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Island Blog – The Luckiness

Oh we are so very busy, so fraught, so flapdoodle about Christmas. I remember being all of the above back in the last century when my five feral kidlings wreaked havoc in as many ways as they knew, and they knew many ways. Their excitement was loud and fraucous, high pitched and very fast. What happens to legs, I ask myself, as I cautiously descend the stairs and never jump anything over 12 inches high, remembering the blur of Child as it tore through a room causing even the wine glasses to fall over in the afterwrath of such a cosmic blast? When I was ‘busy’ and responsible for everything Christmas, the presents, the wrapping, the dressing up of the 20 foot tree with its point pointing to the floor because the ceiling just wouldn’t lift to accommodate, the star hanging down land twinkling like the drip from an ancient and cold nose, my legs were right beneath me and as fast as any cosmic child. I was lucky to have legs at all and so was my family. Had I been legless, the whole lot of them would have effortlessly escaped the rule book; probably burned it along with the logs that were more like tree trunks. At least my fully functioning and agile body could prevent disasters, catch the ferals to spin from room to room averting disasters such as the 20 foot tree falling on the sleeping dogs, cats and pet lambs and who let them in btw? Don’t give me ‘Aw, they’re cold’ or I’ll just cook them.

Now in my pensioner days, I rush not, nor am I busy. That chaotic life is in my past and thank the holy crunch for that. No more must I panic about stocking gifts, other gifts, in-law gifts, writing a zillion cards to a zillion people and the annual freak out about serving up a Griswold turkey; the making sure that the in-laws, who invariably arrived in an argocat with a bumper laundry basket filled with well wrapped gifts settled into chairs aligned just right, candles at the ready, lambs definitely out and who brought that crow in? Atop the tree, well, not actually at the top because we all know where the top is, but in the tree nonetheless and shrieking worse than any child. I had to blow out all candles at that point. The thought of feathers alight gave me indigestion in my imagination and that is not a comfortable feeling. Ah, such a past. So many adventures. Such a lucky woman. My life, our life, would kick the Griswolds into second touch, for certain.

When I write that I am not busy, let me explain. My days are always engaging and active. I stack wood, I walk, I clean, I write, I sing and I dance, but the have to, that pushy crow-shout in my ears is quiet now. I can do what I like when I like. Sometimes I don’t like either of those but I can still perform the tasks and there’s another word I like. Perform. Thinks me of my non-existent stage life. Did I tell you I was offered theatre work and turned it down to marry himself? Well, I did, and I regret it not. In fact, my agility and ability, both physical and mental as a stage performer, storyteller and activist (a good one) has supported my life as wife, mother and now grandmother. Lucky me. When I take a wee wander back through time there is a lot I forget until out of nowhere a memory lifts like a swan from the water and I watch it fly up, up into the vast blue sky and I smile. I was there. I was her, that woman, that wife, that mother, those times are mine to treasure. I also recall the stomps and stamps and slammed doors, one of which fell off its hinges with the force of me. I am proud of that even though, at the time, it was of great inconvenience.

This morning I tootled into the harbour town for fuel and fish. I really don’t know why anyone ever bothers with going off island as everything anyone could ever need for feed is grown right here. As I lifted into the mist, the mist flashed with sunlight, the frost sparkling on the grass and on my little mini, along the empty switchback road, I passed the grave, the new headstone. I stopped the car and watched it for a few moments. There it is. There you are, facing the rising sun and with a view you always loved. T’is right and rightful. T’is your landing place and it will be mine too, one day. There’s a new grave. I knew that man, that quiet, gentle man. He is gone too. I wonder if you and he have encountered each other yet. I like to think so.

The town was quiet. The shops alight, their windows dressed in baubles and gifts and mostly empty; the town lights all a’twinkle, few cars parked and only a few islanders on the street. Not like the old days, in the last century when the pavements would be buckling beneath the feet of those with gift lists, stocking lists, in-law lists; those collecting food and fish and turkeys and chocolates, when ‘on’ and ‘line’ were two words that never went together. Well, now they do and we are lucky to have that option at this time. Now let’s go otherworldly. Beyond our fuss and fret, beyond our rush and our busy, what is the voice of Christmas? Is it love, is it giving, is it peace, is it sharing what we have? When the packaging is burned, the toys broken, the meal devoured, even a Griswold meal, what are we left with, the something that will succour us through the Big Cold Months yet to come?

