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Island Blog – Grammar, Flying and My Name is Judy

There is a thing about things that thing me. Now, there’s a sentence for you. I remember English Language classes, the emphasis heavy on grammar and sentence construction. Rhythm, beat, phrasing, verbs in the right place, ditto adverbs, adjectives (steady on those), spelling and please do not use made up words, slang or swear words, however covertly disguised. Blimey! Throttled from the start was I, were we. It seemed to me, and seems still, that bothering overly much about the correct words in the correct order is like wearing a whalebone corset for gym practice. I want to flow, just roll those glorious sentences out, quick and slick and without losing the storyline. I don’t want to feel verbally, rhythmically or phrasically constipated whilst I spill out the words from my, apparently, overactive imagination. This was actually penned in one school report. An overactive imagination. What my well-corseted English teacher was really saying is that I was disruptive. My challenge of her she took personally and I cannot blame her, she who seemed to have nothing much more exciting in her life than the ‘correct’ structure of sentencing with the odd thrill of a hyphen or a colon.

So I play with words. Punctuation, however, is a different thing, not that I am perfect in the way I employ the marks, but it does bother me when I read an official document with glaring errors. It’s means ‘it is’. Its denotes ownership, ‘its tail, its banana, its wings’, and so on. It’s, on the other hand would precede a sentence such as ‘It’s hard to believe that Mary had a little lamb’. ‘Their’ applies thus. Their home, their choice of venue, their problem, whereas ‘they’re would mean ‘they are’ in a squish. They’re going on a train to Bandalouche, they’re in trouble now, they’re a right pair of idiots’.

My dad, a stickler for all things Language, taught us all and corrected us when necessary. I believe one of my sisters actually had her letter to him returned, corrected. It did us no harm, but stood us in good stead as women moving into the world of men. We knew how to speak, how to phrase, how to construct a sentence. What of the girls nowadays, as the subject of grammar recedes into the background? I obviously have not a scooby as to whether this applies to all schools in the whole country, but just going by the evidence of what I see written down by young adults, it isn’t encouraging. ‘I never would of thought of that.’ Really? ‘I never would have thought of that.’ Ah, yes.

I sound like an old stick-in-the-mud, I know it and I really don’t mean to. I am the first to make up words, to play with the fold and random flow of rhythmical phrasing, but I believe that a person has to learn the basic mathematics of anything before they can fly off piste. Drumming, piano playing, singing, dancing, writing, painting, scientific exploration, mountain climbing (no flying off piste for this one, not literally), plus a zillion more disciplines, appropriately called disciplines because of their grounding in just that, discipline. I completely loathed discipline in pretty much all areas of my life, but needed them all, the gravity of them holding down my scatter feet, a springboard for any future leap.

They say knowledge is everything, which is a tad sweeping for me even as I can taste the truth in the cliche. If I am unsure about any area of my life, anxious, perhaps, I know it is simply because I don’t ‘know’ enough about it. My imagination takes me into a future that doesn’t, and probably will never, exist. I must needs investigate the subject, thus imbibing knowledge which, in turn, grows my confidence, shifts my perspective and stabilises the chaos within. I am anxious about my journey back home. What is it about said journey back home that feels me this way? 1. Getting lost in the airport for weeks. Follow the signs and ask someone. 2. I will miss my connection. Catch the next plane. 3. I won’t get through security. Check hand luggage and remove all weapons. 4. I am frightened of travelling alone. Ah, now we get to the nitty gritty. Well you won’t be alone, not with 300 other hot and bothered travellers and the pilot will be fully trained, plenty stewards on board, you can ask them for anything. There will be food and a movie of your choice and when you land you will be in London where everyone speaks in a tongue you understand. The fact that you aren’t on speaking terms with any of those 300 other people is entirely up to you my dear. Hallo, my name is Judy. that’s all you have to say and in that sweet and simple introduction, you are no longer alone, as you perceive it.

It seems so easy, once a fear or anxiety is questioned and gentled apart all the way down to its core. I can spend weeks with my knickers in a knot of anxiety, but now I have learned to notice, question and then find solutions to each individual aspect. It’s freeing. Its hold on me lessens, loosens and, eventually, lets go. I can still feel a frisson of fear but can quickly refer back to my solution list and breathe in the adventure, fill my lungs with it, fly with it, curious as a child.

Hallo, my name is Judy.

(Oh lord, she’s going to talk the whole flight) Hallo, I’m Simon, Mary, Lord Fauntleroy.

Do you like flying?

(Here she comes) Not much.

Oh I love it.

Good.

And if that’s all there is, it’s enough for me not to feel alone.

