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A Point in Time

Island Blog 38 - Three Amigos

 

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.

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Island Blog 37 – New Road

Island Blog 37 - White Wood Sprite

 

Things are hotting up for the launch of my book, Island Wife, to be published by Two Roads on March 28th.  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.

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Island Blog 36 – Pecking Order

Island blog 36

 

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.

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Island Blog 35 – Speaking without Words

Island Blog 35

 

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.

 

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Island Blog 34 – To Rise and Fall and Rise again.

Today I spent a happy time with 3 other women over lunch.  We talked of many things, and sometimes all at the same time, but the theme that wound its way through all our conversations, was the ‘how’ of living.  How we each manage it.

Some of us walk a steady, even path, although it wasn’t always so steady.  Another is young, and she will take many paths, mainly out of youthful curiosity.

Do we lose that curiosity I wonder?  Or have we found that it doesn’t only kill cats?

The way we germinate the seeds of our own personal existence, it seems to me, is decided by the choices we make as we live out our life.  But if we felt we had no choice, or if choice was made on our behalf, does that mean that those seeds never grow and bloom?

There is a theory that we make our own choices, whether it looks like it or not.  Actually, I do agree with that theory, but I also hate it at times.  It is so much more pleasant to present myself as a victim of circumstances, or of some overbearing ‘other’ in my life.  After all, I could have been this or that, had I been allowed to make my own choices.

Couldn’t I?

When you live like I do, on a daily roller coaster, you are allowed to cast envious glances to those marching steadily along their level path of choice.  It’s fine when I am riding on point break, towering over the world and shouting ‘Woohoo, Look at Me!’  but quite another as I sink into the troughs and nearly drown.  And I do it every single day.  It is, in a word, exhausting to be me, but I am me and that’s that.

So, Me, how are we to accept that we made this choice very early on in life?  Our sisters seem very sorted, our brother too, and we all came from the same nest.  What, or who decided that we would think too much about every flaming thing, lifting up the carpet of life over and over again until the tacks give up and ping off into the unknown, leaving a permanent curl for everyone else to trip over?

Enough questions.

I have found that my first important decision each day lies not in what I do, or where I go, but in how I see what I see.  This doesn’t mean I should spend all my time looking inward but quite the opposite. When I have heard that someone is off to find themselves, in India or some such place, I have to conceal an inner snigger. In order, it seems, to feel ok, no, better, good about being a volatile lunatic, like I am, is to look at the world of which I am an essential part.  I know that sounds a bit cocky, but to be honest, it works for me.  If I can tell myself that I am here for a specific purpose, just as I am, with my own seeds to nurture and grow, then my roller coaster begins to make some sense.  After all, I can see higher and lower than the ones on the steady path.  I can spin among the clouds and swim in the deeps and I can use those powers of observation to help another.  I can take what looks like a heavy load and call it a gift. And I need to do this exactly where I am, because to flip off to India would be fine, but only if I could leave me behind.

Which I cannot.

If I am the one who has to surf the biggest waves, then let me learn how to surf.  If it is I who must sink into those troughs, then I must learn to be a cork.

And then, let me have the presence, the absolute engagement with where and who I am, to find one who fears their own sinking, and to show them that they can do it too.

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Island Blog 33 – Footprint, Shadows and a Whisper

Island Blog 33 - Shadows

Walking on the wide white sands of the bay, I see the footprints.  Some are of big old walking boots, like mine, only bigger, some of paw marks or gull prints and then……oh joy…..little bare toes, scrunched into the darker wet sand along the shoreline.

The tide is coming in and fast.  I have to veer landwards, ever so slightly, or it will be up to my ankles by the time I reach the far side of the scooped out bay.  There’s a screech of gulls way over there where the fresh water has sunk a deep furrow in the sand.  They always gather there, shouting ‘mine, mine, mine, into the cold blue sky.  As the little dog splashes through the frothy spume and the fingers of kelp, spread at a tidal whim, the gulls begin to rise, first one, then, two, then all of them, not high, but high enough to float just above my head.  They are huge this close, alarmingly so and their eyes black and mean as they cant at us from a safe distance.

I find a message in the sand, drawn letters, two foot tall, a sand-whisper about someone loving someone else, a childish confidence in the curve and straight of the names.  Laughter comes to me on the breeze and I look up to find the owners of the toe prints.  Two little pink girls, leggings rolled up to their knees, run in and out of the freezing water, impervious to its chill, filling brightly coloured buckets and emptying them again.  Their hair, long and curly russet, flies out behind them.  Their song is of delight and life without thought, without reason or limitations.  Their mother watches from where she sits on the drier sand, muffled up in hat and boots and a warm overcoat.  She calls to them and they reply, their voices sweet with innocent joy, but their words are lost to me for they fly into the salty free-blown air before I can catch them, and make them a part of my own afternoon.