The moments. The pictures, we remember, the affection and the warmth, the rebirth, even if I raise the busy and the frantic. I remember it and them. They had their place in my remembering and they are so much a part of it all. However, they are just part of the structure of just one day, and just one day can create ripples. We know this. What we need to learn is the wholeness of everything, including Christmas Day. There will be ups and there will be downs, and in that intricacy, there is a landscape. Rest in the whole. Look at the bumps and the awkwards, the imperfections and the exploding turkey and smile. We are who we are and we are just perfect just as we are. Just as we are. Lucky us.

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Island Blog – Because she cares

The farrago is clearing, as if, as if, I move through it, like a fog that eventually gets fed up of all that fogging nonsense and puffs itself out. The path ahead becomes clear, or clearer. It takes a moment or two to re-align my eyeballs with this new clarity as the density of unseeing becomes vision. A human falter. But we know how to survive and suddenly. When fog clears, our senses are heightened. We adjust. We must adjust in order to move on intelligently. But, we cannot always rely on self, on the aloneness of the singular, not in all situations. Because I was lost in the turmoil and fear of fog, I spun like a dervish without intention, without a plan. So, I reached out. I called my sister. I have three and each one is wise in different ways. This one is beautifully pragmatic with a can-do attitude, cautious but never compromised by caution. She investigates it, thinks it through, pulls it apart and studies it. I came to her like an unravelling jumper and she, well she, did not knit me back up again. She just saw, immediately how I felt. She is not afraid to speak and I felt so much better after our talk. It was like I came down from some planetary freak out.

It thinks me. I know, have always preached, that we need each other, that reaching out for help as we feel we are drowning, is not a weakness but a strength. However, I did feel foolish at first, me, the older sister, needing a guide through the fog, my personal fog. Then I did what she does. I looked around me at the complex thixitude I had made all by myself and for myself, I thought it through and studied it and I smiled. It takes someone else, a one you trust with all your fears and failings, your admitted weaknesses no matter your age or place in the pecking order, to hold out a hand and to bring support.

The words ‘help’ and ‘support’ took on a different shape for me in the caring years. They came as crutches and support bars affixed to walls. But I need to re-jig my thinking on that and to remember that there are times in every single life when we need to trust another enough to tell them how we feel. Yes, it means unzipping our breasts for a full revealment and I get that it is something we would rather not do. I felt it and for a whole foggy week. But, I have learned and am still learning that, no matter how experienced we are, how apparently wealthy, how strong, how much of a leader we have become, we are human. We meet fog. We meet fear. And, when we do, we must reach out to someone we trust, someone who we once guided but who now might just lift us up just because she cares.

Thank you my sister.

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Island Blog – Farrago, A Walk, A Widow

I feel like I am walking backwards in terra incognita. I might thwack into Rara Avis, a hippogriff, a chimera, a story I cannot read, nor understand. I recall walking backwards into a lamppost once, and it hurt. My head spun a whole web leaving me feeling foolish and a little sick. It’s not so different now what with the re-run of Covid restrictions. We could move Christmas to June, I suppose, when the days are balmy and warm and quite unacceptable for the virus. Even my thisitive ponking is hiding in the attic and the windmills of my mind are moving too slow to grind the corn. Everything is so very confusing. But it’s not just that. It’s the longness of it all, the slogging grind of endlessment and with no wide horizon out there as a promissory note.

As I bounce into each morning, which I do, I meet the morning, usually half way down the stairs, in the place where Winnie the Pooh stops to think, or gets dropped by Christopher Robin. I never worked out which. The morning is most gracious, meeting and greeting me like this. It must be so much more rested in normal homes where folk rise with the light in a big fat panic because they can’t find their cufflinks or their art homework or their gym shoes. In this house the morning is never a panic, not any more, even if I do recall a few in my past life. What are you thinking? asks the morning as we meet in a socially distanced greeting. Oh, I reply, shucking off the dreams and turning to watch them scoot back up to the bedroom where they will plan another show for tonight….mostly Covid worries. Ah, yes. Of course. Well, you know you have to make your own decisions about what you do within a farrago. I nod. Coffee, I say, heading for the kettle which is also getting used to being woken early. I pass a lodger, hanging from her web, and I greet her. She isn’t fussed at my looking. She knows I won’t hurt her. I only swipe at the old webs, blackened by fire dust and long abandoned.

