April 11, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 45 – Small Giants

I am an old fashioned sort of girl.

Big statement that. Sounds like it defines me, but don’t stop there if you please. I can be new fashioned in many ways when it suits me.

The thing about Big Statements is that they can confuse. For instance, if I were to say ‘That man over there is an irascible old bore’ and you didn’t know anything about him, you could think that being irascible, old and boring is the sum of the man.

Which it most definitely is not.

Nobody is that simply wired.

I love language, the rise and fall of a phrase, especially, in the way my dad used to deliver them for maximum impact. He used short words now and again, when he was playing the irascible old bore and the tonic water wasn’t cold enough, but in the main, he made language sing and he taught me well how to communicate. This is not to say that in order to communicate we need to be graduates in English, or Scottish, or any other language, for that matter. Words in the wrong mouths however cleverly phrased and delivered, can be as welcome as a fire in a paper factory, and as destructive.

In the world of technology, this new crazy fast non-human way of communicating, I find the old fashioned girl in me lurching into the foreground. I know it is the new way to tell out our latest product, opinion, story, but it is not the only way. We do not need to drown our voices in an ocean of electronics. Deep inside every one of us, is the need for human contact, for the soothing velvet sound of a loving voice, for the kindly helpful efficiency of a stranger on the other end of a telephone.

No electronic recorded voice can do that for us. We need voice to voice in order to reach a new place together. Yes, a recording can guide us through a button-pushing and monotonous process as we plod our way to submitting our white meter reading for the quarter, but oh what joy it is, what heart-lifting warmth fills us when a real person says those loving human words ‘Mary speaking, How may I help you?’ I can almost hear the angels in the background, as she pauses for my reply.

I remember meeting my first robot. She (was it?) answered with tick-tack words and no music to her phrasing. I thought, this’ll never catch on.

So, Big Statement. I am an old fashioned girl in the world of Communication.

I can also dance you off the floor when the DJ racks up the beat, and I can weep when Piglet gets blown off his feet in the Hundred Acre Wood.

April 10, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 44 – To Live Again

Sometimes, in ordinary conversation, a friend might ask me if, given a choice, I would live my life over again.

I think back across the millions of miles of it, the lush richness, the deserts, the rainbows of success and the stumble-grounds; the learning and the laughter, the birthing and the dying, the joy,grief and inner growth. Particularly the inner growth.

It is not a logical question, or answerable using logic, so you can guess that there are no men present, although maybe that’s just the men I know who, bless them, would say it can’t be true unless it’s been proven. I know what ‘proven’ means to me. It’s that point in the process of bread making, when the dough has risen as high as it can without pushing open the skylight. The point when it requires further bashing and twisting and pummelling into shape before being popped into an extremely hot oven for a permanent shape-arrestment and a nice brown crust.

Anyway, answer the question you daft island wife….

Well would I? Live it all again?

My first feeling is one of huge tiredness. It is not easy to imagine, let alone believe in, the energy required, not just to go through it all again, but to know what I’m going through as I go through it and worse, to know what comes next!

My head is reeling at the very thought. So, park it for now.

My next thought/feeling/response is that, had I not been gifted the life I lived, there would be no story, dynamic and whacky enough to have led me to write it down; to have been guided to an experienced agent and through her, to have found a well established ‘we-don’t-take-on-books-unless-they-are-top-quality’ publisher. And if there had been no madcap story, just a regular law-abiding disaster-free life, kept under militant control, I probably couldn’t imagine wanting to go through it all again. The very idea would just have made me wriggle my ageing butt deeper into the sofa cushions and pull out my knitting, thankful that all those requirements to jump about and be adaptable are just blurred memories.

Instead , look at me learning to Tweet and Blog and answer messages on Facebook (for goodness sake) and feeling rather like I hoped I might feel, but didn’t, at the age of 17.

Is this, I ask myself, because you are being stretched when others are shrinking? Or is it just that I am still living this life, instead of peering back across it all from the soft plumpy feathers of my wide-mouthed armchair?

So ask me now. Would I live my young life over again?

Absolutely N.O.T.

But….. I wouldn’t change one bit of it, except, perhaps, that one time I drove right over a roundabout near Greenock because I didn’t know it was there. Men were digging up the road and the leading lights had failed. It was a splendid performance and I came to rest in a field with my headlights illuminating the bottom of a large white bull.

You can’t park here! Said the roadman after chapping on my window. Yellow rain streamed down his face and a furious gale played skittles with the traffic cones.

No mention of the roundabout.

