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Island Blog – One Young Woman RIP

A few days, nothing much, just days, either legging it or dragging. Rain falls, wind blows, stories exchange somewhere near the vegetable aisle in the supermarket. Routines are kept or challenged, food is consumed, gardens tweaked, walks walked, admin attended to. A well known and familiar huddle of days, divided by weekends, as weekends always do. Routines dither, mealtimes shift, demands lessen, perhaps, whilst others march in like soldiers with bayonets at the ready. Clothes need washing for skool on Monday, hockey, horses, football, choir, athletics, etc. Freedom beckons for some and it is heady. Folk gather, celebrate community, a shared meal. Fun is out there.

But not for one young woman, for her daughter, her family. Her weekend was her last on this earth. Cancer is ferocious, or can be. She wasn’t even 40. When I think of that time in my life, I was strong, bonkers and never thought about dying, not at all. Death did not stalk me. Oh, I was aware of the Ferryman, for sure, but only for an old granny, or others who topped me by at least the same again. It is still almost impossible, no, impossible, to accept such a young life just stopped. Just. Like. That. But it happened and the village is quiet. There is little chat near the vegetable aisle today. We are in stasis. It isn’t about any of us, no matter if we knew her well or not, but there is a big Something about a well known someone leaving the earth, us, for ever. It makes no sense. None.

There are plenty funerals here. Small community, everyone knows everyone. But not a young life, not a young mum, not her. We will gather and mourn, but, eventually, we will all get on with our own lives, our own stuff. Not her daughter, though, not her mum and dad, her brother, her grandparents, no. They will live with the death of this young woman for, probably, ever.

I am glad I knew her, a bit. I loved her strong lively spirit, even in the early stages of this all-consuming killer. She was always upbeat. I have no idea what went on in her mind in the scary hours, but she presented a typical island woman strength when ‘out there’. I aspire to that.

RIP Sweet Girl.

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Island Blog – Fiddling Sticks

My favourite music, the fiddle. The word alone lifts my feet into dance. Fiddle, rhymes with diddle, piddle, widdle, skiddle, and I could add a few more. All of them traverse me into lift, laughter my aide de buoyant. That might be French, might not. I’m not for caring much right now about semantical language shifts, nor their accuracy. Actually, fiddling is rarely an accurate science. I know because I had stood standing (a rare thing for me) at a ceilidh, just to watch the wild crazy sawing of that bow across four strings, the bow and bend as the fiddle and the player become one with the dance. I hear more beats to the bar, more sudden shifts into minor, into major, I hear it and it wilds me too. Even if others don’t get the musical seasonal shift, I can sense their excitement as it happens. Needless to say, there is often chaos in the field, a lot of crashing into each other, laughter lifting like spice and sugar into the over-breathed air above our heads, and we forgive, as our toes sting like hell. We just dance, we just move, we just collide and apologise and move on. We have to or we might end up as part of the single track road.

Sticks. After all the winds we have buffeted against this summer season, we find sticks every which where, spun off from big limbs, like they are no longer useful. And, on the picking up of them, I get it. It’s a bit like clearing out a wardrobe (such an ancient name) and shucking away those dodgy frocks and blouses (another ancient word) for the moving along. That’s a season in a word. Move it along. It seems to me that nature is much better at this than we are, we daft humans who hang on to what was fine in the past, and is no longer. Nature just spits out. Maybe there’s a lesson there. However, and notwithstanding, (sorry, indulgence there) it is not easy, because we have this propensity to hold on to our past. I was young, looked good in this, once, thing. It wonders me, even as I know the feeling. And not just in bodily coverings, but in mindal (my word) acceptance. If we could, can, spit out the dead sticks in our lives, just like that, how might we free ourselves? From past pain, from regrets, from the feeling of pointlessness (way too many esses in that), how might we be able to enjoy the seasonal changes in our own lives? And our lives are seasonal, not as an accurate science, no way, but as a random crazy unknown thingy. Which it is.

In our turbulent times, as we try to navigate the yet unknown, who the frick are we? We have seen Sea take Land which seemed solid. We have been there when the light died and the black came in and held. We have danced with the reckless and longed to stay in that moment. We have loved, we have lost, we have done bloody well by the way. So what now? Who is caring, who is in charge, and what is it about that which tells us we need a leader anyways, beyond our own ability to flick and flex with a new dynamic dance? I say we need only ourselves, and that might need inner work, but that is where our power lies, not over anyone else, no way, no, no no, but over our own selves.