I walk with a friend and her dog. We plash through the puddles, noticing and commenting on the way the island sucks up any amount of rain, allowing it fraccess to slip-aways and into burns and water scurries, all finding the sea eventually. We will never sink, not this rock, not these island people with their stout boots and heart-strong spirits. We talk of life, of Christmas hopes, of Covid fears, of how we have managed to refuse defeat, even if we sometimes dip our heads into our hands and feel like nomads without any physical ground to traverse. It is all happening within our minds, the doubts, the confusion, the halter that tightens daily. And here we have control, as long as we exert that control. But, but and but, I twitter at her, I just don’t know what to do, what to decide. I, in theory, have family coming. I am longing for them. I don’t want to stop them. I would like to be a woman who is easy with the vast expanse of life but I am also engaged fully with the minutiae of life. Of course I flaming am! I was a wife, am a mother and grandmother and I learned quickquick that this was my role. If life had been down to himself, the whole scatterment of children would have spent their lives in the trees or floating out to sea in inappropriate boats. They would never have washed nor cleaned behind their ears. Their diet would have been white sliced bread and a fry-up, three times a day. Good Lord, of course I was all about the minutiae. However, this learned behaviour trips me up nowadays, particularly in these nowadays, inside this farrago, this dissolution of life as we knew it.

It wonders me. What, if (let’s play) I had become a widow in ordinary times, those times when we could go anywhere, see anyone, travel freely, guffaw around tables sharing breaths? Gosh, it might have been so much easier to walk a widow’s way. Maybe she would have found herself a bit quicker. Maybe after all that fannying about with minutiae, she might have pulled on her dancing shoes and spun around lampposts, spun new webs, spun just for the fun of it. Maybe. Ah, but I am open to learning, no matter the times. Perhaps these tougher times will find us stronger, more autonomous, more ready to outgo when outgoing is once more the normal. Farragos, in my experience, lose momentum and fade away eventually. Now why is that?

The human spirit is why. We are, let’s be honest, indestructible.

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Island Blog – Drips, Droops and Defiance

I got drips. No, sorry dad. I have drips, less than of old but drips nonetheless. I quite like hearing the plash of each one falling into the enamel jug placed in place. I had to poke a hole in the plaster above the window recess last year. Actually, I have to do that poking thing every year until the plaster sags like an old woman with little to define her younger contours. I pull it all down, revealing the hen stone, the beginning of this sturdy place, the stones that protect me and many before me and then I reach out to a plasterer and the whole thing begins again. However, there used to be buckets here some 19 years ago, and everywhere, in doorways, mostly in doorways where an old 3 foot wall argued with the efficacy of whatever modern attachment attached itself. Poorly, it seems. Windows allow ingress, depending on the wind direction and puddles appear on floors. I look up. Seems logical but nothing is logical around drips. Water will in, no matter how clever you are and in homesteads built circa 1830 you are battling with just too much and it is so much better to catch the plash rhythm and to dance with it.

I empty the jug once, twice daily depending on the wind direction. It slightly bugs me that the wind has all the say in the matter, but then there is always someone who has all the say in the matter and I know that place. The rest of us work around the sayer, to a degree. We are canny, nonetheless, finding a dance that works for us, that makes the situation less rigid. I look around the rest of my room, of my home. No leaks. Just this jug-gler one, controlled until the plaster comes down. Accepting what is, even recognising and then acknowledging it, is what works for me. I have, with builder help, found the source of many leaks. This one is challenging me. She, must be a ‘she’, is telling me something. Check the outside. Check the mortar. In the olden days, there was lime in the mortar. This building could have housed King George 1V, had he travelled to the islands. Lime was a marvellous thing back then, as all new things are marvellous until they’re so not.

