Stories

Daily wonderings of an untamed mind…

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Island Blog 56 – Half-Remembering

Island Blog 56

 

Rising from a dream I bring half a name from another world.  One half of a name is no use to me, not lying in this bed with morning singing at me in blackbird.  I try to reach back to find the other half, but it is too late, the gate has swung shut and I am on the outside of the dreamworld for another stretch of daylight hours.  When I resume this position later on tonight, it may be another door I go through and that half of a name will be waiting for a girl who won’t show up.

Not this night anyway.

All morning I try to remember, as I go through the daily round of husband-dusting, dish washing, floor cleaning, blog writing.  My head is full of daylight things such as What’s for Lunch and What time is it and How do I upload photos from my fancy phone with orange surround and a tailor made screen cover to cover the screen?   From time to time I remember that I am trying to remember a half-remembered name, and then, like dust, it is gone again, breaking up into tiny motes and landing in someone else’s eye.  I can’t see it any more so I should probably give up.

But I don’t give up easily.

That name belonged to somebody, somebody that played a part in my dream.  The fact that the dream itself never travelled the distance from dreamlight to daylight doesn’t seem to bother me at all.  It’s the name I want.

Who was it that tried to come with me as I journeyed between worlds?  And why does it matter so much?

As I fed the birds this morning, in a warm spring wind, I asked the sheep if they knew, but they just stared, mid-munch.  I don’t suppose ‘mattering much’ is easily translated into sheep.  A bit long-winded and fancy when all you ever say is ‘Baaa’.  To be honest, I would have fallen straight into the corn barrel if one of them had said……How interesting……let me give it some thought.

All afternoon I look out at the hills, the cloud shadows moving across their winter flanks, in search of inspiration.  I watch the gulls spin over the rumpled sea-loch and hear their cries, not one of any help to me.  The washing machine whines in endless circles, but there is no answer there.  Gradually, the half name dwindles and I fear I will lose it altogether, so I write it down on a snatch of rough paper and fix it with a sea stone, garnered from a jewelled shore after high tide.  Perhaps I think the stone will stop it blowing away, this half name.

I read it out.  Means nothing to me, makes no sense.  I feel no tug from any harbour in my mind and I know I must accept that this name has no desire to be found.  Not yet.

Soon it will come again, the dreamlight, when candles can be lit and the wood burner coaxed into soft flames and I will sit beside them all, and watch their echoes dance across my wine glass.

And I will wonder if this night will lead me back to that same door, behind which a half-remembered name waits for me.  Perhaps, this time, with a face.

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Island Blog 55 – Islands

Island Blog 55

This bank holiday whilst the whole world basked in barbecued sunshine, we took on the rain.  We’re nice like that up here on the west coast.  Our coats are shinier and fluffier than everyone else’s and our skins softer, more luminous.

It’s the rain what does it; that, and the lack of hectic streets and hypermarkets and flat-down pavements so you don’t trip over.  Our pavements are all wonky, because the land is wonky, although in the nicest possible way. We know how to get around things up here like big rocks and slip-down cliffs and difficult situations.

There is something lost in a life where all is perfect.  Wifi connections flow effortless as water and buses arrive on time. Supermarkets never run out of chicken legs on a Friday afternoon and the papers are delivered on time.  The smallest thing can throw a person, almost over backwards.  I’ve seen it with my own eyes.  A door is left unlocked, a school bag forgotten and you would find yourself looking round for an Apocalyptic Horseman.

I watch, in astonishment, this organised, orderly, efficient, calm person turn into a firework display….. and I want to say:

What on EARTH is the fuss about?  But I don’t.  It might be dangerous.

Instead, I go back to the people who make little fuss about anything much.  I don’t mean to imply we all live here under the lowest possible standards, oh no indeed!  Quite the opposite, in fact. But the approach to miniature disasters, such as catching the snake-winding bus into town and discovering on arrival that one is without purse, never seems to bring on a hissy fit, but, instead, a way round it.  There will be someone in town who will lend a tenner with a smile to go with it and a chuckle at how daft one is becoming as one ages, and someone else, again, to buy a frothy coffee.  Then, lighter laden that we thought we would be, we pop onto the returning bus, some hours later, to share the merry tale all over again with the other passengers. By the time we arrive back in the village, we are short on groceries and long on laughter.