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Island Blog – Blue Gin and Sleeping with Ants

Happy 70th birthday to me! It bizarres me that I have arrived here at all. 70, in my experience of parents and grandparents, is an age for sensible knickers, shoes and rigid opinions. I relate to none of those. I still feel mischievous, my sense of fun and the opportunities for seeing the fun in pretty much everything and everyone, is childlike still. The very thought of becoming sensible, according to the world, is enough to send me up the curtains, in my mind, at least. Life is such a glorious adventure, a troublesome pain in the ass at times, yes, but I will not focus on those times, only learn from, and survive, them. People keep saying Life is too short, and then spend endless moments, hours and days, worrying about a future that hasn’t even arrived and probably never will. Such a ridiculous cliche and meaningless when you think about it unless the core truth of it is imbibed and digested.

This past weekend in Africa, I was feted and celebrated until my smile threatened to dislodge my ears. Taken out for lunch, out for breakfast, gold and white helium balloons and golden streamers dangling all around the big open kitchen; champagne toasts, lovely new friends over for a wonderfully daft evening with good food on the braai, good wine to drink, shared anecdotes and jokes, conversations and laughter tossed into the sky, high enough to join the stars, which, I might add, are in all the wrong places and tilting dangerously. Even the moon is on her back, the saucy madam. Something to do with the Equator or an attitude to Latitude or whatever.

Although I knew bits about what might be happening, I didn’t know it all and it felt odd at first not being the one to organise a surprise, the celebration of another. Let go, I tell myself, and shut the dufus up. You think you don’t deserve to be celebrated? Stupid woman. Look at your family, friends and other animals, how they keep coming back. This, my dear, means something. Drink your blue gin and be thankful. And I get it and I am. I loved every single minute of the weekend, gathering up the memories like wildflowers, saved into a file in my head to be enjoyed over and over again when I return to my little island home.

For the past couple of warm African nights I have not been alone in my bed. A large contingent of ants has chosen to join me and we cannot work out where on earth they come from, why they are in my bed and what ion earth they are up to. Ants are intelligent wee critters so this is no random invasion just for the hell of it, just to upset me, not that I’m upset. I studied them the first night, my miners lamp on my head (in case of power outage overnight) and my goodness they looked busy. I pulled the duvet over me, brushed a few stragglers away and wished them well. In the morning they were gone. However last night I believe they lost their moxie a bit as I noticed a lot of dithering and fleeing aboot, all the way up to me. It tickled me awake. Okay, I sigh, clock says 01.15, and I want to sleep. I wished them well and took myself off to the couch, a very comfortable ant-free zone. It is still a mystery, this incoming tide of small black busybodies, and one I hope we can solve without destroying their lives, but none of us speak ‘Ant’ and nor do we have feelers to waggle, so a mutually agreeable result is only a possibility for now.

I could easily freak out over this but that is not my style. However, if we were talking scorpions or poisonous spiders, my moxie would also be challenged, I admit, and my curiosity wouldn’t even lift its head to engage in any study. But these harmless wee people are a fascination because there is such intent and dynamism in their ordinary little lives and they very obviously do not want to be in my bed. Something has disturbed them and they are de-camping. Solid walls are preventing this, or so I guess. I wish them well and I wish them gone, obviously, but I know what it feels like to be unsettled or discombobulated and I also know that in this so-called short life of mine, sleeping with ants is rather an unique situation, a story for the telling sometime when I am home again.

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Island Blog. Mosquitos don’t fly in Sunshine

Just over ten days to go before I fly back home and I really don’t want to leave. I feel so at home here, with my young, in the heat of certain sunshine, the warmth of African welcomes, all the new people I have met, talked, and laughed with over delicious meals beneath jacaranda boughs all festooned with twinkly lights. I have risen with the sun and sat beside the pool as day gives way to night, a glass of good wine beside me and my skin covered in anti-mosquito spray. I won’t miss them, the mosquitos, silent and determined and always under the table. I have helped with many small tasks and a few big ones, as my young prepare to move house, sanding, oiling, stripping tables, painting walls, and occasionally cooking the evening meal. I have walked in the wildlife estate, thrown ball for the big soft dog in a dog park, laughed at the antics of many cats and shared worrying moments when they came. In short, I have engaged completely with every aspect of life in Africa and the buzz word here is companionship.

