drive me somewhere, let alone walk, you could still smile up at me and I would smile back, so much said, so much unsaid.

I want to tell you I am ok. Better than that, I am doing well. I am learning how to let go and how to make myself into a whole me. I am supported, safe and warm. I am also, finally independent. I know you hated that word, fought like mad against it, but it means something different to me. Independence does not mean a person needs nobody. Oh no. We all need somebody or we die of loneliness. What I mean by that word now is that I have confidence in myself, in my choices, my actions. I take full responsibility for everything in my life and I lay no blame, not even on myself. Although there are things I would have done differently given the chance, I am proud of who I am. And I am thankful. Thankful to you for being my broken rock, for protecting me and our children in the only way you knew; for loving and living as you did and you did your best. I can see that now, for all the squawking I did along the way.

I touch your face in a photograph and remember the feel of your skin. I remember your hands, strong, warm. I remember your smile and the ice blue of your eyes, a gift to our daughter.

These are what I would tell you this day, my husband.

Maybe I just did.

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Island Blog – The Options Option

I never like being told what to do. Receiving that Tolding, I feel trapped. Trapped with No Options. This Tolding person is not asking me if I want to or even can do the thing he or she just barfed out and I am required to catch it whether I like the shape, smell, story or point of it. I am forcibly contained within four walls, either of the home, the relationship, the school, the playground or the workspace. Limited, big time. No, not limited, because limited suggests an option, even if that option option is as thin as web or as elusive as a down feather in the wind. Trapped describes more accurately.

As children we are required to cope with a deal of confusion when someone at least 4 feet taller than we are tells us what to do. It’s like smoke, pervasive and choking and equally confounding. We cannot see our way through this confusive smoke. We want to run, but to where? We are confounded, surprised, upset and paralised. But we move, we go, we do, because we trust the Tolding person and we do not, yet, trust our young selves. As we grow to adulthood, we may believe we can now, at last, decide for ourselves as to whether or not we obey like slaves. Bizarrely, a great many of us do not grab that option of independent thinking, nor do we grow appropriate courage nor the legs to stand firm when we do not agree with an order. How come? We saw our own parents barking orders quite the thing for a whole childhood and we are now old enough to be parents ourselves. But infuriatingly still we find ourselves running to obey doctors, accountants, lawyers, people-behind-desks, ministers, husbands, wives, teachers, and many many more. We might even obey without realising we obey. What I mean by that is when we find ourselves in a situation wherein we feel obliged to someone, duty bound to someone, owing a debt to someone; guilty around someone. and we do their bidding regardless of how it makes us feel. I could go on, but I won’t.

Options, that’s the ideal. And to know that we have options. Okay, so let’s pretend we know we have options, anywhere, everywhere, with anyone, anywhere, anytime. I like that. But if I am not prepared, and a trigger authoritarian figure commands the daylight, throwing me into shade, I will perform as an automaton. I will react as I have always reacted, confounded, blinded by their command of smoke, puzzled and wanting to run but stuck to the ground. So what is this ‘know’ thing, the one that sings us options? Perhaps she comes all angel like, winged up and offering freedom and and acceptable refusal to comply. Well, she might. But I cannot get a hold of her.

I am learning, through intensive study and research that the most influential mind control is birthed in childhood. And, I get it. These imprints on my mind will always be there and, unless I bother my butt to look at them, allow them and then release them, they will always and forever influence my behaviour and my knee-jerk reaction to current triggers. I may not remember each incident in childhood when I had to obey or face dire consequences, as fact, but I will always remember how those times made me feel, and at that time when I had no voice/no choice I remember feeling hurt, lost, dismissed, rejected, ignored and judged.

