June 10, 2014 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 135 Little Weeds

As the garden grows into complete hilarity, with an ebullient chuckle, I watch the weeds find their places. They’re clever, these weeds, finding quiet little dark places to begin their journey, rising into view long after the roots have winkled their way around, along and through those finer species, once carefully placed by us. When we clear space for such a planting, we see, not the weeds to come, or those now removed, but just this fine sunny spot, allocated to a shrub or bush, envisioned in full majestic bloom, with the ground floor as peaty brown as it was at the start.

Well Ho, says Mother Earth, and Hum to that, for she has other plans and she’s not giving them up to any old human. Let them eat cake, she says, for now.

Over winter the roots keep spreading, like witches fingers, in the silence of the earth, out of view, out of mind. Some of us employ evil sprays, conveniently forgetting the lasting damage any of them might do in the long term. We don’t worry too much about long term, unless we are a fledged and experienced gardener, which I am not. I quite understand those who buy all their bedding plants each year, thus creating what appears to be an established garden. It’s tempting. We don’t use sprays, choosing, instead, to allow the witches fingers room and time to stake their hold. Then, whatever Spring might bring in showers, snow, frosts and sunshine, these roots decide to reach for the sky, pushing up green and strong, and tempting me with pretty yellow blooms the bees love to visit. Well, that makes it okay then, if the bees choose thus.

It thinks me about weeds, or wild flowers in the wrong places. But who says it’s so? The wild flowers were here long before me and they’ll be here long after me, so which of us has rights in this little hill garden?

I was a weed, once. I think we can all admit to that at some point in our lives; when we just don’t fit in. Actually, I think I have often been a weed, but not ‘weedy’. Finely pedigreed folk who do fit in, might want to remove me, for I pinch the light and the live-giving water allocated to them. But, the strength and tenacity of me might undermine them, as long as I keep moving, keep finding new ways to reach the sun, keep producing pretty blooms for the bees. This is not a ‘them’ and ‘us’ thing, for we all have our place and time in this life, but, instead, of ‘both’. I never did like either/or scenarios, opting every time for a laterally sought choice. We know there is room for all of us, but the trouble is always one of boundaries – where you stop and I begin. After all, we don’t have the same voices, you and I, nor the same dreams, visions, hopes and plans. You may be planning for something I have no interest in. This doesn’t make either of us wrong nor right, just different. We laughingly say ‘Vive la difference!’ in our best french accent, but most of us have no idea what it means as a life choice. No matter how careful we are with our inner thoughts, we all make judgements on others. Words like ‘should’ and ‘ought’ pop into our mouths and out again and we feel regret long after the damage is done, for, in speaking those words about another living soul, we have shown we are better than they and have established it firmly in the ears of the listener.

I kick myself often for such worthless chatter, gossip to call it by it’s proper name. If I name a weed, I damage three people. Myself, the weed and the listener, and on what authority I ask myself?

In reply, I look out of the window, at the fancy shrub about to bloom, and, then down towards the so-called weeds. The shrub will never surprise me inside it’s controlled boundary limits, but the long-tailed fronded grasses, the speckly indigo blooms of the wild forget-me-nots, the creeping buttercups, the purple-belled ground ivy and the Lady Elizabeth poppies, the colour of sunshine……?

Well they will.

June 6, 2014 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 134 Reality Check

This morning the air is still on the island. Nobody is about, except for the birds playing out their dramas. The doves, including Dave, whose mate was nabbed by a sparrowhawk a couple of years back, and who will always be a gooseberry, turn up to feed, their beaks tapping out a syncopated rythm on the wooden base of the bird table. We found the remains of the kill on the track outside the house, and Dave stumbling about lopsided and scared. Not a lucky dove, we said. After a week or so inside a box, fed and watered each day, he managed a wonky lift from the ground, straightened up and flew right onto the telephone wire. We hadn’t fixed anything, weren’t sure how to, but perhaps the combination of love and his own will to survive did their work. Now, however many pairs line the wire, sometimes up to 15 in the winter months, he is the uneven number, but always faithful, staying close to home, when the others loop away across the hills to build nests, raise young, complete the yearly circle once again.

A pair of swallows have taken the nest we fixed at the back of the garage years ago. Each spring, they check it out, and each spring, they reject it. Perhaps this is because we are constantly in and out of the garage, for it offers the only access to the hill garden at the back, where the bee hives nestle in the wild grass, their faces towards the sun. Every day each community, numbering thousands apiece, fly out to find pollen. The scouts communicate directions to the others in waggle dances, performed on the front step and taken seriously by the other worker bees, all women of course, who might be dithering about which way to go. The hive mind is an extraordinary thing and one that never sleeps, for even when the bees don’t fly, we know that if we lifted the lid (which is not for the faint-hearted) we would not see one single bee loafing about with a vacant look in her eye. Every single one is busily employed, going about her business mindfully, intelligently, continuously. Any loafers would be thrown out.