As we move from the old to a new we really don’t want, there will be leaks. I leaked today, here, in the wind and rain and alone. There is nowhere for these tears to go. I drooped, I confess. We face, and we do ‘face’ an uncertain future. Our fears, our lime mortar is crumbling. Our resolution is to dance but we also need to dig deep into the truth of what life is, this new life. We can decorate the inside, jug up the leaks, play positive and all that is really important, just as long as we get what is happening and grab it by the throttle. This is how it is. This is Defiance. The knowledge of what is and the fight for freedom in spite of it.

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Island Blog – Rethink the Butterfly

I remember times when we could move in and out of each others lives without second guessing the wisdom of close encounters, sharing laughs and songs, music and chatter. I am sure you do, too. These past months have shown us how limited that freedom now is. We don’t like it. We feel confined, scared at times, at best, cautious. We have to think for ourselves and make our own decisions regardless of governmental announcements and that state can be confounding, overwhelming. I flit like a butterfly between overwhelment and decisiveness, caught up in the barrelling winds, soaked in the rain of it all, only finding rest inside my own home and alone. Many, many folk will know how this feels and for now we can see no end to this battering.

However, being forced to think and to make our own informed choices about what we do, where we go and whom we meet with is good for our brains. We are not schoolchildren. We have autonomy no matter the restrictions laid down for us. They are very important, nonetheless because nobody really has a Scooby about this virus and its dastardly plans. Is it dying or is it morphing into something even more destructive? Nobody knows, not the governments, not the scientists, not the medical profession for this enemy is invisible, secretive and immensely powerful. We move through each day with caution, most of us, and as we wake up our immensely powerful brains, we have to stand for what we believe in, even if it upsets someone else, or many someone elses. This is not an easy thing to do for we all want to fit in. We second guess ourselves. Is this decision not to attend a gathering based on wisdom, my wisdom, or fear, my fear? Well, the answer is both. We need awareness of fear, the knowledge of it, the inner study. We need, in short, to think and to question those thinks.

Not so long ago, wars raged for real with military ranks marching into battle. Those left at home faced huge restrictions, fear for the fighting men and women, shortage of food, of warmth, of security. Time dragged, days rolled into a long line of misery and frustration but in the middle of all that confusion, individuals stood strong. Mothers queued for many hours to make sure their children could eat bread. Young women and the men who could not make it to the battlefields, entered into the intelligence services. Folk butterflied in hospitals, on the streets, in soup kitchens, in schools, helping elderly neighbours, working on farms and in many other ways. The country pulled together because of the war, in spite of it because the human spirit will not be defeated.

We are in a different war now, but it is war nonetheless and every single one of us can do something to make life a bit better for someone else. Many have been bereaved and they need comfort. Many are lost in fear and isolation, the loneliness chipping away at their self-confidence, spinning in confusion unable to see more than one step ahead. They need friendship and connectivity, even remotely, through a window, on the phone, through a zoom or a text. I’m thinking of you. We will not emerge from this unscarred, none of us will. It has shifted the tectonic plates of our thinking, played shinty with our beliefs and shattered the structure of all we heretofore believed solid and strong.

And now Christmas is almost upon us, one filled with concerns and ditherments. Do we, should we, can we, ought we? I shake my head. I have no idea what to do. I know what my heart wants, as do you but if we look beyond our obvious desires, what do we want to see? Good health, yes. A future without viral attack, yes. But a vision requires restrictions in the present. Not at all comfortable. However we are fools if we pretend everything is okay or bury our heads and hope we won’t be the one to get sick, won’t be party to bringing sickness in for others. It is, in the end, all down to individual decision, popular or not. Easy to say, I know. Damn hard to stand strong and light in confinement and darkness.

In Spring, the butterfly is a wiggly worm, a maggot, a nothing much. Inside the safety of its cocoon, it develops beauty. Then, one fine day, it breaks out to enchant anyone who sees it. This unbelievable metamorphosis is only believable because we know it will happen. In these dark times, in the wind and the rain and the uncertainty, vision, trust and faith are everything. If we are patient, careful, considerate and with an eye to the future, the lucky ones will emerge and fly once again in new colours, even more beautiful than before.