Well who didn’t! Maybe that should have been a question, but trauma in childhood, no matter how we brush it away in comparison to someone else’s appalling abuse and cruelty, is real, hence the lack of a question mark. The good news is that options are an option. Just ten years ago, depression was ‘all in your mind’. Now we know different. So many of our ‘now’ behaviours and reactions to others stem from those early days, not because they remind us of the actual events, but because we remember how we felt. So what to do? I believe there is only one way if anyone wants to stop feeling judged, criticised, put down, rejected or mocked. And it is simply Research. There are a zillion books out there now, penned by those who have found a way to shake off their past. We also know now that trauma does not just relate to soldiers coming back from war, or abused children, women, men. You don’t have to have witnessed something terrible. What was once brushed off as nothing much, or all in your mind, now has a spotlight on it. It could be a fear of being alone in the dark, a cold mother, a derisive grandmother or primary school teacher. It could be bullying, marginalisation because you had to wear specs aged 4 and everyone laughed at you. It could be you took ages making a gift for a mother who laughed and handed it back. Do Better. It could be anything. It is, without question, trauma for a child, and the feelings of shame, rejection, hurt and judgement will never leave no matter how long a life you live. What happens is that when someone meets the same feelings as a result of an encounter in the adult world, the welter of emotions is overwhelming. It seems bizarre. We talk it down and scurry on in the same old shoes. But if we want something to change then that change is not external. It is within.

And this is why it is so vital to prepare. preparation is everything. It isn’t about a clever rebuttal, nor a running away, and all about doing the inner work. I know it. I do it. It is the only road to the Options Option.

Trust me.

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Island Blog – Flip-Scoot, and Go Scotland

I wake this morning to a great big thump outside my wide-open window. It is about 04.30 and light. Ish. I scoot out of bed, tripping over the tome I had been reading the night before and falling into the curtains. Fortunately the window is recessed and the curtains have the added gravitas of a black-out lining, affixed by myself I might add amidst a symphony of robust swearing. The whole scoot performance was definitely stage worthy and, once I have recovered from the giggles, I look out to see what sort of flapdoodle might require my proactive attention. Hawk strike perhaps? No, too heavy for that. Might be something falling over like a bird table or even a landslide, although no, it can’t be that. This was a major thump, not a frickadee tumble. I keen around the corners bumping my nose against the pane. There’s nothing to see, not even the birds, I having scared them away with my tome tripping. What I want to find, I tell myself as I rub my bumped nose, is something wonderful, like a heffalump fallen from the skies, or a whole angel with wing trouble, or a huge waterproof book I could read in the garden whenever I feel like it.

Disappointed and with my fed rightly up, I swing my cosy dressing gown around me and trip (not that sort of trip) down the stairs counting every one as I always do. There are 17. I plug in the coffee and flip on the radio. There is a great big star in the Western sky. What? We see no stars in summer. Venus is ahead of herself, if, indeed, it is She.

Then I think, what if that great big thump was a star falling? Obviously not in my wee garden because even at 04.30 I would notice a crater and smell the smoke dust. But maybe nearby? Stop it, I tell myself, coffee. We sit, coffee and me and study the possible Venus. The star is not the usual shape. This is more like a circle of brilliant white light and fixed, not moving. It is there for about 30 minutes, then gone. Could be cloud cover, could be magic, could be nonsense, but I know it is not the latter two. I know what I see when I see it.

So what was the heffa-thump? I, as always, scurry about inside my Alice brain to find resolution. I don’t care about so called realistic or rational thinking which, in my opinion is culture enforced and designed to control imaginations. I am one who works between the worlds, which is also nonsense now I come to write that down. There is no disconnection between the imagination and the logical brain. Fact. There is no disconnection between the spirit and physical world. But there are many who would have us believe that, thus marginalising the ones who effortlessly move between the two. Like me. I would not have been horrified to find a heffalump nor a fallen angel in my garden this morning. I don’t think I would have minded a fallen star not neither, although the mess might have required me to employ the services of a landscape gardener. The former two could have become my friends and just think of the stories they could tell, and the latter would have saddened me, made me think a deal about the poignance of a dead star and then had me with a bellyful of conversational material for years to come.

