‘And it’s from the old I travel to the new – keep me travelling along with you’.

That’s a line from a bouncy hymn, and it’s one I like for the pictures in my mind. Travelling from the old towards the new sounds like a plan, a daily one. I will be travelling, literally, tomorrow, to find my new car, a mini, my own car, my own choice. As I know very little about cars beyond the obvious requirements necessary to drive one, my son is coming with me. He, like most boys, does know cars. Where I could be dazzled by the colour or the shine or the alloy wheels, his head will be under the bonnet. Where I fall short, he will stand tall, asking the right questions about emissions and mileage. I could fall for sleek black or wild red and not discover a thing about emissions or mileage. It doesn’t mean I am a fool in such matters, but by travelling along with him, we can cover all areas effectively, bringing this thing to a satisfactory conclusion. The right colour, the right price and the emissions and the mileage at a satisfactory level. Many times in my life I have been quite certain that I could and should do everything on my own. If I ask for help, I show weakness. I was so sure of that. Eventually, however, I did learn that in not asking for help, I was depriving someone else of the chance to be valued. We all like to be valued and if a person asks for help, we feel chosen, honoured. I had forgotten that in my drive to be singularly successful, and it proved to be a lonely old place, even if I did feel a tidal wave of smugness wash over me on completion of a difficult task. Sometimes it is wonderful to overcome a challenge all alone, such as assembling a wooden flat pack garden planter without help, a task I completed yesterday. I had to guess what went where, however, as there were no instructions in English. Polish, Russian, Japanese, Eastern European, yes, but not a word in a language I could understand. It looks marvellous now, even if I have screwed it together upside down so that the ‘easy-lifting’ handles are at the bottom.

Prior to employing a weekly cleaner, I wrangled with the sense of failure in me. I have time, after all. I can work the hoover and the duster and the eco window cloth. So why am I asking someone else to clear up my mess? Am I being lazy? On sharing my angst with another son, he wisely pointed out that, by employing said cleaner, I am valuing her. I am helping to put food on her table. Both of us win. I have a super clean house and she has money in the bank. I also have someone to cut my grass. Yes, I could do that too, even if I hate doing it, but I choose not to. I choose to value his work and he makes a very good job of it, and the hidden benefits of sharing a work load lie in human interaction. Alone, I would grump my hoover down the stairs and curse the dust that gathers in 6 short days, but when Thursday comes I get to laugh and chat with a woman of whom I have become very fond. On grass cutting days I can discover what goes on in the gardener’s life and what he thinks about any topic arising. Those encounters stay with me and influence my mood. They lift me, and maybe I lift them too. I felt the same on agreeing to help with dementia care. Those girls work hard, and their work is tough and demanding, physically and emotionally. I can do all the things they do for me, all by myself, but, in being all by myself, I am lonely and sometimes overwhelmed. Although they might have to walk here beneath inclement skies, or have to drive miles over switchback roads, I now see clearly that we all win. I don’t have to do what they come here to do and, when they do come, they bring in the light.

So travelling along together is, I have decided, the way to go. Not always, for I love and protect my solitude, as I value completing a challenge alone. But…… there are times I think we miss out on the hidden benefits of sharing a problem by letting someone else in. The concerns we feel about this or that, once shared, can find their own way home. Alone we can worry an issue into a tangled web. I’ve done it a million times in my life and all I end up with is exhaustion and sleeplessness. Worry is a fool’s friend, after all.

I have created monsters through worry and not one of them ever became the truth, once I reached out for help by letting someone else in. Travelling together is what we are meant to do, be it for a new car or for help in difficult circumstances. It amazeballs me that we can resist it so much, thinking we have to do everything ourselves.

Today I recommend reaching out to a fellow traveller. The unseen benefits can change a life.

I like wild places and children’s faces. I like paths that narrow and then disappear into trees or over a hill, like a beckoning. I like red wine and black coffee and avocados greened by the sun. I like jackboots and horses crazy running and free. I like snow and sunsets that turn old pine trunks orange. I like quick decisions and slow mindful thoughts, bare feet and spontaneous joy as it lights up a moment. I like classical music and dance beats, flowers in surprising places, people, solitude, soft lighting and comfy armchairs. I like hot baths and icy water from a mountain stream, tomatoes chopped in olive oil and basil, climbing fences and being blasted in the face by a freezing Atlantic wind. I like doorways and sitting on kerbs. I like change, colour, and clouds, and I like finding something when I was looking for something else.

