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Island Blog – Perceived Failure

Ach, well today was a bit of a trudge. It didn’t wake thus, and nor did I, jumping (I did) out of bed as the very first schist of morning framed my blackout curtains. When I wake, I’m like Alice, excited, down the stairs and into the fart of the sparrow all exuberant and ready for strong coffee. I call Alexa into Radio two and bring in the tunes and, despite the dark which will stay resolute for at least another 2.5 hours, I am there to welcome in the light. To be honest, I would like to be one of those who stravaigle into a morning, yawning, turning over, sleeping again until the last noisy minute, such as the arrival of the council bottle bin collectors, all twinkly winkly lights and big noise, arrives at my door. But I am not, and there’s a twister. My mum attributed her ability to hit the pillow asleep until morning, the actual morning, not the hour, when light beckoned breakfast and the whole world visible, ducks on the pond, all that, as an easy conscience. I did squirm at that, I confess. I think she probably said that to my dad, he who didn’t sleep, who caught me wandering all awake and in the dark of the landing and who told me stories, cooled my feet, stayed with me until I did drift away. I wonder if he did.

In the echoes of Remembrance, of those who went to war, some many times, and all who came back changed. The echoes continue, even now. How on earth does a soldier return to ordinary life, the caption of it, the captive, the superficiality, the expectation to adapt overnight? It wasn’t recognised in my dad’s day, nor before, the fallout, the agony of it, the loss of one for one, the strong bonds formed under immediate fire. the fear, the desert dark, the cold, the all of it – the refusal to tell out. It is now, I hope, although I’m guessing there is a lot of fallout, too many echoes, too many triggers, too much seen and not spoken out.

I’m shy now, once I see I have written this. My fingers do their own thing pretty much. So, I felt a trudge today, did I? I can see the judge front of me, all male and whigged. I planned to do this and didn’t. But I did sweep the floor, no, that’s a lie. I did walk, truth, I did do 100 rows on my row machine, I did check the canoes on the shore, see they’re tied right. Truth. I did walk, a bit. I did lose my specs and still haven’t located them. I didn’t attend a meeting, giving my notgoingness. I did bake a potato for supper, prep a salad, light the fire.

There is no competition. I know that. But I still compare myself against others. There is a learning there, and, as I work through this, I feel a tad less furious at my perceived failure.

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Island Blog – Confusulate

Today was a bit of an upsydownsy, not in anyway distressing, no interjections, no road blocks, no awkwards, no tricky altercations , no big stuff, none of that. Just a confusulate . Explain, I tell myself, finger wagging like a headmistress from the past and a very long ago one. I can see her, see that finger, how interesting, how damaging.

I decide to make something. Sweet Chilli Jam. I’ve made it before and it is delicious, but in my life it would need to be frozen for acres because there’s only me here. I can, I know give wee jars to those who may well swell with a wide smile and then let it go to mould. I still make it, for the pleasure of the making. It thinks me, as I get this, the process. This is me. I have always known this, held this. Those nights of tricky lambing under flickering dodgy lights at 4 am in the snowscape, of birthing in the freeze of a stone cold byre, pulling her into that cold, swiping muceous from her mouth, blowing in breath, over and over, and then the warm glow of life, the change of colour to the. skin, the wonderful of that singular moment.

I know how thoughts slip through all filters, tricking their way into the ordinary, tipsying it, tilting it and illuminting a light that shows something new. It’s exhausting. But I am in for the learning, despite the confusulation .

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Island Blog – The Shelterbelt

I feel weird today, sort of in the in between of stasis and movement. I wound tangles of wool pretty much all morning, realising, once I just had to stand up, that I hadn’t made my bed, nor turned off the lights no longer required. It felt strange. I don’t miss things like that as a rule, but, as I stravaigled the stairs, a tad shame-faced, flipping switches and sorting my duvet, I allowed myself to courie in to a place where nobody waits to judge me. The shelterbelt. The place wherein there is hot cocoa, a butty, a warm bosomy mama with wide open arms. We all want this, if we are honest, particularly those of us who never experienced her in real life.