I move through the day, crossing the dapple mosaics of sunlight through branches, watch a mother warbler shout at me from her branch whilst her babies squeaked from within the safety of the nest. I don’t understand ‘bird’ but I got her point and moved on. I notice the way a spring seeps from the bank above me, rising from deep deep deep in the ground. I watch the trickle of of it through the cadmium grasses, the way they bend politely to let this ancient being pass, step over the outfall and wish the ancient safe journey, apologising for the way humans decide to plant a track, or build a home without a single thought for the ancients. Then I smile. Good for you old y’uns. You can suppress, break, contain and silence them, for a time. But they will rise, the deeply rooted. Always.

I never did discover the origin of the big thump. However, I did reflect on my current tome and was reminded of a recent chapter, based in County Cork where, like here, it rains for 300 of our yearly allowance of days, and wherein the chimney pot, exhausted and ancient, just decided enough was enough with the whole wheezing puffing thing and which, in all its brick and stone marvellousness finally capitulated to the inevitable and made a big show of itself on a quiet night when windows were wide open (for the midges) to land like a startling statement on the front lawn. Perhaps I was replaying the exhausted chimney thing. I will never know.

I like that. And PS, Go Scotland!!

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Island Blog – Turbulence, Calm and Letting Be

Good heavens how life can tumble us! One minute I am tootling aboot inside my ordinary and the next I hear news of someone mid turbulence. It slams me to the wall and I can feel my breath hold as I try to make sense of the shock. It is not easy for me inside my ordinary to completely get what they are going through. How can I? I am not who they are; I don’t live in their home, have their concerns or know their joys. As I peel myself off the wall and breathe out, I find myself pacing a bit as if my pacing a bit will create a map that leads me to a solution, to the beyond of their sadness. But all I can see is a load of disconnected squiggles, in my ears the sound of another heart breaking.

It thinks me. Do we, do I, believe that the easy and ordinary days will always be here, holding us up, boring us to distraction, keeping us safe? Well, no. If I look out upon the natural world (interesting that we as humans appear to be separate from the ‘natural world’) there is nothing but turbulence with spots of calm. It is a constant whirlwind out there. There is life, there is death. There is freedom and there is entrapment. There is safe and there is danger. Nature understands herself and she has left us far behind. As I walk beneath the sky-tipping trees I stop awhile amongst the snatch-shadow of limbs, wind-buffeted. Shadows do not lie before me like palm branches for my walking. No, they are dinging about like disco dancers in a frenzy and the mud track lights and darkens strobe-like. The sky-tipper branches create mosaic of the blue sky, moving, shifting, dancers in the wind, waving their arms like longing mothers welcoming children home. Come to me, come to my arms, my mother warmth, my love. I can make everything better for you.

I hear the songs. Pines shoosh, beech leaves clatter and click, hazels and willows whisper. A whole symphony with the wind as conductor. I walk alone but I am not alone at all, not if I mindfully engage with everything I see, hear, smell, touch or taste.

Today it might be still. Today it may only be for those tree intuits to hear the voices of the trees and the soft wave sound of the wild grasses. Or, there might be a raging red blooded hooligan who decides, well, I am bored, It’s Thursday (Thor’s Day #God of Thunder) and I just fancy a rampage. I confess I never know. Himself always did. Batten the hatches, he would say. Bring in the sunshine chairs. I walk now clueless but mindful and noticing and curious and I am learning to connect as he did. I don’t know all my clouds. I don’t understand the sky formations that formation over me but I am learning.

I remember turbulence and calm. Turbulence was the norm and calm the odd moment, so that my ordinary days showed up as turbulence. I got the hang of it. In fact, I rather liked it. There was never anything boring about turbulence. I knew the language, met it head on in doorways and grew strong in myself, in the confidence of my elastication, my bounce back and I was strong enough to adapt and to resolve. Children returning from school brought turbulence, a hooligan, a hurricane of limbs and shout. I learned how to bring them down. Not literally, although it has been known. No, it was more about allowing, noticing, being patient and kind and a whole load of letting go.