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Island Blog – Undays and The Next Turn

I can skip and bounce and work easy with whatever comes my way, either in happenings or in thoughts, and then cometh an Unday. Oh, don’t get me wrong, the day itself is just fine, the usual length and breadth, the light lasting the same hours, the dark ditto, but I, as inhabitant in said day, am not the same and not just fine. I can explain it not, despite my investigative forays. Nothing in particular happened yesterday and tomorrow is, as always, a blank space on my week-to-view desk diary. The mystery eludes me. I had no bad dreams, no discomforts, no bad news, no big changes. But the Unday comes unbidden, unsought, unwelcome for all its slumpability. I have had these uncomfortable days before, since Himself relocated, and had thought them gone back into the past, overtaken by all this moving on I am so busy with. Maybe it’s because the headstone is up. Maybe it’s because my daughter has gone back home and I miss her and her family. Maybe, but as a woman of spirit and moving on-ness my whole married life, I can’t hook on to either of those. Yes, they both impacted but I am way stronger than impact. Or so I tell myself.

Beginning at 4.45, a lie-in for me, I made coffee and watched the dark. In the silence, which is never silent, I held myself very still to listen. The rush of the burn just beside the house, a music to soothe the exhaustion of endless island rain. Bonus. The dark so deep, so unpricked by any light beyond a cheeky star that grabbed a second to say hallo before the cloud bullies noticed and joined ranks; the call of a tawny owl and wait, wait, ah…..the reply from its mate somewhere behind me in the woods. A blackbird on steroids, risking a chirrup long before dawn rises from sleep. A scuttle of leaves through the garage when I open the back door to garner wood for the fire, which is also asleep. Most folk are, most things are. I understand this now as a night-walker only I won’t be calling myself that once the summer comes back. Then I will just be an early riser.

This Unday is a Sunday. I have found Sundays to be troublesome since I arrived in the land of Alone. The last time I remember finding this day uncomfortable and full of resistance, wishes and longings for things to be anything but the way they are, was as a schoolgirl and for obvious reasons. Now Sundays drag. Sundays are for family, for couples, for resting and reading and for sharing moments more than any other day. Today is Sunday. I give in around 11 am and flick on a romcom, A Prince for Christmas. I’m not proud of it but it does the trick, it passes the time and it makes me cry and I need to do that. Then I do better, I watch no 2 and no 3 until my eyeballs are stretched to popping. I need to walk and I do. I notice horse hoof imprints in the mud, a bicycle track, stout boot prints, the strut print of a pheasant, the last night imprints of a stag and his hinds as they made their darkling way; fallen leaves, and the sky held in stand water, in stasis. Where is the sky, I ask? Is it up there or is it down here? I laugh, my laugh scooting out into the silence that is never silent. The tall trees lift my eyes upwards. You tired of this rain too? I ask them. A branch moves, as if in a nod of agreement. You have to stand here taking it, all this weather change. What can I possibly whinge about, me with my warm home to return to, with that daft movie to help me shift time along? The trees say nothing. They never do when I ask them to fix me. Trees are not fixers. They are empaths.

I come home to write. I write my blogs not for likes or comments, even though I love to read them. I write because writing is my passion, my push, my have-to. I have been given a gift and that gift will make voice, like the burn after heavy rain. It cannot be silenced and I have an outlet. You who read, you who follow me, I thank you. You mean so very much, just knowing you are out there in these weird times, still watching, still reading. Even on Undays, you are there and I feel like I am in a team, a powerful push forward of people, with voices and lives lived, you with scars and regrets and loved ones and lost ones. Just thinking of you all reminds me I am never alone, never without an encouraging word, a helping hand.

Undays will come to us all. When you have one, turn up the tunes, go for a walk, listen, look and know this. We are human, dammit, and there is no great escape from life and her trickeries. We just need to get canny, to find something to fill in the moments without judging ourselves. All success stories are fraught with failures, angst, doubt and rejection. Working on being strong in the land of Alone is the only way and, in living true to self, all of us are alone.