As I wander away from the gulls, the kelp and the shoreline, it is almost evening and my shadow casts long over the sands.  Tonight, when all is dark and the little russet-haired innocents are safely tucked beneath their warm blankets, the sea will claim this beach for her own and she will take the words, the shadows and the footprints back to herself.

It will be as if we had never been here at all.

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Island Blog 32 – Circles of the mind

The Island

This morning is a cracker.  I know it before I open the curtains, for I can hear no rain, no wind, but only the sound of happy birds calling for breakfast.

I sit here and think about this blog, about my writing, my need to write.  Looking at something, a view, a morning, an encounter, is not enough for me, because I can hear the voice in everything, one that asks to be remembered.  It’s not enough to say ‘it’s a beautiful morning.’  There has to be more than that.  Is it a warm one, a Saturday, my child’s first birthday?  Is it busy or quiet?  Do I have something to come that excites and delights me, or am I just a morning person?

All these and more affect how I look upon what I see.  And the person next to me, next to me in the same moment of morning, might say it’s about as beautiful as cold rice pudding, for we all look out from our own perspective, our own context in the life we live.

Some folk look for flaws,  some folk look for beauty.  I just look.

Start a blog, Lisa said, as if it was a really simple thing, the simplest. Lisa is my publisher at Two Roads/Hodder.  She also said I should upgrade my mobile from one purchased at a street market in Africa 3 years ago, with just a few knobs and an On/Off switch, to one fashioned in the 30th century with a thousand applications, including Tetris (whatever that is) and a camera with screen rotation which I can’t turn off.  I have taken many pictures already of things and people tumbling like beach balls, including some mint wrappers inside my jacket pocket, a shot that looked quite artsy once I stopped rotating and my eyeballs settled down.

I used to re-charge my old mobile once a week.  Now it’s a daily thing, and not just for the mobile. If I am not actually writing my blog, importing (!!!???) photos, once they have stilled, from my mobile, I am sifting through my thoughts on life, love and what’s for supper.  Preparing my mind;  pulling at the sinews of it, encouraging blood flow, breathing in the morning.

Initially I resisted, squeaked and screamed and whined and moaned.

I can’t do this! I wailed.  I am a techno-phobe, an island girl, no roundabouts, no traffic lights, remember??

That was one of my voices.

The rest all yelled ‘Shut up, make coffee and get over yourself!

In the face of such encouragement, I had to listen.

Now it comes, more or less, naturally, and what I have learned, in this new process, is that I can change, even though I struggle with it as much as anyone else does at first.

It’s the thought of it that scunners us.  There is comfort and predictability in staying the same.  We think we still move forward, but we don’t. We circle.

The benefits of personal stretching far outweigh the disadvantages.  In fact, I am not sure there are any disadvantages, for, in the light of this new view, it’s not only my mornings that are different, nor, indeed my afternoons or evenings.  I find I think in a different way.  I am more able to face whatever comes next, because I have already done it, and can do it again.  The unknown is no longer frightening, not because it won’t be at some point – I am sure it will – but because I have proved to myself that my mind is not stuck, that my old way of doing things is not all I am capable of, and there is a new beauty in that.

My advice – recognise your circle and step out of it.  Oh, and please remind me of these wise words when I need to hear them again.

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Island Blog 31 – Valentine’s Day!

Driftwood heart

A day longed for by many, fizzing with champagne and flowers and hopes and promises, and one shrugged off by others, usually those in stoutly sensible lace-ups and crackly anoraks.

‘A load of romantic nonsense!’ they say, indicating, with a chuck of their square chin, that such an unrealistic, time-consuming and pocket-emptying affair should remain ‘over there somewhere’ and dare to move no closer.

Their wives think differently, of course.  They have grown weary of being realistic over the years and might rather appreciate the odd attempt, however odd, at an indication that this man with whom they have walked through most of their lives, does, in fact, realise they are a fully paid up member of the female species, and that, beneath that crackly and efficient exterior, there beats a soft, gentle and loyal heart.

Although this heart feels, most of the time, like a rather unattractive pulsation of tubed-up offal, it could glow again, with the smallest gift, the tiniest whisper of proffered affection, and I don’t mean an emaciated clutch of terminally ill carnations bought from the local garage and dumped on the kitchen table.

‘We don’t do things like that.’ they say, these men as if it was a good thing and one ‘we’, at a certain point, grow out of, along with wetting the bed and playing conkers.

I ask them ‘Why not?’  which is always my favourite question when someone says they don’t do this or that, because, in the main, they have absolutely no idea or have quite forgotten why, having ‘not done’ that thing for a very long time.  Then they pull back a little, in case whatever I am showing signs of might be catching, and, at the same time, their sensible wives pull forward as if hoping that it is.

