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Island Blog – The Jousting Woman

Women used to joust, you know, back in the jousting days. Needless to say, they had to look like men, breasts bound. But, coated in gmail, no, chainmail, sorry, all they needed were huge biceps, strong thighs for clamping a horse, hands free, great eye-arm precision and bloody mindedness; a Boudicca sort of attitude and a kick ass determination to be a fighter, regardless of their sex. Altough jousting was fast and furious, it rarely ended in tragedy, but only in collapsed pride. Women, wiry and flexible are less rigid, less stuck in the ways of men and, more importantly, less encumbered by ego and swagger. In fact, swaggering is not what we bother with at all. Wrong shape for starters.

I will get the call tomorrow, the one from my wonderful surgeon, the one who will tell me the wotwot of my nexting. I will hear that only radiotherapy is next, after Christmas, and for one week. Or, I will hear that more surgery is required and, then, the radiotherapy. I have said I refuse chemo. I’ve seen too many of my community go for it, only to lose a year, at least, in sickness and pale-faceless and loss of self-confidence, and then, for some, to fade away anyway. No bloody thanks. However, if I was 40 (loved that birthday) I might have chosen differently, but I am not, I am 70 and that’s a fricken long life. I have lived like nobody else has lived. I have adventured every single day, dealt with chaos, damage, disaster and celebrations which everyone who came would agree were the best. Me and the old bugger were excellent party hosts. Just saying.

Not that I am going under. Whatever my results are, I am ready and peaceful. I cannot control the most of it, but I can control me and my attitude and. my thankfulness and my humour and that mischievous imp behind my eyes and in my throat. I can do that because life is the most wonderful thing. My life is the most wonderful thing. So, btw, is yours because without it, there is nothing much.

So, although I began with jousting, I still like the thought of Joan of Arc-ing myself up to meet the stranger which is Cancer. I doubt I could hold the chainmail, nor clamp the horse, hands free, but there is something about flying there, about letting go, and not just of the joust pole; like a spirited game-on thingy, the pounding of hooves, the tension, the timing, the invisibility.

Whatever I hear tomorrow will take me forward, and forward is the only way for a jousting woman.

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Island Blog – Ouches

Ouches. I’m unsure there is a plural for an Ouch, but it can so feel like there is, or are, at times when one just doesn’t cut it. Well, it does ‘cut it’ but in multiple directions, like fissures. Too many esses in that word methinks. Backing to the point……

This morning he left, my big African son. He came to be with me after surgery and stayed just over two weeks of big son in doorways, that smile as wide as a continent, those big warm arms, that massive heart, that love in his eyes. We are so easy together. He worked with his coaching clients, stacked my load of wood, repaired a collapso chairo, went through the Spider Darkness of the dodgy understair cupboard, which, back in the yore of yore was a corridor, and they are always dodgy. I remember, as a little boots, on my tricycle, scooting a corridor in a big house/boy’s school and it was miles, and there were rats (yes, there were) and I was there pinging away on my bell and heading for Cook in the huge steamy kitchen with her buns and her smiles and her bosomy welcome. I pedalled like a dingblast. You never saw such footwork. It was darkling, old place, old lighting, possible rat attack, always a thingy. Parents were well into gins and fizz and nonsense and there was me, or I, on my tricycle. I was a brave one, even then, or was I just after Cook’s buns. They were spectacular, but you decide.

He left in the beginning. Morning was pushing Night away with her flaming torch, the sky flipping fire. I was in ma goonie and with coffee to hand. I am fine with this, I can do this, I can let him go off and up into his own life, I said to myself and she, as usual, did this folded arms thing and smirked. And, the daylight was light enough for me. I cleared old clothes, tidied the Spider Darkness and found a few things I had thought swallowed up by the Mouthie past. That chattering reminder of all we failed at, didn’t say, did say, wish we had done, wish we hadn’t done.