Since himself decided to abandon ship, I have felt very alone, even though, towards the end, he was mostly in his own world, I in mine. But he was a presence in the home, a familiar. Navigating the uncharted waters of early widowhood was uncomfortable at times, unsteady, rough too, but I did not capsize, not me. Friends and family are all anyone needs beyond the obvious, like an inside toilet, money for food and bills and four stone walls to surround and protect. Connecting, however, was strange at first. I would say all is well, I am fine, et la la, but inside I felt, at times bereft. I didn’t want himself back, not as he became, but the familiar, when removed in any life, will cause a disturbance in the atmosphere, a fractal cracking of a heart, yes, a split in the ground beneath feet, a stopping of the old turning wheel. Advancing can feel like an impossibility, but very gradually, all this stopping and cracking becomes irritating. The human spirit is tenacious, the inner sprite knows how to itch from within, like a mosquito bite. Now I notice my skin, now I see the red rise of response, now I need to do something, find someone, get off the couch, get living again.

We all take our own time inside this process. There are no rules, no timelines, even if those who have not experienced a fractal cracking decide there are both. Meaning well, but unknowingly feeding the inner judge, these good folk encourage. Get out more, join a club, take up tango, anything to create motion and connection, they might say and to it all I said No thanks. Although I understood that there is a thin line, blue I think, between natural grieving and indulgent collapse, something in me just knew it would take me the time it took me, that eventually my fed would be right up there and I would, naturally, lift myself into a new life. And this I have done. Africa is a healing place for me, mosquitos notwithstanding, and I will miss the soothing balm of easy family companionship. However, and there is always one of those, the flip side of the coin, the other face of the moon etc, is that I have had a long time here. I have inhabited each day and still do. I have engaged with small and ordinary tasks, ready for adventure even if it is just a shopping trip for food, and this because of the surprisingly wonderful serendipities that might just appear in conversation. Familiarity can allow openness, the freedom of precious sharing, whispers from deep in a soul, voiced and floating, beautiful and fragile as butterflies. A new encounter perhaps, a random meet in a shop, smiles swapped, news exchanged that ripple out in a mind for the rest of the day.

I love to live alone, now, but I also know the power and the value of companionship. I will fly back to my much loved island home with a wealth of memories to nourish me. I will recall flash moments and long conversations, reflect on how my time here has affected my young and myself, how we all might feel encouraged to move forward in something previously stuck on ‘hesitate’. Perhaps we have discovered a reset of values, of beliefs, of perception and will, over time, absorb that learning into our lives. Distance is just a plane journey and distance cannot disconnect connection, not in minds, not in spirit for we are linked in ways no force can sever. We change and grow, learn and discover, share and develop because of each other, all of the each others in our lives. Each day offers a gift, the chance to learn something beyond the familiar, something unexplainable, silent, invisible and flowing with light and lift.

I am thankful for each moment left to me in this place, looking forward to what may happen after breakfast, and extremely happy that mosquitos don’t fly in sunshine, whereas I, most certainly, do.

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Island Blog – Ordinary Knickers

Today I went to buy new underpinnings. T’is a while since I did this. What I wear beneath what I wear is functional and, although an important, nay critical, part of the dressing process, I rarely think about buying new. Unless, that is, I discover exhausted elastic or a seam falling apart. My reason for yesterday’s adventure into the lingerie department, a terrifying place in my opinion, so much choice and with so many consequences, is because I have purchased a white dress. It isn’t see-through per se, but bright turquoise knickers would definitely be making a loud statement. I need white. I have no white. White knickers are for children. My teenage longing for something of colour beneath my clothing is a feeling I still recall, even now. However, needs must. I take a deep breath and dive into Lingerie.

I’m like a little girl in a strange world. I study the various bras in amazement. Every consideration has been made, it seems, to provide endless and puzzling results, to uplift, separate and transform what is into what isn’t. Just looking at these things is enough to squeeze the air from my lungs. I cannot imagine wearing any of them for more than a minute. Head down, I scurry through the weapons of torture and on to knickers. Just white pants, that’s all, white, cotton, functional, medium at a guess. I wander through high-leg, low-cut, no-visibility, full-cover, high waist, post-birth, thongs, mid-rise, none of them either suitable or white. I search for Ordinary Knickers. I glance over to the pay point. One young man, deeply inside his mobile. I decide not to ask him for Ordinary Knickers. This is Africa, after all, and we would both be embarrassed, my voice loud in the almost empty department and he, stumbling for words, an unsettling image in his mind. It wonders me he is here at all. I dive back into the confusion. There are no Ordinary Knickers it seems. But wait! In the budget section, I spot packs of 3 and one shows me a glimpse of white between ‘skin-colour’ and ‘black’. I purchase hurriedly and leave, gasping in gulps of freedom air, relieved to be leaving the terrifying and bewildering world of Lingerie behind me.