Perhaps that’s the key.  Perhaps, although we live on an island, we are not islands ourselves. And before you say it, this has diddlysquat to do with location.  I remember finding just such teamwork in a block of flats in Glasgow.  Downstairs baked pancakes, brought them upstairs, and upstairs helped carry heavy shopping in and made a cuppa.  Mid-stairs was a bit distant, but we could hear her, all of us, upstairs and down, in her high-heeled boots as she marched over her wooden floors with many miles to go before sleep.

It isn’t that things come too easy that make us over-react when they go wrong.  It’s the fear we will be alone in facing it.

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Island Blog 54 – All Roads Lead

Island Blog 54

 

I had arrived as a surprise.  My daughter met me in the hallway and we hugged and exchanged greetings.  A little voice from deep inside the house asked ‘Where is Granny talking from Mummy?’ and we both laughed, as did the little girl once she found me.

I could have been using skype as my road, or the house phone on loudspeaker.  Her last thought was that she would round the corner and find me standing there.

But there are many roads we cannot see, such as a span of years or a scene from the past.  We can only find a shape to those inside our imaginations, and no two imaginations will find the same route, although the destination is the same.

Driving Miss Daisy the other day, through the wintry  island wasteland,  I pointed out a wonderful stone formation, obviously man-built as support for the rise of a narrow track, that wound its way down towards the Atlantic shoreline.  There was not a drop of mortar holding it together, but only the skill of the dry stone builder.

We considered the time when this track would have carried man and his animals, and nothing weightier than a pony and cart loaded with hay or feed for the hungry animals. We could hear in our imaginations, the slow march of a day long gone by, the lowing of the cattle, the call of a ewe to her lambs, the odd shout or whistle of the shepherd, and the bark of his dogs.  For a moment we could count the day in hours, smell the changing seasons, according to the rise and fall of the sun, or the flow and ebb of the moon tides.

But our pictures would have been very different.

Sometimes in the clipping season, or when the ewes are brought in for dosing, the hill road from the little town grinds to a halt. The local shepherdess is gathering her flock and calling for them to follow her, through the open window of her truck.  Those of us forming an ever-growing snake are required to dig for patience as we lurch and stall in the wake of a hundred woolly legs. There is no opportunity to overtake, and no possibility of speeding up.

Some of us click our tongues and roll our eyes impatiently.  Some of us smile, knowing we have arrived in an afternoon where time is not the issue, and to hurry along would be to risk lambs becoming separated from their mothers. And we can notice, at this slow pace, the first buds on the heather, the marsh harrier overhead, the way the clouds change and reform into new shapes above the gentle roll of the hills.  We can catch the soft calls to ‘follow!’ as they float back to us on a breeze.

And we will all arrive at our destination.

In the end

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Island Blog 52 – I Rise

Island Blog 52

 

After the weekend and turning to face another weak, sorry, week, I can come over all peculiar.

There seems to be a flurry of panic in my head, like bats disturbed in the quiet of their belfry. Bringing it forward to my frontal ‘Fight or Flight’ mechanism rarely helps.

There is a whopping list of to-do’s for starters, followed closely by another whopping list of how I can’t possibly  do any of them because I am not good enough.  By the time I have dithered through a few tasks half-heartedly, I am now quite certain of the fact.

And it’s only 9.30.

The path I walk now divides.  I can see it, feel it.

One me, with bats in my brain, and Two Roads.

What do I think I should do about all this chaos and confusion?

Go back to bed?

No.  I think I should harness it.  After all, isn’t there a powerhouse of energy racking up to storm force ten in this daft head of mine, and  am I not more than able to grab it by the goolies, flip it round and set it on a new trajectory?  After all, who is to stop me?

Only my inner doubts and bat-like fears.

In days of yore, when I was young, and everything scared me half to death, I would begin an inner conversation between the whinging little Wuss and the confident, outgoing, talented Wonderwoman.  (There’s probably a book title in there somewhere).

In the dark corner, curled into a ball, as best she can with her arms full of imagined judgements, the Wuss cowers and says things like ‘go away’ and ‘please ignore me’ and ‘don’t tell my mother.’

In the light bright corner, standing tall and dressed in wild colours, sporting a wide smile, great teeth and  twinkly winkly eyes, is the confident (etcetera) Wonderwoman.