It’s a fiddlesticks sort of desert, seasons shifting like waves in a menace, sudden, unexpected, wild and infuriating, much as life is now. Meet you there.

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Island Blog – The Beyondicous of Me

They do it all. They use every single minute of their time in their ‘home’, connecting with their roots, roots none of us knew about until fairly recently, and roots which have explained the feeling of being HOME when on this Hebridean island. For them, t’is obvious. They were either born here or came as wee smouts, one still in terry towelling nappies. Good lord they were a struggle to force into anything beyond huge lacy knickers under a skater dress, which tutu-ed no matter how much mother ironed the skirt. Boys (in blue) just looked ridonculous, all bottom and with a bow-legged gait. I digress.

Family have been here. I’m guessing you guessed that. Just a week, but not just a week, because of all the moments they filled with adventure. Come on, let’s go! I heard that many times even if I was just beginning on a bacon roll. Just bring it, just get on, just hurry up. I am, at heart, an adventurer. I love spontaneity, and the let’s go of most things, and this dynamic wondered me and remembered me, the me who experienced this bonkers and, mostly inconvenient, adventureness, and did I go back then? Maybe, but maybe not. I would have been shackled down to dinners and guests and the endless wotwot of hospitality, not that I felt hospitable a lot of the time. Did I miss my children’s rise into the wild, or did I, somehow, by waving them off time after time, with bacon butties or cake or a kiss, teach them what was always in my heart? Go, go, go my beloveds, go, and have the best fun. Perhaps.

This time, those ‘children’ are fathers and mothers, with their own adventurers, and, I am delighted to say, this adventure thing is very encouraged. Seek, Ask, Search, See, don’t just look. Stop, Notice, Challenge boundaries, Find opportunity and connect. Seize the moment, the sunset, the sunrise, the call of the wild, and follow, follow, follow. They’re like wild creatures when they are here, my kids, and they bring their own kids to catch the scent of it, the catch of connection to adventure delivered down the line, colouring the hearts and minds of young absorbers.

They caught the tide and found ‘out there’ beaches for a barbecue. They watched the sun sink into the Long Sea as oystercatchers, curlews, many gulls and whitetails cruised the pinkling sky. They traversed woodland walks, walked the machair, swam, dived, paddle boarded, fished for crabs in the rain, picked blueberries, raspberries and blackcurrants from the lovely community garden. They caught newts and released them. We talked about clouds and rain and colour and sunshine and how steam clouds granny’s glasses when she checks a pizza in the oven. I watched the grand girls, backflip, drive my quad barefoot, show me a better way to do this, and that.

They beyondicous me. And it is a joy.

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Island Blog – Macaroni and a Hag Stone

I hear calls, here, inside my ordinary life. Birds in trouble, a catch of a mew from a feral kitten, lost and hungry. I hear the rumble of boats way out at sea, the whirr of a coastguard helicopter, the call of a lamb being an eejit, even the high-pitched squeak of a mouse in my drystane wall. I hear it all, even, and above the noisy interior of a home on Radio Two. I don’t think my ears do the hearing. Can’t be. I think I hear because I care so much about them out there, fighting for their lives, every single minute of the day. I remember, in that short spell of living on the Glasgow streets…..well, not ON the streets, I was super aware of the timbre of passing conversations, recognising trouble. It caused problems, as you may guess, as I launched myself towards a young woman lying on the pavement and crying out. I heard her pain and that was enough for me. I just held her hand for a moment, and she looked up at me and I don’t regret that one bit, as her eyes said many things. Thank you for caring, no hope here, please move on. And I did.

My kids liked to eat three dishes. Macaroni Cheese, Shepherds Pie, Sausages and Mash. The End. Now, I may have bored myself to death preparing the same old in a weird triage, but it happied them and all plates were cleared in seconds. Life was ordinary then, as it is now, but I know something, something I had no idea I was teaching them….the ability to listen beyond the noise of Def Leppard, of Super Mario, of the shite and spite of secondary school, because, even if they don’t all admit to it, they do listen, they are aware, they do hear. So many times I can walk with someone who just talks all the time, listens to nothing, hears nothing, unless I arrest progress and say, Stop. Listen.