All good so far you might think. Back home I try on the white, size medium, and sigh. The shape is not my shape, the waistband which isn’t at my waist, too tight. I pull on the dress. It works. The underneath of the overview of me is invisible, although sitting down creates a skin-fall mid body, but, I suppose I can bear wearing the damn things for an evening. I guess they, like all my ancient colourful knickers, will soften over time. I also know I could snip around the elastic, not right through, of course, I don’t want an embarrassing knicker-fall, but just enough to give some give.

I make coffee and think a bit. I do understand, and vaguely remember, the delight of new underwear but as my young and middle life demanded functional clothing, a farmer’s wife ensemble of tee shirt, jeans and a jumper, I didn’t spend much time choosing what to wear underneath, didn’t give it much thought at all. I remember my first bra, a little white thing, a most uncomfortable restraint and one I resented daily. Not much has changed over the years it seems, and now relieved at the thought of another few years of not having to brave a Lingerie department, I move happily into the rest of my day.

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Island Blog – How we really feel

The day dawns fresh-breezed and sunny and we have jobs to do. We bought sticky tape, non-sticky tape, varnish, oils, turps and scrubbers, many things hardware, for we are preparing this house for letting and leaving. As the lists are made, we see how much there is still left to do, and remind ourselves how much we have already achieved. The five indoor cats watch us through the windows, follow us from room to room, sensing some change is afoot. The jacaranda trees beyond the walls bend and flip in the breeze whilst vervet monkeys leap the branches, sure-footed, swinging like acrobats. Perhaps they watch us too, curious but uncaring. Sunlight lifts the newly oiled deck boards into a shiny conker warmth, one coat complete, a second to reapply, hot work under the broiler in the sky. Various bits of furniture are advertised and sold, little holes filled in, taps re-washered, walls brushed and touched up, door and window frames varnished to a shine. Moving forward, ever moving forward. Sometimes a task presents as too demanding so we break it down into smaller parts until the whole thing is complete. At others, we sail merrily along, buoyed up by sharing the process, bantering, laughing, pausing for breath, discussing the best way to achieve the end result. We allow for rests and diversions such as going out for Eggs Benedict with avocado and strong coffee, or a trip to the dog park to throw ball for the big soft retriever to catch and chase after. And all the time we talk on many things, not cabbages and certainly not kings, but on concepts and reflections, mind-mapping and acceptance of self, gatherings and solitude, our observations on everything Life. We have always talked that way. Not for us the idle chatter of wasted words. We are sentence makers, thinking people, curious and interested in a new way to see old things. We ask each other, How do you see this, or that? and then we listen to and consider the response we hear.

When we join others, I sit and listen to their discussions on what appears superficial to me. It isn’t that I judge, because I don’t but when the subject under the lights is only about a situation they all know and inhabit, the words just seem to circle pointlessly to me. Unless there is curiosity and reflection, the subject remains solid, unmoving, stuck in time, with the inhabitants thereof stuck with it. There is no right or wrong in the way we converse, but I always want to dive beneath the surface, to discover the depth, texture, movement and flow of this subject. It could be all about bin collection or the lack of it and that could take up a whole evening, resolving not at all from where I sit. It could be any number of similar issues under the microscope, until the minutiae has been thoroughly talked out and absolutely nothing has changed and my legs are itching to move on, to move beyond the tiddleypom and out into the wide open spaces, curious like Alice.

Sometimes I think I am an onlooker in this life. I love people and gatherings, conversation and laughter, sharing a meal and so on, but give me anytime the meeting of true minds, of thinkers and wonderers, of those who live on the edge of all truths accepting none of them and all of them at the same time. I am a loner, a weirdo, different, odd. So be it. Although I have met only a few differently odd weirdo loners, we know each other immediately even if we never met before. We connect instantly and then, as is our nature, break apart. I used to want to change myself, to find complete happiness in evening-long conversations about bin collection or lack of it, but I cannot change so instead I accept who I am and who you are and it is a peaceful warm place in which to live. And, over time, I have learned that to initiate a conversation by asking the right question can result in a shift in direction, in content. I can ask, as the chat on buying carpets is wearing me thin, Have you ever made a carpet, dyed wool, walked barefoot on a silk Persian rug, been to Turkey, or anywhere else, for that matter, to watch a carpet story being assembled in full technicolour? Oh yes? How did you feel watching that, do tell, all the details please. Ah, no, not facts, not facts, not pronouncements, but feelings. How did you feel?

After a few blank stares and some throat clearing, my gaze fixed firmly on my target, a tentative response trickles out and I finally get to hear the voice of the person before me instead of the repetitious rote, the factual quotes, the I-agree-with-him platitudes. I get to the real beneath the mask. It’s exciting and informative and suddenly I am engaged, fascinated and gently questioning further until I see you, oh there you are, just you, no pretence, a warm lively interesting human being.