Trouble is, the swallows number three. I don’t suppose this works, a menage a trois, in the swallow world, but the three of them dive in and out of the garage each early morning and evening. On the wire, they have words. No violence is employed, but you can tell, from the tone, that it’s not friendly. Perhaps, like doves, and swans, swallows mate for life. Perhaps this lone one lost its mate on that huge journey back from Africa. We watched them gathering on wires, rooftops, swirling like a dark cloud over Capetown, when we were there in March, preparing for their flight across the globe, and we marvelled. How they manage to find their old nest sites year after year beggars belief. We would need maps, charts, radar, provisions, a transport vehicle, confidence, determination and periodic rests in soft beds with cotton sheets and a spacious en suite. They just fly.

In honour of their unusual tryst, together with the excitement at their final acceptance of the Garden Centre nest, (buy one, get a House Martin one free) I have fixed signs, one on the inside of the door, so we remember not to dive out and head butt a swallow, and one for anyone coming through the little gate who needs guiding to the other door. If we need to access the hill garden, we must open the garage door slowly, peeking gingerly out, to see if our new friends are around. Sometimes they wobble on the inside washing line. We need an inside washing line on the island, as the outside one is often long-term unemployed. The concrete floor is already guano-ed up and this situation won’t change, as long as they decide, finally, to lay their eggs, which they still may not, given the human comings and goings.

As I walked Miss Poppy around Tapselteerie yesterday, she made me laugh at some antic and, in response to my voice breaking the silence of the afternoon, a well-hidden nest of young tits leapt into action, their collective cheeping floating out from one of the dark holes in the old dry stone wall. The mother, behind me on a branch, yelled at them to shutup, but they were having none of it. I didn’t stay around to worry her, but the experience lifted my heart, just to have been allowed to witness that moment, and to fix the knowledge of it into my ordinary day. I call that an ‘internal shunt’, for It changes me, even though nothing has changed. My usual list of miniature disasters is still there; the demands on my time, my patience, my purse, stay in place; nothing is certain, nothing really safe and nothing I can do to make it any different. I could lose a loved one in a nanosecond and there is little I can do to stop it happening. I can fall ill, a silent enemy moving in to establish victory whilst I dash through my daily list, unaware until too late. But it does me no good to focus on what may or may not happen, in fact, it will falter my step, weaken me, make me dull at parties. What I need to do, mindfully and intelligently, is to learn from the birds, from the natural world, of which I am a part. I am at the top of the food chain, yes. I can think and reason, yes. And these gifts are not given to be wasted. They are gifts of sight, gifts of power, not over others as we seem to believe, but over myself, the choice to get real, like the birds.

How does that song go………oh yes…..

‘Hey, you know what paradise is? It’s a lie
A fantasy we create about people and places as we’d like them to be
But you know what truth is?
It’s that little baby you’re holding, and it’s that man you fought with this morning
The same one you’re going to make love with tonight. That’s truth, that’s love.

I’ve been to paradise, but I’ve never been to me.’

June 1, 2014 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 133 One Hand

Whenever I go somewhere or meet someone, or do something, and then come back to my own solitude, I bring rememberings with me. We all do, of curse, but not all of us revisit them in order to learn a new thing. I know this, because I have asked people who continue on the same track regardless of encounters of the third, or any other kind. I have never worked that way, because I believe that everything changes me. A glimpse of a smile from a distance, unexpected and easily missed had I been burying in my bag for my mobile, or lippy, or notepad; something a person says, albeit like a grace note that leads quickly back to the dominant chord; a fleeting look, hurriedly corrected so the eyes give nothing away; a chance meeting, a chance to see, to hear, to notice.

The world is moving too fast, everyone says so. Not the actual world, but we who stomp across it’s surface, plunder it’s depths, take too many liberties. However, it is the way it is, and bemoaning what is lost is a pointless excercise and one that can have me rolling my eyes and taking my leave. It has aye been this way, and we were sure to speed up. We thrive on a challenge, ache to be the first to discover new ways to do old things, so I embrace the change, however much it might trip me up. After all, did I know how to blog, tweet and facebook a year ago? I did not, and it is only thanks to the team at Two Roads and Hodder that I have learned anything at all, or discovered the delights and noted the pitfalls involved in this trip to outer space. Had I been curmudgeonly, had I succeeded in returning my laptop to a pile of component parts, as I badly wanted to do, I would still be on the outside, swearing I knew all about it and wanted none of it. I would have sounded knowledgable whilst I sank in the quicksands of ignorance.

Learning how to notice every little thing, is just a habit. However, like all habits, it requires attention and mindfulness at the outset, until it becomes something that our subconscious mind, our higher self, takes on board. I am no expert on any of the many wonderful ways we can control the lunacy of our monkey minds beyond knowing that I have 12 monkeys at least in my head and must, therefore be 12 times more determined to shut them up when their screeching and tree-leaping drowns out all gentle sound, such as that of a baby bird calling from across the loch, the sound of one small voice in a busy street, the sound of pain, of hope, of fear, of longing, the sound of one hand.