The morning expanded as I kept untangling wool. You know…..there are times when untangling wool can play a very important part in a person’s future. I just don’t know the how or the what of it right now. My mind scurried back, like a nibbley mouse, searching in the scurry of what might have thrawn me, thrown me into this stasis. Ah……the funeral, the two funerals this week. One, okay-ish, a long-term friend, tired of life. The other too young, a bit older than my own eldest, also tired of life. I reckon that’s the shaker. Perhaps the sudden dive into complete emptiness for the family, for friends, for me, spirals a landslide from some invisible and magnitudinal force. It’s a gasp, a stopping. And, a day or two away from that ‘stopping’ I wonder why everything just continues on, as if there’s polyfilla on tap, to cover the ripped cracks in the landscape of so many.

Remembrance time now. In church we celebrated all those who gave their lives, those who went to war, or who stayed with ‘war’ once they met it headlong. The brave, the courageous, the loving, the curious, the inventive, the ones who, in private times, cried the cries of the seabirds, the oceans, the losses, the flipping wild of this bajonkers life. I drove home, wondering about a pub visit, but didn’t. And that wonders me. I could have found a shelterbelt just for a wee glass, could have told myself this is ok, to connect, to talk and said where I’d been, shared my deep sadness and my even deeper respect, the confusion of it. The twist of loss and lift, of the fall of rise, and the rise of falI…..I just came home with it.

I think we may be all the same, dinging like pong balls at such times. We can still ping, but we also need that shelterbelt. Or, I do, anyway.

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Island Blog – Explosical

I just made that word up by the way, but it fits. In that word is Ex, meaning gone. Plose, as in ‘Boom’ and Sical as the arse end of Musical. Well, if Latin/ Greek scholars can derivativise words into minute parts, then so can I. Much as I respect the past of historical learning and memories, even remembles, it is high time we caught, grasped onto, and learned from the way language has changed flipping ages ago. We all have many new neighbours, new work colleagues, new dialects on our streets, among our new-met friends, in all social gatherings. And it isn’t just the pronunciation of a word, the tilt and lift and shift of the musicality of a well-established word. I know this, I have been confounded, felt the hesitation and the embarrassment as I tried to understand what the person across from me just said. I got the drift, but not the fulcrum. Even in my long ago youth, I remember that sweaty awkwardness, the wishing I was anywhere but there, trapped in a chair, sweating anxiety. Not now. Now I will respectfully admit to my own lack of understanding.

There is musicality in all languages, in the way they emerge from the iodine of whatever the familiar is to us, the old tunes, the stuck of it. It seems to me that the English, the British, are more stuck than they might want to be, perhaps with the legacy of owning half the world thick in aging throats, perhaps. But to lift into a welcome …..How about that? I am my father’s daughter and thus fixillated in entrenched wordage, but, and I do believe this, if he was still with me, and could still pontificate enough for me to bring him down to a whisky and a courie-in, he would get that, no matter the dictionary, which, by the way I have added to twice. Language is explosive and musical, and if we want to dance with it, well, we need to get out there and do just that.

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Island Blog – Tapselteerie and Widdershins

I’m watching my money tree. I’m not sure it’s mine, actually. I have no recollection of growing the thing. It just arrived, not as a gift, I’m certain of that, but, more likely, a cast-off from someone leaving. It would have arrived in some young person’s arms, all apology and hope, because what were they going to do with this damn thing fighting for life, in a pot of earthy mess?

Anyways up,….she’s here, and for many years now, a veritable bonsai beauty. She arrived as a spindly twinkle of life, all floppy, over-watered or, more likely the reverse and required a mother touch. I gave that. I always do. Now she holds proud right in my sight, in the window above my writings. She thinks me.

We live in a following. We do. We follow signs, orders, expectations, protocol, regimes. We go with the flow. And I am all about going with the flow, until, and that word is one of my favourites, one or some of us pause, feeling that we don’t want to continue on. And that’s a tricky one. I thought much about it today as I walked into the fairy woods, now considerably less wooded after the last storm-fell. (new word…..soon to be stormfell). How would I turn on this ‘follow’ thing? How would I find the courage to go widdershins against the clock of ticking inevitability?

Methinks this as I wander on my walk today, as I feel connection with the lift, of life, of sinking death, of all around me, that there is much I can do. I can take in a money tree and give her life. I can challenge this and that and make something happen. I can push through the desire to hide and chide and then go to the pub to meet friends. I can commit to this, take that on, because both this and that in my tapselteerie thinking means I am widdershins. And I love both words.