I can hear mice in the undergrowth, the chatter of baby tits inside a drystane wall. I know the call of a young buzzard, the way a mother woodcock reassures her chicks, hidden inside a stone uprise inside the woods. I can hear when a huge beech limb is about to give up and fall due to water ingress. It isn’t magic, just practise and an open mind. There is a wonderful place in-between the sensible worldly science and the Otherness and I can embrace both, and I like that very much. I think being stuck is a choice. Not mine.

Still, in my days of the now of me, I can be cooking something, dancing to something, listening to something, and the ‘else’ calls from outside, lifting me there, taking me out, barefoot, with a cheese-coated spoon in my hand, to hear more. Living between two worlds, if that is what it is, is for me. And, I have a hag stone. Oh, I don’t believe I can see faeries, or even through them. I don’t believe looking through the hole will give me illumination. I am no fool. My feets are firmly grounded. But I am open.

Always.

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Island Blog – The Trigger Triggers

Sunshine and warmth spins me. I love it, long for it, especially this season, but when it comes, lifting light and freedomwild, I can suddenly feel like I’m on a swivel stick, confused emotions dinging around as if all my road signs have turned on me. I can’t explain it better. I just know there is a yearning on such days. Opportunity is out there, loud and lustrous, but my feet are fettered. I will walk, and I do, but the walk is singular, when once it was something I wanted, but rarely achieved. I tweak and dead-head and weed and clear, but it doesn’t bring me the Good Job response I seek. As the sun, warm and wonderful, captures the sky, moving from blinding light to a red resolve, I watch it. It’s as if sunshine needs sharing. Look at the way those yellow flowers rise, butter bright, see the way gulls white up, rising above the incoming tide! See those roses, their response to the sun, the tips of my too-long grass quivering in excitement. See this, see that? I want to say all this, but it’s just me here.

What shall we do tonight, he used to say on these rare sunshine days. Let’s go out for dinner, and we did, booking late, dressing up, a sunshine excitement running like fire through our bodies and minds. And we laughed as the sun visors came down, as the sunlight sparkled off flutes of fizz, anticipation electrifying. It never mattered that tomorrow a summer storm was forecast, nor that he would be out in it, searching for whales, dolphins, porpoise, safe landings. This sunshine day was all that mattered. But that was then, and it thinks me.

When we have had happy times, great experiences, we don’t forget. We will, eventually, accept their place in our past, but when a. trigger triggers, it all comes overwhelmingly back and we need to employ juxtaposition. I had this and now I don’t. I had this in spades and now I don’t. To accept this is like volunteering for extra latin classes, but it needs to be done if a person wants to move on richly, and I do. However many times sunshine days confound and upend me, I know that I did have what I had. I still don’t know how to accept the loss, perhaps because sunshine days are as rare as Kyawthuite up here in the chilly wet Western Stick Out islands. I allow myself that. If triggers comes daily, they are more sortable. The random ones less so. But I will work on this. Everyone feels loss, everyone, and, hopefully, most of the everyones out there will notice, react, consider and make changes for personal support the next time the trigger triggers.

The Pierris reds up wild. The sea-loch skin is beautifully scarred by geese families, en traverse. The ancient pines dangle red oxide cones, backlit as the sun catches them in its downward bright. Shadows lengthen, change, shift. The sun-followers begin to close their petals, and I have linguine to cook as I remember those sunshine days, the ones where I was an active and dynamic part, and I am so very thankful.

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Island Wife – Lift and Slideways

I love the way they lift. Birds. It gasps me every time, the sudden sight of a life that can do that lift thing, all feathers and aerodynamics and who the eff cares, thing. I’m behind the wheel of my sassy mini, one, bless her, whose brake pads are skinnyrink. Not her fault, of course. It’s those tourists who have no clue about passing places, reversing, spacial awareness, nor a care in the world for the big ass drop on my side of the single track road. I digress. Back to the lift.

As I watch the Little Gull lift without any sign of a run-up, just an effortless rise from Terra Firma, I not only feel my own body lift, even from within the clutches of Matron of Seatbelts but I also sense a deep longing in me. To fly like that through a whole life, to lift from standing when something bothers or threatens, or just from boredom, must be truly wonderful. I watch the white and grey touch the sky, slide sideways, cutting a line, a definite line, then scooping up again, and around, and all of it in silence. It thinks me.

