February 15, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 31 – Valentine’s Day!

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.

February 14, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 30 – Force 10 and Rising

‘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.

February 12, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 29 – Elephants and Crossroads

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.

February 8, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 28

This afternoon a gaggle of women sat down to discuss our personal responses to a study we are working on. Although the time in which the words were written dates back over 2000 years, it has a relevance today in ordinary lives. The language is dated, the context not relevant to us in this western, and predominantly material, world, but how we feel as humans changes not that much.

One of the main topics, that seemed to inspire us all to make comment, was on our own gift, or gifts. A gift, by definition, is not something we have earned, nor learned, but, instead, something beyond ourself, something of a surprise, perhaps.

What is my gift? We asked. I am just an ordinary island woman, leading a life much like any other life. I cook and clean, I sew or don’t sew. I organise to varying degrees, my own life, and those of another or others. I do nothing astonishing. I am not a prima ballerina, a rock star, a princess or a surgeon. I am just me.

Or am I?

What we learned, over cups of tea around a table in a warmly lit room, is that not one of us is ‘ordinary’. For a start, we each have certain problems and challenges to wake us each morning. These are specific to us. As we pull on our sensible warm underwear, we each consider these challenges and make our decisions in context. One of us is good at being cheerful. She says her mouth goes up at the edges naturally. Another is good at writing letters, at remembering those who often forget even themselves, and she loves to take out paper and a pen and begin.

Dear You….

Another can bake seriously risen cakes and buns and does it for pleasure. Another paints and is lost for hours in the process.

I write and the same goes for me.

What we all realised is that we do what we do because it comes easily, because time loses its grip on us, because we forget context in the content.

Now see-saw that word.

Content.

We are content in our work.

And that is the whole point of a gift. It is not something we struggle to achieve, nor do we have to study it to get good. We just do it, effortlessly. The skill is to recognise it and then, to take it out into the world for the benefit of others who don’t have the gift we have. Not for our own validation, although we all look for that, but for the good of humankind.

Or the village. Or maybe, just for next door.

February 7, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 27 – Sea-words

We walked on a wide white beach today in the late afternoon light. The little dog ran here and there through the machair in search of rabbits. She has never caught one. I don’t think she really wants to. It’s the chase she loves, the journey.

Because of the recent storms, the kelp is high, almost on the machair, settled in loops as it was pushed in by the waves. It looks like curly hair. In one curl, lay a dead seal. I knew it before I found it, as the hooded crows and a bird of prey I couldn’t recognise in the shout of blinding sunlight, lifted into the sky as we came near.

Something dead there, I thought.

And there was, its skin blistered pink, at its final resting place. Food, now, for a hungry world.

We found driftwood and bits of flotsam and jetsam, and I love that around the ocean, there are so many wonderful words. Not one of them boring.

I saw bladder-wrack and bubble-wrap and plastic bottles and lids and bits of toy, a piece of Lego and another thing, an emergency water bottle.

Whose boat, I thought, and what journey and where did you come from, or go to?

I remember someone found a soft toy rabbit in the harbour car park. Soaked in the rain, we dried her and placed her for all to see with a sign asking…….Am I yours?

Nobody claimed her, so now, she is mine, with her raggedy ear and her eyes wide with looking.

I call her Anouk.

Grace.

It takes grace to allow ourselves to be moved from one state to another. One place to another. We may not choose it, but if we can bring our whole self with us, without looking at what we left behind, with just our wide-looking eyes hungry for right now, right here, we can make a smile appear in the most unlikely faces.

Anouk

February 5, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 26 – Safe and Sound

They said there would be no ferries as the wind was forecast to rise beyond acceptable bouncing-over-water limits. At such times, ordinary old waves suddenly turn into the Salt-water Alps, and we struggle to hold down our children, our cars and our skirts. Words are snatched from open mouths and everyone wishes they had gone to a health spa in Basingstoke, including me. I may be married to the ocean through my family, but she and I have had plenty of disagreements over the years. Trouble is, she is way more confident than I am and with the wind up her tail, she can batter ordinary law-abiding folk to their limits.

We decided we would set off anyway, although the ‘we’ part of that is never the result of a discussion. When I married my husband, he became ‘we’ and I remained ‘I’. So we set off because we always set off. To not set off is to be a big girl’s blouse, and we don’t do them in our house. Even the girls don’t. To show fear is to appear weak. To hesitate is to be run over.

We spent a happy ten minutes behind a huge mucky lorry, and, having left home a rather cute sky blue, we gradually turned brown in the spray from its many wheels.

What a lovely gentle speed, I yelled over the hysterical blapping of the windscreen wipers. One of them hesitated mid blap. This is it, I thought, and waited for it to ping into orbit.

The moment passed.

Then so did we. Well, he did. I just closed my eyes as we plunged into the brown darkness on the wrong side of a very narrow road.

We passed gritters and snow ploughs, and tourists at viewpoints, holding on to each other to avoid flying over the edge. Anoraks billowed out like kites and nobody looked like themselves, as nobody ever does in woolly hats, scarves and multi-coloured mountain jackets, their hoods pulled right up tight. I have walked past family in the winter with no flicker of recognition. All I can see are a fistful of features peeping out from the dark.

