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Island Blog – A Wonder and a Mystery

During these past two days of almost warm sunshine, no rain and blue skies, I have loved walking among the trees and along the shore. Gulls wheel above the tidal dance and it seems to me that every tree I pass beneath is bursting to push out leaves. However, the night frosts are sharp and I get their caution. Primrose leaves are now showing along the banks in sheltered spots, sheltered that is from the still cold wind and the daffodils open with big buttery smiles as the sun brings his warmth to their soft petals. I dare to believe that Spring is almost here and I am glad of it, not just because February tried to drown us all but also because of the long covid cloak that has darkened our days, months and years recently. Like others I have spoken to, the covid time is a blur. When I am asked how long ago Himself left the planet, I have to think hard. It’s as if time didn’t count herself. She just laid herself out before and behind us, not interested enough to make any particular mark.

However, during these timeless and dark days, the colours that shone bright and sparkly came from us, from human endeavour and resourcefulness. Instead of everyone playing sheep, individual enterprises and personal challenges rose up like flowers in the winter and were no less surprising. I heard about it on the radio and would find myself leaning in to really hear what this or that person was doing, stretching their minds and bodies in order to bring encouragement and inspiration to others. It has been tough, all of it, the dark, the fear, the lack of information, the doubts and the dithering but we have got through it, and well. Most of us. Of course there are very sad tales to tell, I know that and I am sad for the sad ones who endured bereavement and pain. But what excites me is the rise of human endeavour, not just by a few, but by millions. This is who we are and how we can live if we stop wishing the nanny state away whilst buying into it ourselves.

Any day now the larch buds will appear like tiny purple grapes. The horse chestnut, often the first to bloom, will show that gloriously uplifting snatch of green way up high on myriad branches. Then as if given permission, the other trees will follow. Delicate lurpak coloured primrose flowers will thrill passers by, including me. Then the garden will erupt and careen into real Spring allowing no time for me to catch up with the weeds and I will sit on the old bench, remember Himself who used to sit beside me and smile because whatever comes and whoever goes, Life will live on and there’s a wonder and a mystery in knowing that.

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Island Blog – Ageing and the Big Adventure

The way I see it is this. There are 3 stages to life. First off we are born without a clue until we learn from parents and others who reckon they know everything about everything. The second phase is spent in rebelling against parents and others who reckon they know everything about everything until everyone is muddled. Then comes the last phase, the one of unlearning. It is a complicated process, sifting through all the stuff we have had drummed into our heads, then rebelled against in various unattractive ways. In fact, it is nigh on impossible to spin out such a thixotropic frame of mind because we have grown comfortably numb, wearing the familiar like an old coat, protection against the cold winds of life. Scrabbling through the old rules, the old patterns of behaviour, the routines and the ways our mother did it, or her mother or that before-mother who would have fainted clean away at the very thought of women in trousers, never mind see-through bikinis or no bikinis at all, is perplexing. A brain in knots. There are centuries of accepted norms to un norm, tangles of dense forestation to push through, ribbons and threads and chains to cut. It is tempting to give up. So what we do is one of two things. We decide to accept that we are a product of all those mothers and those fathers going all the way back to the Crimea or we park the lot and reinvent ourselves.

This, the latter, is huge fun. I can be anyone I want, more or less, excluding (obviously) Madonna, the Queen or Jessica Limewater the horse whisperer from County Down along with many others whose lives are not even remotely connected to my own. I am still me after all, living where I live, looking like I do with the same car, dog and home I have had for years. But a reinvention is an inner thing primarily I have found even as it can manifest its colouration, density and texture on the outside. A person may decide, after deciding to have fun with this, to start growing long sideburns or to wear jeans instead of those shiny suit trousers. He or she might choose a new diet, learn to play the tuba or take a course in Poetry for Beginners. It doesn’t really matter what is embarked upon. The key is to embark for embarking’s sake, to step out of the old even if the new is nowhere in sight. I remember my mum saying (often) that she did ‘it’ this way because her mother did it that way. Do you want to do it this way? I questioned. She shrugged. That’s not the point she said, turning back to the thing she wasn’t watching on television. It puzzled me, this unthinking way of life, the powerful hold of it, the refusal to change. When the programme was over I asked her if she enjoyed it. Oh, she said, I didn’t pay attention. Good Lord……..