Like that male hen harrier canting on a rising gale, hunting, perfectly balanced. I was lighting the woodburner, looking for kindlers, in a clifftop cottage far out into the mystic, and listening to the punch of a north easterly gathering strength. The sheep were hunkered behind drystone walls and the goldfinches, sparrows and other small feathery tots held fast to the branches of the bent-backed hazels, all talking at once like women in a Glasgow bus shelter. That white magic, his flight, his caring less about me, eyes on the chance of breakfast, took my breath away. In moments, he was gone, sliding through the wind. The day lay ahead. Shall we walk this way or that? Shall we sit and contentedly knit and sew now or later? We could choose whatever we wanted, my best friend and I because we had 6 days of this wild freedom, just us and her dog and the wild things all around us. We could talk for hours without interruption, although the return of the snow white hen harrier would have been a welcome one. We could eat lunch at breakfast. We could move mindfully, laugh uproariously, tell each other secrets and the best way to make lemon cheesecake. We could share tales of children and grandchildren, remember together long past memories of people, places, happenings. We did all of those things as Time decided to move at double speed through the days. And, suddenly, it was over.

I like transitions and dogs, hand-made rugs and chilli jam for breakfast. I like old boats that have turned into skeletons. I like reading and to overcome, cats paws on the water and women who look different to all the rest. I like geese cutting through the sky, cloud dancers and the meniscus of the world as I stare into the distance. I like being woken by the full moon or the soft honk of night-flying swans going somewhere I will never go. I like that Nature carries on, whatever may happen to me. I like sharing and I like friendship.

Although our time was too short, we changed each other just a bit. Every encounter with someone who holds my trust changes me, just a bit. And ‘just a bit’ is a good starting point. All our conversations, from lemon cheesecake to family troubles found a place in the space between us. Carried most carefully back home, she to Englandshire through snow and traffic jams and I, well, to just a few miles away without snow or more than 3 cars (which could never be a jam), our shared time will think us both for a long while. Back to our own lives outside of each other’s, we will remember it all with smiles and contemplation.

I have no plan to make lemon cheesecake, nonetheless.

On the ferry coming back from #housemoving, I listened to the announcement on the tannoy. Is it still called that? Anyway, I have heard it and not listened a thousand times on my many forays into the so-called civilised world – and back again.

All children are to be restrained. Dogs too, only, for them, a harness or lead. What on earth else would you restrain a dog with? A garden hose? And what does it matter what any dog owner chooses to use as restraint? It is nobody’s business but theirs. Now, children must not be lifted over the rail. Well, thanks for guiding me there. It has been tempting, in the past, to lob my children over the side, but I resisted the urge, in the light of the fact that I am not a monster and do completely adore my children, however much they might have made me want to scream along with their current tantrum. These announcements come in two languages, just in case we only speak Gaelic, and it takes a few nautical miles to shut up. Nobody listens anyway. The urge to stay calm if the ship is sinking is almost a joke. I doubt there has ever been one soul who stayed calm at such a time.

It thinks me of this Nanny State. Everything needs to be said twice and there is no rule bending. I asked the woman at the tiny wee village shop if she could spare me a spoonful of coffee as I was dying for a fix and had forgot to bring the jar with me. She replied that she was not authorised to do that. Another time, another shop, I asked the woman behind the counter, after purchasing my purchases, if she could put this scrunched up bit of paper in her bin. I could see her bin, right behind her, its maw open, its belly barely half full. No, sorry, she said, I am not authorised to accept anyone’s rubbish. Well, I thought, on my smiling departure, nor am I. I’m sure it’s written in my DNA somewhere.

This week was a riot of Social Service visits and the guy to fit the personal alarm. Of course, the alarm thingy went wonkychops. Because the phone line now goes through the alarm, everything turned on its head. Rising suddenly from an afternoon doze, I heard my daughter’s voice. She lives over 100 miles away, so it was a surprise. Hallo Mum, she said, hallo……? Thinking she had turned up unexpectedly, I leapt up and went in search. She was nowhere, but the alarm, which connects with HQ in the civilised world carried her voice. Puzzled, we chatted for a bit whilst I expected the alarm dudes to interrupt with an admonishment. Since then, the phone hisses like a snake, telling me quite clearly that we have a fankle. Needless to say the alarm fitter doesn’t live on the island, so he and I had a wee chat about things and he guided me through an unplugging and a re-plug somewhere else. It worked to a degree, as the alarm is now back to itself, even if the phone still snakes at me like a python pre-strike. I am not authorised to sort such complex fankles, and, yet, I can, with guidance, and I did. The python might beat me however.