How easily we bend to a shape in order to fit in, with our statements and judgements, and yet how soft and vulnerable we really are, and how very beautiful we become when just one person shows true interest in how we really feel about something.

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Island Blog – A Bee, Curiosity and Instant Solutions

How do bees manage to fly sideways? In this African garden with its ebullience of fragrant blooms, I am of interest to the bees. One or two come over to me, perhaps beckoned by my floral perfume or perhaps I just look like a blooming shrub in my colourful frock. On the trajectory towards me, the bee flies straight, but once it arrives a few inches from my face, she swings from right to left, left to right, sussing me out, eyeball to eyeball. How does she do it? I google. It seems that a bee’s wings, both pairs of them, not only flap up and down but also can twist and rotate. How fantastic is that! It thinks me.

How flexible am I inside this life of mine? Do I flap up and down, moving either forward or back, or do I have the mental wings that can twist and rotate, thus allowing me to visit any situation or encounter using a lateral flow? I like to think I can laterally flow with the best of them, and I believe it to be a truth. I visit the sideways of things a lot, particularly when I am unsure-footed, continuing forward, but determined not to go back, because going back over old ground in any situation is not going to show me anything new, after all, now is it? However, there is often the temptation to replay the movie, to berate self for any trip ups back there, to wish I had done or said it differently, a thoroughly pointless exercise, a waste of mind energy, and fruitless, but we all do it now and again and some of us make a life of wishing the past was different.

Logic and emotion can be poor bed mates. I can know something, a fact, a truth, a way of behaving, but if I cannot feel the truth of it, know it in my heart, that ‘truth’ means little to me, much as the bee thought I was a blooming shrub. However, it’s deeply frustrating when that belief lasts only as long as it takes for something to trip me up, like a half-concealed boulder in my new path, the one I absolutely know to be the right one, logically speaking. The number of positive and upbeat wisdoms, particularly on social media, are beginning to irritate me, all those goodly truths serving only to tell me how often I fall short of their perfection. Learning how to accept that each ‘truth’ is something I need to experience personally as I keep moving along my path takes a degree of patience, not something any of us find easy. I want it now, this new understanding, not in ten years time for god’s sake! Other people get it straight away, so what is wrong with me? Your thinking, m’lady, that’s what is wrong, not you. Don’t think, but just keep buzzing along, use those wings to twist and rotate, work the muscles, fly sideways, checking out everything and everyone along the way. Be like a bee. And if a shrub turns out to be an old woman in a loud frock, so be it. Move on.

As I approach 70 years of age, an astonishment for me as I never thought I would pass 60, I take a look down the road from my past. 60, in my opinion, meant bad temper, lipstick smudged, hair, weekly permed into a helmet and sensible shoes and I wanted none of that. Nowadays, however, we are younger than our parents were, in thinking, in opportunities, in attitude and in engagement with younger generations. I don’t feel old at all and plan to remain not feeling old until I fall over for the last time. I have also found, eventually it seems, a confidence I did not have when younger. Although I cannot state with any lofty words that I know where I am going, because most of the time I do not, I am happy with that. If we stay curious, fly sideways as well as forwards, the occasional look back allowed but only to honour all we have gone through and survived, we birth ourselves again. We have inherited DNA, yes, but that doesn’t need to define our choices or actions today, right now. I am truly thankful for my ancestors, what they gifted me, the good and the ‘bad’. I am also deeply thankful that I am not a bee. My eyes are open, my limbs flexible, my curiosity a daily fascination as I can arrive in a strange place just like that, my mental wings ready to twist. I don’t wear lipstick nor do I have a permed head. I am not bad-tempered, nor do I own a pair of sensible shoes, running barefoot most of the time. I am prepared to face whatever the olding process sends my way. I will continue to read those uplifting truths because I never know which one will settle in for keeps, and, best of all, I no longer believe in instant solutions, because the only instant solution I can trust unequivocally, is me.

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Island Blog – Ripples, Dementia and New Land

Two and a half years after ten as a dementia carer, the ripples continue, spreading out as if no land is there to stop them. Where is the land, the beginning, the stop point and also the start? Who knows when, after all those years of confusion, of accommodating the one with dementia, of twisting into knots in order to make things as okay as possible, landfall is an option? And, what land will be there? A strange new one, one that will require the carer to find her or himself? Yes a strange land because this carer is forever changed. Just untangling the knots will take years and then it is not so much a finding of who I was before, but more of building a new me, one I don’t know at all, not yet.