In being whoever I want to be, bar those aforementioned, I can make my own mind up about pretty much everything unless, I have noticed, there is a man in the mix with definite opinions. This I now understand, having lived with men of definite opinions all of my life, to be a ribbon to the past. Once I notice it, I snip it. Even if the man is right and I get it wrong, I still want to find out for myself. I am curious about all those things from which I was ‘protected’ and besides, living just a bit dangerously is very exciting. There is a glorious euphoria in finally managing to do whatever it is the way I choose to do it. It may have taken weeks instead of minutes but it is my work and my way.

I can change the way I speak out now. I can challenge and make clear my boundaries. However, this third stage of life doesn’t always bounce along. Folk are surprised. Let’s say I was a doormat and they knew the doormat. It was a familiar doormat and everyone felt fine about wiping their feet on it. Lifting it and setting fire to it can be an unnerving upset for these folk. She has turned weird, they say whilst keeping their distance. However, there is a downside to the third stage and it’s a damn shame coming as it does just when a person is finally free to leap across rooftops singing bawdy songs into the night sky and startling the neighbours. This downside is is that the body is ageing and although bits are not falling off yet, they do ache or stiffen or bruise more easily. Fortunately I am not required to leap fences or rooftops any more, nor to offload a ton of hay bales but this doesn’t mean I can sit around all day bemoaning my not yet falling off bits that ache or stiffen or bruise. If I do focus on them then they will become my main think pattern and before long those thinks will turn into long sentences, spilling out of my mouth every time any poor soul asks me how I am. They also must not turn me into a beggar for sympathy. I ask a simple question with a yes/no response option. My mistake. ‘I don’t want to do Zumba but thanks for asking’ is response enough, whereas ‘Oh I wish, but I can’t because of my knee, yes this one. It’s Pamperloid Arthritis, have you heard of it, no? with complications, a big long list of them and it swells in the night, the knee not the list although it is a very long list and my mother had it in both knees poor soul and she had to stop doing school dinners and I have to sit for ages with it up, the knee that is and it’s at the wrong time you see, the Zumba that is, because East Enders is on that day so I have to get my husband’s tea ready early and it can’t be fish because fish doesn’t sit so it has to be mince which cooks itself and is kinder on my knee, not the mince but the standing’ is exhausting for both of us. I regret my question and just might be coming down with a knee issue myself.

So, no excuses about ageing. We all do it. Some of us get old before we are middle aged and some stay young at heart, dodgy knees notwithstanding. Getting old is not pretty, not really. Looking, as I occasionally do, into my magnifying mirror, I can no longer see the girl and this can either make me laugh or send me into a long term slump. I must decide to live all the way up to the end, choose my thinks, reinvent myself, consider my ‘how are you’ responses and get the hell out of myself ready for the next big adventure.

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Island Blog – Me and the Monkey

There is something I am working on as I consider the human dynamic – the misbelief that our thoughts are in control. It is nonsense. Let’s say that one day I suddenly feel awful. I acknowledge that I feel awful and that’s fine so far because the awful carries a message and a question. However, it is very easy to stop at the message bit and to construct a belief below and around it, giving it space and power. If we don’t ask the question we are at the mercy of this awful. We might tell a friend thus reinforcing the construct, giving it an upper floor so it is harder to see the sun, and although it is okay to tell a friend it is not okay to build on the feeling. A good friend will listen, hug and assist in the deconstruction. The fixing bit is entirely up and down to you and to me. So what is the question? Well the one I ask, after recognising the awful is ‘What just happened to make me feel this way? Am I hungry, tired, bored, lonely? If one of these hits the spot then action is required. Eat something, take a nap, find something to do, call a friend, go for a walk, make soup, anything to apply salve to the perceived wound. What not to do is to build another level nor to project outside of self in a frantic attempt to not take responsibility. There are probably too many nots in that last sentence.