It is tempting to fall into line (pardon the pun). It is so easy to say NO, without recourse to even a wobbly yes. I have learned from my mammy’s knee, to be practical, to use my common sense and I am glad of it, because those who allow the ridiculous All-For-One rulebook to, well, rulebook them, just stop thinking for themselves Our brains are huge. Even when in the grip of dementia, when each little carrier of blood closes for ever, the brain is resourceful. There are so many ways to move forward, if we employ this hugely intelligent organ, but it is our own choice. I don’t believe that an All-For-One rulebook will ever make the best seller list, because each one of us is different in a million ways. We are not one. We are not we. I am I and You are You. It is a very encouraging thing to remember, especially when one of us feels strongly that we don’t fit because we don’t agree with the rest. Actually, on interviewing ‘the rest’ I found many discrepancies of thought and belief. What puzzled me was the need to comply and it is out of fear, every time. If I stand for what I think, I will be left all alone on this dodgy rock with the moon filling up and a Spring tide on the rise. That, my dears, is Fear talking.

So, although I am not going to raise anyone over the rail of the ferry, nor let my dog run riot between the decks, I will still fight the All-For-One rulebook when I come face to face with the ridiculous. I will question everything and then choose my actions. As a teenager I was a rebel without a cause, apparently. I just knew everything was nonsense but did not have the intelligence to explain it to myself, let alone anyone else. Now, I am older and wiser and have worked out a braw expanse of space in between Notice and React. I recommend it to everyone. It’s called Think Space. Inhabiting it allows me to accept what I see and, then to question it, and, finally, to react. We are told to ask questions, to question everything. Buddha, Jesus, Mandela, Luther King, and hundreds more of the deep thinkers, who refused to go along with a One-For-All rulebook, all urged us to question. I want, sometimes, to shout it from a rooftop. Don’t become a people who accept everything. Don’t take the easy way and fall into grumbling. I am not calling for a riot. I am asking myself, and you, to use that spectacular piece of kit inside every head, the one that could decide to die at any time, as it has done right here in this wee island home.

Think on that. And then react.

They can be fun, transitions I mean, and they can be very difficult indeed, all the ones we go through during our lives, from a new school, a change of home, a change of life, acceptance of something we never asked for, and so on and so forth and fifth.

I spent the past five days helping my son move home. The weather was superbly kind, the trailer didn’t blow a tyre, the help turned up and so did the grannies and grandpas. We all just seemed to fit into whatever role we chose and we worked in harmonious sync. Good name for a band, that. I dedicated my hours to cleaning out the old flat, having boxed and bagged all the stuff of life lived. Once you start cleaning, you realise how much more there is yet to do. I mean, who cleans corners with a toothbrush? Who ever notices little finger marks on big walls, or takes wire wool to the cooker shelves? Well, not me in an ordinary day, but this was not an ordinary day and the landlord will inspect very soon. Leaving a place better than you found it is a golden rule for me. It applies to encounters with people too.

As I walked between the old and the new, carrying buckets or empty boxes for the filling, I thought about this transition and what it represents for the ones moving out and then moving in. As I smiled a welcome to a passer by and received one in return, I wondered if they wondered about me, as I wondered about them. Where is their life lived? Is their home a happy one, their life good and strong, their little dog curled up in his basket, their child at school? All I see is what they show me, in passing. All I show them is the same. What stories could they tell me and I them? Back in the new house with the view across the tidal rip and on towards the ancient hills, I saw geese and ducks fly, gulls and shags skim or dip the waters. In the pines behind me, goldfinches chattered and in the eaves of the house, sparrows built their nests. Everything here is new to the young folk moving in and they are new to everything in return. Together they will learn to move in harmonious sync as the seasons unfurl, as the flowers bring colour to the garden, as the trees fill with nests and the chatter of children. A transition for all and not just one. The shop is now not across the road. Travel to the city is a shorter distance and the neighbours are yet to be discovered. As the moontides ebb and flow, the cycle of life rolls on like a never ending story, as it always did and as it always will.