In my now life, most of the turbulence is within. I argue with myself about who I am now, what is my purpose, where am I going, if anywhere and, if there is a ‘where’ left, how the hell I get there. There will be an answer, or answers, of course. To look back with a smile and with thankfulness across a long expanse of a life shared, of memories burgeoning with colour, sounds, sights and experiences, is crucial. The smile, I mean. Although there are things I think I would have done differently was it possible to address those situations with my now head (impossible) I am not burdened by regrets. I am practical, after all. I know it is a fool’s errand to imagine I could change anything in the past. I also know how possible it is to change things in the present and that is exciting. Playing around with frock-layering, tapestry landscapes, baby playmats, music, TED talks, audio books, walks in the wild, albeit each one worked on in solitude, gives me great pleasure. Within each activity I may be alone with my thoughts and memories but when I step into one of those memories I find the young woman I was, one who achieved so very much and who was so damn lucky in life. She always landed on her feet. She was loved and respected. She was good at negotiating with turbulence and she was kind. Quite a list. Now she needs to be kind to herself, the hardest thing for all of us because our inner critic appears to be in good voice. I have no clue why we listen to that voice above the other softer, kinder, more understanding voices, but we all do it.

So, frocked up, music on, sun up, rain down, I look sideways. I was never a fan of Either and Or. There is a vast expanse of opportunities between those horns and even if I must needs pay attention to the instant way I default to either this or that thinking, I won’t give up. I know I cannot sort everyone’s life out and I also know that they can and will. I begin from here. And the best I can do for those whose lives I would dearly love to put back in a happy order, is to just be there for them and to let be.

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Island Blog – Rain, Alice, Getonwithit and no Cat

This morning as I rise from my sleeping quarters at some ridiculous hour I decide that enough is enough. From the moment I stumbled into the bathroom I knew it at gut level. This day is going to be my return to Getonwithit. I know the place well, have lived for lengthy periods of time within its borders during my long life and it offers considerable sustainability and protection. Its gardens are beautiful, long expanses of emerald grass tonguing into the distance, borders fragrant and blowsy with blooms in every colour of the palette; pretty arbours and trellises of clambering beauty, falling like waterfalls to brush against my cheek as I wander through. Birds flit and flutter among the shrubs and trees, butterflies of every hue, bees and other winged buzzy things sip nectar from open-mouthed blossoms, backlit by the nurturing sun, their stripes and wing patches painting magic on the garden canvas. I can wander all morning here, sit to rest on a garden bench whilst my eyes go deeper into the foliage to see more and yet more of nature’s life. In the evening I can watch the light fade to dark, the sun dip beyond the horizon, feel gentle sleep nudge at my edges.

The trouble is that my stay is limited and never long enough. The double trouble is that I am the one who decides to leave, my edgy gypsy wandering mind becoming bored of all this wonderfulness, for no reason the rest of me can explain, and clamouring for the bark and bite of everything harsh and difficult. From simple not-thinking to complex over-thinking. I blame my parents.

So, this morning I considered a few things. Swinging from Getonwithit with all its simplicity to Questions Without Answers is a waste of my resources. The key is to think Child. I had forgotten her, the wee Alice, the one who keeps falling down habit holes, sorry, rabbit holes, and who accepts a smile without a cat as if that’s completely normal. I find her. She is sitting on the stairs, half way up, half way down and I almost ping to the bottom in a tripcartwheel. I start a bit but I am happy she hasn’t abandoned me, me with my edgy mind. How patient she is, I smile to myself and myself rolls her eyes. Children, I remind myself, get on with it. They may not like the things they are ordered to do. They may not like living along the lines of a rule book they had no say in, but in the main they find fun in their lives. That is what Getonwithit shows me when I am there and this morning I am going back. Myself eyes me, knowingly.