It’s all over in the first round.

Get up!  barks Wonderwoman who is always up, herself.  Get up and get over your whining.   Scared people do nothing, achieve nothing, if they sit in dark corners and let fear win.  You aren’t even rising to the fight, you wimp.

In the darkness, I, currently the Wuss, begin to flex my fingers, curl them into a fist.  She moves nearer, goading me.  Her boots are gleaming, her legs look like they know where they’re going.

She adopts her ‘diddums’ tone.

So, your mother was a bit harsh, so what!  So, you feel a lickle bitty tired, poor lamb, and you don’t like dusting, or find cyberspace a bit difficult to navigate, boo flipping hoo!  And those self-doubts…..all your own fault.  I had mine removed. No time for them. And what makes you think you can ever achieve anything anyway?  It’s laughable to be honest.    You are way too stupid and chaotic, and your chin is weak, like you.    You’re pathetic.   A waste of space….

That’s when she takes off, backwards, on the other end of my fist.  It’s spectacular to watch in slow motion, as she sails through her own stale air and lands with a thump on the ground to lie quite still.

It is just fine being scared, I tell her as I stalk away; okay to be filled with doubts and panics and with a great big wish that the day will ignore me completely.  It’s ok to be overwhelmed by fears and tearful at nothing.  I feel wonderful now and am ready for whatever comes, although the bruising on my fingers will take a while to go…….

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Island Blog 51 – Stirred Not Shaken

Blog 51

 

When I am home again on the island, after a time away, I spend the first day remembering.

I remember a sudden smile on an old familiar face whilst sorting through the washing to be washed.  I hear again a comment, made days back and long forgotten by the one who made it and whose mouth has filled with many words since.  For that person, it is gone forever, but not for me, who heard it and held it and find it still inside my head, and sometimes my heart.  Lisa from Two Roads, for example, who spoke out before all those who came to the second book launch of Island Wife in Norwich, the home of my formative years, although, to be honest, I would question the formative bit.  It’s not like I stopped forming once I left, frozen in time as ‘her’ because ‘her’ has changed a whole lot since then.  For beginners, ‘her’ no longer wears shiny hotpants, nor does she feel like a bit part in someone else’s play.

Back, as they tell me ALL the time…..to the subject……..

Lisa stood up and said things about me as a person that made me feel like I was really something.  She talked about the book, about Island Wife and how it came into her hands and how Hodder multiplied it thousands of times over, flying out into the world on its own wings.  Karen, Queen of Publicity, came too and spoke of new avenues, new ideas, new hopes and plans for my story as we shared a cream tea in a smart town hotel.  Actually, I didn’t share mine, but that is so not the point.

Old friends I haven’t seen for 3 decades bought first editions and invited us for coffee, tea, supper and lunch, taking us on journeys through little Norfolk lanes lined with old red brick cottages and a lot of history, and the sun shone the whole time.

At the launch, someone tapped me on the shoulder.

I’m June, she said, and I knew her face at once, although on another’s shoulders, for she is the youngest daughter of the Old Horseman in my book.  We talked a little, whilst we could, and she went away with her signed book.  I had tried to find the descendants of those who gave of their best to us on the farm, and her unexpected visit (I hadn’t managed to find her) lifted my heart the highest.

The other lifting thing was that I realised among old friends, that, although we are all older, I am still the daft eejit.  Some long to be daft eejits, and some are jolly glad they aren’t, but, for me, it says just the right thing about me.  However tough life is, whatever comes our way, tries to break our spirits, confound us, shake our confidence, we always have our inner spirit, and it is our own.  My confidence shaker may be different to yours, but I still experience the shake.

May as well make it one with ice cream, fresh strawberries, mango juice and champagne.

 

With Two Straws.

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Island Blog 50 – Afters

Blog 50

Well here I am after the event. There is something about after the event that rings of disappointment…..you know the song ‘After the Ball is Over?’
It’s about breaks of day and cold porage and most probably someone lost and not much found.

Well this is not the case for me on this sunny Sunday.

We had the best fun (whoop whoop) at the launch of Island Wife in Norwich!