The ferry travelled me home through spectacular views over a flat calm sea. Few visitors were aboard and I sat on the deck, my face warmed by the sun. This is another transition, I thought. Not only am I traversing wild ocean, ocean in a good mood today, but I am also going back home to my caring role. Various emotions fought for supremacy at that thought. Let it go by, I told myself. Let my heart lift at just this, the wide sky, the call of the gulls, the ancient hills and the Lismore light. Let my heart lift at the thought of my cosy little home, the people in my community, the change in birdsong all around me, the first push of summer colour in the faithful old trees. All that bothers me is dust in the wind so don’t develop it.

I remember once hearing a speaker say that everything comes from fear or love. It made things over-simple, I thought at first, but on deeper reflection, I agree. When I begin to get hot and bothered about a thought or allow myself to develop a worry, I know it is fear taking control. Inside love lie many good things, all good things in fact, and one of them is trust, trust that all is as it should be and that all will turn out for my own happiness, in the end. Possibly long before the end. Who can tell me otherwise? Nobody. Not one living soul. Hanging on to the negative of anything at all, is a waste of living. It blocks the possibles of any situation. If it could go wrong, this situation, this worry, then why on earth could it not go right? Imagining doom and gloom is something we are all good at, and yet what we are doing is buying into fear, fear that does have its place if we are being stalked by a leopard or a serial killer, but not when the object of our fear is only real in our imaginations. Well, hmmm, but this could go horribly wrong, or that. Yes, it could, but it could equally well go wonderfully right. The first is fear driven, the second driven by love.

And it is all in the thinking.

It has been a busy week. Wood delivered, and requiring me on the business end of a barrow. With a punctured wheel. No matter, a friend suggested a new wheel, one without an inner tube, duly purchased. Nurses came in to take bloods (standard checkup), Marvellous May, the cleaner made a ‘lot of noise’ with the hoover, as if it was ever possible to make none at all, and we made a trip to the optician. Yesterday the guy came to set up a personal alarm for His Nibs and recommended that he shouldn’t push the red button if I am in the next room.

I love when there is nothing in the diary. There is something so peaceful about nothing in the diary, like I could willow-the-wisp in my scumfies and slippers for days on end. However, it doesn’t often happen that way. In between events there is space. The key is to be able to notice that space before the old brainbox gets busy filling a natural hole. It is surprisingly difficult to s t o p. To sit, to watch the clouds, and not to see that the floor needs sweeping, again. I practice it, this art, endeavouring to stop the white noise in my mind. However, I have now learned that trying to stop anything is a waste of energy. Resistance according to the Queen of the Borg, is futile and she is right, because in the resistance process the only thing that fronts the mind is the very one I want to resist.

For example…….I came home to a new wet room. I alone chose the colour scheme, online, and thousands of miles from here, although the word ‘scheme’ is hardly the truth of it. The walls, a swirly beach, called Moonlight on Sand and bearing truth to its name, are fine with me. The floor, called Beach Hut, (you would think all is well at this point) turns into a wide spread of pale lilac. Hideous at best. I am not a lilac girl at all. The floor and the walls and, in fact, the whole wet room is a very professional job. I have nothing but praise for the builder who, bless his big heart, met endless troubles during the work, including a leaking water tank in the loft. The floorboards are wonky chops and the plaster is flaking off the 184 year old stone walls and he had to deal with all of that and more. He is, simply, the best. But, I still have a rise of nausea whenever that expanse of lilac brilliantine’s my eyes thanks to the very bright overhead safety lighting for safety lighting.

What can I do? Well, I can spend a mint changing Beach Hut to something that co-ordinates with Moonlight on Sand. I can stop looking at the brightly lit lilac dance floor, keeping my eyes on the Moonlight. I can sigh and get over myself. Or, I can add a little something of my own, something that will make me smile whenever I encounter the clash. Not a resigned resistance, but something that rebels against the ‘scheme’ without compromising safetynessment. Something nobody can trip over or struggle to negotiate.

Graffiti. I love graffiti and always feel a little sad when I see council workers madly scrubbing it off bridges or tenement walls in the pouring rain in luminous jackets. Why take it off? It’s art and it’s prophesy after all and besides, neither the concrete bridge, nor the grey tenement walls had much going for them in the first place. However, my graffiti will not be aggressive, nor accusatory. Mine will be uplifting, like daffodils in early Spring, giving the reader, whose bottom will be on the high-rise toilet for safetyness, at the time, inspiration.