It rains today and blows a hooligan. Stripes of heavenly water cut my window panes into slices and the wind batters the seedlings. Petals flee, birds scoot backwards and walking folk look like kites as they pass, their waterproofs flapping out behind them like wings. Dogs drench, woodpiles sigh and soften, the sky frowns and dumps on us. I can go back to Questions with no Answers, to a droop, to gloom, to the whom I had allowed myself to become recently, or, and this is my choice, I can remember Alice and fun and Getonwithit. So I do, we all do. Me, the dog-about-to-drench, Alice, and the rain, join as one this afternoon as we walk out into the wild, lowering beneath the wet beech leaflimbs , dodging the puddles, smelling the rain, the lovely scent of newfall . And there is a smile in the branches as we wander.

No cat.

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Island Blog – It’s okay that it’s not okay

I could have said that better, my English tutor would have told me, her huge bosom leaning over me so that the whole room went momentarily dark. I can still smell the tweedy smell of her fitted (very well fitted) jacket and hear the scritch-scratch of her thickly nylon-ed thighs as she travelled the distance to my desk, then home again jigetty-jig to the safety of her chalk blown upfront tutor desk. And she is right, was right then. I am very thankful for my English tutors down the ages, who challenged my brain to dig deep for words, old words, old ways of saying, poetically, what turned into street talk. Not that I mind street talk at all, for it has rhythm and beat to it and I am ever the dancer. But when writing it is important for me to stretch my brain, to find a way of saying an ordinary thing in an extraordinary way.

Forward to the point. I honestly believed I had got away with it, the grieving thing, this widowhood thing. At first, I felt only relief. 10 years of caring for a big man who was slowly falling away, was horrible, even though he himself was always positive no matter the declination. His peaceful and accepting dying brought relief to him, to all of us. I thought, maybe this lovely gentle leaving after all those years of angst and battle (on my part) would rub out the horrible, like my old India rubber did for my spelling mistakes. A foolish thinking. Here I am two months off the anniversary of his death and everything hurts. A bird caught in a fence (thankfully freed and flown), a child crying, the hearing of someone else’s pain, the fact that the stairlift has stopped working, the leaks in my ceiling, the stubbing of a toe en route to the wood pile. Sharp as needles, these ‘small’ things that were okay are not any more. I tell myself I am doing okay, that this is normal, that it will pass and myself rolls her eyes and goes “ya-di-ya”. What did we say before ‘ya-di-ya’ I wonder?

I know of others. Those who, since the Covid lockdown and the fear and fallacy this past year and more has brought to us, are scared of going out, unsure if they actually want to do the going out thing at all. I know I can be confounded at the gate of my gypsy home, in the so called middle of nowhere, if I see walkers moving up the tiny track on their way to Tapselteerie and her wild delights, her vision, her stretch right out into the Atlantic Ocean. And I pull back, hide, wait. This happening-to-us thing is what is happening to us. And, although it feels thoroughly not okay, it has to be okay. Our clenched teeth, our fears, our resulting flip into nowhere, well, owe have to find a landing. I haven’t yet, even here, even in this free, gentle land, and if I haven’t then how the heck is it for those who have survived in cities? I have no answer for that. Only respect.

And then there is the grief. Not mine, not just mine but the everyman, everywoman grief because it is loud in my ears and a strong part of the music that sentient composers will play into our future days, in our remembering days. As will poets and novel writers with their prose. They are working on it now, this omg (sorry) in our lives and they will come up bright, intelligent and colourful, I just know it.

Till then, I, and hopefully you, have family, siblings, kids, grandkids who lift us into ourselves, the ones we knew so well a year and then some ago. They are still with us as we are with them. This connection is rooted and unbreakable. Friends too, formed way back or even more recent. Roots grow quick and they need to.

I am thankful. I am broken. I am me. And, I am okay that I’m not okay.