See you at the next turn in the road.

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Island Blog – Sense and Sensibility

I know this brings to mind a story, and a film, but it also applies to life and I do that applying thing a lot, because the words are dynamically apposite. You might think they mean the same thing but they do not. Sense is a being thing whereas Sensibility is a doing thing. It requires active response. There is responsibility and it’s all about the ‘ability’ attachment, even if the ‘a’ decided to be an ‘i’ in this case. If I remember my grammar at all, I think that change is acceptable, even though grammar, it appears, is obsolete nowadays. On an official NHS site, re the Covid thing, it boldly announced that the Omicorn Virus is far more contagious than previous variants. I did sigh. I really did.

Moving on and to the point. I have really good friends visiting the island for five minutes and I want to meet them but I am frightened into retreat. Why is that? Is it because something profound has changed? No. The Omicorn Covid threat, in reality, was here last Wednesday and the week before and somewhere between last Wednesday and the week before I did meet with a lovely friend in a hilltop arts cafe to sit with her by the log fire over coffee and we did laugh. Oh, panic. Laughing is like a gale is bursting out of a mouth and we did plenty bursting. I remember thinking this. If our breaths were coloured, her’s pink I think, mine a dark blue grey, we both would have seen where it all went, where it landed, on her over there on table four, the collar of her coat, or him behind me on his greying locks or his beard and we could have dashed over to swat and flap and wipe and apologise, sending both her and him to the toilets for a punch or six of sanitiser. We could have shown sensibility. Let me dictionary you. ‘Sensibility – the quality of being able to appreciate and respond to complex emotional or aesthetic influences’. See? Action!

However, we are in a spin right now with Christmas coming and the wait for a political decision and it dithers us into indecision and indigestion. But if we pull back from that, the waiting thing, and consider from our own sense and sensibility, we can find the power within, the one guide we really need. Christmas is coming. We have made plans. Family, if allowed, are coming. Are we weak on this, or strong? Let’s dig down. Family are coming. If we had no political lead, what would we believe, whom might we trust? It always comes back to one thing. Our own selves. The joy of Christmas is all family, the smiles, the games, the moments and before that, the anticipation, the present wrapping, the secret plans. My belief is that we have bought into the Nanny State, and for many years. We don’t need a nanny. What we need is to take stock of how wise we are; all those years we learned and those years that learned us; all those times we saved the day, found the answer, stood strong and tall. Can you remember those times? Bring them back and study them.

I have in my diary a date next week for a writer’s group, led by an author I really admire. I planned to attend this coming week. I’m remembering the log fire, the great coffee and the sparkly staff. But my inner eejit is freaking out. Woa……..steady……..think……that’s what I do, with my hand up and my feets stopped. You went there last week. Now that sense,sensibility,action,decision is in the whirlwind of a looming political decision, you are slapped to the wall, quite flat and, to be honest, it is not a good look for you. Okay, I say, pushing off said wall, you are right. I must make my own decisions based on my own-ness. My inner eejit slinks off into the shadows and I find light. I find my sense and my sensibility. One is feeling, the twin demands action. I can feel my feets find fire, my head rise, my brain say “About Bloody Time”. I snort at that.

I will go. I will wash my hands, I will mask up. I will banish the indigestion of dither. I will live through this and so will you. Don’t wait for decisions. Make your own. T’is powerful and so freeing.

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Island Blog – Sounds Like a Marriage

This day I decided to upgrade a lampshade. I thought I knew my plan until the logistics of fitting square patches to a conical shape told me I should have paid much more attention in Domestic Science classes. Actually, to my feral and feminist credit, the word Domestic irked me even at 14. I recall struggling with both the dough for bread, the cutting on the cross of materials, the threading of needles and the, wait for it, measuring of stitch uniformity, and the name of the class, not to mention the bosomy matron who thwacked us gels out of giggles and back into the serious of Domestic. I managed to keep giggling and was good enough of an actress not to get caught but I suspect the matron knew fine who the leader was in her class of gels.

