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Island Blog – Spin the Globe

I have no concept of Global. I have travelled, in my time, but to imagine the globe, one I spent many happy moments spinning into what we may well be enjoying now, as I took Africa to Somewhere Else, and Somewhere Else to some Polar confines, not knowing a dingbat about any of it, but still marvelling. I do remember feeling somewhat pissed off (not in my vocabulary then) that I couldn’t spin the world perpendicular. In the rigid thinking of my childhood, this was a WRONG THING.. However, I believe that sometime ago, about 55. million years, just saying, the world did tip somewhat, tilting toward the perpendicular. It is such a clumsy word. Ps I failed Geography. Big time.

Nonetheless it still bothers me when I encounter a globe. I love a globe, wish I had one, the spinning thing, the stop thing, the where did you land thing, still lively in my child brain. I don’t remember if my parents had one, don’t think so, but somewhere I met one, and was allowed to spin and to stop and to dream.

What happens in our lives? We do what we do, move where we need to, sort what we need to, but what about our dreams? When I consider mine I just know they would never have found the sensible feet required to walk them out, nor the courage, that innate courage. I didn’t grow that one, the sensible. And, the ‘sensible’ has import. Flying off the ground is for birds.

I still wonder about globes, see them now and then, in another’s home, wonder if anyone has put a finger on it, challenged it, flipped it fast, slowed it down, stopped it. Said THERE!

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Island Blog – Finites, and Tell your Children

A finite ending, a thing we all have to accept. Solution, Dissolution, Dilution, and, without the U, Definition. Without the T, Conclusion. All finite, all aaah, endings. I do not believe in such. I know, I know, that, in the wonderful world of science and fact and all those other finite endings, we, on the ground with our weekly schedules and demands and troubles, must, it seems accept. However, things shift along with the world and change and la la. There has always been the La and the La, and I would know, being a septuagenarian. Another damn finite. Like you should stop dancing, now, btw, because you might wet your knickers. That sort of finite. I don’t hear that from anyone, not no-one, just from my own head. Thanks and spanks to the last generation.

I don’t like the online dating thing. It isn’t for me. In the bios that I read from Marco, or James or Captain Marvellous (seriously?) and so many more, 90 something, who clocked me and sent me so many lips it was embarrassing, I pulled out. I felt invaded, pushed against a wall, imagined them all at a dance. Now, let me see……You are beautiful, at 50. That’s a No. You say you want who-she-ever, to look after you. Blow that. You want to meet for coffee. but live in Buenos Aires. Let’s talk about your brain, first. All the older men seem to think beards and big bellies are attractive. Okay, okay, I am new to this, but am a tad disappointed. So, I am gone from this. Instead, I volunteered for work at the charity shop at the island hub. It’s busy, dynamic and fun even though I know I will fup the till. When I worked in then Sealife Surveys Centre, back in the day, I managed to charge a delightful old (my age now) man £450 for a keyring. We both startled. I tried again and managed to upgrade his keyring to £4500. Confounded (another, but welcome finite) I said, Please, Just Take the Keyring for Nothing. We laughed at lot, and when the real Captain came in after a whale watch, he just smiled and said, Good takings today, Ma!

Thing is, nothing is finite. There is no one solution, dissolution, dilution, because life is always moving on. We listen to olding words, olding fixed finites and they can trim us like hedges, perfect, uniform, unable to sing. There is old wisdom there, but it is both finite, as long as there are bright minds alive, and fighting for a new freedom.

Tell your children.

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Island Blog – A Gallus Exposure

Now that the Past Participant has dumped me, via text…….so teenage and so NOT Adult….. I have ventured into the terrifying world of online dating. Having so suddenly felt alive and attractive, albeit for 3 weeks (ish), and having not even considered I might be a woman alive, beyond the expected carer thing, my brain and body came alight. It was/is, deeply weird. I mean, at 71, that’s IT, Isn’t it? Obviously not, however, this could have been a one-off, the only one-off. But I no longer believe that, not least because it was so very random, so unexpected, and, in my thinking, ONE is not enough. It might take thought and (scary) action to bring back that opportunity. Obviously she, ()pportunity) was knocking.