April 5, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 42 – A Tale to Tell

By now, my book is out there in the world and you may even be reading it. You may be loving it, you may not, and over this bit, I have absolutely no control. It is how it is. My responsibility ended as I caught the words from the air around me and laid them down upon a blank sheet of A4. The thoughts and feelings that will arise in you as a result of reading those words, in the order I chose, will relate to your life, not mine, and, in that moment of connection, become something new.

Over the years I have found such connections myself as I devoured the stories of many folk in many places and times. Sometimes I have been tearful for the writer, the hero, or for myself as I become lost in a life that connects deeply with my own. Sometimes thrilling with delight at the way a story bubbles and chatters over the stones like a clear fall of mountain water after new rain. In a well written tale, I can hear the voices and see the landscape. I can smell the wind and taste the grit of it in my mouth; I can feel the warm skin of a dancing child and shiver at the ice cold of a closed mind or a bitter Arctic night. I can twist and turn in the sweaty damp of an unfriendly sleeping bag and I can pull quickly back into the shadows to hide as a cruel drama unfolds before me. I can waken in the night to remember, and then wish I could forget. In short, I become part of the story, and yet play no part at all. I may follow this person, or that. I may long to go back, to see what happened to the child, or the old woman, even knowing that I may not; not until the writer catches the words and lays them down for me on the page. Sometimes I even forget to breathe, so lost am I in the story.

And every one is real.

Although it may be a work of fiction, you can bet that the writer is in there somewhere, for, if not, the tale would be as dull as a Monday shopping list.

But it is not just in books that I can connect with another life. I can find stories in faces along the island roads and they can touch me just as deeply. Of course, we don’t often get to this level on a daily basis – merely exchanging husband news or word of new additions to the family, new accomplishments, new sofas, new guests and so on, but the eyes are the windows to the soul and no mistake. Some bright chirpy person can tell me one thing with their mouth and quite another through their eyes. I do it myself, did it for years.

You are always so bright! They told me, and because it was the done thing, I kept doing it.

Just like you do, or most of you. There are some that might consider leaving their list of ailments and complaints at home, for we all have them to some degree or other and I have found from experience that those with most to complain about, usually don’t. And when I meet those people, who have made a decision not to bore the bejabers out of the rest of us, telling us things we can do nothing whatsoever about and causing rain to fall on that precious moment of shared sunshine, I find my supplies of compassion and respect, verging on reverence, threaten to overwhelm me altogether. My whole day changes as I guess my way into their life and out again feeling humbled. Suddenly my load lightens, supposing I thought I had one in the first place.

There is always an argument between reality and fairyland. I have always preferred fairyland, finding reality way too matter-of-fact for me, and, as we know, these Matters of Fact change daily according to the latest discovery/statistic/breaking news. Shifting sands I reckon, whereas fairyland is always fairyland and you can depend on it remaining so forever, for in that world (the real world in my opinion) we are allowed to be individual in our response to that which we observe. All views are acceptable. Nobody is right and nobody is wrong, for we all see things in different ways according to our creed, birthright,childhood and experiences. And we should stand tall and proud inside our own story, and sing it out, for it is the only one we can really tell.

April 2, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 41 – Yikes!

That’s what was in my mouth as I awoke this morning, for this is Book Launch Day for Island Wife and I am fizzing with excitement!

It’s not like a birthday fizz, something that comes anyway, whether I am good or bad, but more the fizz of accomplishment. I have now, with considerable help and support, brought an idea to life and it is now packaged and ready to go out into the world.

At the beginning, when something is just an idea it can be caught and held, or lost in a single day. I get ideas all the time and my head can feel like it’s full of bluebottles, buzzing and whizzing and banging against the windows in the way of all foolish things without direction. At other times, it is just one or two ideas, that are not so hard to catch and pin down, until there is time to pay each one due attention. This book was once an idea, but remaining an idea wasn’t going to do anyone any good, least of all me because it wouldn’t let me go. Somehow I knew at the start, that writing my story was not just self-gratification – it was a body of work that other eyes needed to see.

In my life, I have found the strength at difficult times through the life of another. Yes, for me, it has mostly been women writers, women’s stories, but not exclusively. What I have sought, and found, in other’s tales, spun like fine webs across the pages, has been a voice to give me courage; courage to do another day, to take another step. I connect with that voice, that truth, that story in some way and at some level, and that changes me and brings me hope. Many times have I risen from the pages and dried my own tears, refreshed my own war paint, chosen brighter clothes to wear and squared my own shoulders. Many, many times.