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Island Blog – Darkling grey, Gulls, Chips and Walking together

Rain soft morning, grey enough for the gulls to look like white-light dancers as they cut the sky, wheel, cant, tip and slide, effortless flight like they belong which of course they do. I watch with yearning. They make flight look so easy and their beauty erases the memory of fearsome beaks and stolen chips. I once sat on the harbour wall with chips and within seconds was every gull’s friend. They are massive close up and not very white and sky cutting once their big yellow webbed feet slink closer with a look of black intent in their currant eyes. A sideways step becomes a menace when flanked as I then was and I confess I did elevate my butt, moving it and the rest of me back into the safety of a tourism crowd.

However from my big picture window I can dream. I can watch the spike flight, the lift and luff of not-white currant-eyed, yellow footed gulls become snowy dancers against the grey rain sky and smile. We are miles apart after all and there’s this big picture window keeping me safe from beaks and chip snatchers. I watched the grey and the soft rain all morning, the way it slides my window into smoke, the garden bird colours losing their integrity, becoming a brush stroke flow and return as they flit from feeder to feeder. I sewed a bit, noticing the pinks of this baby girl playmat dulling somewhat. Oh, I thought. These pinks were brighter yesterday. And then I remembered art school. Everything affects everything. On dull grey days in Falkirk (plenty of those) even the primary colours were confounded. We can’t work with this, they said and refused to flow freely from their tubes. The grey weather (is it yellow grey or blue grey?) is sending you, art student, into a dithery looking thing. Concepts, precepts, upsets and greyness are colluding to confine you. It is the real artist who can rise from this, who can utilise whatever is on offer this grey day. I am thankful for those grey Falkirk days. Others might, and did, shake their heads and head for the pub on such grey days. But I wanted to learn, not just how to work with grey days but more, how to walk beside the grey, to have that conversation, and not to turn away. To engage with the grey and to find the colours within, the ask of colour, the beg for it, to take flight.

Life. Yes? It thinks me. Whilst walking beneath the grey soft rain, which I love because rain enhances colour in everything. An upside down electric blue beetle , a feather caught in branches, leaves, speedwell blue, buttery cups, the honey back of a bumble bee, the float and breeze flow of wild grasses, the imprint of horse hooves in sucky mud, even the shine on my jack boots, so much glisten. If I am looking I will see. If I am aware, present, engaged, I will find the art. When I look back on the gull thing, I know that, had I not felt watched by the crowd of tourists, I might well have stayed my ground. I wish I had. I wish I did not give a hoot about being watched. However, I was right in front of an outside cafe and there is only one way to look when the sea beckons and there I was, sat sitting on the harbour wall plus chips. Plus gulls.

In the grey lies endless opportunity. I tell myself that and myself knows it to be the truth. Grey is my life right now, of course it is. When a life goes into grey it has options. Think grey, dive in or flipping don’t. I’m a flipping don’t sort of woman. Even as I flounder and plod, wonder and dither, fill up endless hours with a this or a that, I know that this grey has colours. It isn’t that I must needs grow beyond grey because that says grey is dull and grey is far from dull. To make good grey on an artist’s palette I must bring in rose madder, cadmium red, ultra marine, cadmium yellow, maybe, cobalt, maybe, plenty maybes’ to be honest. Just a touch, just a tiny touch and everything changes. Just like life. I am working with the grey, looking deep into the eyes of it, the currant eyes, and saying, I am not afraid of you. In fact, I like you. Shall we walk together?

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Island Blog – Outfit, Outflit

One morning I awaken with a lightness in my step once I have connected my feets with the new carpet, found my ground and elevated into my height. I know it isn’t a dizzy height, but it is mine and I know where I start and where I end and that is completely fine with me. It is also reassuring, because the frocks in my wardrobe only fit the me I know and were the me I know to grow or diminish overnight, we would both be confounded, the frocks and me. Thankfully, this scenario only belongs in one of my fiction stories, the ones where worlds merge because some eejit has found a portal into another one and gone through leaving everyone else behind wondering whether or not said eejit will be home in time for tea. I have yet to be that eejit despite locating portals all over the place. Moving on.