Our brains are just computers, completely devoid of emotion. First comes the thought, ‘I made a right cock-up of that thing’. Then follows the feeling, compounding and validating the thought. Third comes the action and that can be finger pointing at circumstance, weather, self etc etc or it can be approached mindfully in ways that don’t deny the feeling, rather saying hallo to it and asking ‘why are you here really and are you helpful or relevant to me right now; are you moving me on or holding me back; are you real at all or did I just stub my toe, feel the pain and sob out ancient grief?’ Oftentimes our thoughts leading to feelings are not helpful in the Now, unless, that is, we notice each one, particularly those that bring us down, say hallo and ask the question or questions.

It can be so easy to let the brain take control at times, but once we remember that the only person who controls my brain is me, I take back my power. It does mean inner work, I get that, and so many folk just aren’t prepared to innerly work, living out reactive lives whilst feeling generally miserable. I don’t want that. Well nobody wants that but it takes conscious thought and a lot of noticing to keep the brain under control. When something kicks the legs out from under me I can forget this, momentarily, but not for long because I am doing the inner work. I need to. Falling apart, not that I ever will, is not an option, but it’s more than that for me. I want a fulfilling and dynamic life at the mercy of nobody, of nothing. I have heard people talk of a difficult work mate or boss and how this person or that is responsible for their unhappiness. Although it does make me sad to hear of anyone being consistently unhappy, I know their state of mind has nothing to do with the difficulties around certain people. The real truth is that this person, through low self-esteem very probably formed in childhood, does actually have complete control if they but knew it, not over the difficult other but over the way they respond to that other. A bully won’t bully if he or she meets inner strength. A bully sees weakness and plays on it, and inner strength is silent and needs no words in order to be clearly heard. It’s not about fighting back which never works and all about not reacting. Easily said, I know, but it works every time.

Inside my head there are two voices, mine and the monkey’s. The monkey is always alert and ready for mischief. I must control the monkey, not by ignoring him but by treating him with respect and with a firm upper hand. Let’s say I think something. Then because of that think, one I believe to be the truth, I feel upset. Then with an ‘Aha!’ I recognise the monkey, stop everything, turn to him and we have a little chat. The monkey departs until the next opportunity for mind mischief arises and on some days I am quite worn out with monkey deflecting. This is inner work. I don’t know about you but my mind is never inactive, even when I sleep. The past rises up to bite my bum, the future looks scary and the present is raining and cold at times, at others a bright sunshine songster. It laughs me now that I understand that whoever we are right now in our lives is whoever we are and that whoever is a damn fine specimen of humanity.

Control your thoughts, control your life. T’is undeniably the truth. What a glorious chance for freedom and I want to be free. Don’t you?

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Island Blog – You have to want to dance

There is a scowl in the sky this evening. The grey pushdown clouds point fingers. The Blue Ben bothers not and why would he, standing there all granite push-up shoulders and for centuries? It doesn’t mean he doesn’t notice. What we eejit humans don’t understand is the natural communication between the elements. Earth, Wind, Fire, Water. They were here and talking long before our ancestors arrived, whether from the sea or from Adam. It matters not.