I joined one, then panicked and unsubscribed. I joined another, then panicked and unsubscribed. The men who ‘liked’ me and wanted to talk seemed a bit keen, their bios presenting what I have heard before, albeit 50 years ago. I I hear ‘feminist, no desire to change you, open-hearted, all that stuff. I heard that, out loud, from the Past Participant. My unbelief is on High Alert. But, there has been another few weeks of lonely, bored, wanting to share, missing companionship and all the other ships. So, even though those men who like me appear to live in the Dominican Republic, or Brazil, or Edinburgh or Glasgow or Inverness or any other damn place that isn’t anywhere easy, I did email respond to one of those men whose bio doesn’t request (‘any woman over 30’) even though he is over twice that age. Jeez…..I’m not sure this online thing is for me. However, I am brave, gallus, and game on, lonely too, scared too. That ‘Scared bollix’ mustn’t stop anyone. In order (and here I’m doing the sensible thing) to move on, if that’s what I wants, (the scandal plural intended) the scared bollix needs a knee in the groin. A Gallus exposure. Forget all the rules here.

Moving on……..

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Island Blog Clouds and Colour In

I watch Clouds. They’re like television for me, so much big ass sky out there. Below, a sealoch, reflecting. Clouds in the saltwater flatwater, trees and homes too, otters, fish, sometimes kayaks, canoes, people spinning over they know not what. The clouds bump each other, argue, lift above and change shape, give in and dissolve, or are pushed into nothingness, wind-altered, dismissed. Like us down here. There is music in the sky, melody, dissonance, discordance, and dance. Same below, changing moment by moment. It thinks me.

Down here, we have to walk in boots. We are grounded and sometimes stilled and stopped. We don’t have cloud privilege. I know that clouds are moisture and not there and all that weatherly wotwot, but from down here they have substance. And, when the landing you inhabit feels like a place you would rather not be, the chance of a lift into the sky is not so weird. Thankful am I for my imagination, for my belief in the extraordinary, in the impossibility of possible, in the chance, the random, the wild connection with all that not one single one of us can ever explain, nor define. However, and nonetheless, I, like everyone else, am damn well stuck here, and in boots. And when the knocks knock, it hurts.

We are taught, and I am thankful for that taughting, that there is a way beyond loneliness, rejection and self-recrimination. More, a swipelift on and up into the wild and the fun and the adventure. I believe it. I also know that, without such guidance, I could have fallen off my perch.

I walk under clouds, as you do. We know that things ethereal are changing. It will affect us, the grey, the wet, the cold. I bought red boots today. Colour in. Colour in.

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Island Blog – Gallus Respectacles

We don’t get these evenings much, the warmth breathing in chance, dance and opportunity. A sudden, it is, from a cold thrifty catchy tunnel of ice to this. To this. A swing dance in the altercation t’ween winds, and the warm has won. For this evening. Trouble, is, in this place, if you haven’t planned something bloody marvellous, like dinner booked or a picnic or a trip on. a boat to watch the sun set in the the out there world, then you missed. Tomorrow might be pissing stair rods.

I know this place so well. Living here has Taught me J ump. Taught me Go. Taught me Now. I’ve learned this, and the this of this has guided my feet and the feet of my my mind and heart so many times. It was tough. I resisted. I fought and reasoned, standing on two small feets, on a cold floor, with the wit of a woman in the making. But, and the but is important here, I love that I learned what I learned.

I’m here now, still loving the Jump, the Go, the Now. I live this way. However, when one of my specs lenses fell out, I did have to recognise the whole thing about olding and specs and eyes and vision. I am still gallus, I tell this flipping collapsed thing. Takes me a while, but with copper wire and dedication, and a good twisting thing, we get there. Still Gallus, still out there, always.

With my respectacles.

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Island Blog – Flexidextrous and Kate

Movement. Moving on, moving beyond, moving just moving, is it. It, by the way, is just a pronoun, and one to be employed cautiously. It cautioned, she, he, they, them, into places they were frickin fed up of being. I remember the rote, the quote, the confines of being a english lit student, and one who challenged. I wish I could go back to the 15 year old me, the one who disturbed until.