I have just listened to ‘Travellers to Unimaginable Lands’ by Dasha Kiper on Radio 4, a series on dementia and caring and so intelligently put together as to explain the dichotomies, confusion, anger, demands and lack of understanding as to affirm exactly what I and other carers go through. The one with dementia becomes more of what he or she always was. Correct. People ask ‘How is he, or she?’ until we, the carer, grow weary of answering whilst feeling even more lonely and isolated than before. Rarely, oh rarely, does anyone ask ‘How are you?’ Why is this? Because, I believe, there is far too much still unknown about dementia and the devastating and long term damage to the carer; because a long term sickness is something to be compartmentalised, understood and run away from. It is messy and uncomfortable and what we want to see is a bright, capable, carer who doesn’t complain or fall apart. We want to hear about the good moments, hold onto them and even, in our kindly ignorance, encourage the falling apart carer to focus on those times. We don’t want to know about the details, the nightly horrors, the extreme lack of sleep, the anger, frustration and fear. We cannot process it, we just cannot. Please, their eyes tell me, keep this light. I’m just here to bring honey, flowers, a card perhaps have a quick coffee but I must get back to my own life. And there you have it, there I had it, there all carers have it. And somehow we cannot let our feelings out for fear of seeming weak and failing. So, we don’t.

The series, however, investigates and illuminates the feelings a carer will feel. Sometimes, the longing for it to end, swiftly followed by a tsunami of guilt. Sometimes the desire to hurt, to punish, to argue and shout. Sometimes the wonderful warmth that appears as randomly as the accusations, of an old companionship, a shared long-term agreement on what music we like, what stories, what memories we share. A glimpse of what was, the longing for it to stay a while, fingers clutching as it recedes or snaps shut like teeth, gone, forgotten, denied. The ensuing sadness, the rise from a chair I only just sat down in, my smile eager, say more, say a bit more, yes we did do that, share that, enjoy that together, then a lonely wander into another room as he clamped on his headphones and goes back to Casualty, something he would have mocked when he was the man I knew.

I am thankful for this series because although it was tough in parts to re-live those long years, its existence means that carers, unpaid or paid, just might find the support they need. Dementia is cruel and endless, or so it seems. As the person with dementia moves into unimaginable lands, they don’t go in a linear way, one we can understand and process. There are no uniform stages, nothing we can expect nor prepare for. As the sufferer’s unreality settles as reality in a damaged brain, there is no conversational flow, no logic, nothing to grasp onto. A carer lives reactively and that is upsetting, confusing and exhausting. Nothing agreed ten minutes ago is a truth, because a new ‘truth’ may appear, changing everything. And so the carer must accept this or fall apart. There is no opportunity for discussion, no way to remind a damaged brain of what was agreed, a trip to the shop, a cafe, a doctor’s appointment, because in his mind, that decision is my delusion, something I made up and never communicated to him. You always were flighty, fey, in another world!, making things up. A derisive snort, a turn away, and I must accept this without recourse to my own frustration, without expelling a fruitless vomit that would only make a mess, one I would have to clear up. To disagree is to bring on a 8 part series of accusations, rejections, sulks and criticisms, and all carefully, or so it seems, targeting my most vulnerable inner weaknesses, and poking at them all. He doesn’t mean to hurt, I tell myself, whilst I try to calm the feelings of rejection and the sting of dismissal, whilst I recall he could often behave this way as a healthy man. And, as he lights up like a Christmas tree when someone he is fond of comes to chat with him, the loneliness is crippling.

So, I say, Hallelujah to this new understanding of how a carer feels. Hallelujah to the freedom that understanding and exposure brings. To shine a light on we who care or cared just might nurture us as we work through the chaos and the years, because it would mean we no longer need to pretend everything is marvellous when in truth our whole world is crumbling. It also might mean that we can find new land once the story comes to an end knowing we gave our very best, our falls from grace understandable, our sacrifice a gift, not only to the sufferer, but to ourselves. And, when we are no longer all at sea, we can swim with the ripples until a new land makes them stop. We can climb out, ragged and torn whilst knowing who we just might be able to become, curious, broken and beautifully lost. I got through it, I did, and, both despite and because of the memories, I am proud of that.

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Island Blog – Ordinary Fun

Up with the sun, we are and ready for action. The task this day is to de-grease the deck and then to oil it for when my younglings let out the house. So much to do, so little time, but I am always game on for physical work, never having been good at sitting on my butt for very long. It always takes time, as a guest, to find out what ordinary tasks I can take on. There’s the washing up, of course, and the floor sweeps etcetera, but I find there’s often a lot of ‘You’re on holiday’ responses at first, when I offer to help, which is a caring sort of thing to say. I counter that now with a reminder to them that my butt is expanding with all this being on holiday stuff, and my legs need a cartwheel or two to flex them up again. I don’t notice how much flexing I do back home, lugging or stacking wood, lifting heavies out the way or into it, gardening, climbing steps, scrubbing out cupboards or hoovering black spider webs in the ghastly loft. Just ordinary stuff, as I say.