I grabbed a permanent marker, and I began.

Or, rather, what you choose to see. I know that two people can go on the same holiday together, be around each other for two weeks and return home with entirely different stories. One saw the late arrival of a dinner out. The other saw the over-stretched waiters doing their best. One remembered every rain drop, the other saw the flowers beginning to petal up. One slept for the whole plane journey, uncomfortably, whilst the other didn’t sleep at all (but wanted to) but made friends with a fractious child and his overwrought mother. It has aye been thus with folk.

This morning, I lifted down a candle mess. Two wee scented candles, tampon sized, had melted into a pancake. No…..it isn’t a pancake……look….there’s a face, two eyes and are those ears? And is the creature smiling? What a cheeky look on its face………I took a photo and sent it to my African son, who would have been well into his morning at my 0600. He came back immediately in response to my question – Who is This?

Shaun the sheep, he said, no question. And there began a ping pong of nonsense on WhatsApp, covering in seconds what it takes days to travel in real time. I remember we played these daft games for 3 months when we were together. Straight back to his childhood and my second. All my kids learned the nonsense attitude to life. It wouldn’t have mattered that this so called friend at school had turned like the worm and was making life difficult. In the time it took to draw breath, this child became a creature and this creature made us all laugh out loud. The voice, the quirks, the things we all observed about this child, or this teacher, or this whoever, were reconstructed in fun. I recommended that, every time that person in worm disguise made unkind comment or ridiculed, my child might bring into his or her mind the caricature, and to respond not at all. It was always enough. I employ this mental manoeuvre myself, even now. It isn’t unkind, but a sort of peaceful warrior attitude, one that makes a choice not to feed the beast. And it’s all about what you see.

We can find dragons in clouds and monsters in forests. A dropped egg becomes a country, a broken bowl a landscape. Look, there’s Winnie the Pooh, or is it Piglet? Winnie the Piglet, perhaps. Whatever life throws, we can always catch it. It might not look great, at first but just wait till we get the hands of our imaginations working. You’ll see……once one of us begins the game.

I recall a long delayed flight once, in an overheated airport, somewhere in Greece. We couldn’t leave as we had all gone through security. There were all of four seats already inhabited by four bottoms, not one of which was budging. We settled for the floor. It was easy for us, a young family, but not so easy for the hot oldies with disabled this and that to contend with. Everyone was tired and mostly everyone was either screaming for Mummy or muttering murder for the airline. One of my boys pulled out a soft toy and brought it to life. Another followed suit, then another and before long there was a full production in play. At first, nobody heard anything above the screaming and the muttering, but, gradually, eyes turned towards these children and smiles appeared on weary faces. Even the screamers shut up, intrigued by the floor show. Then out came the juggling balls. By the time the flight was called, everyone felt quite relaxed.

For one, the flight was delayed too long, it was overly hot, there were no seats and the drinks machine was out of order. For another, life changed.

Often hard to write. Now why is that? Well, in this culture of keeping private things private I am obviously a boundary breaker. Trouble is that if we all conform to the keeping private things private thingy, then nobody learns nothing. My dad would have had a conniption at that grammatical twist.

This journey (that word irritates me a lot) is one of watching and waiting. Of wishing and not wishing, of hopes dashed and of the longest moments/hours/days and nights. When I write, ‘hopes dashed’ I am walking into the fire. The slow road of dementia is nothing but cruel torture. This poor soul is falling apart and, what’s worse, he knows it, he feels it, he fears it. As do I, the nurse/keeper/watcher and both our lives are on hold. Which, by definition is something neither of us can control. I could say it is in the lap of the gods, but as I don’t believe in gods, I won’t be saying it. However, you know what I mean. If I admit that ‘hopes dashed’ means not what you might think, I will face judgment. I will enlarge on that.

This morning, my man was grey and very frail. He could barely walk, barely talk. I could see his face was a bit lopsided and the nurse in me stood to attention. This could be another stroke. I gave him water ( he is right on the water thing since his last stroke in Africa, brought on by dehydration) and some food, and settled him by the fire. He slept and woke and slept and woke and every single minute I am watching him, checking him, ready to take action. By noon I am knackered with all this watching and readiness planning. I hoped he would just sleep on, that he wouldn’t have to face the gods with laps, the long slow demise. I felt a frisson of guilt, but a frisson is nothing but mist, that quickly clears, as long as you keep the windows open.