Walking with my old Ma down a dusty track in Corfu, not lost but heading that way, we moved slowly and noticed everything. She has just had both cataracts done so she does a whole lot more noticing that I have noticed her doing before. The scuttle of a tiny lizard, the tipping sideways of it’s head as it watched us pass by; a new red bloom, just opening, on a wild spread of hibiscus; the twinkle in the eye of the sand-seller with his jet black face, and his armsful of colourful sunglasses; the old dog, only it’s tail visible as it lies cooling off beneath a little bridge; the dragonfly and the black butterfly, the old woman clutching her prayerbook, dust on her long skirts and not one tooth in her head. At each encounter, we stopped to talk about it, and, when I was quietly alone, later on, I revisited them all.

If, by just stopping albeit for a second or two, I grow my own world, not because I passed these things, these people, these moments by, but because I noticed them mindfully, then this must be a healthy option – more healthy than any breakfast cereal, nutritious diet, super-juice or form of excercise can ever be, although they all have their place in our general well-being. People live and then they die, and sometimes too quickly and as a complete shock. We know this, and yet we still live fast, rushing past moments to make contact, to make amends, to make friends, to make things well again. We can be millionaires and poor as church mice at the same time, and we keep doing it. The monkeys say it’s ok, don’t listen to that stuff. They say things matter, that we should speculate, accumulate, call in the locksmith and keep it all safe, learn clever tactics for anger management and stress control, plan for the future and so on, and they are right, to a degree. But we are out of balance if we think they are gods.

What we need to make time for, not merely hope that time will stretch just for us, are those things, people, moments, that grow our worlds beyond the daily admin. We must become the change we want to see, not waste time wishing on a star as if we lived in some fairytale. We have it all right where we stand. All we need to do is shut the monkeys up and listen for the sound of one hand.

May 3, 2014 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 132

We never talk about shrimps up here. In fact, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard that word used anywhere in Scotland. Up here, across the tempestuous border, we talk about prawns, and they are quite believably so. Shrimps I remember from Norfolk days, and you needed 3000 of the little so-and-so’s for all of seven sandwiches. I have been served up a plate of ‘prawns’ before now, and knew fine I was being ripped off, but not up here. Folk can’t believe their good fortune when they order a prawn dish, savouring the fat pink bodies, dense and firm and tasting of a fresh wild ocean.

In Tapselteerie days, I would drive over the hill to meet the fisherboats coming in, bartering with the raw and ruddy-faced hard-working ‘boys’ for an overflowing crate of still-twitching jewels, the huge aga pans left to bring themselves to boiling point as I travelled. The eyes of the guests grew wide with amazement as I laid down plates of them, pan fried with garlic and fresh herbs. Then I would make bisque from the shells. Nowadays, you can’t buy them on the quay, as I did, because they all go for export. But there are a few choice restaurants who either make sure they have their own creel boat, or have found a way to do as I did, and connect with the fishermen. Some of these ‘boys’ are still fishing, some have stepped back to let their sons carry on the good work. After all, shrimp or prawn, lobster, oyster or mussels are always a different experience when they are fresh and still full of personality.

Much like us.

So why am I talking about shrimps and prawns and the like? It isn’t to lead on to the obvious Bigger is Better thing. What I am talking about is choice and quality, yes, but more about paying attention to the strings that bind us. Driving over the hill to find fresh shellfish meant I had to know and befriend the fisherman. If he thought I was a stuck up little madam, he would have said nothing was available and I wouldn’t have blamed him for that. I know that the lonely process of buying goods, any goods, via the interweb is easier, cheaper often, but it involves no human contact, or very little. In fact, we seem to enjoy as much ‘very little contact’ as possible these days, and, yet, it is only through a bonding process that anything in life really works. Oh, I am not saying we don’t need, use and value the internet, but out of balance we can find ourselves clumsy and careless at times when we are with another person. Out of practice.

When I go shopping for clothes (I hate shopping for clothes and am the very first to look online), I will avoid with great energy, huge shopping malls, caves of blue lighting, plastic walls and no air, or none already breathed in and out again. Instead, I will choose the little shop with a ‘ping’ as I open the door and a welcome smile on the face of the assistant. I don’t want ‘NEXT!’ yelled at me. I have a name, and it isn’t that. Although I absolutely do not like a pushy sales person, I do like the question ‘Can I help you with anything?’ and then, when I say I just want to browse, to be left to do just that. If I buy something, I want her, or him behind the pretty counter, to be interested in me and my choice, as I will be in them. I want to walk out feeling very chuffed with myself and with my purchase, and, more, the pleasant memory of our human encounter.