The until came to bite me in the butt. No matter, I got away from galoshes and Sunday Itchy Pants, my perfect companion, gone now, I remember her so very well. She galoshed me, in her Sunday Itc hy Pants over three long years and joined me in all the hijinks. We tore the ridiculous confines and restrictions into opportunities. Paper chances, and we employed them from Monday on. I miss her. Without her, I would have been so lost in that straightupnoarguament place, run by women who had no idea about sex, hoping for it, but, in their day, it wasn’t acceptable pre marriage. They were of their time. However, war loomed, men would go and not just be home for Christmas.

She was in the moment. Not stupid, not lost, strong. A voice, I can hear her now with her Hallo as she walked towards me near Battersea , and that pavement stretch was nothing. She knew me. I knew her. Neither of us have had an easy marriage. Who has btw? And we met in a wine bar and it was almost as if we were still the elves who, flexidexrous, confounded authority. I rest there, my lovely Kate.

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Island Blog – Authentically Mongrel

Talking last evening with a delightful friend, she challenged me about someone I labelled. Then, later, I challenged her back. Both of us, at each challenge, paused for thought. So much that dribbles out of our mouths comes from learned opinions, until, that is, we are challenged on a single word, a resolution, a definition, a dereliction. This child is…….this man/woman is…….my father was, my mother is. He can’t fit in because he is……….She is just a……… and so on. We were taught these labels by those who influenced us at an early age, and, without thought, we continue the line.

So, let us think. Let us notice. So very many of us, gazillions, I reckon, have felt out of the uniform kilter, like our underpants are showing and everyone is laughing, or judging, or turning away in disapproval. Crowd thinking, or Coward thinking. If you are like me, all you want is inclusivity, gentle acceptance, the chance to learn whom another really is, what makes them tick, because I know they have a story that isn’t mine and through their story, I can learn to be the best person I can be. Surely I am not alone in this? The current, and understandable (sort of) culture of fear around invasion on all levels, the one that throws we Ordinaries, into a big old D I Lemma, is here, whether we fight it or engage with it. We cannot stop it, and nor should we, because there is learning here, there are stories, life experiences, if shared, that can juxtaposition our ingrained thinking. We can lift above what was considered THE RIGHT WAY. I won’t fiddle in a yelling crowd. Nobody is listening to the new music in such a place, but I do believe that if just a few among the gazillions refuse to label and, thus, to marginalise, to exclude, there is hope for this blood-stained world of ours.

I spent my sentient childhood knowing I was different. Not a fitter-in. I knew not the language to speak myself out, and thereafter to stand strong, too swamped in middle class beliefs, in how girls should (SHOULD) behave, whom is acceptable as a boyo, what is okay to wear, etc. My folks I judge not. They were of their time and, with four pretty girls, they were probably fraught as hell, and for years. So I was ‘just’ a rebel’ and without cause. And, that is true. I just reacted to any confinement with an energy I could not understand, nor process. So, I was labelled. There was a relaxo parental breath around that. Difficult, is one word I remember. In other words, I wasn’t their fault.

And, yet, my mouth can still label. Although I don’t like it at all, swipe at my lips and twitch my head in fury as I hear what I just said, I cannot deny it flowed out into the evening. And how do I feel? Initially smug. Oh god, God, gods, that is so not who I am now! Hmmmm, respond the god, God, gods, and I don’t blame them.

There is a lot of something around resolution. In music, I know it well, when even a naughty musician adds an extra bar, or fricks about with an elongated ending, and, (I’m avoiding the But), it is all about finding the warm security of the finite, of the landing, and of putting an end to this thing. In my young days, nobody wanted to stand out from the safety of the crowd, and, everybody wanted to stand out from the safety of the crowd. We were longing to be mongrels. We didn’t want the middle class confines, even as that life gave us security and privilege. In my day, to conjoin (OMG) with those who were not from our ‘level’ was anathema. Not to us, but we were wild, and, I am happy to say, even in our years, we still are, but now we have learned to speak, to stand, to rejink what we say, we will not judge, we will not, we will not and, more, because of the way we have learned our lives, spat out old beliefs, and found our own voices, we will stand and fight for inclusion and acceptance.