But as light concedes to dark, day to night, I miss him, our sundowners, flicking on the twinkly winkly lights, the jacking up of the wood burner, the shared tunes, the dances. And we did it all. And I am so thankful. Although there are many ouches, there is a fricken wealth of memories and I have them all, right here beside me, inside my heart. I can go there any time I feel an ouch.

As I walked today, knowing I would return to the alone of my life, I looked up at the leaves still falling from the beech trees, the caper of their float down, like dancers, a capricious play with the breeze, and I thought, there is so much pain in our broken world, and so much beauty, in loss, in struggle, in play, in dance, in moments shared, even in the ouches. We grow from all of it, even the shit of of it. Have a wonderful weekend. I will. There will be ouches. There always are.

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Island Blog – The Irks

You know those days when everything irks you, things that did no such irking yesterday and probably won’t tomorrow? I’m having one, or I had one until just now when I reminded myself that such minutiae only ever believes in itself. It has no gravitas, no longevity. I know this. We know this. However this irking thing has a spread and a power and cannot be allowed to become aloud. My mum wasn’t good at an irking attack. She had that face on, you know the one, when absolutely nothing is okay no matter what you do or don’t do. She was just plain irked and nobody was going to get away with not recognising her irk. She would seek out opportunities to demonstrate how irked she was, well, until the milkman came or Jeff with the eggs, or a call came through from someone who wasn’t her husband or children. Then, the sun would come out banishing all irks into the shadows. Anyway, enough of her, bless her old dead heart and back to me and mine.

I awoke at 0200 with anxieties galore. Did I say that? Did I commit to something huge and impossible? (typical me) Did I offer to fund a new project? Did I charge the hoover, let the dog out, balance my account? I got up, wandered down the stairs in the dark, counting the steps. There are 12. Please remind me. I recall missing the last one, only once, but only once was enough to freak me out. Thankfully, there was a soft landing. I made tea, marvelled at the starry starry night, and returned to read till 03.30, whence I dozed. Not enough sleeps. My anxieties stood up straight once I did, and I knocked them down like tin soldiers.

However, the morning shift was uncomfortable. I dressed, made coffee, did my chores, let the dog out and the irks in. The washing machine hadn’t spun enough. It took strong glasses to work out that someone, probably Son One, had changed the wotwot on the dial. Then the coffee shot out of the cafetière all over the counter top. I sighed and mopped and settled to Wordle and then to continue play with my scrabble friends. Here’s another irk. Not them, no way, but the adverts in between are currently all about boob jobs, boob uplifts, saucy bras and boyfriends with their hands down said saucy bras. The women are girls, all pert, Kardashianley made-up, and quite impossible. I cannot see a single one of them working for a living. But, before you tell me I could pay for ad disposal, I will not pay that money out, knowing that yesterday it didn’t irk me, and it probably won’t tomorrow. Today it does, it just does. Plus, my own breast is tender. It was yesterday too, but without an irk in sight.

I try to rest early afternoon, but the damn dog doesn’t agree with this resting thing as she wants a walk. She squeaks, jumps around my bed, makes sounds that would make great backing vocals and I have to get up. I am resentful and that irks me. I, unlike my mum, don’t want to show my irkness. So, we set off. A few yards in, she, the dog, clocks the rain and dawdles. It laughs me. I am going on, beyond the rain, beyond my irks and she, well she can just walk it out too. Those raindrops falling all about me are cleansing. I am cleansed of irks.

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Island Blog – Revenance

It’s been a while, awhile. Interesting, is it not, how words play with our brains? Two words mean one thing and when conjoined, another, pulling me in to play their game, feeling me free to challenge the shapeshifters, as I oftentimes do.

I am a revenant. One who has returned, and I quote from the dictionary, ‘especially supposedly (no commas, I notice) from the dead’. I recall meeting no dead folk during the process of being nearly dead, although my day and night visions were somewhat weird. It was all cat. A cat curled into my suitcase in broad daylight as I slapped ice packs on my swollen body, hearing the fizz like a water drop on fire. Another two cats, differently coloured, walking through my hospital room, reassuring. The End. Or so I thought with the whole cat thing, fever, sick, one of the nearly dead.