I can do that, I whisper to my home. I can live that way, just not exactly that way, being featherless and weighing a few stones more than that wee body of lift and slide. But, in my mind, my attitude, my chosen direction, I can. Yes, it is a damn pain in the arse being a thinker, I agree. These beautiful elevators, and the animals grounded, don’t think at all. They respond to instinct, our own fight or flight part of the brain. They just respond to an outside stimulus, and they are always on the alert for danger. That part must be exhausting, although, and this thinks me too, how many of us live that way, feeling so under the power of ‘someone else’ that their innate sense of independence and choice is quashed into mud? I suspect too many beautiful souls.

Every single morning, and through each day, I self-correct. The Terra Firma of my thinks, could sink me in that mud. I kid you not, and here’s another thing……those of us who really feel, Really Feel, for others, for the world, for our future, for our even now, for our self image, and that’s the biggest pull to ground, feel bloody everything, question everything, are consumed by everything. We need to remember our feathers, even if those around us just don’t get it. My advice? Don’t bother to explain. If you are a creative, recognised and acknowledged or not, know this…….you will find your place among others who recognise you, even if they never met you before. Trust in this, through all those awful lonely times, those dark places, those rejections and mockings and nightmares. I have no idea why I went there, but perhaps someone needed to hear the hope in my words.

Back to the lift and slide. In this ridonculous world of rules and behaviour parameters which seem to close in like jaws at times, there is, for the brave who just say, Enough, just once, and stick with it, a new flight. Yes, it will be tough, dangerous, all of that stuff, but who wants to live the one life under another’s control? I watched a big predator lift from the sea-loch, all 8 foot wings, big ass, confident, the queen of the sky. She rose up and up and frickin up until even a cloud gave in with a sigh and a divide, so intent was this big lady on full exposure. Then I saw the Little Gulls, wee smouts (look it up) in an immense sky, skinny wee things, intent on moving this big lady on and away. I heard them talking to each other, You go this way, You round on her, You tackle her, You deafen her with that dreadful squawk of yours, and so on. The Whitetail lifted, slid, lazy, like I’m in charge here. But the gulls, the small people, were having none of that shit. Persisting for a whole skyline, they moved her on. I’ve seen it many times, and have always wished that the ‘small people’ in business, in the world, could band together like Little Gulls, and not just in business. I think of a book I have with me always. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, by Richard Bach, a slim book with fat wisdom. One gull decides things are not right. Just one.

Please never believe the shit inside your head. It isn’t you. It’s learned lies. You, too, can fly.

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Island Blog – So Worth It

I’m watching the tidal flow. Full moon tonight, the Buck moon, Feather moon, Berry moon and a load more, depending on where anyone is and what a full moon means, or has meant, for generations, for cultures, for people around the world. Here, the Buck moon tells of the young bucks, the hopeful stags, whose antlers are just growing now like a Big Thing in the way of their traverse. Imagine it. There you are, bouncing disorderly through woods and around trees and suddenly, you snag. Must be a twist in your sobriety, don’t you think? An encumbrance has encumbranced you, one you were never warned off, much like a period to an 11 year old girl, only different but no less embarrassing. It seems a tad bothering, however, that bucks soon get the hang of their antlers, whilst girls spend a frickin forever being embarrassed about their emergence into adulthood. Just saying.

The tide. It moves so slow, the tide, taking its time as it careens through the Narrows, initially in a wild and ebullient whoosh, then silent, to slide and saunce like a slattern as it arrives little by little, inch by inch, a burglar, a power with a knowing. Once it, no, she, has filled the basin, she keeps on, at full moons, rising higher than she ought, than she has before, just because she can. I know women like her.

I like the naming of moons, each one born of history, noting the seasonal changes, the life changes which ensue for those whose work on the land, on the sea and in the air, need to know and to really know which damn moon is which and what that moon presages. Once, it was survival. It still may be. Although here, watching the bigly intake of the Long Sea, there is no bother. But what a big moon means to me can be floods for others.