I want Island Wife to do the same. Perhaps for you.

March 22, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 40 – Show Yourself

I had three phone interviews yesterday about Island Wife, due to be published on March 28^th by Two Roads. I think there will be more to come over the next short while when I am new news as opposed to old news, which I will be by the second week of April. By then the sound of running feet will be receding, not coming closer – such is our quick-quick world. I will be standing here, open-mouthed and half way through the answer to a very personal question, laying down my words, one by considered one, only to find the room has cleared in a heartbeat.

So, it seems of the greatest importance that I use this platform with the respect it requires, for the legacy I leave behind will be the things I have said, that may be remembered, for life and death are in the power of the tongue. Words will leave me and attach themselves to the hems of departing coats only to be re-assembled through the filters of a very different person, using a different emphasis, perhaps, a different tone of voice. What I say may not be what is printed or spoken out. What I mean may not travel the distance.

And so it is in relationships, those ships that fascinate me most of all. Every one of us in one, like it or not. Some of us are crossing oceans, through angry storms, turning our faces into biting ice winds that threaten to tear off our very skin; some bob gently across a mirrored calm, the sun warming our bones, and some just putter up and down the same claggy-banked strip of canal on an ancient barge with rusty screws, a draggletail posy of wild flowers in an old jam jar on the cabin roof. But this is to stereotype and is not therefore the truth. The truth is that we all travel storm wards at some point in our lives, and at others we bob across the mirror and in between, we deadhead the draggletailed posy whilst the endless ordinary banks pass us by. And whilst we do all this, we bring that of ourselves to the table, to our relationships. We bring likes and dislikes, opinions and phobias, passions and failings, gifts and skills.

In an ideal relationship, such as the one my neighbour has, or my sister, or that woman I read about

in last weeks Sunday magazine who lives beside the sea with a loving man and who has enough money to spend on whatever she wants to spend it on, neither person fights to control. Neither person pulls rank, manipulates either by loud domination or weak dependency and neither wants anything less than to lift the Apple of their eye up to whatever light warms them. My opinion of what you should or should not do, has no place in our relationship. My only role is to love you, and to love you right I must remove myself. My……Self.

This doesn’t mean I am silent and fuming in the corners. It doesn’t mean I don’t tell you loud and clear when I am angry or upset with something you have done or said. What it does mean is that I can be honest, create my own boundaries, speak with my own voice, make my own choices and leave you to do the same for yourself. I expect nothing from you and you expect nothing from me, and both of us give and receive freely. It sounds like perfection, you say, too perfect to attain, but it’s not perfection. It is Love. Love for myself and Love for you.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and I am single-stepping right now as the Island Wife considers her response to another personal question. There are often two answers to that question, two directions. One choice. Mine.

March 19, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 39 – The New Old

Today I am 60 years old.

When I was a young thing, bouncing carelessly through my days and nights, my greatest concern was that I looked like everyone else whose stocking seams ran in a straight line all the way up to their sensibly clad bottoms, and whose mothers approved of them.

I never managed it. In fact, it was rather fun to see just how many winds of seam I could wrap around my leg before I choked and fell over. When tights came in, everything went to pot on the wrapping fun, for reasons I am sure you can quite well imagine.

Those women of 60, to whom I looked up, or so they thought, and, to be honest, some of them earned an upward look, seemed ancient as fossils. They had looked like their mothers since they were 25 anyway, but somehow, at 60, it all set like concrete, in their attitudes, their faces and in their moral confidence. I can still roll my eyes and want to hide up a tree just thinking about them, as they pinged my mother’s doorbell and were allocated seats for luncheon. It was there in those lips pursed for ‘a small sherry’ and in the hush of gossip.

Is this now me?

No flipping chance.

I and my 60 year old peers are breaking that mould. We are no longer ‘mouldy’ nor are we up for being moulded. Although we may have become shape-changers, we are doing it our way. Not as a group, which is what the previous generation seemed to do, but as individuals. It is not necessarily easy nor simple this being an individual thing, but the more I speak with my daft female friends, the more determination I hear and because we support each other, not to be the same as we are, but to be whoever they are, through the filter of their own life, their own heart, I do believe we are about to cause chaos.

I can see that such a change might not be too everyone’s taste. After all, our mothers happily retreated behind mounds of fluffy scones at just the right time, allowing us to leap out of the conjurer’s hat and into a surprised world as the ones to watch from now on. Our mothers’ sensibly clad bottoms became just bottoms, when ours invited conversation. Their voices fell back into an appropriately domestic hum, whereas we say blow to baking on a regular basis (not least because our husbands might grow too fat), and the confident voice of the new olds reaches up and out and can silence a room of men.