If I sound stuffy, I don’t mean to. I blog, I Facebook, I text and tweet, but it isn’t all I do.

Recently I came to realise that my work is lonely work. Writing, painting, loving my little home and being in and around it, walking with Poppy in the fairy woods, none of these get me in front of people. This is my choice. I am, at heart, solitary and I need that space around me to feel creative and healthy, but, out of balance, I get fearful in crowds and resist meeting friends. The good news is, that this is instantly fixable, once recognised. Driving through Glen Coe, beneath the craggy snow-covered tops of the Three Sisters, I pulled over to call Lisa, my publisher. We talked of mice and men, cabbages and kings, and, as I turned back onto the road, I felt a lift. It wasn’t the content of our conversation that did that, but her voice in my ear, connecting me once again to the outside world and, in doing so, raising my confidence in me, making me feel important and interesting and changing my whole outlook so that I was, once more, fresh and full of personality.

April 24, 2014 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 131 Gifts

Sometimes in my life surprising gifts are given. I remember my paintings being ‘out there’ in some gallery miles away for flipping ages doing nothing, it seemed, and then, just when I needed a lift, encouragement, a gift, it came; always a surprise. There I was, ferreting about for enough cash or whatever wherewithall I needed, thinking How Can I manage This, and with stealth and whilst I was looking the other way, in came the gift. Somebody bought a painting!

Of course, there are those of us who just know their paintings will sell wherever and whenever they hang them in white-walled galleries anywhere in the country just because they have a following; because someone loves watercolour landscapes, or elephants or canoes with bears in or cows with attitude, but I never had that following because every painting was in a different mood, employing different hues, tones. shapes. Hence The Gift.

It seems to me, now that I look back across the years, my eyes moving in fast-forward but backwards that there is a plan here. Not mine, I hasten to say, because I am like a chicken most of the time, grubbing in the dirt for whatever I’m looking for, picking over the stones and bones of life to find some nugget that will make me rise up and shout ‘Aha! and find me later relating this moment as an epiphany, and one that has altered from that moment on, my whole direction in life.

When Spring comes every year bless her old heart, she sort of spits and spurts, gives a little and then withdraws for many see-saw weeks. One minute, cardy off and all that white flesh revealed for a couple of afternoon hours, the next she churns up snowdrifts that stop us going through Glen Coe. One minute we are bringing out our daisy-festooned frock, the next snarling our way back into that frightful blue jumper, covered in pulls and paint marks and fighting off chillblains beside the woodburner. We go from hot stews to no thanks I’m not hungry and meanwhile the salad vegetables, hurriedly ordered by an over-keen grocer after two days of warmth, moulder into bronze on the shelf and end up smelling something rotten in the wheelie bin. And when she comes, Spring, she causes me much unrest. All the birds are building nests and not overthinking anything at all. The sun shows up the domestic slut that I am, and the windows look out onto what looks like fog. Any visit outdoors would sort that in a nanosecond. At Tapselteerie the begrudging Spring Clean would have been well and truly done by now, but given choices, as I now have, there is no such thing.

And with this Spring, there came a gift, unexpected, unsought, random and wonderful. In the ordinariness of any life, there are stars.

There are always stars.

April 18, 2014 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 130 Wild Flower

I know I write often about relationships, but, let’s be honest here, they are fundamental to every step we humans make. In order to move forward in any area of our lives, we need to form them and feed them and acknowledge, within them, the parts we don’t resonate with. We must allow each other to be who we essentially are.

Unless I meet my doppelganger, (which could throw up no end of trouble if you think about it) I am always going to have to deal with the things in you that are not in me.

As are you.

I may be loud and laugh like a donkey. I may have an irritating habit or six. I may bring, and undoubtedly will, into this relationship, my baggage from my own past, my own hangups about being told what to do, for example, fixed, pigeon-holed. Or, it may be you who has spent a lifetime wanting your voice to be heard and then listened to and who is fed up with pigeons, and their holes.

When we embark on a new relationship, there is a kind of euphoria at first, if, that is, we click in a way that appears bathed in a glorious and magical light. Then, after a little time, this wonderful light begins to pale, it has to for the true person to show their face. We might not like this bit. Why is that? Because now we see beyond the mask, and we all wear them. There are ways we wish to be seen and ways we do not wish to be seen, but it is not possible to keep that mask on for long. Human nature is too strong for us, we are at its mercy.

What we are all seeking, is to be accepted as we are. There are probably thousands of books on this very subject. It’s called Agape love, as distinct from the type of love known as Eros, which is the one that comes bathed in light. It cannot last, Eros, although it’s dashed useful as a starting gun, unless it matures into Agape. The Greeks had many words to describe love, as do other languages. It’s only we English speakers who have the one word and it can fankle us up something rotten as we wander through our lives. For example, over time, love can grow weary of loving. This is something you might say to me. Love flickers like a candle in the winds of time, and can sometimes snuff right out. But not Agape love, I will reply, because this love doesnt seek domination nor control. It doesn’t ever want to make another feel small or scared or unsafe. This love protects and encourages, even if there is no obvious point upon which we both agree, especially then.