I walked today with a young friend, she concomitant with all things earth and sea, and we talked of such things. I don’t think we discussed the moon, nor the tide, but there is a knowing up here in the wild isles, that we just know. Beyond weather and whimsy, away from street closures and businesses closing down, a timbrel shake apart from the dire and the district, the closures and the chaotic, we can watch the tidal flow. No sound at all beyond the baa of a lamb, the slink of a moontide, the siskins, blackbirds, finches, sparrows, wood doves.

I am truly fortunate. A chance move 46 years ago, on a whim, a risk, a huge risk. T’was so worth it.

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Island Blog – New Femaline

I awoke to a, quite frankly, feeble moon, full, or so she will be soon. She dithered behind the greyling clouds for a while. Come on, I said, and out loud, startling my sleeping orange tree and the damn geraniums, all ancient and why on earth do I keep them going? Duty, is all. They were my mother-in-law’s and all salmon pink and I am sick to my socks of salmon pink. It thinks me. I have annihilated quite a few growing things out there in the garden that is finally mine after a whole flipping lifetime of duty, but it always takes courage, or a glass of red, to spin me out there with my loppers. And that is how I see, or hope to see, my ten granddaughters, brave and confident and independent, freed from the constraints of an ancient hold on patriarchy. I also believe my grandsons won’t want it either, although those lads are heading into a world of strong decisive women and that brings its own consequences for them. Knowing their parents, they will be guided, but jeez the change will be tough, no known territory, no manual. I hope they learn on the hoof, by listening and observing, their learned ethics and principles supporting their journey into their own world.

Today one of my granddaughters played the pipes at a Highland games. I have two of these piper girls, beautiful young women, who know what they know, as I did not. They move like women and yet have no idea of the days into which they are moving. They have confidence, but so did I. They have answers, can parry, but so did I. In my day, men ruled and that was that. Now, it seems, women do and the outfall of that assumption of power is an obvious elevation above boys, men. Too much of a pendulum swing. But, who knows the learned behaviour of these boys, the influences to which they have been subjected? Did his/her mother teach of submission to the male, the husband, the doctor, the vicar, the policeman, the teacher, or just the husband of her next door? And did her/his father tell him to take the power, to dominate, to control, to make sure of the last word? So much has changed in so short a time, and it will confuse this new generation, until, eventually, the pendulum swings easy, tick, tock, tick tock. I am hopeful.

My role is to observe. I know that. I have 12 grandkids, 10 of them girls. The lads seem fine at family gatherings, lost in their constructions of whole worlds online, with AI working a treat, or reading, or discussing the dynamics of flight, whilst the girls flit like butterflies through every room, every conversation with wings and on brooms and sparkled with slap-on tattoos of unicorns, faeries and sparkles. All so lovely and all so transient. Does the hammer come down for them? Yes, it does, when trusted friendships sail away without them, when they meet the ‘old thinking’ inside a derisive comment, a judgement carelessly spilled from one who speaks out from learned behaviour, and it can turn an ok day into a catastrophe.

I’m glad I grew up in the arms of safety. I was definitely a child of my time when I met my match. Ten years his junior and absolutely discombobulated, well covered in the carapace of protection against my learned learning, that which made me wish I wanted be anywhere but where I was, so unfit was I for the obliging world of women back then. And he took the risk. He had also learned the old ways. And, as time went on, he brought them back. But, at first, I had met a man who didn’t treat me like the tea girl, the go-get-this girl, this don’t-interrupt-girl, the given cleaner, washergirl, the answer-the-phone-because-I’m-tired-girl. And the new of that captivated me.

I hope, for the next generation, that they can find their own way through the thixotrope of this changing world. I ache for the young men in the rise of strong women. I wonder how they will navigate. Yes, women have been suppressed and poorly informed, controlled and dominated for centuries, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need men. I suspect that it just takes good young dads to teach their sons a whole new learning, of the new female, feral, femaline.

I am always hopeful.

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Island Blog – Nor is Jasmine

My creeper is waggling. I’m watching it right now through my wee window. It’s Jasmine, but the Jasmine thing is not the point. For weeks and weeks, it has waggled a different way. Let me explain. The prevailing wind, no, just the damn wind, has barrelled in from the Cold Lands, bringing stories, yes, and that is a marvellous thing for those of us who listen to the wind instead of berating it, but we kind of get the Cold Stories now. After all, we have heard them since November last year, and we welcomed them back then, were intrigued, looking expectantly to the re-widging of important information we all needed in preparation for the very long winter up here. Such as, bin your shorts, frocky loose kit, strappy wimsy, sandals, the fun of lifting out, moving up, the spontaneous yes to picnics and swims and let’s go- ness. All that. And we get it. We understand the farewell to the warm winds for about eight months, being realistic. Lambs born in the so-called Spring, can disappear into the snow, not here, but a bit further up on other wild islands.