There are times I feel very small as an eejit human, as a sudden ‘insider’, in such a huge story that tells of life so long before me that it means nothing beyond its echoes. And, to be honest, they are easily ironed or washed or swept away along with the dust and the creases. However, I am very busy noticing myself. Not in the mirror, no. But in my responses to whatever comes in, including my thoughts and my ditherments and my hesitations. I have to say that once I step into those footprints of acceptance I feel engaged with the oldness in me and with all the ridiculous crap that goes with oldness. I won’t say it is a fear-thinking thing because it is so very not. It’s in the bones, the creaks, the inevitable inability to lob a fence as I used to be able to do. It also isn’t about striving for that agility. No. I get my limitations, but I will not accept without challenge. Again, No. I just step up. I acknowledge that I will not be young again. I say that I know where I am and who I am and I will (don’t do this) always accept a challenge. I will dance the rest of my life. I am under nobody’s control, only my own.

There are scowls. There are fabulous starlit nights. There are cold wet mornings and sunshine afternoons. There is that moment when the sunset blows poppy red, and suddenly in a dawn when a new daffodil takes the breath from me. I am watching myself. I say that because it is so easy to keep flopping onwards without noticing ourselves. I know because I have done just that until I clocked my flopping and turned around to question why. It whirled me around and back till I looked at the old thinking and saw it cobwebbed dark and without the spin of a live spider. It takes mindful thought. You have to notice and to question. You have to want to dance.

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Island Blog – Along the Way

On my road to recovery I learn many surprising things, see much through a different lens, complete old puzzles that I had thought missed an essential piece for decades, the very one that would show me the whole picture. It bothered me, this missing piece thingy and I would find myself going back over and over again, my fingers digging through the dirt for that chunk of gold as if I believed everything would be just as I remembered it way back when my ass was pert and my feet fleet. It smiles me now, for nobody can piece together their past from where they stand now. Not nobody. And also I recall recalling memories with himself and seeing that ‘what are you talking about woman’, a statement not a question on his face. He wasn’t there apparently.

When I say recovery, I don’t mean me coming back to me because I will never be that me again and because I have nobody to remind me of that me, I am free to build, foundation up. First off I need to find that foundation and I now believe that this is the hardest part. When there is a ‘we’ in the mix, there is discussion, argument, tantrums, acceptance and solution, not least because the digger is revving impatiently just a hillock away and costing money. So ‘we’ decide and there it is. It begins.

It is the same within a shared life, sometimes tantrums, sometimes arguments, hopefully acceptance and solution, but nonetheless, each ‘I’ affects the shaping of the duo dynamic. When he is in this mood, I keep clear. When she is slamming doors and honking horns, I look out at the birds and say not one word. And so on. We change each other without even knowing we do. We can tear down and we can build up and most of us do a bit of both, but as we grow above the foundation we alter each other, smoothing down edges, rounding them into a learned shape that works, even if only as far as the next volcanic eruption.

Alone is not lonely. Alone is powerful and free and scary at times. Nowadays there is no other close enough to perform any shaping manoeuvres on the one of two. Just the ‘I’ is left, an ‘I’ with complete autonomy, absolute freedom of movement and thought; a singular soul who can, and has, felt both utterly bereft and warmly supported. Happily, if this person is curious about life even if he or she finds the whole thing terrifying, he or she will find others along the road, surprising others. In my afterlife I have met with kindness I never expected, such as offers of help and then those who actually see what I need just by walking by and who turn up to do the job. I could think that this is just the way islanders think, the community strong and bonded through winter gales and no ferries running but I don’t believe that. I believe, as I always have, that although this world is broken, she is beautiful because of her people. Of course there are those who choose greed, corruption and worse and who’s actions cause terrible consequences but they are in the minority. They do not define the human race. I see community and kindness everywhere because it is everywhere. And I for one am a very grateful beneficiary of that kindness.

We all have some kind of shit flung at us, but along the way we will find those who give of themselves just so we can rise and shine once again, and in a shape we are still working on but one we rather like the look of.