Every time this will happen, there are children to contact. Every time there is a nurse to alert, a carer, a neighbour. What will I do with the wee dog if this cants into an eruption in the darkling night with the wind blowing and not a ferry in sight? What do I need to pack? Should I do it now? All of that, and more. This is the sentence, the jail of dementia, or any illness on the cusp (which could be the size of Africa or a sliver of moonlight) of chaos, with not a butterfly in sight. And, as we know, dementia and other mental illnesses can take their time, dandling all of us in their laps, playing time games and teasing, always teasing.

My man is better tonight. Still grey faced, still wonky chops in his walking, still frail, but it seems the ‘danger’ has passed. Was it only in my mind? Possibly. Was it just a lack of spinach for the Old Popeye? Perhaps. But what it changes for me is absolute. I say ‘absolute, when nothing outside of science is ever absolute, but I like the word, for now. Do I spend time with my best friend for a whole week away? Do I go to help my son move house? Do I, do I, do I?

Responses to those questions will be by the book, (yes, they will) Of course you need to go, to do, to be! What about your life? Well, what about my life? If anyone seriously imagines that a life is a singular occupation, then they are reading the wrong manuals. Life is a group thing, big or small, but still groupie. It’s what we humans need and crave and long for. So, it follows, then, that when one of the group is sentenced to the slowest of dyings, we all feel pain. We also feel fury and loneliness and the desire to punch a hole in the universe. We watch and we wait and sometimes, we just want the one who never asked for this, who provided and protected and made our whole life into a wonderful crazy, colourful, noisy adventure; who took us up mountains into wild seas, who taught stamina and strength and ‘don’t you bloody well ever give up’ ness, to sleep on. I know this is bare truth, but there is only one sort of truth.

In the words of Iris Murdoch, who went the same way and knew it…….

There was a gap. Gaps are perfectly acceptable in a woman’s life, as long as they don’t become IT. My gap, ie more than two days without writing was because I was busy with grandchildren, collecting and delivering them. As we drove the little roads from A to B we chatted about their lives. They live in the moment, these wee ones, although I did have a little glimpse of what is to come for one of them, when he said he wished something was different. Instead of being completely inside the day that surrounded him, he was looking ahead. It was a small concern I am happy to say, but he might be prone to worry, in the future. It was one of those moments of illumination for me, a snapshot of growing up, right there beside me in the car.

It thinks me of how lives change and alter as they develop, up to the point where we have to orchestrate the change and development all by ourselves. From letting the day go by, we have to sort and order it into shape. From short trousers to the right trousers and, what’s even worse, on a day to day basis. That is both the pants of a life and its freedom, and it comes without an invitation. It just arrives one morning accompanied by an uninformed confusion. I used to just ‘be’. Now I have to ‘do’.

How glorious might it be to just let the day go by, let the next one come and the last one go without having to scrabble for control, battle with regrets and write endless post it note plans for the one yet to come. I think that probably only happens in heaven. I don’t remember when that moment came for me, that discombobulation, that fear, that dread. I am certain, had I voiced my fear of what-was-to-come, my loving parent would have turned to me with experiential wisdom and loving reassurance. At least I imagine so. And that would have been the beginning of the rest of my life. No longer was I an add-on to theirs. Now I had to learn, not only to think for myself, but to face 70 odd years ahead unthinking a great deal of it. That long road of learning to stand up and to stand down; to make something happen and to make it not happen; to love, but not too much; to rise in grace and to fall from it now and again; to believe and to doubt; to go, to stay, to trust but not to be a fool, and then, to be a fool in the eyes of the world for the right reasons. There is no list of right reasons by the way, no map, no app for your phone, no chance you’ll find a book on it in your local library. Its a flipping journey is all, and you can’t arrive at enlightenment by running in the corridors because that’s not allowed either.

Well, hallo Life. Hallo Gaps. Farewell to scraped knees being the entire focus of my day, and hallo to a tsunami of inner doubts and fears. Hallo, too, to choice and to a freedom that scares the bejabers out me one minute and empowers me to dizzy heights, the next. No more can I spend the whole day inside a gap because that will have consequences. No more can someone else tell me what to do because someone else has popped their clogs. Now it is all up, and down, to me. I have had plenty of guidance from the clog poppers, and still do, from those I admire, and like whom I aspire to be, or, at the least, to become, eventually, once I’ve organised my head.