However, this year has outsmarted us all. We were ready with our shorts and frocks and our picnic Let’s Go thing. We have had moments, even days, but those Cold Stories have kept coming. Today, oh today, the wind changed. It was warm, and I could feel the new stories bursting out, as if they had been stuck in the wings for way too long. There was a fiesta feel to the punch of it in my face as I arrived for work today. Aha…..a great day for all those towels to dry, those bed sheets and huge frickin duvet covers to fly free in this warm blast, to absorb all these stories. I did wonder, as I dived up and down, pegs in my mouth, fixing linen to plastic, releasing them to the beneficial wind, if anyone might smell a story as they settle for the night. Maybe, although I also know that, in the world we live in now, very few people think this way. No matter. I hear snippets, calls and sudden images, nothing I can hold on to. I don’t mind that.

Thing is this. And the this of This is important to me. I know what I want. I want the Long Sea, but a short sea when I’m on it; I want to muddle through whatever I’m going through, but I don’t want to end up in a muddle. I want to walk through a Sea Meadow (Machair) but I don’t want ownership; I want a long stem but not the cold stories to cut me down; I want to walk free along a wild shore, ancient stones from north, south, from everywhere, bibbled into roundling walks. I want wide skies, the almost full Buck Moon I watched last night, big as an ostrich egg and a luminary just above a rise of granite, and the cloudal twist as if they’d all arrived at the wrong disco.

And connection. Without this, there are no stories. Do all young parents read bedtime stories? I no longer know. Do older children take the time to read stories back to ailing parents? I don’t know that either. Do those who know they hear stories ever say so? Another I don’t know.

Meanwhile, the Jasmine is waggling. I walk out into the warm. We haven’t known warm since last September/October. And I am not wasting one moment. Nor is Jasmine.

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Island Blog – Leave it Out

I notice, as I ding about the island, that folk tend to spread in the Summer, much like the shrubs, although shrubs tend to spread from a single point, whereas humans sprachle. You can look that up. Chaotically, as if in a wild abandonment, the controlled collation of tools, wellies, toys which could be the first landers on Mars, considering our winter storms, just sit out there, all confident and cocky. The weather is kind, or was once, and we still behave Summerly. I know, I know, that the cold winds have dampened our spirits somewhat, if not a lot of what, but we still jump to it whenever there is the chance of light and the length of days. Even beneath clouding, we grab our teeshirts and flowery whatevers, our sandals and flip-flops, our pretty bags and tags, our summerwear. We may love the seasonal changes, but we do, absolutely, need the seasons to remember themselves, instead of becoming a gloop of grey. We want to know where we are with the changes. We allow the endlessly slow shift of the Winter King, him with his frozen jaws and his refusal to release the earth from his grip, but not this long. The man needs therapy.

On the island, we don’t risk leaving much out, beyond cows or sheep, because, out here in the strut of the wild Atlantic, we know what we know. The weather can change in minutes, clouds gathering as if nobody has paid them attention for ages, the mountain and hills colluding, and we can hang washing out at 9 and regret that by 11 as our underpinnings head down the village. However, I do notice a leaving out thing going on, like a challenge. Folk still sport their summer colours, but underneath warm cardies and fleeces. T’is a weird old time. However, and this thinks me somewhat, are we, out here, living with cloud collapso, with cloud sneezes, with winds quite unsure of their origins, North colliding with West, East with South, and all in a dayo , more ready for this particularly weird Summer? Maybe.

And does that mean we are cocky? Oh no. We still want seasons to change in an orderly manner. We still want to sit out on a rock in a flowery frock (and fleece) to eat a seafood bun, or whatever and to watch the sun sink into the sea; to walk to the pub and join friends of an evening, to leave things out, and not just wellies, cows, sheep, toys and so on, but the verbal stuff that serves no purpose. Just to connect no matter what the weather, the politics, the troubles out there. To laugh, to share, to show strong no matter the changes in our world.