We do celebrate Valentine’s Day, still, after over 40 years.  I am not saying I have felt much like it at times, nor I imagine has he, but one of us at least has not allowed romance to starve to death  over time,  and I am glad of it, because what we have not lost is the fun in a marriage, and, to be honest, if there isn’t fun then it is just a life sentence.

However, fun does not appear by magic, it is a delicate plant that needs daily attention.  Not bothering is so much easier.  We women will always rise ourselves up from any ashes that come our way, but we can only do so much rising once the rust sets in.   As we watch others being bought fresh flowers or taken out to dinner, or being told how wonderful/pretty/clever they are, we know we want the same.  Our problem is that we have forgotten how to ask for it.

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Island Blog 30 – Force 10 and Rising

'Force 10'

‘Force 10’

Photograph courtesy of James Fairbairns

Today it’s cold, sleety and wet and with a gale forecast, again, and the maudlin in me could take over if I was less than vigilant.  The thought of going for a good brisk walk, or even just driving Miss Daisy down to the shop, makes my neck sink deeper into the high neck of my big woolly jumper of which I am more than heartily sick.  Although I do need to cover myself from neck to bottom and beyond, every day from the moment I rise, wear fisherman’s socks over my chilblains and a big jacket just to feed the birds, I still look longingly in my ‘skimpy’ drawer.  Strappy tee-shirts, a pair of shorts, silly frou-frou tops, a short denim skirt.  When did I ever wear any of them?  When was it ever warm enough, or when did my pale blue skin ever allow such nudity?

It wasn’t that long ago, I tell myself, as I shut the drawer on my finger.  Fingers move slower in the cold, and sometimes, too slowly to avoid being shut in drawers or doors, or knocked painfully against surfaces that somehow seem softer in the warm sunshine.  Conversations are all about how-to-pay-the-bills and who ran up this cost anyway? And everyone I meet is aching or has lost their greenhouse, and it’s not over yet.  We are exhausted being so positive, but therein lies the key.  Whether you believe in global warming, or not, have a faith or not, there is a spirit within us all that keeps us going and we are glad of it.  We are tough cookies and built to survive, no, more than that, to laugh at ourselves, our situations, our daily disasters.  We can lift, cheer and support each other, just as we are designed to do, and it is the stuff of life.  In cheering you I am cheering me.   Whatever gales and tempests have assailed us and will assail us yet, whatever gets flattened or damaged, torn or ruined, we have ourselves and our sense of humour and we can share both every single day.

So, I tell myself, stand up girl, and be counted. This is much ado about nothing.

‘Life is either a daring bold adventure or it’s nothing at all’

I am off to bake a chocolate cake, visit someone, and tomorrow, I think I’ll wear my jumper inside out.

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Island Blog 29 – Elephants and Crossroads

 

Turning Point

Just before I meet a cross in the roads, I get what feels like indigestion.  A friend of mine once called this state ‘The Churny Pits’, and it’s a pretty good description of the upsy-downsy state of my inner woman.  Things I did up to this point seemed ok, if a little samey and ordinary, and I got on with them, in the main, with a positive attitude and a spring in my step, I waved my usual wave, bought my usual coffee at my usual place, arrived at my usual time, said the usual things, got on with my usual routine. But something is different.  Each of these usual things feel empty – empty of life, as if I am acting out a role, one I have played for years and know off by heart.

For a while I ignore the unrest, gathering in the ‘usual’ closer to my chest, to keep it with me, for without it I might be nobody and, having been a nobody once before, I don’t plan on being one again. But it doesn’t work and soon those things that gave me my place in my own world, abandon me completely.

And then I stand at a crossroads I never asked for, never even considered was there in the first place. I can’t avoid it, not this time.  It’s like finding a herd of elephants in the Fairy Woods, which, to be honest, has never even thrown up a fairy.

I know what all this means by now, although it has been no less uncomfortable in the gestation period, much like the onset of flu.  This herd of elephants is here to tell me it is time to change direction, that Life has something in store for me, something up her sleeve and I can’t see it until I let go of the old and turn towards the new. It could be old thinking, old habits, old responses or it could be something bigger.  The good news is that I won’t be asked for more than I can give, although my idea of what I am capable of is not necessarily all I am capable off, as has been clearly demonstrated to me more than once.

Sounds like a stretching opportunity cometh my way.

Again.

Well, I whine, from where I sit on the old couch in my old slippers with my usual cup of tea at the usual time……I would turn toward the new if someone would just show me where it is.  I could waste weeks pounding up the wrong path, whether my boots were right for the task or not.  Someone needs to tell me.  I need hard facts, a good argument for this whole airy-fairy change thing.  After all, how will the household bills be met, and what will the coffee vendor think and what will my children/husband/mother say?

Besides, I know nothing about this daft dream that’s been floating in my head for weeks now, months perhaps. What if it’s just a mini crisis, a temporary loss of balance, or even just indigestion?

Well, says Life to me, there is only one way to find out.