The deck is covered with furniture, big plant pots, heavy tables and the big basket of dog toys. We clear, sweep, shift and heft, de-grease, hose down and wait for the sun to dry it all off. Yesterday we went to the store in search of the recommended oils plus brushes and spoke to Yolande who has a real wealth of knowledge on all things hardware. She is also an Afrikaner. After some discussion on the right and best oils for the task in hand, she asked a question that would have sounded like this in the UK, a perfectly ordinary question for sure. ‘How big is your deck?’ She, obviously needed to know that in order to establish how many gallons of oil we might need to comfortably cover all that wood, and for two or more coats. However, the way an Afrikaner would ask that question is “How big is your dick?’ My son, with a twinkle in his eye, replied “Now, Yolande, that is a very personal question!’ I watched her face, first confused and then what she had asked and how we heard it dawned on her face. First, a wide smile and then a burst of giggles that lifted us all into the air, astonishing passers by with a barrowload of hammers and planks, screws and very grumpy faces.

Such fun can be had if the fun bones and muscles are flexed and ready for the chance to out. A simple exchange of words, twinkly eyes and a dancing sense of humour can bring the sunshine into any day, can put the spring into a step, can turn an ordinary task into a story. We were still chuckling as we left, as was Yolande.

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Island Blog – Keeping Time with Time

I wake early and with the sunrise. Out here, in Africa, we are two hours ahead of the UK for a while yet, until the clocks go forward this month. Africa doesn’t bother about clock changing and it wonders me why anyone does. There must be a point to it. Perhaps there is only a limited amount of time in the world and it needs sharing. We lose an hour and another continent thousands of miles across the world finds it has gained one, over us, that is. What is achieved in that gained hour I wonder? Does somebody somewhere get a job done more thoroughly or is that hour just 60 minutes of boredom, time wasted, time not needed, time spent in waiting for something, anything to happen? And when we claim back that hour, around now, with Spring in our step, do we notice the gain of it, treasure it, make it really count, or is it just lost in sleep, a sleep cut short? This musing thinks me. I don’t need to know the facts around time gained, time lost, because this is not the way my mind works. I am more interested in the concept of time and what it means at the core of itself. Time gained? Who gains? Time lost? Who loses? All answers float in the stratosphere, high above factual explanations, beyond the reach of science or physics, free-flowing through the vast and unlimited space of an imagination. There is no such thing as time. Time is an illusion. We all have the same number of hours in a day. But what do we do with our no-such-thing, illusory and equally gifted gift of Time? Now that’s a question.

When I was mostly tapselteerie, way back when children were children, when I was taller than any of them and when, if I said NO, then NO it was, I never thought much about time as a concept. It was something the clock told me, tick, tock, tick, a hand at my back, a hurry up, a panic, a flurry of hours that allowed for no sit-downs, merciless in the tick and the tock of itself, selfish. Selfish time, stop a little, slow a bit, let me catch up? No chance of that my dear, you just need to shape up and move faster. It is like this for all in the muddle-frenzy of young life, building children, building a business, clambering up corporate ladders, learning new ways to fit in, diluting self for the benefit of the team and so on. From where I sit now, watching all this flurrying about me, I am glad it is done for me, no longer diluting self, no longer at the mercy of time, of business, softer round the edges, watching, smiling, calm. I was never calm in the olden days, although I did know people who managed the calm thing and it really irritated me that I couldn’t, me constantly on the boil, my guts in a right fankle, my legs never still. These people seemed in control of their time, allowing it to pass them by, yet still able to fire on all systems when required. Something to do with my faulty wiring, I told myself, and there was a damnit in that thought. However, looking back now through the rosy lens of hindsight, I smile as I recall the fankle, the self-flagellation, the waste of those minutes, those hours spent wishing I could be who I was not. Time wasted, or was it?