Now, and now, here I am back home to the island with two big sons. One breast is, like (!) what’s the fuss all about? T’other looks like the surface of the moon. The op was a ‘wide excision’, in other words the spider legs were a distance apart. A scoop was required, and the wotwot pulled together, hence the strange shape. The old girl has the usual sag. The new girl on the block sings a different song. I wonder how she will look once she gets over this puffed up, bruised, attention-seeking thing? I smile.

I do my exercises. I am tired, rest often, keep doing what I can do which is mostly hanging my twinkly winkly lights now that the sun goes down like a crashbang. I can reconnect with my frock stash. It’s like meeting old friends and we all love the Autumn and Winter, my frocks and me. The cold brings out our colours, layers and revenance. We can carefully layer, we who refuse to go un-barefoot, always bare legged and feeling, really feeling the seasonal change. No protection. It is a choice and one I made a thousand years ago. I need to feel it, feel all of the all of it, of everything. Wild, yes, but not to me. To me it is a rising into whatever comes next.

This life with all her fears and worries, her slapdash, her punches and losses, her sharp cuts and traumas, all give us a wild card. (I have no idea what a wild card is, but ‘wild’ works for me). I will always play mine. It doesn’t matter what a soul has had to face, has come through. There is no competition. We all face shit. We all have the rising in us. All of us.

We are revenants. All of us. And, ‘Revenance’, the process, will be a word in the dictionary one day, telling out that all of us have, and still are, rising from whatever became dead to us, another, a thing, an understanding, a relationship, a valuable something. I have not met another soul who hasn’t lost something, someone, an heretofore (!) understanding. We are so shit at taking this out into the world.

In the breast cancer ward, giggling with the surgeon about a load of wotwot, pre-op, I watched a cat, white and grey, move easy away through the doorway. I don’t have a cat. Or, maybe I have four.

Let us rise. We are revenants.

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Island Blog – Tidal Curve

Such days of glorious Autumn, dry, sunny, coloured up like blood, gold, emeralds and fox. Folk wander, stop to watch a silken swirl of thrushes, Mistle, Song and Fieldfares, all dinging about the blue in search of berries. They can strip a tree in 20 minutes, working as a team, even though they don’t gather like this at any other time of the year. There appears no discord, no fighting, no chest bumping, just a ribbony swirl like the wash of a boat, lifting over treetops, diving into branches, all a-twitter. I walk out into this, into the fairy woods, under a shelter of trees hundreds of years old. What stories they could tell me, if only I spoke ‘tree’. The sealoch is speckled with diamonds, stealers of sunlight, reflectors, the surface broken by the rise of an otter, busy with the salmon run and mighty with cubs to feed and protect. Herons bicker and shriek, divers fly in silent until they settle on the surface and call out in ‘loon’, their velvet voices schmoozing the air, and me.

I watch Arctic Swans, various of them, push past the wind and into the lee of the loch, where the tidal flow comes smack bang up against a right bloody push of rainwater. The flood against the tide. I go out to watch the meeting. It’s like a Scot meeting an Englishman. The rise of wild bubbles tells me much. There is no way out of this. I know it, as do they. I watch them curve away from each other but there is no escape, not with those damn hills and rocks and wotwot hemming them in. They have to bond. It thinks me.