Back to the lampshade. Basically I decide, what the heck and just diamond the squares onto the shade. They stick okay but not with a really good stick. The spray glue I have selected from my arts cupboard smells like a holiday high and sticks my fingers together. I prize them apart and keep going with my apple greens, my emerald stripes, my lime spots and my moss green swirly whirlies. Mostly they stay in place even if I do need to curtail a corner from peeling away like a dancer. I feel like the bosomy matron, but without the bosoms. I work away as the morning finally wakes up to join me. It looks good. Overlapping squares even on the conical seems to work. I will have to address the rims but for now me and the material are mates. I pause to find breath outside as the air in here is heady to say the least. I find my specs and check the label, propelled by a little doubt. Is this glue?

No, it isn’t. It is high sheen varnish. Well great! Then I have a wee chat with the material and the shade. We are a triage so I speak freely. Will you stick even though I got this all horribly wrong? I check the dancing corners. They are at peace. Thank you, I say, and I mean it. Later I adorn with flower stick ons, this time with PVA, and it looks pretty fabulous. I consider the process. Me with no specs making an error; the waiting gamers waiting; the way we collaborated and succeeded.

Later I have a delivery. My new hoover. Oh, I still have Henry but he is heavy and smelly and I need someone light and rechargeable. Did I just do a Man/Woman thing there? She is sapphire blue and light as pins. I tried her around my peripheries and into corners, stairs and all the way up to the bathroom, something I would have put off for days thinking Henry. She is cordless and light and working with her is a real pleasure. I may be open to the Domestic thing with her around.

I go to the shop. I’m feeling so chuffed with myself, my triage and my sapphire best mate that I spin on lipstick. I haven’t worn it for decades, it, the lipstick on me, being something that was not welcomed, so I stopped. It takes a while to get the hang of lipstick but I am loving the practise. I set off for my shopping trip, all of half a mile down the road and then I realise, with giggles, that nobody will see my lip art, not with that mask on. However, I know I am wearing it, much like a new bra or lacy underpinnings, like a secret hug to self.

Later, after all this creative excitement, I go for a nap. I don’t nap. I know I won’t even if I sling all the logic in my head to Lady Sleep. Look, I say, finger wagging under her perfect equine nostrils, you let me go at 3 am and I am old and give me a break, but she is gone. I keep my eyes closed and may have slipped off the earth for five or so minutes, in spite of her. As I come slowly back into the room I am aware of my husband sitting beside me in a chair he must have brought with him because there is no chair there. I don’t see him but sense he is warmly there, pre dementia, strong and calm, smiling, waiting for me to awaken.

When I rise with plans for a dog walk and a wood stacking, I check my emails. There are photos of his headstone from the stone mason. The mason came like a whisper in the night, or, maybe he came today or yesterday, but I did not know. He just came. Ah, I smile. That is why you came my husband, for the first time as a strong able man. Are you telling me you are doing fine and that so am I? I decide so. Too many frickin decades together joins lives, the solid shade, conical so as to be as difficult as possible, and the patchwork materials that don’t fit, don’t fit, then do.

Sounds like our marriage.

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Island Blog – Tigger

The trouble with me, or one of the many troubles with me, is my Tigger bounce in the early mornings. It’s ridikkerluss. I must have driven my children mad with all that early bouncing, especially on school days. Waking in this ‘darking’ at 3.30, wide awake, excited about nothing and everything, I have to get out of bed. Thank you bed, I say with a reassuring pat, as it’s a bit startled. Most people, I add, would just turn over but I never believed in turning over anything with the exception of new leaves, naturally. I would be marvellous on early shifts in, say, a hospital. I would burst into the ward, my smile leading the way. Good morning! I would sing, as I reinflate the flagging night watch, flip on the kettle, brew coffee and head off to cheer the post and pre-ops, soothe the sad and weary, have a blether with the janitor and make him laugh but not too loudly, naturally.