I decide on an outfit. It is quite a sassy one for me, given that I have chosen full flowing billow-skirts for a longtime. It is cooler this morning, circa 10 degrees and I needs must address the coolth #scottishword. Pantaloons of a black and white scarpy slash pattern, elasticated just below the knee; long tee-shirt beneath longer frock in an arguing design; overlay, a thin unequally hemmed jersey, also not matching and a wrap-around tartan knee-length skirt fashioned from almost the same amount of fabric required for a kilt, which is, for the sassenachs, about 20 yards in old money. I need safety pins to secure the connecting lengths having lost weight since being widowed. I blame Himself for that. The finishing touch is a bead belt, hip hugging yet loose and well, quite the thing. I pose before my old cracked mirror and think, Yes, You Will Do, and scoot down stairs for a boiled egg.

It takes only 30 minutes for me to realise this outfit is not a long term thing. The bead belt keeps shucking up to my waist and I can bear nothing around my waist. Then the safety pins ping apart and stick my skin. I sit down to eat my breakfast and the skirt tangles with my body. The underneath tee rumples quietly beneath the frock and I now look like an un-made bed. I tolerate and breathe deeply. I know, as does my sassy outfit and my mirror that I will be seeing no-one today, not one soul and that this is all about me and how I feel about me, but that is not what confounds me, is not the thing that twirls me fastly back upstairs to wheech the whole thing off in a rather dramatic fling and to begin all over again with a more considered approach. No. It is that moment I need a pee. The undoing process of wrap around skirt, safety pins, layered tee beneath frock and pantaloons, no matter what the flaming pattern, all conspire to confound and I know when I am beat. T’is now. My dressing up is not working today.

It thinks me, reminds me of happy happy girl days and my absolute favourite of all games. Dressing up. My mum had a chest, or trunk filled to busting with outfits and these outfits were not made of paper or plastic. They were sewn quality and lasting and beautiful. I was Gypsy, my favourite, and mum would darken my face to a Norfolk tan with her powder (she was able to take dark, unlike freckled white skin me) and affix the hoop earrings somehow and I would flash my eye whites into the moment and dance and jingle the bracelets and anklets for hours. I also recall being the fairy, the clothing white and laced and cotton and fitted and beautiful and with wings. There was a sailor outfit but I ignored that one. I became the gypsy then, or the fairy. My friend Angela had to be queen and as I was not even remotely interested in being a monarch there was no contest. I remember watching her walk across the grass on a summer afternoon, straight-backed and completely absorbed in her queen-ness whilst I finagled around the shadows planning gypsy/fairy anklet jangling mischief. It worked for a long time. I think it still does.

So, after the wheeching myself out of the conflictions of an outfit that looked frickin great as long as I would spend the entire day standing still before my cracked mirror, I move towards my frock wardrobe with both interest and trepidation. I don’t want to lose the devil-may-care-let’s-astound-the-wildlife thingy but I do want to be able to move freely. Moving freely is a big thing for me. If I feel contained at any point on my body or in my mind I have this desire to explode. I haven’t done it yet and it could be messy but I am super aware of the exploding gene that figgles about in my DNA and which, if DNA could encompass feelings, would show in my ancestry, I am certain. So, choosing not the sameold and yet poking about with fingers of curiosity, I locate a layering option. Let’s try you, I say, kindly, because I am aware that this particular underlayer has not seen light of day for a while. It is quite hard to get it right for my mood, I say, muffled beneath the foof of the material as it falls over my head and lands around me. We look at each other, the underlayer and me. We agree. Okay so far. I go back again to the dark depths of the wardrobe and flip the hangers along. No, no, maybe but no, hmmm, okay, how about you? I can hear the excited squeak and I love it even as all my abundant frocks know the rules. I hate to disappoint but this may not be your day. Once selection is made I can go about my business. I still will meet nobody, and the frocks know this but together we swing through the day, through the ups and downs and all is well in our world.