Not of cabbages and kings, nor of how to service a chainsaw, nor, even, whether or not I ought to deal with the extraordinary wonderfulness of spider spin that fills most of my corners. In this sunlight, they look like hope, connection, determination and strength. I watch them rainbow, lift and move with any breeze, almost breathing. In my before cancer life, around this time of year, I would be flapping a cloth or cobweb thingy through these webs and strings and connections, always very cautious not to hurt the spider. Sometimes, if I reckoned the spider to be a very tiny one, or couldn’t see it with the naked eye, I would employ binoculars. No. I am not anal. This is when they’re ‘in’, and they are my friends. Now that I know my cancer is, colloquially, known as The Spider, for it does not pronounce itself in a lump, more a spread, I feel a kind of safety, as if all those gazillions of spiders I have saved and relocated and freed, have returned to me. This reads bonkers, is bonkers, but allow me please, for it helps me to find the positive in all this interminable waiting, in the sleepless weeks, the slash of early waking fears, the exhaustion of keeping myself upright, fed, excercised and washed. That’s on the bright side. On the other side, I feel scared and lost and exhausted. I might tell you this and I bet, I absolutely bet, that you, like so many others, will respond with a ‘but’ and place a lovely new Patch on the coverlet of my life, a glorious one with no fraying and with colours that will last for ever and ever, Amen. Don’t do this. Not to anyone. If I could, personally, remove the word ‘But’ from the dictionary, trust me, I would. It is a fixer, like the freshwater is to the tidal flow and yet, which is the wild one, at the beck and call of the moon and the four winds, the storms, the violence of volcanic eruption, the dying of an iceberg the size of Brazil?

Feelings come unbidden, unasked for, unsought. They just come, like a tidal flow. We attempt, because, (if we don’t we are counted weird, odd, unmanageable (?) and ‘difficult’), to process our feelings into a palatable presentation, delivered over the phone, on the street, at work, in a relationship, among family members. I have not learned, yet, to butt against the ‘buts’, and, maybe like the tidal flow, a pisces me, I can just curve. Maybe bending to the butt of the world is exactly the way to continue a flow. That thinks me too. And, to be honest, I am weary of being a standup in my life. Perhaps this cancer is proffering me a curve, the layback into the care of others, short term, and, perhaps, there is a sweetness therein, like the ribbony flow of the thrush family, who only conjoin at a time when the collective brings power and success. I can go with that.

My baby boy, well over 6 feet of him, is flying over from SA to bring me home. Number OneSon will drive us to a ferry which may, or may not, run for a load of reasons, not many of which make sense. We will home ourselves, and we will celebrate when we do. It is always a birdlift of relief when we do, when I do, when anyone does, cross the water, and land. At times, oftentimes, we have to curve, are stuck in the wrong place, no toothbrush, no jamas. This is when we might(y) take on the curve, if we decide to.

I am one, no matter the buts. I am afraid, moving into a space on which I have spare intel. It feels as if I am shoved into a time I do not recognise. I will, after.

Here comes the curve.

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Island Blog – The Rickle of Me

Well, well, well. Who’d have thought it? I wouldn’t, not never, the I who held each member of my family every time they faced something very scary, from first day of school, to delivering a first baby, through accident emergencies, breakdowns, woundings, emotional traumas and a close-knit dying. But I am here now, a rickle of things, as they were back then. Although I am not abandoned at all but beautifully supported by all whom I lifted up and encouraged down the years, I feel very alone. Distant support is not the same as holding hands with a real warm human being, one who cares, and a lot, one who will notice a daily change and respond, who will initiate and lead at times of complete flop, one who will just sit beside me, breathing, and I can hear that breathing as a reassurance. I don’t have that, nor could I in this time of my life, of their lives. I know the logic of it all, by rote, but it doesn’t address the emotional aspect. Maybe that sounds ungrateful, but, I assure you, I am very, very grateful for the support they bring. The shoring up of the walls against the storms, however, is my job, and I am so very tired and afraid.

I bought quorn mince. It’s ok. Rising, as usual, around 1 am, with, I confess, a big blue sigh, I made tea, lit my twinkly winkly lights and had a think. I had to rise, because the anxieties flood my mind on waking. There is no logic to any of the awful images, no history, no reality, but that doesn’t stem the flood of them. They are random, weird, unreal and poisonous. And, so, I rise, telling myself they are nothing to do with me, not mine, not helpful, not, not, a lot of nots going on as I pull on my warm dressing gown (ghastly thing, but cosy) and descend the winding staircase, rounding down into a pitch that might be the bowels of a mine. Well, it is mine, after all. There is one star and I look long at it, lovingly. I tell myself I am not mad, not that myself believes it, and that all will be well. A whole generation could birth, develop and die in the long hours before any light pushes up the dark, hefting it on shoulders strong and decisive. Off you go, Night. My turn now, and she, down there, can you see her in that ghastly, but cosy dressing gown, is in need of me.