Self-reflection is no bad thing, as long as it is not indulged in and developed into a standstill. In my long journey through wasteland and over capricious and sometimes spiteful expanses of ocean, I did, and still do, need to trim my sails, to learn from life herself, to change this or that, to find a new way to look at an old thing. Learning is a lifetime’s work and I am still learning, still a student, an understanding that can really up my fed at times, and delight me at others. I still have my mind, my health, my precious life, time. None of us know how much of that we have, myself included, and it seems to me that this doesn’t really matter much. It’s who we are in the time we do have that remembers people, makes a dent in others lives. Did I waste time in my life? I did. Was I completely marvellous at filling my time to capacity and at all times? I was not. Did I share my time, gift my time every time it was needed? I did not. Am I deeply thankful for all the time spent, shared, gifted, wasted? Those hours of shared chatter, laughter, tears and silent companionship, those highs and lows, those moments spent staring through windows and wishing life was different, that something would happen to change everything……….am I thankful for all of that time? I am.

And now, for however much time is left, no matter the loss and gain of hours, I will keep time with Time. I will sleep some away, waste some, share some, sit alone and gaze through windows but this time without wishing for transformation, without regrets, analysis, criticism of self, all of that time wasting nonsense. Even through the rumpelstiltskin hours of a tossing night, even when I wish she would hurry up, slow down, stop completely for a while, even then, for Time is my friend and she is gift. So many have no time left at all.

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Island Blog – The House is Singing

The noise is spectacular! Five roofers gadding about, a mile high and as if the land beneath their feet was as flat as the tundra. They have performed this task before, methinks, so confidently do they work as a team. The first day there was a lot of hammering and poking through the thatch with long poles to establish contact with the beams. Building a structure a short way above the existing roof, a skeleton of struts to hold the Harvey tiles in place whilst still allowing for air flow so the thatch doesn’t sweat is something else to watch. The men work quickly but not quietly, chatting to each other in some African language no, shouting, even if they are just a couple of feet apart. They sound as if they are here in the room with us and yet they are balancing like monkeys, effortlessly and high overhead. To work with concentration down below is something that requires patience, concentration and the odd yell out of the window asking them to please talk quietly. This, it seems, is impossible. Their natural voices are loud, and it might take an operation to change that. I notice it’s the same among the black men and women wherever they are, shopping, working, shovelling, tidying litter or sharing an office space. These people are naturally ebullient, ready to smile, always polite, always ready to share a greeting, more than ready to laugh. A far cry, indeed, from the UK where all of us are strangers to each other, heads down, avoiding eye contact, barely able to disturb the air with a wave, let alone cut it with a sentence, and as for smiling, well, there aren’t many of them around on crowded streets or inside cars, a bus, a train. It’s as if life is happy here and unhappy back home. I don’t refer to the island folk, nor the Celts, nor a lot of other folk of whom I have little experience, but mainly in the cities and towns. It’s as if they, the ones with heads down, no smiles, empty of greetings, are living in a quiet desperation (not my words) and that makes me very sad. I digress.

It rains. I have never experienced this much rain in Africa and nor has anyone else. However much Africa needs rain, the roofers do not. Add to that the regular load shedding and there is a problem, Ma’am. No power. I see that, I reply, you will need to fire up your generator. He grins and shrugs and fires up his generator. In the times of a drowning deluge, the men run for cover but in gentle rain, the work continues and I watch in trepidation as they skid across the tiles, the sky a mackerel of clouds above them. A tile falls to the ground with a crash. These tiles are long, about 4 ft, and lined with something like aluminium making them heavy. I shudder as the guillotine hits the deck, thankful I had not just walked outside at that very moment. But no man falls, of course not. They have done this job for years and, besides, men don’t fall, or so they believe. Almost 3 days later, the roof is almost completed and having watched the craftsmanship of its creation and elevation, I am very impressed. Now we will have no leaks through the thatch. Now the house looks sharp and proud and the garden looks like a war zone. Offcuts of woods, bits of thatch, bits of tiles, power tools and no-power tools, all scattered across the grass, poor grass, and just as it was gaining new life thanks to all the rain.

Yesterday I sat here at the kitchen table working away on my laptop when a shower of thatch landed on my head. It was a shock and then it was funny. I walked carefully, like I was top of the deportment class, to the bathroom mirror and there it was, a neat round birds nest on top of my head. I do admit, as the holding poles stabbed through the thatch, to a frisson of fear at the thought of a beam collapsing down or a holding pole or a whole man crushing me to a splodge, and I did have to move around the house to avoid more birds nests, but all has gone smoothly. Beyond a lot of clearing up, sweeping and dusting and coughing and spitting, we have all survived the process. And, today, as the sun shines merrily and the generators gurgle and chunter with life giving power, it will be finished, completed and done. All the rubble, the offcuts, the tools and the men will be cleared away, allowing us to put the garden furniture back into place and to enjoy an evening, a braai perhaps, a shared sundowner, laughter and conversation beneath what promises to be a starry starry night. You hear that? I will say. The house, she’s singing. And she will be.