A mother’s love for a child can be this ‘warts and all’ type, although such total acceptance is often lacking between herself and the child’s father. And yet, didn’t they set out together to make a shared lifetime? Of course they did. So what is missing? If we can allow a child to grow into an unique being, how come we work so hard to de-unique a partner? I’m not saying we all do this, but I have found a common thread or two in the relationships I have watched and studied.

I am wondering if the starting point is outside or inside us. If it is outside, then it must follow that we are always at the mercy of the world and its complex entanglements, a world that expects us to do or be something and someone, in order to fit, to take our place in the pecking order. If it is inside us, then why can’t we change things? Perhaps it’s because we don’t really want to. Maybe we feel we have done all we can and why should we be the one to change? If you tell me I am too over-bearing or judgemental, too quick to put you down, and you only see, before you, a person in serious need of repair, then you are obviously not going to budge. And if I rather like whatever it is about me you don’t like, or I don’t even recognise these, so called, faults in myself, then nor am I.

If I could go back again to the early days of my adult life, not that I would want to, for a minute, I might have wished for more training on relationships and less on geography and latin. Emerging as a student with qualifications might indeed lead me into a certain area of work, presuming I could find any that is, but it doesn’t help me one bit in the art of relationship building, nor its ongoing maintenace. If I am one of those fortunate children who was loved with an Agape love, then I am even less well-equipped, in theory, for haven’t I been allowed to be myself in any and all situations? How on earth I am going to be able to ‘fit in’ to the shape you want me to fit into?

When I am working with school children, little ones, I can see who is confident in a goodly home love, and who isn’t, by the way the child behaves, shares, steps back, or doesn’t. I came from a large and competitive bundle of children, and I notice how we all want to be heard, our voices rising to cap the general white noise inside a crowded house, to lift above it. When I leave that nest, I take that need with me. At first, you might have found it rather cute, but over time, trust me, it could well become a pain in the aspidistra, and build on itself until it becomes a ‘bad’ point, something that needs fixing, although we may not ever agree on that one.

What I have learned for certain, over many long years of relationships, is that my strength is also my weakness, and my weakness is my strength. My excessive behaviour, is just creative energy lacking in direction, like a weed, which you may want to pull up and cast away, but which, in truth is just a wild flower in the wrong place.

April 11, 2014 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 129 Out of Africa

In Africa I was more likely to find wildlife than wifi. Of course, there were odd times, in a bar perhaps in town or in a friend’s spanking new office block, but mostly, the only form of contact with anyone at all, was with a handshake, a wide smile and an exchange of words, a state of being I rather like, even if I did, out of habit, reach for my phone if ever we stopped for coffee.

This new office block, with its wide light rooms and wrap around views across Capetown, is already a business hub. Inventive and creative thinking, interior design and spatial understanding brings together anyone with a business to run and no desk to run it from. Hot Desks are affordable and genius, because, not only do you get your own space, wifi connection, etc, but you also get to work in a bustling energetic atmosphere among other creators, all of whom are more than happy to network over coffee or a beer.

At every robot (traffic lights) there may be 3 lanes of vehicles. I look across at those parked beside us in our little silver car (Maggie) and can hardly see the tops of the buckies (four-wheel drives) without craning. Inside these sit the well-upholstered Africaaners, their windows tight shut for the aircon to work. On the other side, a people carrier taxi, all windows open, pumps out music, the black passengers grinning and bopping on their way to or from work. The second we stop, the street sellers move in, weaving their way among the cars, holding their merchandise, such as beaded animals, children’s wooden puzzles, mobiles, jewelery, long-legged birds fashioned from plastic bags, woven sunhats and the Big Issue. The sellers are clean and proud, in the main, the turbanned women flashing sparkly smiles, the men making eye contact. Not begging but business. We don’t buy because we can find exactly what they are selling on the high street or at the market, even though they did assure us it was all their own work. It could also cause a cafuffle if the lights changed in the middle of negotiations, for there are always negotiations. The asking price is set high, the rest is barter.

I found the beggars, when we did meet them in town, and you always meet them in town, most distressing to observe. I always wanted to give something, but, had I done so, I would still be there in Market Square with not a penny left to my name. Once you give to one, others move in, many of them children, and all of them thin as rakes. Those who live in Capetown are not cold hearted, but they have grown a thicker skin. They will consider employing anyone who turns up, who cleans up, who decides to move up in life, but they will not easily support those who choose doorways to sleep in and some lethal coctail as nourishment.