By 6 I have cleaned the cobwebs and wiped the walls that have been hidden behind the Family Furniture for decades. The walls look startled too, suddenly aware of their nakedness. The cobwebs are all fluff and dark materials; very dodgy, but easily removed with my eco cleaning spray and a determined scrubber hand. Before I wipe them away for ever, I watch the way the webs float and lift as I pass, like wisps of smoke. I check for lodgers, but they have already scuttled off into a safe corner, probably temporarily blinded. I can see where the painter didn’t paint, couldn’t reach behind the Family Furniture. I pause to wonder who will buy these big pieces, who will thrill at the very sight of them, a must-have for the perfect place inside their home. I wish them and the furniture many blessings and a very happy life together. And, good luck polishing those brass knobs. I am done with brass knob polishing for ever. I have also moved furniture, stacked books and it’s not 7 yet.

I blame my mother. She was just the same. I remember us going to visit when the kids were young. I was up early, but himself, who could sleep all night and longer, remained in bed. Mum wasn’t having any of that nonsense and she wheeched off the duvet revealing his naked splendour and tickled his toes whilst singing something nobody recognised. He never got over it, not for years and years. Ah, well, I told him. You are not alone in this. Most people never get over my mother. So thanks Mum for the Tigger in me, the mischief, the fun and the way you were the most impossible woman who ever lived and probably always will be.

Unless I take over that role, of course.

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Island Blog – Self Assemble and Family Furniture

I’m here listening to Cat Stevens and buying a self-assemble white bookcase. The Cat Stevens bit just means his song happens to be on right now from a list of my top played tunes in 2021. Apparently. The self assemble thingy does bother me somewhat, me being a woman who never has the right specs on to read instructions, and even if she did she probably wouldn’t. No matter, I can fret about that when the flat pack arrives. And, why is it arriving at all? Ah, good question.

Today, after decades of longing to be rid of ‘Family Furniture Angst’ my antiques whiz came to the island. He has been before, many times, with his fabulous sidekick, straight from the Barras in Glasgow, a man I miss for all his stories, his deals in wild island. places where the pickings were always good. Sadly, that wheeler dealer is dead now and very probably confusing God with his eagle eye and his sharp wit. RIP Peter. Anyway, back to this day. Well I was all of a confucious. I could not settle from 5 am onforth. I had to find all the things this trusted valuer would want to see, the bits, the endless religious bits and the bobs that have travelled through the generations of my husband’s family since Queen Victoria reigned in her starchy widow weeds. And, the big ass mahogany trip ups, such as an escritoire (?) and a something else wood replica Queen Anne dresser which took my antiques whizz and the welcoming help of my neighbour to harrumph down the winding stairs, avoiding the fixation of a chairlift, one, it seems, I am obliged to retain for 7 years after the death of the dead one.

He arrived in the onset of rain, which, just to say, is most of the time. You have to love West Island life or you drown, and if you do, chances are you will wash up in the outer isles somewhere Middlemarch and in February when no-one’s looking so don’t bother. Way too wet and cold. I remember him, the way he dresses, the flamboyance, no matter the rain. His smile went right through me. What on the earthly earth was I fretting about? Not him, no. It was, it was, my need to be perfect, not to hold anyone up, not to be lacking. Good lord! Hallo Me. Moving on, he came, his eye sharp and seeing. He has many many years around antiques, or anything of value. As I showed him the Family Antique Angst pieces, he nodded. I know them, he said, and, of course, he did but I was not able to move them on until the man was dead.

It felt like a betrayal, over a poached egg breakfast, in the dark, waiting for the light, looking for it. It’s late again. Light is always late in the winter. As the morning rolled out like a geriatric snail, I went from room to room, touching, moving, packing, lifting, learning my limitations and ps btw I am so not into them. I used to be jaunty on stairs, even with fifteen children hanging on to me. I was all deer legs and gymnast. Something changed and that something, if I ever find it, might just regret messing with me. Moving on. My neighbour, strong young man, helped with the big stuff and we did the rest. I see the cobwebs, decades old, hovering like stories all told out. I see the space created. Space. I always longed for it but the Family Antiques Angst is like a corralling of generations, or it was., blocking out space, confining it, darkening it. I know that he who is dead had no information at all about these big dark crow threatening pieces. So why are we keeping them? He shrugged but held firm. Hence my breakfast sense of betrayal. I honour it, that feeling. It is respect for the the respect of he who is dead.

But now, I am working beyond cobwebs, through space and into a white self assemble bookcase. God help me.