Eventually we arrived at the ferry point and could see its beak was closed.

We were not to get home this day.

Now, settled in a warm little hotel sipping tea and watching the storm dancing through the wide windows, I find it all rather exciting. Home will still be there tomorrow and we are safe.

I think of the homeless on the cold streets of a cold city before I sit down to write.

February 4, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 25 – As I believe, I will achieve

If we don’t try things out, how can we know if we like them or not, that’s what I ask myself as I hover on safe ground looking into unknown territory.

Such as the Hair Care products in a supermarket, a line of shelves that stretches for half a mile and each brightly coloured tube or tin or tub, all with impossible-to-open lids, promising that my life will change the instant I apply the goo/foam/wax or cream to my head.

And that’s just the Hair Care section. I could spend 3 weeks in one store bamboozling my brain with options. In fact, if I believed all of it, or even some of it, I could emerge a completely different person, transformed by ‘product’ into Superwoman, or, at least, as someone a whole lot more beautiful than the one that walked me in.

In this world that refuses to allow me to be ‘myself’ I can get lost. I forget to hear only the voice of my higher self, my instinct and listen, instead to all those whispers that dart around my head like swallows catching flies. When I am faced with a bigger set of options, like changing careers for example, I can either follow my heart, or follow everyone else’s opinions and, if I do that, I just go round in circles until I am wheezing with the exertion and still standing in the same place.

What I do is say nothing.

When I decided, after 35 years of doing the same thing, pushed on by need for cash to pay bills, low self-esteem and self-doubt, to leap into Art School, the world was aghast. Well, not the WHOLE world of course, but the little one I lived in, because nobody but me felt the blood rush and excitement at the very thought of changing lanes. Actually, it was more like deciding to walk against the traffic in a fog without a fluorescent jacket, but I had to do it. The idea grew skin over its bones and filled with strong red blood overnight and I was in its thrall; captivated and, for the first time in years, truly alive.

When I take a risk, I know who I am. I don’t follow the flow just because that is what we should do. I may be laughed at, or ridiculed, or, at the very least, carefully interrogated by those closest to me, but I know now it is not necessarily because they think my nut case idea is dangerous or destructive. It is more that they are a little envious that anyone could kick against the pricks and still be able to walk and run and dance.

I don’t sit down and draw up a risk situation. Risk comes to me, through the ether, from the clouds, and it will not be denied however much I may flap it away with my tea towel.

If Risk knocks at your door, let him in. For beside him stands Lady Providence and she is the one who will walk beside you if you just have the courage to take the first baby step.

Someone once said that needless consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, and I agree. Until I broke free, and not from others, but from my own fear and doubt. Our minds are not small at all, and each one of us can move a mountain, if we just believe.

‘Make the Jump’

February 1, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 24 – Many a Mile

On the eve of a journey I get collywobbles. That is a word, I just checked, although it not being a word, as in a dictionary word, would never stop me writing it. Sometimes there is just no acceptable word or phrase to describe what I am feeling, or seeing and so I just make it up.

In my young days of being the Elocution Queen, propelling my voice, ‘Chin UP girl!’ with my neck pushed forward like a goose on the attack and all my tendons tight as telephone wires. I would have been upbraided by Miss Stuffy Drawers endlessly. She of the stuffy drawers is long dead, bless her old heart, so I feel quite reckless these days when choosing my words.

Onomatopoeic, they are, in the main, and sounding like themselves, the way they feel. I could waffle on about the colour of my feelings too, but I might lose you sensible readers who like to hear a regimental march in the laying down of prose, although nowadays anything goes.

Or does it?

I love language, any language, whether it be Spanish or street talk, even if I don’t understand one word, as long as it is spoken from the heart and not contrived. Sometimes even the Queen’s English can sound contrived, if it is pompously delivered and devoid of feeling. Words are music after all; they have a rhythm, phrasing. They need to convey both information and emotion, even if it is just giving someone directions to the station.

Which brings me neatly back to my collywobbles.

Tomorrow I fly. Not with the geese, as I have always wanted to do, but with British Airways back up to Scotland. I have, by mistake, booked an aisle seat so I won’t see any more than the back of someone’s head. It’s not that I am fearful of flying, nor of a train bus or car journey, so I can’t really explain my inner state at all. Perhaps it is just stepping away from what has become the norm for me. Perhaps there is a frisson of anxiety about going back to whatever I am going back to.

How can I get back into the old routine? Do I want to get back into the old routine? Do I even have one?

And so on.

I felt this way starting a new school, or the first day of a new job, and there is a beauty in there somewhere if I can just lay my hands on it. If I can rest in the process, if I can worry not, but trust that all is just as it should be and I am the only one who can do whatever I must do, then I will take each step mindfully and be inside the moment.