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Island Blog – Salt, Ladder Resistance, a Giggle

When I went to boarding school aged 13 I believed I was going into a story. Well, I did, but not the one I imagined. I reckoned on adventures, midnight feasts and a lot of giggling. I know, now, that my ideas of how life should be lived does not always agree with the plans Life has for me. When I am expecting fish and chips, she serves up gruel and the key to the gruel thingy is to see beyond it. In my imagination I can see whatever I choose to see and even gruel can taste okay with a pinch of salt and a giggle. It’s saying Hey ho to whatever I face, refusing to allow this bowl of tasteless slop to damage my dreams. Needless to say we girls were carefully monitored at the table. Not a drop was to be wasted and it is not possible, as it might be with sprouts, to hide any of it in your knicker pocket. Yes, I know. Who on earth decided the need for knicker pockets? Well, someone did and they were regulation in my forward thinking school.

It thinks me as I listen to the terrible news from Ukraine. All those frightened and damaged people hiding underground. No chance of escape. From my place of extreme privilege I cannot imagine how they feel. I cannot imagine living through a war, the sheer terror inside each and every minute of what might become months or longer. Whatever gruel I may face, it is as nothing to their plight. I can decide my attitude to anything and everything. I am free to roam in safety. I can actually open my fridge door and choose my next meal from many possible options. I can talk to whomsoever I want without fearing for my very life. My one life, my now life. It humbles me and challenges my potential for too much inner study. Look out, I tell myself; look up. Don’t be ladder resistant like my regulations stockings (no pockets thankfully), those hideous orangey beige things that were supposed to remain intact for a whole term but never did. Oh, they didn’t ladder, no. Instead, when climbing fences (forbidden) or when pushing into a dense thicket of brambles in order to reach the fattest blackberries (also forbidden), I would emerge with polka dot legs. These ‘new age’ stockings about which everyone was thoroughly over excited would ‘hole’ not ‘ladder’. It was impossible to hide the truth, not with those white skin holes all the way up to the regulation suspenders, and I was oftentimes in the headmistress’s office being warned once again about how ‘nice gels’ should behave.

What I did then and what I sometimes forget to do now is to choose how I feel about things in my life, to focus on the blackberries, the thrill of climbing a fence, or diverting matron’s attention just long enough to salt the gruel. In other words taking the opportunity for fun, for naughtiness, for adventure. It matters not what comes at us. What matters is how we deal with it – because we who are free and safe have that responsibility, no question; to look up and out as we are able to do for we are not hiding underground in fear. To see the fingernail moon hanging over the sea-loch. To welcome others with a twinkly winkly smile. To hear the birdsong and to be thankful for every moment. I have homework to do.

It took me flipping ages to sew up the holes. In the end one leg was longer than the other and. even with my suspenders pulled down as far as they could go, I had to walk like a duck. Any thought of fence climbing was quashed at the outset and I raised many titters from other girls as I walked from Latin to History. The discomfort was inevitable. However, as I have already said, my imagination can take me anywhere and when I sat to study the dark lines peppering my legs I relocated my giggle. When the ghastly orangey beige things finally exploded open, way beyond repair, I pulled the stocking over my head and gave matron a terrible fright when she came into the dorm for lights out. Although more punishment was inevitable, I had no regrets. I chose to look up and out. I chose not to be ladder resistant and up there at the top the sky is wide open, the salt in my gruel.

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Island Blog – I wish as you wish

It doesn’t matter how much he or she irritated the bejabers out of you at times. It doesn’t matter how many times you may have wished them away for longer so you could drown the goldfish, sleep wide in the bed, eat what you wanted or go out spontaneously and without curfew. Once they are gone, we are all lost. With my logic head as Speaker, I get it. Of course we are lost. We have been with this person of irritation/love for decades. We know them, or we think we do and they knew us as they think they did. There was a compliance, a working together, a stand-back or fight thingy. A thingy that became our normal.

When our normal is thrust into outer space, just like that, no matter the months or years of caring nor even if the separation is sudden, we are actively lost. I say ‘actively’, because it is just that. When the whole thing about living together stops dead, we just don’t know who we are anymore. Active still wants to be active. We find things to do and over-do. We still have the momentum we always had but what is lost now is purpose. Why am I still doing this, this getting dressed/ stepping out thing when I come home to nobody, not to the smile, the questioning, even the sharp remarks about how long it takes to go to the local shop?