At 0500 I prepare said mince. Loads of onion, garlic, tomatoes and quorn. I bring it to the boil, then simmer. For a very long time, until the colour turns towards purple, as if a whole bottle of port is in there sharing the simmering event, which it isn’t. I wonder if my neighbours can smell this at a time which will make no sense to them. I whizz up my Pond Juice, a concoction of spinach, celery, carrot, ginger and apple, divide it into Today and place Tomorrow in the fridge. It is still pitch out there and clouds have swallowed the star. I won’t let the fears in.

But, and let me admit it, they are constantly there. The internal fight is exhausting but I refuse to back down, to let them plant any flag on my ground. I am so very tired but, like a Jack-in-the-box, I keep bouncing up, even though my legs hurt, my costume hurts, my brain is mince (or quorn) and every choice faces a wall of Don’t Bother. I WILL bother. It wonders me. Is this what it was like, is like, for anyone facing any sort of war ‘against’ a force that threatens to overturn all that was normal, all that was, heretofore, taken for granted? I suspect so.

I leave the island on Wednesday 25th, for surgery on the 30th. I can feel the cancer now, as I never had before, as if it is rising up to meet my fingers. It isn’t a lump, more a small mass. Actually, that is an oxymoron, because it is either a mass (definition – a very big thing) or it isn’t. Let us go with mound. I like mounds. All across this beautiful West Coast land there are mounds, and a mound is about all I can manage these days #short term.

I might have a spot of bother with my right arm for a bit after surgery, but, as soon as I can, trust me, I will be diddling and a-fiddling about with words and dingles and thinks and rickles, and music and chuckles and and nonsense. However, I am not gone yet.

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Island Blog – Tumbletast

My Dad liked bloaters. The rest of us baulked at the whole bloater thing, the name being enough. I don’t know, even now what is a bloater, and am not sure I want to. I think it is half smoked, or half something and half anything is not for me. I remember many times being called to shores where a huge whale had beached and died (thankfully), each sight a bloat, big enough to eventually explode with enough force to cause turbulence in the flight from Glasgow to Iceland. the swellbelly of that magnificent, once free, wild person was a trip in my step, the deep sadness a hold in my belly, a gasp. Even as I had seen death many times, sheep, cows, calves, lambs, dogs, cats, in-laws, these encounters, seen afar off, yet known, walked to over stones and tumbletast, maybe in the darkling, with torch, always ready to defend, to protect, from gulls, from people, from the weather. A lonely death, a lonely walk. But, I would not have missed any one of them. I saw them. I see you. I put my hand on your bloated beautiful body. Hallo.

I understand why some of us choose to beach.

I watched the sky today, the first open one for frickin days of slanty rain and grumpy clouds and the whole wotwot that goes with such control, mud, puddles, landslides, the withering of our confidently constructed land. How foolish we are to think we can do this. Nature allows no half measures not neither. (sorry Dad) By the way, what do three negatives mean? Perhaps a lot. I might look into the three negative thingy. I know 3 to be the perfect number, and I employ it myself in my writing. This, this and this. It seems to work. In fact, I struggle to do two, as if two fail me somehow. Then I feel sorry for Two. Life is so complicated.

I am scared. I am anxious. I sleep little. I am tumbletast.

The post arrived today from Ros, my lovely friend. Everyone here is a friend. She, however, has the smile and the welcome that could begin a new history. I collect, barefoot, and not under rain. She, in her luminous PO kit meets me over the fence, hands over. She asks me how I am. I tell her I am waiting, waiting, two weeks till surgery. How do you feel? She asked. I am not half anything, so I smiled and told her.