Authentically Mongrel. Did I just label myself?

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Island Blog – Calypso or Collapso

We deal with much, these days, in real time and online The online-ness of it all. Everything was fine for a while, until suddenly we have to update, or change, when neither of those demands are fine, at all. Someone wants your mobile or home details, and there is a suddenly in there, a stop, a halt, and then endless questions, most of which ask you if you are a dunderhead, an eejit, a left behind, even if those judgements are not voiced as such.

We are in a new era. We can go with it, learn new tactics, ask family of friends to guide us, or we can concave, we can bow to what we no longer want to welcome in, and rest. And I get that. But that’s not me. I am so out there with curiosity and barricades which thought they could keep me confined. Well, arf to that.

I meet many folk my age and older, and I just love them. Such beautiful folk with stories I wonder will ever be heard beyond my ears. I love stories. The why of this plant pot, the why of the way you make coffee, the how of your choice of dress for a ceilidh, the what of all of it.

And I meet choice, all the time, on the street, in the shop, as I travel this beautiful island. I meet it, There are those collapso. Then I meet calypso. The laughing connection to the wild, to hope and to the dance, the always dance. You know who you are my friend.

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Island Blog – Who Will Stand?

Opinions are easy to form. They rise like birds, or bile, and the moment they are heard, they create an emotive reaction. The one who hears, the one to whom the compliment or invective is aimed, is immediately affected. A positive or uplifting opinion is voiced from a place of love, a negative one from fear and a lack of knowledge. ‘You shouldn’t do that, or say that’ is gifted, invariably, by another who has never done that, nor would ever do nor say that, because doing or saying ‘that’ carries a degree of personal risk, particularly if delivered in public. I would be judged, for sure, marginalised, criticised and rejected, and who wants to risk finding themselves in any of those uncomfortable states? Safer to stay quietly in crowd thinking.

It is very different if a judgement is proffered. Then the forum is mine, because everyone is fed up of delays, costs, the weather, tourists, noisy children, the limitations and demands of work, of family life, of rules, rules and restrictions. Now I have the crowd behind me, the mutterers, the ‘angries ‘. I can lift my voice in this scenario, I can go flipping wild with my fists and my body and my learned beliefs around caste, colour, sexuality, the government, Calmac and the state of the NHS. I have wings now. I can fly with this, lording over all of you mutterers down there, muttering. Danger alert.

Just saying.

Have you noticed that any negative judgement or criticism is invariably delivered in a whisper, or anonymously? This is Fear in action. Sometimes a name is named, but the personal risk is slight because taking the negative stance is our natural leaning as humans, and there are many ready to agree. And why is that, I wonder? How long have you got? To distil……..poor housing, no, disrespectful housing, overcrowding, lack of staff, old trains, planes, ferries, Covid, Brexit, wars abroad and encroaching, flimsy governments, corruption, domination, lack of respect, lack of respect for every single one of us. I get it. I really do, from my comfortable home on a beautiful island. But someone has to ‘voice up’, and there are many such someones out there, the brave, the courageous, the risk takers, the ones who understand that the only way forward is not through fear, but love.

I attended a women’s business conference once, many years back, in Glasgow. There were a lot of women there, and many good speakers. The attendees came from diverse backgrounds and varying levels of success (so called). High heels, perfume, smart suits abounded. We settled. Success, so called, shouted from the stage, women who commanded businesses, entrepreneurs, food chain giants, those who had noticed a gap in a market and who had dived right in. It was exciting, dynamic and, for me just a show. I was never going to be any of those hard-nosed focussed female leaders, even as I loved their stories. The last speaker talked of giving love out, or walking it out. A very different presentation, and, ahead of it’s time. She was ahead of her time. Because it was just after the first Afghan war, there were mothers, sisters, even grandmothers in the audience, and giving unconditional love caught like a knife in many throats. The crowd grumble rose into something scary, so I left, but I still got it. What I got, was that I, in my safe place, had no idea what these angry women were going through.