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Island Blog – Make it So

Blimey, it’s been a while since I tapped these keys. Life loughed in and I was busy being mindful and also going to the mainland which is mindfulness enough for any sentient and emotionally aware individual by the way because we never know when we will get off, nor home again and at what time and in what state. Anyway, all is well for now, until the next venture into a Neverland we islanders believed was something to do with Peter Pan.

Tapping away, I recall learning a qwerty keyboard. I remember it well the Pitman rise of keys, the required strength to punch the Q or the P, the Z or the Y or any other damn consonant rarely used and under the watchful glare of eyes, pin-striped, narrowed, judgemental (judge…..mental, now there’s a thought or two) of the Ma’ams who ran the show. One, wide-arsed and slow moving, her nylons sounding like frenetic waves on a shore as she marched between our desks, and the other prinky pink, sharp as a cut, glasses peaking aloft, holding tight to her edges, a bustier, a confiner, controlling knickers, something like that I was sure. She could barely breathe. I wondered about their love lives, but only for two embarrassed seconds, to be honest. They were old and I was recalcitrant 16 and knew it all. However, I was bright and surprisingly keen to get out of this place but with honours. I didn’t manage those, as others did. I watched the others who did. They were alight with the joys of being a secretary. check that word out. A secret-ary. You get it. I was absolutely not. Lasted a week in my first job. Second job, my ‘boss’ decided my pert arse was his landscape. I kept no secrets after that.

I digress. What I wanted to write about was fairy lights.

Because I don’t go shopping, don’t go to the mainland unless I have to, I trust the google search on Warm Fairy Lights. It doesn’t always work, in fact it often doesn’t work. So I hesitate to risk purchase. I’m not interested in battery powered lights which are gold for as long as it takes to sigh and smile and turn away,and die very slowly and whitely and flickery. I have seen golden plug-in lights in family homes, other homes, I seek them like a drug, asking where did you find these and they all say, with a floppy hand wave…..Oh, I don’t remember. I want to pin them to the ground right then and to choke the answer out of them, but I won’t and I don’t, much like, on the back of the trust and hope and belief of my Secret – Arys, I really did see golden, the chance to be somebody, noticed, respected, a part of something growing and wonderful. I’m not saying it can’t happen, chance is always a thing, and I am still hoping for that chance, for plug-in warm, golden fairy lights that don’t lie about their lack and for secretaries to make it so.

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Island Blog – To Go Dancing

Where i want to be right now is dressing up for a night out, a dinner, a car lifting me there and back home again, all elegant and smooth, me looking marvellous, feeling confident, no baggage. A completeness. To go dancing.

Well, that’s a dream. Life is more dynamic, more twisty, colder, sharper, inviting, a compo of shitstorm, warm encounters now and then. We move through shapes and disguises. We actually work our way through what straggles us. We do. The straggles are just flip thoughts. always the pulls from childhood expectancy. always. And the twists continue as life changes, is blown apart, creates a chasm. It can, and does. As I know.

Thing is, everyone is delonculous about Halloween. Next, Christmas. and that’s fun. I’m right there. I’m just wondering if anyone is looking deeper.

I still want to go out dancing

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Island Blog – Inquillinate

I cut the slimy ends off my syboes until I get to the crispy green, the last addition for a salad. The potato is already baking, the fire lit, the tunes on, the stuff of an admin and action day done. The clouds are back lit, sunlit, fire lit. Just moments. If I move from one room to another I can miss the show. It’s all about noticing, about watching the passing of something, about holding the experience. Everything brings that, every action, each moment, the longing to be noticed. We all want that, if we are honest. Which, mostly, we aren’t. We spend so much time in an inquillination, we do. A place where we ‘dwell in a strange place’. T’is an obsolete word, not used since the 1600s but it’s a gorgeous word and means so much because we all spend time in the strange of a place. Over and over and over in our lives. Those times, say in childhood, when some friend who was always a friend suddenly turns on us when around others. What happened? The times when we presumed everything was just fine and ordinary in our life and something hit us, someone caused massive damage, just like that, in a second, just when we were annoyed about delay, about lack of response, about someone not showing up. When someone we always knew was there, suddenly isn’t. So much cloud hiding the sky. Looking back, well, there comes a clarity, one often too late for reparation.