It all began with me getting trussed up in my frock and stockings just after lunch which feels a tad early, to be honest, then into the car, chauffeured by my little sister, and whizzed down to the BBC Studios in her smart car complete with satnav and toffees in the glove box. I tottered up the steps in my foolish heels trying not to look like a drag queen arriving for a shoot. I was greeted and welcomed by the producer’s lovely assistant and guided upstairs to the studio. Black Watch (make a note about them!) were being interviewed before me and I noticed how the producer, Stephen, showed what looked like genuine interest in his guests, and I loved that, for it told me that the cynics of the world are wrong.

Again.

Next up was me and I enjoyed a delightful half hour with a really good guy (who may well actually read my book now)
Then we met up with Lisa my publisher from Two Roads, who said some lovely things about me, and Karen (publicity, Hodder) for a cream tea and a catch up.
So stylish.
There’s no copy of Island Wife on these shelves, Lisa said, so I signed one and we left it.

So many old faces came to the launch, such as descendants of the farm workers who had given of their best to us all those years ago and friends, now grey haired, but still recognisable in a heartbeat and with lovely well-remembered smiles.

Jarrold’s sold out that evening, and as we walked to the Last Wine Bar for a superb dinner, we talked of all that is wonderful in this life. It was a night that we will take home with us as we begin our long journey back to the island, one we will talk over for many days to come.

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Island Blog 49 – Flight

Sometimes a story unwraps like a ribbon. The words just tumble out in the right order and, better still, reflect what I want them to reflect. But not today it seems.  

I blame last night and that whistling wind and the clack of the plastic air vents and the scritch- scratch of Virginia creeper, not yet softened with leaves, sounding like the bony fingers of a witch against the window glass. Today is a big day.  

It’s launch day for Island Wife, my book published by Two Roads.  Actually, to be correct it is Launch Number Two.  We already held one on the island, for the folk who see me often and I them for over 35 years now.  

The people, who will come this evening to Jarrold’s Book Department in Norwich, will wear faces I haven’t set eyes on for 3 decades.  

I guess, like me, they will look older, a bit worn, a bit broken too, but we will know each other in a heartbeat.  Faces, hair colour, shapes may have altered dramatically or barely at all, but voices stay the same.  I could close my eyes all evening and still know exactly who speaks, even if I have to dig deep into my memory bank.  

So many voices and no two the same. There won’t be time to hear the stories, the tales of joy and sadness, the lost and the found in that short 90 minutes, but when it is done and books are signed and drinks are drained, I will walk out with those voices darting around inside my head like swallows just back from Africa. And they?  

Well, they will drive or walk or catch a train back into their own lives with a new book in their hands. I may never know their stories, but from tonight, they will all know mine, perhaps hearing my voice for the very first time.

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Island Blog 48 – Mother Love

Island Blog 48

 

This morning way too early I wake and step through the automatic doors of the hotel to say hallo to the new day.  The sky is closed, a thick pale grey over the wasteland which calls itself an industrial estate, perhaps in the hopes that it will be once industry moves in.  Outside a young woman smokes a cigarette and shivers.

I live here, she tells me, as I am homeless.  I must have looked surprised, thinking, as I did, that a hotel is not where I would expect to find a homeless anyone.  She says she has a little boy, aged six and the council have lodged her here temporarily whilst they find her a place to live.

I know my jaw drops, for it suddenly seems so huge, being homeless with a young son.  I ask her about his father and she tells me that he had hit the boy, just once, but once was enough, especially as she gave him 3 days to show remorse before leaving.  She says in that split second, what love she might have felt for him left her and stayed gone.

Her family lives in Cornwall which is light years away from here, but she won’t go home as it would disrupt the child, who loves his school, and, by the way, his father lives up here.

I thought about mothers.  What we do, what courage we find, what love we show.  We may get it all wrong, but that strong protective fire deep inside us burns bright from the moment of birth and stays with us for the rest of our lives.  Nobody, not even the child’s father, stands a chance against such a powerful energy.  We would give up our freedom, our quality of life, our life itself for our children and, if asked, we could not explain why that is.  It is both a gift and a life sentence and we have no defence against it, nor can we escape its hold on us.  Most of us, regardless of personal cost, wouldn’t want it gone anyway.  It becomes our drive, our reason for waking every morning to bring out the sunshine, even if the sky forgets to.