Holy men have learned themselves into such a state. Hermits live alone for years to find it, this inner peace. Material things will never be enough, however much I may think they are the solution. Enlightenment is a personal journey, a quiet reflective one, one lived step by step, inch by inch, and all my anxieties do is rush me ahead of myself, into an imagined non-reality.

I met someone once who told me he was enlightened. I fought back a snort. If someone has to tell me he is enlightened, he is most definitely not. No-one who has reached that state would ever feel the need to say a single word.

I obviously have miles to go.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

– Robert Frost

January 31, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 23 – Fur and Feathers

This morning I watched a magpie fly against the luffing of a growing wind with a twig in its beak.

It’s January! I called into the sky. You daft eejit.

But, it was warm this morning, warmer than of late and as I stopped to notice the birdsong filling my ears, I realised they were all at it.

Spring talk.

When we lodged briefly (but not briefly enough) in Glasgow, in a third floor flat on the south side, this blackbird kept me awake at nights. I would stomp to the window in a sleepy grump to fling open the curtains with a view to barking some ‘shut up’ comment, as if that would have made any difference. Instead, I watched it on a branch, its beak working away and from that small assemblage of bone and feathers came the most beautiful melody. Of course, I thought, its those awful street lights that confuse you my friend. They confuse me too, shining like super troopers right outside the bedroom window so that even the nasty chocolate velour curtains can’t hold back the noisy orange shout of light. I come, after all, from an island where day is day and there’s a brightness about those hours, whatever the weather, and where nights grow gently dark, falling into a soft black that blinds us all and sends us running home for tea, to warm fires and golden lamplight and something to watch on the telly.

Back to the magpie. It landed in the top of a big pine tree. The outstretched branches floated about like tentacles underwater as the wind grew muscle. I listened to the squeaking of wood on wood and wondered where on earth among those dancing limbs this daft magpie planned to lay its first stick.

As I watched, another magpie disappeared within the, now frantic waving of needled arms, and for a moment all was quiet.

Then I saw the squirrel.

It hurtled up the trunk stopping every so often to wiggle its tail at no-one in particular, although if I know anything at all about tails, a certain sort of wiggle is definitely a warning.

Still no action from the magpies, although I could hear their conversation somewhere out of sight.

Suddenly the tree exploded. There was a great deal of animal shrieking and swearing, and two magpies burst outwards from the tree, flipping out and over and away leaving behind what sounded like a trail of expletives.

I waited.

The squirrel appeared and ran along one of the upper branches, one particularly outstretched one, now completely at the mercy of the wind. As it got almost to the end (to see where the magpies had gone perhaps), a big gust caught the branch and turned it into a trebouchet with the squirrel as ammo. Catapulted into space it made a perfect flying arc and disappeared into the neighbour’s garden.

I giggled, although I don’t suppose the squirrel did.

Moments later it appeared on the fence and chirruped something at me; something, I fancy, like

‘What the hell are you sniggering about lady?’

How to Win Friends and Influence People sprang to mind, but I said nothing.

Time for coffee.

fig via: funny-pictures.feedio.net

January 30, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 22 – Colour me Purple

A young friend, half my age and still scampering through her life, arrived the other day with perfectly painted toenails, a crisp bright red and not a single mistake. I had to put my specs on to be sure. Not only was the polish perfect (she had painted them herself, whilst her children ate their coco-pops), but so were her toes. I looked down at my own unpainted, bent battered toes and had a little sigh to myself, but only a little one. I remembered carrying all those babies, those half hundredweight sacks of potatoes, and all that marching up and down the hill, all that stomping around in various stages of outraged indignation and I thanked my bent battered toes for their unquestioning loyalty to the rest of me. She, of the perfect toes, is careless with her youthful vitality, just as I was. I never thought, for one minute, I would cascade into a heap of wrinkles, because it just seemed impossible. It seemed so unlike me.

Well here I am, and it’s hilarious most of the time. What I have found, in these purple years, is the wonderful humour of women. More precious than any jewels, we are born with it and we can always access it when faced with challenges. We can rise, as we always have, to the occasion, joshing with each other, encouraging and teasing, propping each other up, accentuating the positive. Even when this ageing process brings us up short and sharp and sore, there is a woman near to hand to help us laugh at ourselves, in a gentle and sensitive way, because she knows exactly how we feel about our five stomachs and the cold in our bones, and our rheumatic fingers that used to play Rachmaninov and now have trouble peeling an orange.

Well I say this to all of you fabulous women.

Firstly, you really are fabulous, every single one of you, and younger women need to see us plucky old girls with a smile on our faces. It takes longer, I agree, to elevate the wrinkles, but it’s still possible, and, besides, we can smile with our eyes, our humour, our experience of life. Getting older is getting better, if we decide it is so, and what about this childlike sense of devil-may-care? That desire to jump on sandcastles and run a stick along someone’s railings, or pinch an apple from their tree. Where did that come from? I think it arrived when I turned 50 and I believe it to be the Great Consolation.

So, I’m going to make the very most of this delicious ageing process, and, when I am really old, which is a very long way off, I don’t want to be a sweet old lady. I want everyone to be saying……….oh glory, what IS she up to now?