I did wonder, only this morning, does everyone else have this much fun in such ordinary moments?

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Island Blog – Touch only Rain

Rain, at 0400 is a sigh, a shake of my head, a slump in my gut, yet I know the flowers need it so and it makes a pretty mist picture-coat on my window pane. The sky is heavy with it, with rain, fat pregnant greys all lined up like women at an anti natal clinic, emitting rain. The morning seems just fine with it. There’s no sense of disapproval, no cross words flitting across the in between where humans like me are earthly bound and at the whim of weathers. The birds don’t mind enough not to fly, to swoop down for soggish seed and to rise up again quickquick into shelter, although it is not from the rain they hide. I sit on the other side of the window, watching rain. My phone app tells me in an inappropriately luminous yellow that there is an 100% chance of rain the live long day and I slump again. What is all this slumping? Well, I don’t know. Perhaps I am bemoaning the loss of those recent balmy summer days, the ones we recently enjoyed on our rain-sodden island. Our summer could already be over. We all know that. We are well known for being sodden, have been rain sodden for about 600 years give or take and we are also well known for going completely bonkers on sunny days, completing gargantuan tasks in record time like re-roofing a hotel, landscaping a 20 acre garden or building Gran a bungalow by tea-time, foundations and all. Or perhaps this slump is that I am thinking of another’s tears.

The wood pile is rained wet but the wood pile has no care of such a minor incursion. This wood grew from sapling right here on the island after all and has rain in its DNA. It burns regardless, wet or dry, no smoking. No bees though. Bees don’t like to fly in rain. I imagine them all peeping out through that tiny hole watching the clouds and needing a sugar rush. Buzz buzz, not yet ladies. How’s Her Majesty? She’s fine the old bat and who wouldn’t be with all that royal jelly plus, if you don’t mind, 1000 nurse bees at her every whim whenever she fancies whimming?

Gulls cut the sky looking white as newborn snowflakes against the greys, lazy, leisurely, nae rush at all, whilst other colours sharpen and shout new defiant music into the sleepy air. Rain turns ferns apple green. Moss and lichen lift into shades of Ochre, Sienna, Olive and prick tears to my eyes, Granite rocks divide into maps of the world, the cracks darkling with wet. There, the Mason Dixon Line, here, the continent of Africa minus Angola and over there, Iceland, more or less. Rhododendron leaves are polished to a sheen. My face drips as I walk and the little dog grows ever mud coloured. Puddles big enough to bathe in squat along the track, rain plash hiding tree reflections beneath its surface. Come another day reflections, for this day has no time for such gob-smacking indulgence. Mirror another day, bring out the cameras, click, post, marvel, compete, Like. We raindrops are legion and extremely busy watering the flowers and pissing people off. In short, we are having fun rumpling puddles and filling the wellies of anyone who stands still too long. We are chewing up the mud for the spreading, clarting the roads with it and sinking the baleful cows up to their knees as they wait to grab mouthfuls of hay before it becomes insulation for wall cavities.

Diamonds shiver at the tips of weeping larch, hundreds of them, thousands, perfect pear drops of heavenly water held in stasis, catching the light, on hold until it is their turn to fall into the mud. Still, it is surely a wondrous thing to be a light catching water diamond even once in a lifetime. Rain popples the sea-loch, lifting, luffing, tickling the surface until it giggles. A single heron stands as if on water, still and patient. Beneath a spread of hardwoods, beech, chestnut, elm, birch and ash, their branches lowed with rain weight, the ground glows liquid green, a molten gold carpet of Creeping Buttercup and Lady Elizabeth poppies. Even the wheelie bins gleam bright.

I remember rain, as slump and lift, as promise and disappointment, as joy and sadness. Rain, tears; Rain diamonds; Rain liquid life; Rain skid death; wash clean, wash away, wash out; I remember the joy of rain and the unjoy of it. Walking in the rain helps to shift a slump even if I cannot stop thinking of the family who will reach arms out to a beloved pet this day and touch only rain.