I thought much about that. If someone has lost whatever they had, which may not have been much, it might not take long for that loss to turn into an acceptable way to live. I imagine self-confidence and respect dissolve pretty quickquick when your only chance of food is by raiding bins on collection day. I watched a man walk down the street doing just that and talking away to himself. He was oblivious to me, beyond stepping off the pavement to avoid a collision, and his eyes were bloodshot and empty. I pulled my bag closer and felt vulnerable and overdressed and frightfully well spoken and, well, guilty. We were heading out of town for a few nights on the coast, with food and wine and a rented beach hut to wrap around us and all he had to look forward to was another long street of wheelie bins and the possibility of Thai curry leftovers in polystyrene. And a doorway to sleep in.

Then (for life always sends a balance to help out) I met young black people with a zeal in their bellies. Not priveleged and living in one of the townships – mile upon mile of tin roofs and dust floors, but still determined to find new quality for their lives, waiting at tables, working on the dustcart, cleaning, odd-jobbing, and so much more. ‘If anyone wants it, the work is here’, I was told more than once. This is a country where labour is abundant and cheap. Wages are low, work is hard, but these people have a joy about them, a laughter that may well not come from a place of comfort. It’s more an attitude than a result of how life treats them. In other words, it comes first, that smile, that easy laugh.

We saw the maids arriving at the big smart Africaaner homes every morning around 7am. Dressed in black with brilliant white aprons, they trudged up the hills from the noisy taxi that brought them out of the townships, talking and laughing together. They always looked up for a greeting and always responded with friendship. Their hours, from 7.30 to whenever they were done cleaning, looking after children and cooking, might earn them £8 at the far end of a day that expects a woman to do every domestic job required. Then they walked back to the taxi rank, back to the townships to their own families to begin all over again, every single day. When I talked with one maid, she told me she was happy to work. Work, she said, is important. No work, no importance. She look at me, astonished when I told her I had worked as a maid for a time. Why? she asked me. ‘You don’t have maids in Scotland?’ As if cleaning was not for my shiny white hands. I fumbled about for an answer that didn’t sound like ‘well, I needed the money.’ She would have fainted clean away, had she known the wage I was paid for doing far less than is expected of her. And then she smiled the widest smile and then she laughed a laugh that made her bangles jingle and shook her head in amazement and amusement at the very thought of the ‘Ma’ cleaning a house, even her own. Then she gathered up a huge pile of washing and left me wondering at my priveleged life and how often I forget to remember that it is just that.

March 3, 2014 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 128 The Songs we Sing

Today the thrush sings atop a nearby larch that is just about to burst into new life. Last evening, as the stars filled the heavens, I listened to it again, this time down by the sea-loch, singing in trinkets. That’s my word, not the official diagnosis of thrush song. Unlike other birds, where there is a chance to follow the melody and phrasing, the thrush jumps from a whirr to a rhapsody, from clicks to trllls, and all in, what sounds to my ears like, one line of music score. I like music like that for it keeps me listening, keeps me wanting more, keeps me turning pages wondering what happens next. I like being around people like that, who fascinate with their creative agility.

Okay, park all that for now, but keep it close to hand.

Some people start to do something one way, and stick with it. I ALWAYS do it this way! they cry, not recognising the fun of variation. I always walk down this road! one that has given way to a dual carriageway, or I always loved that old beech tree! which now has fallen and will soon turn to pulp thanks to endless rains and careless landowners. These people can approach relationships the same way, with an ‘I’ and an ‘Always’ and it can cause havoc just because it refuses to bend or twist, to be creatively agile or adaptable.

At times, and when this ‘Always’ thing is in balance, it can mean wonderful things, such as always doing what you promise, or always being there when someone falls. In this state, it is a gift, a dependability, a trust. However, I would just like to poo-poo the thought that may have just popped into your head. The one that tells you, it must be either/or, always or never, This leaves trinket singing thrushes like me tweeting away on the outskirts of goodness, so, for that reason alone, it can’t be the truth.

Out of balance, the ‘Always’ person, believing, let’s say, in either/or, might look down on the rest of us, or me, anyway. Out of balance means being rigid, dogmatic,unbending. So that, if I were to suggest a deviation from whatever is planned, and if I continued to do this over long periods of time and in many areas of daily life, I might be creating a disturbance in the universe and possibly be the sole reason for climate change.

There is a third dimension to this thrush talk, and it is this. If I, a woman who changes her tune every few seconds, make the ‘Always’ person feel wrong about their way of being, then I am as rigid as they, only in a different, and might I suggest, convenient way. I say ‘convenient’ because I have noticed, that it is easy for me to be Mrs Bouncy Pants when it suits, when the song is wild in me and the day is full of thrushes, but, it is an entirely different matter when I am writing, for at this time, I am as rigid as the old beech tree that couldn’t fight the wind.