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Island Blog – Clanjamfrie

It is, I tell you. Well, for me anyway. Setting aside (why don’t we?) the immense lack of sleep, the immense lack of sleep……no, wait…. my dad has appeared “You cannot have an immense lack of anything, only a surfeit”. Thanks Dad. Who would believe that after over twenty years of being thoroughly dead, he can still appear to check my grammar? Perhaps, and this is up for discussion, but not right now when I’m busy flowing, I might be the one who calls him up.

We might also set aside the jolly fact that a nearby burn, turned torrent, pushed through the vent in my garage’s nether regions and created a whole new tributary, nameless but only because it was obviously a lightweight body of water which, apart from soaking all my logs and taking my wellies on a walk, one they have not enjoyed for years, disappeared as fast as it had come. Then there are the inside leaks. Only two these days, since goodly stonemasons, rubbing their chins as they peered into cracks and poor pointing, at a wall face without facia and inadequate rain resistant piping, managed by some miracle to plug the other 3 opportunities for ingress, 3 openings that our West Coast rain will always seek out and take full advantage of. I confess to a moment of sadness as I considered what wild creature may have found itself walled up.

I have walked, honest. Each day of this clanjamfrie/chaos, when the rain comes slantways and suddenly and utterly soaking, I have dragged Little Boots out for a rush and a bark at the deer, or a car, or even absolutely nothing at all. I wish I had her energy. I wouldn’t mind a rush and a bark at nothing at all. It might take my mind off the fear and the anxiety, and, more, it might mean I could let my roar out, which is something I have rarely, if ever, allowed. It feels like mental constipation. It probably is. When I awoke at 3 am I did sigh. I don’t mind 5, or, at a push 4, but 3 is just not right. The dark is pitch, the wind a howl, the rain a battering and yet, and yet, it is a new day, I am awake, and I get up and out, make tea and spend a lot of time addressing my thoughts. In my sleep, it seems to me, I am free of them, but not for long enough. It’s as if they crowd in the waiting room, just waiting for my eyelid doors to open, double doors, to submit to their pressure. I am told to be polite to them, to address them respectfully, but, much like the relentless days of rain and punching wind, I am losing the lady in me. She is becoming fishwife.

I didn’t go to the shop today. I just sat and sewed something without a name, listening to a whole audiobook (when did that become one word Dad?) thus losing myself in someone else’s story. I did sweep the floors, stack a ton of wood, lift my eyes to the sea-loch when a Whitetail Eagle made a hoor of a stooshie about something, or someone. I heard stags moaning and roaring in the rut. I watched, and hissed at, drivers who shot past my home, through now deepened potholes, splattering the arse of my little mini puddle brown. I listened to the click and crack of the woodburner munching wood. I listened to music, a bit. Actually the whole frickin day was just a bit of this, a bit of that. I have been up too long this day.

I think it’s the waiting. Waiting is, as we Celts say, shite. Always. And then when the waiting is over and the result is clear, we settle back into the clanjamfrie of our lives, as if the leaks and the rain and the inability to roar, and that interminable waiting meant absolutely nothing. As I will, no doubt.

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Island Blog – Dies Saturni

I wake at 04.45. I only tell you this because it is a marvellous thing and also complete pants. The former explained thus. It is marvellous to wake at all. The latter I have issues with. It is still blacknightdark out there and nobody else has stopped snoring. Only me, it seems. And then, I hear a car pass by. It is the second morning for this car passing by waytooearly thing. What is going on? I live in the backside of nowhere and island folk, in my experience wake at dawn and not before. However, it alerts me. Every damn thing alerts me, awake or asleep, and, then I consider this. It always did, and I was glad of it back in the day. Moving backwards, my teenage kids arriving safely home, a gale blowing out a window (that was fun), with a power that astonished me, the baleful call of of a cow, a sheep, a horse, all needing help, no matter the hour, nor the dark, nor the frickin gale. Could have been the first snuffle and twist and hoot of a new baby’s call for mama. I have never lost it. Staying in a city is a right twillop for me as there are noises all the night long, although, I notice, that my early sleep hours ignore most everything, and it is around 0400 or 04.45 perhaps, that I am twisted into alertness, as if I was Joan of Arc or Boudicca, and responsible, therefore, for the saving of a people. It is a wonder and a tiddleypom.