Now there’s a thing!

So get ready world, for we are coming and worse, much much worse, our daughters are watching.

March 14, 2013 by judyfairbairns

A Point in Time

Last night I watched something on one of those TV channels that loves adverts – or, rather, the revenue they bring in. I hate them. Not only do I not want a deep pile shag wool carpet with drip-resistant fibres and enough depth for the dog to get mislaid in overnight, or a 6-seater sofa in ivory tweed for the six members of the family who can’t wait to sit very close together and in a dead straight line of an evening, but it’s the interruption that bugs me most. There I am, trying to work out who committed the crime, or wallowing in the poignancy of a tragic drama, allowing myself to float away on a cloud of wonderful acting and exquisite prose, when my thoughts are interrupted mid-reverie by squeals of over-excitement about some new and luminous cereal that the whole family will adore including the dog – especially the dog, after a confusing night in the shag pile.

It got me thinking about what really matters in life, and not one of them can be purchased with a credit card. Time, for example. Time for looking. Time for loving. Time to give away, to share.

Although time is the one thing that all of us crave and all of us lack to some degree, it is the last thing we seem to treasure. We say we are running out of it. We say we haven’t any to spare, and yet, time is constant, dependable, a never-ending supply day after day, year after year, and we all have the same amount to spend, regardless of our situation.

I think we need reminding sometimes, of the important and lasting valuables of life, ones no online site or department store will ever sell. In particular, a reminder about our family members need for our time, because from time freely given comes involvement, sharing, comradeship, bridge-building and, above all, the ability to see what makes someone happy, what makes someone sad. It trounces loneliness. It requires no particular skills, no clever techniques. It is just sitting with another or walking alongside them and asking gentle questions, talking together about things you can’t buy, and sharing, listening and smiling. It is about being there and being there again and again, stepping into their world, be they 5, 15, 50, or 150. It’s about saying no to ourself and our own busy schedule and throwing it into the air, asking the question ‘What is important here?’ and finding to our own surprise, that it isn’t what we thought it was. Lunch can wait, the TV news can be missed today. Someone needs us, and not tomorrow at ten, but right this minute.

We all want time with the ones we love and if it means we don’t get an expensive gift, or a new carpet/sofa/gadget, we honestly, honestly won’t mind. In fact, we will find we didn’t really want them at all. What we wanted is what we have; a loved one who wants to be at our side; one who cares deeply enough to turn from their own world and to step into ours; who feels our joy and our sadness; who never lets us down. Relationships can be saved this way. All of them.

March 11, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 37 – New Road

Things are hotting up for the launch of my book, Island Wife, to be published by Two Roads on March 28^th. The Hodder team, of which Two Roads is an imprint, are working hard on press releases, magazine reviews, media opportunities and book signings.

As my penultimate son would have said when the excitement in him rose like a wave….’I can hardly bear my seating!’

People, friends, ask me ‘what does it feel like?’

Like champagne in my veins.

Like a moon flash on the sea loch as the storm clouds part.

Like the smell of sunshine after rain, or the first cuckoo in Spring.

And so much more.

Far more.

That’s my new name. Honest, no kidding.

‘Farmor’ means Father’s mother in Swedish and it is the name my new little Viking grand-daughter will probably call me on her Swedish days.

I digress somewhat.

Over the next few weeks, my story will be heavying down the post-people and the carriers as the copies wing their way around the country. E books will ding through space and time to settle into Kindles and Ipads and people in dentist waiting rooms will forget the tropical fish for as long as it takes to read some review on me and my book.

I will find my book in shop windows, or held in hands on a train, or a bus. Will I say anything? Will I bounce up all full of beans and introduce myself, offer to sign the copy and leave just knowing they will spend days buzzing with the excitement or will I slide past with a flicker of a look and hope I am not recognised?

Honestly, I just don’t know, for who is born for this, for a sudden chance at some level of fame, be it good fame or not so good fame? Who knows, when stepping into new shoes (haven’t bought them yet) or onto a new path, what to do or what to say? I won’t know my surroundings and we are always better when we know our surroundings. And people will look at me differently once they have read the bones of me. I wonder what that will feel like. After all, for most of the year, I hide myself happily away on the island, sometimes seeing not one person all day long. Now it seems I must walk this baby into the world, which is what I always wanted, always dreamed of. Not the publicity, although I am sure I will enjoy it all, but to touch on another’s life, to make a connection through my story, with theirs, with yours, perhaps, and to tell you without telling you at all, that you can do it too, whatever it may be for you.