She finds herself some breakfast and eats alone among a scattering of strangers, all dressed crow black for the working day ahead.  I’m going back to bed now, she says…..my boy cries at night, doesn’t sleep good and I stay awake to hold him.

The cleaners will wake her around 11 and she will wait here, beneath the wide screen set to silent, with the hotel muzak beating out its quick fixes, until school is out.

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Island Blog 47 – Upsettings

Island Blog 47

Yesterday, just as I was finger-tap dancing out my new blog, my almost new laptop made a groaning noise, flickered her eyelids a few times and disappeared into silence.
Apparently she has died, which is not game on at all, at only 4 months old.

This is when I realise with a jolt, that there is a body of ocean between me and a laptop hospital. It matters not one jot how brilliant the technology is, how fulsome and encouraging the communication, which by the way was first with Jamaica, then Holland, then India. I felt quite well travelled after visiting all those countries, and in such a short space of time, and I believe I made a couple of new friends, one of whom is definitely looking out for Island Wife to be published in her part of the world.

Are you sitting there in skimpy shorts with a Coolade on the rocks? I asked her and she laughed uproariously.
Not one of the questions I am supposed to answer! she replied, and that is when I mentioned my book, knowing I could say anything I liked at that point and she would be bound to listen, even if that piece of information wasn’t on her Answer Sheet either.

Today I feel a bit odd, to be honest. My nice new red laptop sits in silence, with her flaps shut, on my desk and there is no sound of that thinking hum with which she has, to date, filled the room. Perhaps that’s the problem. She has been way too cheerful working with me and somebody doesn’t like it.

When I spoke to that nice young Dutchman, he did suggest various attempts at CPR, such as flipping the laptop over….
Sorry, I whispered…..such indignity…….and taking out the battery. Then replacing it after a number of seconds and pressing the on button 10 times (exactly). Then he asked me to do something requiring a lot of pressure on the Delete button that upset all her settings right back to the ones she came with, and they took long enough to get rid of when she first arrived.

I didn’t know her at all after that, and so the bereavement process will be shorter I believe. All my orderly little icons and boxes are quite gone now, and it is only with foresight that I had asked my husband to back up all files and documents and pictures and so on onto some flashing box that normally drives me mad on dark nights when it suddenly springs into life and turns the sitting room a luminous green.
I won’t moan about it ever again I promise.

So, the box sits on the ground, complete with warranty information and laptop-shaped polystyrene in a fetching green, and all we need now is for Miss Jamaica, or Mr Holland or even Madam India to call on Monday with a return address. However, I doubt it will be Madam India, as I was fairly sure after a confusing exchange of information, that I had dialled a Flight Booking Service and almost took myself and the laptop to somewhere south of Mumbai.

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Island Blog 46 – Frozen

Island Blog 46

A friend and I play writing games together.  One of us picks a phrase, a subject and we both have to write for say five minutes, or ten, on that phrase or subject.  We are not supposed to think, or lift our pen from the page, but just to let our creativity flow unimpeded.

We have had some interesting projects.

‘The day I didn’t call’  was one, I remember, and another, ‘this exquisite wounding’.

A recent one was entitled ‘Frozen’

Just that.  Could lead you anywhere.

Here’s what I wrote:

‘Whenever I walk past a statue in some public place, I wonder what was happening to that person before someone froze them forever.  Did he or she live out a mostly ordinary life?  Was that laudable (obviously) moment in time their only laudable moment in time, or was it all so laudable that we, living out our ordinary lives have to keep being reminded of our ordinariness every time we walk by?

Did his or her feet ever ache in badly made shoes, and were they ever late for school or work or choir practice and did their teeth hurt eating ice cream? Were they kind to others, loving in their homes, humble in opinions?  What made them so remarkable?  And what would they think of the pigeons who perch on their horizontal bits and shit them white and greasy grey, or the homeless wanderers who slump beneath their lofty limbs?

Sometimes I read the plaque that tells of their achievement, but usually I just march by in my badly made shoes, avoiding pigeon shit and homeless wanderers on my ordinary way from A to B with deadlines in my head and a dirty rain threatening.

In Amsterdam, one moved.  A statue, I mean, and I did stop then.  Suddenly nothing was ordinary at all and I laughed out loud as the pigeons burst into the sky and an old man on a bench unfolded himself and laughed with me before sinking back down into the folds of his oversized coat’.