So, where do we go from here? If I am to go with my heart, and so are you and you and you, then how on earth can we manage it, and how will we ever work and walk together? It sounds like war to me. I believe firmly in listening to my own heart and hope you listen to yours too, but is my heart ‘right’? If I want to walk in empathy and gentleness with you, then it isn’t you I need to fix, but myself. Although I have no plans at all to give up my own right to be a trinket songstress, I must also honour your way. If I keep pointing out that you are wrong and I am right, then nobody wins for ‘a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still’. Besides, if everyone was like me, there would be no balance anywhere in the world. People like me need antithesis in big boots, solidly connected to terra firma.

My life has taught me many wisdoms through daily encounters with people not like me. I thought, once, that I was wrong in everything and could not understand, nor explain, why my heart said ‘jump in’ when all around me said ‘don’t’. Now I know that I do’nt have to give up on myself, for my self, in balance is perfect for me. I have my own way of doing things, of seeing things, and so do you. If there is an area upon which we both agree, then that is wonderful. But if you want to go left, and I, right, then that is what we should do, re-convening at coffee time, whereupon there is a good chance we will both have forgotten our skirmish, so caught up are we in the songs we’ve heard and the songs we’ve sung, on our different journeys.

And that is the key, if you will pardon the musical pun.

Forgetting.

March 2, 2014 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 127 Reasons to Stay

Since writing my book, Island Wife, I have received many emails and letters from women whose own story relates to my own. Some of them are short, some long and detailed, but many of them have the same question to ask me. Why did I stick with my marriage?

The ‘how’ of it, I can answer. Despite what appeared to be going on, and growing shape and form, I could always find one good reason to stay, one reason, however small and squeaky. There may well have been a thousand reasons to leave, but it only took one to keep me in place. In the early days, the reasons numbered five. My five children. I was confident and strong in the knowing that, were I to abandon ship, they would be damaged. I make no judgement, nor did I ever, on women who do leave. In fact, as I re-investigate my heart right now on this matter, I feel no critical twinges, nor any sense of superiority beside those good women who made a choice, a really tough one and one not without considerable personal angst and pain, guilt and fear. I just couldn’t do it myself, not for long, anyway.

I used to watch other wives and mothers, as they flew in on warm winds to stay at Tapselteerie for their family holidays. I warmed myself in the light of their eyes, eyes that told me they had found a nourishing bond in their own relationships, and that they were, yes, happy. Of course, I have no knowledge of them now, but those glimpses into another’s life both helped and hindered me. On the one hand, they made me envious. They had managed to find a man who honoured them just as they came to him, not in need of any re-arranging, not faulty. The new light they brought to the marriage was something he needed, wanted to be around, in order to find fulfillment. He basked in it, sought her wisdom, let her be. On the other hand, they made me feel that, had I been like them, I would also deserve such freedom within a relationship. Oh poor little me.

As the children began to try out their wings and, eventually, flew the nest, I became increasingly aware that I was being abandoned by the five who gave me context. Who am I now? is a question I often asked myself, as the rooms hollowed out and the quiet of ‘just us’ settled like dust. People, friends, told me that this was now my time to do something for me, and, yet, after decades of not doing something for me, I had no ideas at all. When someone has ploughed the same furrow for that length of time, investing fully in the work of every day, and night, it is almost cruel to take it all away and to offer a wide horizon. What could a no-longer-girl like me do with a broad horizon? I’ll tell you what she does. She stands there looking at it, mouth open, eyes wide and head empty, and then dives back to wash the kitchen floor, just to feel safe again.

In a different sort of relationship, one I observed in others and dream-wove from novels and movies, this woman would be given free rein to investigate, to research new roads, and, most importantly, encouraged gently to find her own wings, to grow new confidence as just herself in a new context – that of the big wide world. If that encouragement is not proffered, and if it matters as much as I think it does, then she will hold to what she knows.

I know about monkey mind. That chatter inside a head that always works to undermine walking out a dream. I have worked hard to quiet that voice, and still do, for it is not the truth. To imagine another life, without stepping into it, is just that. Dreaming. I found my way, by writing my story and setting it free in the big wide world. You might say it was written in the hope for understanding, for empathy. You might say I hoped it would bring a flash of remorse and a new beginning. And it might do all of these. It has already brought me a new self-confidence because to have a well-known and respected publisher take up your book, you must be able to write, and in these times of excellent writers, doubly so. It has also taught me that feeling sorry for myself and doing nothing to change my situation is, well, pathetic, at best.

In those times of finding just one reason to stay, I discovered other ones, hiding in my attic. In any relationship, there are at least two people, each with a very different perspective on life and ideas on how to live it. Bring into each mix, parental baggage, school history, sibling rivalry and so on and then dress this damaged person in cowboy boots, or high heels and call it an adult. Then shove it out into a world of high expectations, judgements, parameters, boundaries, social constraints and no mappage, no DIY manual on the subject, but only other opinions formed by those who came before, each one lumbering along under the weight of their own ‘stuff’.