Most of us are productive, action folk, oftentimes because that is what life needs us to be. Just think about it. I mean, who on earth sees the massive role they are suddenly required to ontake when they fall in love? Well, not one of us, that’s who; suddenly wife; suddenly husband; suddenly parents; suddenly carer. And then it stops. Dead. We were running with it all, weren’t we, and fast, just yesterday and then we meet the buffers. I don’t know if you have experienced meeting the buffers on the inside of a train with a driver who wasn’t ready. Well I have and it sent sandwiches and old ladies off piste and flying wide. Not pretty, neither of them. It is way worse in life. Way worse. Did I miss something? Was I being selfish, looking the other way?

When a partner dies, we may be relieved. I was and I am not afraid to speak it out. Although I was the primary and the (godlovethistitle) unpaid carer, not everyone goes through it and I am glad of it. Nonetheless this place is my experience and thus I cannot imagine sudden death, the shock of it rippling for ever, the inner questioning, the self doubt and the regret for all the words unsaid, the loving gifts not given. Let me tell you, those of you aforementioned, that the I feel the same sans your experience. I wish I had said this and not said that. I wish I had asked more questions, been kinder. I wish as you wish.

And the ripples go on. Think not, no matter how he or she irritated, that the ‘lost’ will dissipate soon. It won’t. And do you know why? Well, I’ll tell you. It is because you care. Even in storm conditions for years, even when you just wanted out, even for a month or a year, the human heart has a deep sense of allegiance. It is nothing to do with logic. It is who we are. So if you know loss as a wife, a husband, a father, a mother, a partner, a sibling or a friend, rest easy my lovelies. Let the ripples flow on because they will even if you build a dam. It takes time to be okay with the loss of someone and then, eventually, to find yourself, a shrimp in a desert, yet still strong enough to find the sea.

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Island Blog – Just a Dog

Over the last weekend, the Poppy Dog was very sick, so much so that I had to take her over the switchback to the vet. Negotiating a series of chasm potholes, sharp upward twists and barely any passing places, we arrived. Poppy was to stay overnight to be on an IV drip as she was extremely dehydrated. Leaving her was tough even as I know the vets on the island are quite brilliant. I didn’t expect to collect her alive to be honest and made my wishes clear. I did not want her back as a sickly thing, not this feisty, barky dog, my wee mate, the only other one breathing within these four stone walls. No way.

Needless to say, my night was more day than night. Every hour I wondered how she was doing until Sleep left the building. Early morning, in the dark, I swear I heard Poppy snuffling in the next room. The vet called at 07.30 and I missed the call in the one moment I went out to gather wood against the fourth bl**dy freezing storm in a single week. The answerphone told me she had enjoyed a peaceful night, had not pulled out her drip and had eaten some chicken and rice for breakfast. I couldn’t believe it and my relief lifted into a lip cracking smile. A friend drove me over to collect her early this afternoon and, despite the spectacular wind emissions, Poppy was bright and waggy.

Needless to say we are both tired but happy. She is just glad to be back home and I, well I am full of gratitudinal thanks to the vets, the friend and the survival of my wee barky mate. Poppy is more than just a dog. She is the reason for walks, for conversations (a bit one-sided I admit)and for play. She is the over-the-top welcome when I have been away at the shop for 20 minutes. She is the one who wakes me in the night because her bladder is reminding her it needs emptying. She follows me everywhere, watching with those big velvet eyes where I go and, even before I do the ‘go’ thing, when I am only just thinking about it.

May she continue to mend, particularly in the wind emission department.

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Island Blog – About the Real

I walk into another evening alone. Oh yes I did have a great friend staying and other friends here making music, yes I did. And then they all go back into their shared lives. And I am so thankful they came. I loved the moments chuckled between us, the laughter, the conversations, the music. I really did. But after them there is just me, just the old loneliness.