I might meet you on this new road.

New Road. Two Roads.

March 4, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 36 – Pecking Order

Woken by a bickering of crows outside my window, I leap out of bed to see what’s up. I know they’re upset, I can hear it. They sound like bad-tempered witches and sometimes that can mean a big bird of prey has flown into their air space. This morning is fair and bright and the air quite still, belying the truth of the situation.

The sky is empty of all songbirds, so I know a predator is nearby, and I am right.

On the grass below me a fight is about to begin over the carcass of a large rabbit. Standing over it – a buzzard.

Two crows lunge at the big bird, like louts, juking back pretty quick as the beak comes down like an axe over their heads. Positioning themselves either side of him, they dance around him, calling him all manner of names, much like thugs at a state visit, in an effort to wear him down until he tires of them and flies away. Crows can do this for hours I know, so I turn away for just a moment to find some clothes to wear. Suddenly the noise level escalates into a riot and I dash back to the window.

A second buzzard has landed inches away from the other, presenting a very real threat. The two huge birds take their positions for battle, wings slightly out, necks thrust forward, feet two-square on the grass. In the face of such power, the crows bounce off a few yards and watched from a safe distance, one of them pretending not to care by pecking at a cow pat.

For some moments, the buzzards charge at each other, claws lashing as they rise off the ground, as one, a little higher each time. The crows jig about like hoodlums, calling out, excited by this clash of the Titans. The sky, which had emptied when the buzzard first appeared, is now a swoosh of songbirds, looping across the morning sky like chiffon, to land on the fences and among the hazel scrub, chattering excitedly; spectators for the show.

The excitement is tangible.

One of the buzzards grabs the rabbit and tries to fly, but the weight of it defeats him and he only manages a couple of feet off the ground. Buzzard number two lunges forward to grab the other end of the carcass in his beak. Then all hell breaks loose as the two of them roll each other over and over in a tangle of claws and wings, of fur and feathers.

As they fall apart, one of them concedes defeat, and re-arranging his feathers he rises into the blue morning. The victor tries in vain to lift the carcass, till he too gives up and, with a sharp cry, takes to the hills.

That’s breakfast for the crows, I tell my little green teddy bear who was also watching. But this time I am wrong.

Two sea eagles come from nowhere, graceful and silent. They don’t even touch down. One dips just low enough to pick up the carcass as if it’s a pocket handkerchief and then, together, and without a sound, they lift effortlessly into the empty sky and are gone.

March 1, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 35 – Speaking without Words

For the first time since beginning this blog, I really don’t know what to write. Perhaps it is, as my youngest son used to say with all the confidence in the world, that my daily allocation of words has been quite used up. He didn’t actually use that big long word, but in his ‘little boy speke’, he communicated clearly enough.

The conversation that morning had been about his brother who talked sometimes in his sleep.

‘It’s because he hasn’t said all the words he was given for the day’ said the tutfy-headed small boy as he munched on his toast and ‘hunny’.

Perfectly logical of course, and why not?

It also means that the converse is probably true as well. So, when I cannot find a single thing to say, it isn’t necessarily because I know nothing of the subject under discussion. It could simply be that I have used up my daily quota, sprayed words across a wasteland where they may just have fallen on stony ground and come to nowt. Or, worse, launched them at some poor soul who couldn’t be less interested in whatever wisdoms I might think crucial to this point in their life. Those words either fly off into the sky over their heads or they land in the wrong place and cause that person, who was fine thank you very much before I and my ego came along on our white charger suggesting they required certain repairs, much inner angst.

I’ve done it all, and may well again, in spite of all my good intentions. My mind can fox me into all sorts of do-gooder situations. With heavenly choirs, soaring violins and a strong wind section, I can ‘Mother Theresa’ anyone whether they want it or not.

And, often, they do not. I can see it on their faces. It’s either frustration or irritation, neither of which was in my plan. What I foresaw, in the bestowing of my gracious wisdom, was, first, the early dawn light. Then the epiphany. Then, over time, the transformation.

Oh for goodness sake!

The good news is that, if I shut up and observe only, I won’t land in the poo. If I come with no agenda of my own, such as a long list of easy things they can do to make their life so much better, but simply walk beside them, if indeed they have asked me to in the first instance, asking the odd question that relates directly to whatever they have just said to me, and then listen again, I may just help a fellow traveller a little way down their own road.

Not mine.