As a supposedly grown woman, and retired (!) I can decide my own decisions. But what if I don’t want to even as I do want to? When I was a child, I could just ‘be’ as long as I ‘be’ed’ in an appropriate manner, but now, being is something that does its very best to evade my grab. Doing, on the other hand, is easy. Doing is what we do, what I do with my body. Being, on the other hand, is all in my head. Are the two connected? Sometimes I wonder. If I am to live a full and balanced life, how come the power was given to me? Surely everyone knows I am the very last person who should be granted such power of attorney. I am not to be trusted. My head is ransacked, daily, by the wreckers of self-doubt and ditherment. And, daily, I need to armour up, to re-locate my sword and my shield for the skirmish ahead.

When I was a child, I thought like a child. Now I am an adult trying very hard to think like a child, a child who doesn’t mind the gaps at all.

Yesterday was not a happy day. Now that it’s today, I reflect. What was different, I cannot note down. In the life of a General Operations Manager, there were no specific demands, no extra calamities, no surprises, nothing to flapdoodle about. All was as calm as it ever is. The rain didn’t fall, the outside tap didn’t freeze, my car started and there was enough wood for warmth. So, I deduce, it must be me. I was different. I felt overly weary, of everything, my body slow, my mind fixated on self and all her runforthehills thoughts.

On days like this I speak to no-one, call nobody, write no messages. I hide. I withdraw my tentacles and curl into my shell, whilst still functioning as I should. My thoughts are not fluffed up and sparkly warkly, but, instead, as dark as the basalt rocks on the shore. I see no birds, hear no song. I am cold and I am sore. No smiles are smiled back at. My voice is empty of chiaroscuro. I just want it over. The day, I mean.

It is very tempting to beat myself black and blue over days like this. After all, haven’t I realised that it was I who had my nickers in a twist? Everything else just ticked on, like the kitchen clock, moving on the hours and minutes as per normal, hours and minutes that, as far as I could tell, slowed down deliberately to upset me. This morning, however, I wake a different woman and yet all is exactly the same as it was yesterday. I listened to Heather Small singing Proud and answered her question. Nothing, I said, as I served up macaroni cheese. Today I would reply that I got through it, made macaroni cheese, for goodness sake, and even served it up with peas and a napkin. I kept the house warm and tidied where necessary. I greeted the occupational therapist with the lovely green eyes and even offered her a hot beverage. I waved at a neighbour as she catapulted by on the end of a huge wolfhound. I fed the birds and worked more on my current tapestry. I did good. But what I am learning, is to accept days like this whilst inside them. When I cannot, or will not, remind myself of my huge list of blessings, it is not the end of the world, nor of me. It doesn’t mean I am reverting to the moaning Minnie I was at the start of this caring journey. How could I, considering all the learning I have learned, all the changes I have made inside me?

Living in the moment is super fun when the moment is shiny and bright. Not so easy when it is too dark to see and all a girl wants is to go back to bed. My belief is that daily work is very important, inner work I mean. So, on days when I could kick ‘inner work’ into the never-never, it’s okay. I want to be a lady on the inside – and what she encompasses is grace, kindness, dignity and compassion. Never mind the outside, that skinny shaven-headed scruff in jeans and a big jumper, because being a lady on the outside only means diddly squat. I have met a few of them in my time and they were completely see-through. But when I cannot manage much grace or dignity or even much compassionate kindness, I do not topple. I am just tapselteerie for a day. So, although it is tempting, I will not judge me. I will just let days like this pass by, and I will pick myself up, in kindness and step forth into the new.

Something I wrote whilst in Africa comes back to me in relevance.

‘What would a lady choose? That’s what interests me. I know I am born a woman, but a lady is grown over time. Or not. Some say a lady is polite, deferring to others, especially men. She doesn’t shout or swear or run amok, or jump fences in a frock. She is just a lady on the outside. I don’t want to be her.

But I do want dignity, calm, self-control. That’s what interests me. A lady on the inside. I’ll still jump fences in a frock, shout sometimes in a red blood rage, swear and curse and think on murder. And, I may defer, I may not, but if I do it won’t be because you are a man, but because you have earned my respect. ‘