Hard to find love in such a place. I will not ever experience what another has experienced. I know that. It doesn’t stop me, however, because we need to stand, to speak out for renewal, for hope and for the true meaning of love. It isn’t only sexual, or even familial. Love is just allowing, accepting, non-judgemental, all inclusive, no matter colour, sexuality, choices, directions,space issues. None of those, none.

Perhaps it is a gentle allowance, even as that word sounds patronising. Eish (African word) I don’t know, but we must do something to bring Love back. In any form. Who will stand?

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Island Blog – Ceilidh Craic In it

Two days ago, I drove the looooong single track drive to the South of the island. To be honest, I wondered if I would ever arrive, or if, instead, I would keep going until I fell off the world altogether. It is only a couple of hours, agreed, but because it is single track for most of the way, and tourist and local traffic is relentless, I got really good at swinging into passing places. Over and over and over again. Most tourists in their wide-hipped or shiny modrun ( a scots word) vehicles with electronic everything, including passengers, acknowledged my swinging thing, allowing them to slide by me without braking, but many didn’t. I thought about that, my smile wide and my warm hand held up in a hallo, you’re welcome, fingers moving like seaweed in gentle tidal flow, but in my belly there was, I confess, a switch from I LOVE THE WORLD AND EVERYONE IN IT, to YOU WERE NOT BROUGHT UP RIGHT. I did say it was a confession, and I am not proud of that switch. It is not how I choose to live. I knew who were the real locals, the farmers, fisherfolk, familial cars bent into unusual shapes and with a pause before I swung into safety, just checking which one of us would initiate a convenience to the other. I also noticed the resident young, and I was young once, in a damn hurry and with my fed right up with all these bloody cars littering a simple and gently winding road to home, to my home, to their home. I allowed their own switch to ‘Roar’ as they buffeted my Pixty mini so that she shook from an intensive rap, finally slowing to a Bob Marley. We breathed together, she and I. And we smiled. The world is going too fast, I said. No, she wiggled her last, not the world, the people innit. I laughed. Innit? You imitating Sacha Baron Cohen? She paused (I’ve now let 5 fast tourists create an almost whirlwind around us, and noticed a stand-off up ahead as the bus sits like a planet, refusing to cowtow to a silver Mercedes opentop). Woodentop, I mutter. What? Sorry, Pixty. Innit? You were about to tell me.

In it, she smirks and if she had eyes, they would roll. I watched the plovers on the scarp beach, the granite rocks shining with salt water, catching the white light, for there is no sun evident. Seaweed lifts and lands, lifts again, and people are here, enjoying a picnic, laughing with family, taking what they so need from this wild and electric place. I wonder if any of them passed me and Pixty, acknowledged, or didn’t, my swinging. I remember tense new journeys, fractious children in the back, dogs panting for escape, my own belly in a twitch. Keep positive, keep positive, not much. further children, nearly there and all that shit. I remember.

The Ceilidh craic was spectacular. A real community fund raising event, and I remember them too. We don’t really have them here, in the north, in the north which (or is it that) has moved into the too fast life. I saw, again, the familial bonds, the inclusion of children at a ceilidh dance, I shared the craic with those, many of whom I didn’t know and some I did, who have stories, valuable stories, precious stories. I loved every minute, working in the kitchen, bringing out cakes, baked by a woman who marvels me. I met sisters of my husband’s carer, who lives nearby, and I could see the likeness long before introduction. I watched young people pipe, fiddle, sing in Gaelic. I saw and heard young life holding on to the stories, their history, the story of Mary Macdonald who wrote the tune, Bunessan, thereafter made famous as Morning Has Broken, the reason for the fundraising ceilidh. Her memorial is crumbling and needs cash to restore and protect.

Songs and dances abounded. Strip the Willow, the Boston Twostep, the Canadian Barn Dance, and more. Bloody Chaos on the floor, very few having a scooby about what steps to take, but up there, anyways. Cakes were consumed along with endless pots of tea. The children kept pace. I watched the smiles, the laughter, the sharing and the bond these folk share, so remote, so many passing places t’ween them and a shop, an ambulance, a surgery, a chemist. And, as I left the next day to homecome, they stayed in my thoughts, because the strength of that community is something that draws me in. In it.