It is Saturday. Saturn’s Day, according to the Romans who were invaders, btw. Yes, I know they built roads we still drive along, but they were invaders, nonetheless. We might have got that whole road thing sorted all by ourselves, in time. It thinks me. Although I am British and wotwot, and we had an empire we controlled and invested in, and, let it be said, abandoned the countries which were probably doing ok according to their own understanding of ok, I wonder at the intervention. Bringing down to the individual, how do we interfere? We think, or I thinked, that, as mama, I had the right to ‘guide’. I laugh at that now. How can anyone guide from a generation away?

So, on this day of Saturn, I felt slow and I am never slow. I felt anxiety and had no answer to the question. What makes you anxious? I don’t know. The rain, the pelter, began at 04.45. I came down, wide awake and happy to wake at all, made tea and sat hearing the heavy blatter of cloud tears overhead. I mopped up the house leaks and said, out loud,, Don’t feel bad, old house. You have stood here, strong and protective since 1820 something. I understand a leak or two.

I think of Saturn, way up there, way beyond my looking. All those fiery rings. I do look up often, even as I often look down. Today, I paddled through the lush of super rain. Even the woods were sloshing. My feets were wet and I lifted my head and laughed at the joy of it. Wee Four Legs was a muddy delight on return. On my way, I met a couple staying in a holiday home just inside the estate. We talked, we clicked, we laughed and that connect lifted me. As I rounded for home, I clocked the power of connectivity, even momentual, even random.

And that was my Dies Saturni.

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Island Blog – Did You?

Love someone to the bitter end? I don’t mean death. There is an end in a relationship, one we really wan’t to ignore, wishing it away, and, yet not. We know our hearts. We know this. What we find wanting is courage, and, in my experience, it will lack, be wanting, unless just one bigger, more confident and older person, one we trust, has told us we have courage, and, more, that it is ours and that we can pull it up as a new employee. That was a long sentence, I know. However, according to my English language tutor, I am alowed this dance across the floor of regimental grammar, but only if there are well placed commas, hyphons, apostrophies, colons and semicolons and wotwot. Sounds like surgery.

So, did you? I did. When love breaks into shards of itself, at the time when we are placed in a home, placed in a role, sugged down in routine, money worries, debts, fears, routines, over many years, we may become a sludge of ourselves. We used to dance to Footloose, did we not, like yesterday? We grabbed chances, opportunities, we laughed loudly and wild. All this does not end in a Full Stop. No Way. Living life to the full is not only for the young, in fact, the young just do that living thing without many thinks, when the biggest chafe may be from parental jurisdiction. The next bit is supposed to set itself in place, which probably means this young person with Footloose dancing in their hearts has to ‘settle’. Hmmmm

I didn’t. I did try, honestly, but I am a wild card. It is not a comfortable persona. So, I loved him, until not. However, there was a strong historical build of companionship, and it worked. Much as I would have loved one of those big loves I see in my sisters, it wasn’t for me. And, there is a learning in that. My children (I can say that now without a reminder that they are ‘ours’, which, for me was a given) are strong, loving, kind, giving, astute, intelligent people. I have no idea how they burst from the turbulence of their parent’s breaks, but they did and I am so proud of them, just the surviving bit, never mind the rest.

So, are you at the bitter end? I’m saying nothing. You know your heart, Scary, yes, (another bloody comma) but this is the one life. Relationship, work, something. Could be neighbourhood (ridiculously long word btw) could be any connection that is fighting your heart. Courage. We don’t feel it, do we, nor know it for we don’t remember who taught it to us? In our childlife we watched compliance, obeisance, bowed shoulders, quiet voices, servitude. But we can change that, and not just for us, for our children and their children.

That’s a whole load of thinks. Happy Friday my friends.