I believe I have just found a new definition for Chaos.

Living now, each day as it comes, I learn something new. Something new about me, about my marriage, my choices, my life thus far. I still find reasons to keep walking, keep looking around, keep my heart soft and my stride strong and purposeful. I have bad days, black dreams, bouts of self-pity and I can still make the house shake with a powerful door slam, but these are just a part of the whole. What I love is a challenge and life is always thus. I find only momentary delight in winning an argument if my opponent just backs down, remaining certain still of his own belief. I find there is little (if any at all) point in going over who said what and when and in what tone of voice. I find no future in paying the slightest attention to either of us in a grumpy mood. I am learning that perspective is king, and that grace is his queen.

At the end, whenever that may be, I will reflect on my choices, made by me, for me, and be content to know, not that I got it right, but that I got it at all.

February 28, 2014 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 126 Light in the Attic

Our ‘attic’ or loft for the new generation of home-owners, is mostly dark. There is one piddling light bulb just at the trap door and about a mile and a half of pitch darkness, densly strung with fat dirty cobwebs left by old spiders who thought flies might just fancy a blind spin among the boxes and crates of stuff nobody knows is there, nor cares.

We have employed a miner’s headlamp when required to ferret about for something we think might be there, something high on the critical list for Right Now. Often, that initial enthusiasm is lost in the fight to avoid strangulation by Old Spider and the unlucky miner emerges furious and unrecognisable beneath Miss Haversham’s veil, coughing and spitting and in need of a number four cycle with maximum spin. Old newspapers dissolve into powder at a single touch and underfoot lie fossils that foof into blue smoke after one bootly crunch. Then the fine dust of a rodent’s body rises into a gasping mouth to irritate the cilia into a frenzy, like a field of ripe corn in a hurricane.

Whatever it was that seemed so vital, has now lost all of its shine. Getting out without breaking a bone is what rises to the top of the list. The steps, just too low to reach the trap door, balance between two stairs in an alarming way, and the support group who said they would remain in position for just this moment, have popped down to put the kettle on. Suddenly, all those old spiders, the clutch of their webbing, the dead mice and the darkness morph into a terrifying monster, one that is closing in. All I need now is for the trap door to snap shut and I am doomed to become the next fossil waiting to puff out my own blue smoke in a hundred years time, beneath another booted foot. My throat, or what is left of it, constricts, my heart begins a mad dash to nowhere and there is no way, without jumping, that I can re-connect with the wobbly steps.

That is the very LAST time I ever go up in that attic! I cry, once I can speak again. And, yet, there will be another time, because I am slim and agile and, as the space up there closes down over the years, the only one who will ever be able to get up there at all.

What I want to know, is why we put anything up there for in the first place? The family silver, the pretty china, the old guitar, the boxes and boxes of books on Walks in the Gloucestershire Countryside, or old AA Roadmaps, or those hundreds of volumes of self-published novels by unknown writers, long dead and completely forgotten. Their pages are brown and curling, their bound covers stained and damp. And, yet, we keep on keeping them. For what? For whom? Our children? I very much doubt they would think beyond a bonfire. Perhaps we are thinking that something magical might be lurking up there, something that would change all our fortunes, just by being brought into the light. Another never-ending story.

In order to see the light, we must have the darkness. A darkness that envelops and holds secrets. I can hear the mice up there some nights. It sounds like quite a fun party at times and interrupts my sleep. Tiny feet, many of them, skittering among family treasures, living out their lives in the darkness, along with the monstrous spiders and blind flies. The mice make nests from old hardbacks, or plastic, or the gut from a guitar string. Amazing what you can do with what is all around you.

When I am finally down on terra firma again, I look at the shaft of light on the landing floor, cast by the piddling light bulb and in a perfect, and very small, square shape, one I just wriggled through, twice. I think about the darkness up there, and then of the darkness in my own attic, the attic of my head. Only I really know what’s up there, no matter how much telling I do. There is always more. And it is not easy to squeeze through the trap door of my mind, nor it is it a pleasant experience.

Over here, are the regrets I admit to, and over there, the ones I don’t. Further towards the water tank with it’s wonky lid, lie the memories of my children, what they said and did as little ones. Down there where the webs are dense as a curtain, are the emotions and hurts I have learned to quiet. Near them are stacked the doubts and the worries about which I can do nothing, and never could. Closer to the piddling bulb are boxes of hopes. I keep them near the light for easy access, although I have moved a few of them into a recess because they will never come about. They are tidied away, but not quite bonfired, even though I really should clear that space. The mice chew through old words and the strings that made my music, turning them into cosy nests for their young. I don’t mind that. It’s good to let go, to allow things to move on. And, besides, I can make new words, new music. But, first, I have to let go.

And letting go is the only way to live. I will change the things I can, and let go of the things I cannot. Knowing which is which might appear confusing, but, trust me, we always know the answer to that.