Someone died. I knew her for decades. I worked for her when she couldn’t manage her beloved garden. She was so strong before she wasn’t. And she was determined. She was a friend. In discussions about any subject, she was a wisdom. She saw a foot slip in any statement and challenged it. Many round tables with her and we all waited for her to speak. She was commanding, but without judgement, confident, knowing.

When we moved to Mull, we threw an open dance ceilidh. Anyone, everyone, just come. Everyone did, including her and her husband. I remember seeing her in the line for Strip the Willow, in her synche-waisted dress, all wide skirt, all white and yellow, her eyes sparkling, waiting for the moment to reach out for a swing.

Rest in Peace my longtime friend.

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Island Blog – A Pining

I have them, now and again, in spite of, or because of (don’t like the ‘spite’ word) my olding hooha and the general strimble of downstairs sans a trip, and the forgetting of what I said last week about an important something. Seriously? You remember that? Well, go you and your mind. Mine is all heading off on wings of hope and the next moment, proffering itself as a wild opportunity for me to be wild and opportunistic. Just saying.

However, tomorrow a very big 200 year old Pine tree is being felled. It has to come down, split as it is from navel to tit and with the two sides dancing to different rhythms on windy days. We are talking many tons of crash, was this big beauty allowed to fall au naturel. It’s too near the road, too close to wires and sheep and fences, never mind all the dog walkers, the workers who come by daily. The tree surgeons who will make this whole thing happen, have a tricky task. I wonder if we who don’t have a clue about such skills, have, well, a clue. I don’t. They will have to clamp, climb, position, focus, watch the wind, catch the moment, pick their time to cut. My respect to them.

t thinks me, about loss, half loss, about those with skills who come in to make a situation okay, about the times We did, about the times I did. And I remember bits of it all. The awful times, the fears, the losses, the pain of them, the gradual lift back into the light of ‘Oh Fk’ another season. A tree falling was just an irritation. How immediate and how young was that thinking! What it meant was no delivery serv ice (not that it happened much), no school run access (yippee), no guests in all the wrong clothes leaving nor arriving. Lawny it was a fracking nightmare, and often.

At the Best Cafe Ever today, as we cleared and scrubbed and sorted all the flotsam and jetsam of a very busy season, I was aware that this tree is coming down tomorrow. I know it needs to happen, and I will wander up to watch the skills of tree surgeons. It’s 200 years old. I’ll still pine.

Not just for her

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Island Blog – There’s Something About…..

Having no idea who reads my blogs, nor who benefits. Never knowing what each new day will bring, a serendipity or a catastrophe, a gain or a loss, a fall or that moment when I will stand tall as a warrior. It’s as if life lives me, and, in a strange way, I like that, most of the time. I like danger, living on the edge, always ready to do my very best at outwitting. I am naturally spontaneous, a state which can, and often has, found me in a dodgy situation, mudswamp rising up my legs, the dark completing me, eradication. Until, that is, my eyes adjusted. They did, and they do, and once the ‘ayes’ have it, the house is quietened, and then comes sensibility. Love that word. ‘The quality of being able to appreciate and respond to complex emotional or aesthetic influences; sensitivity.’

There I am, was, appreciating and responding to my highest level, and although this life is bloody exhausting most of the time, what with all this learning even when I left school decades ago, I still love life, the way it lives me, the way I live it. Well, not so much the latter to be honest, because I can still flounder in mudswamp and the dark. However the importance of the important is simple. It’s poopy in the mud. I can do dark but not for long. I love light, am light, bring light. And there’s something in that, the need and the strength to defy. Any something is an enough something because we know the opposite of that.

I have no idea where my children are. I have no idea what will become of me, ditto when the next gale will smash down most of our island trees, nor whom will fall sick, nor when this baby will be born, nor when I will see this person rising from the sadness with a smile on her face. I know not whether this shrub or that will survive the winter, nor when I might hear the Arctic swans softly talking from across the sea-loch. I don’t know when a still day with all its quiet glory will come, not after a torrential rainday, the sea all a-popple with white smoke and sprachle. I never know and there’s something about that.

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