In our ‘out there’ lives, we don’t mention loneliness and yet it is rife among us. We don’t want to speak out the word because it invites questions, or fixings, or mentions of Spring and daffodils and light. We see it coming so we keep quiet. We say we are fine and after a little chat about this, that and the weather, we turn back into the lonely. It doesn’t begin after the death of the one we shared everything with. No. It creeps in after the probate is sorted, the paperwork filed, the busy time that keeps us, well, busy and then stops dead like a train hitting the buffers. The shunt of silence is deafening and it isn’t going to make noise anytime soon, bar the odd visit of friends, the lift of music, laughter and shared time.

So what do we Lonelies do about this? Good question. I will work on it. Many of us are just short of 70. What options are out there for us, we who have stayed solid throughout maybe 50 or more years of being one of two? Well we may not be able to see them options but they might just be there, out there, somewhere. So what I say is this, as I wander, restless, through an empty house, more empty than it was when the other of two was away for a bit…..do you remember your dreams? I am working on that. Dreams I had as a young woman with no clue just don’t make sense now. However, a person without dreams, without aspirations, is basically dead whilst still breathing. It doesn’t matter what you do in the loneliness. But it matters if you do nothing. I catch the lift of the young woman I was, at 18, before marriage and kids and a most adventurous and demanding life subsumed me, or tried to. It never worked, this subsuming thing although it took all my spirit strength to remain Me. And now, on my own is mostly wonderful. I no longer have to say where I am going, nor when I will return. I no longer have to explain myself. I no longer this or that, and that is a void I do not know how to navigate. I was this woman and for decades. Now who am I?

There’s a question. The real is the truth. Lonely is real.

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Island Blog – Stories on a Backwind

It’s been ten days since I blogged, give or take. I blame my best friend because she and I have been here on the island together and there is much to talk about after a year apart. She hasn’t been able to leave, thank you Dudley, Eunice and Franklin, even as it irks me to buy into this nonsense naming of storms or winds. We were always quite the thing just acknowledging a new storm and for hundreds of years, as if we knew we could never tame, nor name them, so powerful and volatile were/are they. Nowadays they take on bowler hats or the memory of old grumpy great aunts who smelled of things nobody ever wanted to smell outside of a wheelie bin long uncollected.

Moving on.

The winds whip crazy this month, flipping from North to Northwest, to West and back to North. Sometimes the South pulls up her big girl knickers for a wee toot but she is up against the big winterboys so doesn’t get much of a word in. Occasionally I have met her on the Tapselteerie track, a sudden hug of warmth but she is wheeched away in seconds. I might walk backwards a step or two to see if she is still there because she was about to gift me a story, but no. She is gone. So what story did she carry on her back? I caught the first line but no more. That’s ok. She’ll be back soon enough.

However the winterboys carry stories too on their backs. If you look at where the wind is coming from and check out the country in line with the wind, you can hear the stories from Iceland where all the mythical stories began and beyond to Greenland. They know cold as ancient. And stories come from ‘ancient.’ Listen as you clothe up and bend against the hail stones. Listen to the slough-song of the wind. Let it blow through you, feel it on you skin and listen. No, not just listen, hear.

Most of the time I do this listen/hear thing and have no translation. Thing is, it doesn’t bother me at all. I am a tiddler in this walk through time, but I am here, I am a tiddler and I can engage. I might catch an image, see how it was when skinning an Elk was the biggest thing for that day. We, now, Elk free, can fight against the winterboys but we will never win. Nor will we master them with expensive outdoor kit nor giving them ridiculous taming names. The moment we can just thrill to the cold, feel the wind, walk out barefoot (just me I think) and really feel the whole craziness of winter life whilst listening to and hearing the windback stories, we are, at once, at home with the whole gamut of seasons.

Such a freedom.