afternoon

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Island Blog – I Don’t Speak Indesit

I walk in the afternoons now, when the frosty biting wind slinkers around, gentling into warmth, as if it has lost its back teeth and feels a bit vulnerable; when the sharp blast of power-controlling a morning (this one hailed with an ice crash that deafened me, Radio Two and my audio book for a whole breakfast) softens into ‘pointless’, as bullying does when faced with a lack of submission. The spring green against a blue sky has me walking reckless, my head up, my feet trusting the track. This majesty of trees, of oaks, beeches, elms and alders, all shouting life and hope, enthral me. The hazels mutter like old wifies unnoticed, and knowing it. I lower my eyes and salute them. You wind-breakers are a team, I reassure, I know this. Many a man, woman or child on this tricky track would have fallen and gone without your crow-backed protection. They snort. I hear it and chuckle. Tinsel leaves burst daily from tight holding buds, holding against the toothy north bite that claims each morning, delicate, soft and green with hope and falter. They have paused for a long time. Spring, albeit late up here in the wilds of the Western Isles, comes cautious, this year more so. Hail for breakfast is not what they want nor need, but the lift for life, for that single chance to procreate is fierce and the afternoons offer balm and warmth to honour that lift. Hence, me and the wee dog, lift too and into the afternoon.

This morning, at approximately 07.30 I put on an Eco Wash. In my understanding of Eco Washness the process will be both short and cool, enough and adequate. I am thinking, as with my old machine, 20 minutes at 30 degrees. But it seems no. All morning, although I could not really hear the machine machining through the din of hail, it chomped and plumped and schlocked and tossed my trapped clothing right and left and over and back again in a repeat motion as if it didn’t quite know what to do next. What have I done? My always first thought. I am a big fan of pilot error, having plenty of experience in such. In my excitement at a new piece of equipment, I ignored the instruction label. But, in my defence, most instructions are unintelligible, in a foreign language and inadequately explained, sentences barely sentences, and ending just when you think they are actually going to make sense. However, in discovering, after my head-in-the-skies wander this afternoon, communing with nature and all that tiddleypom, my machine still chomped and slushed at 3pm. I must have, no, did on first acquainting myself with this Indesit, this bright white eco machine, push all the buttons just to see wotwot. I have obviously set in motion a whole load of wotwot, none of which I can, intelligently un-wotwot. Perhaps I pushed the 3 hour delay button, or the 6 hour or even the 12 hour and what the heck is that all about?

I finally rest, as does the machine. My clothes are exhausted and I apologise to them as I hang them up. 8 hours of chomping and sluice and my obvious foolery around time delay and cycles, has submitted these bright spring colours to a virtual drowning. But, I tell them as reassuringly as I can, You are clean and fresh-colour bright, your shape your own, and you have survived. Many have not. They say nothing. In a sulk, I’m guessing. In the judgement of this, sensing pilot error, I don’t know where to throw my voice. The trees seem to answer, the woods too, and the plucking waves of the endless ocean, but the washing machine is deaf to me. I obviously do not speak Indesit.

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Island Blog – Tatterlife

Yesterday the air was warm and still and the sun shone like a circle of fire in a right blue sky. T’is rare here and so very welcome. We, who live as islanders in the now of Now, know this and our shorts and suncream come out just like that. There is no Winter/Summer collection of clothing. We find the beach, the forest, the shore, just as the birds do. We do not presume another such day. This day the wind rises, not cold but coming from a source that will turn to South Westerly but not yet. This afternoon the wind is slanty-eyed, mean and punching and the poppies will not last the night for the accompanying rain that batters resolute. These are the days of our life up here and I remember it well, travelling back overtime when being ‘out there’ for the animals and the visitors brought a damp into the evening kitchen. Oh dear, tomorrow there will be people at our door, damp guests in need of warming food instead of the fresh salmon salad with minted new potatoes I had planned. Dawn found me making soup, a contradiction of what was yesterday as they chuckled in frocks and sunlight. But I know what you don’t know yet. I didn’t say.

And it thinks me. I wonder how those who expect Summer to be Summer or any season to be as it was, either in childhood, or just before we finally (good lord) got the hang of climate change. Resistance is futile. We know this. And we still resist. I think about that. Out here inside the sharp-toothed mouth of a volatile Atlantic Ocean, we might be wiser than we thought. After all, we have lived with a dynamic not many could ever live with and for years, no, generations. I get that island roots help and they do, a lot. My own understanding of this came once I discovered that my great grandfather was a lighthouse keeper on Skerryvore, one of the wildest and most isolated of lights and I mean so wild, even when the Atlantic was in a good mood. Ferocious waves and zilch accessibility. My great grandmother, on Tiree must have wrung her hands at every storm approaching. Or maybe not. Maybe she just got the hang of this sunshine calm/ ferocious storm dingbat thing like every other day. A boat will bring mail/people/family/food supplies. Or not. And the Not might be months.

I think we island folk, for all the moaning that goes on about ferries and poppy stripping, are pretty well equipped mentally for the way times are a’changing. I think that everyone should experience life in a wild place. Not not and not again as a holiday home but as an experience. The island, all islands are beautiful in the sunshine days. But there are zillions of poppy stripping days, of roofs lifted in sudden changes, of the slam dunk and crash of nature blasting in, of freak storms, of ferocious and terrifying gales with hours of lashing hailstones that can kill a cow, a deer, a sheep.

But I am glad to know this, to be in the mix of this. Not happy about the scary times but somehow in tune with what I have known for decades. However, this time, this climate change time does alert me like a rabbit to danger. And it is ok. If I am resistant to the change that is a glare in my headlights, then I am a fool and I am no fool. The poppies will be stripped in this sudden wind. And then I will walk out in the calm of the next day, thank them, and let them go. This is a Tatterlife. We are all living it no matter where we are, what we earn, whom we know. It isn’t that life is dying, no. Life is finally asking us to live it.

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Island Blog – Shift, Fly and a Dog’s Questions

This afternoon I walked into Tapselteerie, as I do every single afternoon, small terrier bounding afoot. She is always full of ridickerluss bounce as if we have never walked this way before; as if she and I are about to discover a gruffalo nest or a ferocean of fairies. I pointed out the conkers to her, the star moss, the positive pebbles I hid that someone has moved on, but she just looked at me like I was a weirdo. Her plan is to locate the biggest and longest stick she can find and then lift. She waits for me to forward, then runs full tilt, whacking the backs of my legs with half a hazel tree, thinking it hilarious and most satisfying. I don’t mind. She thinks I don’t know what’s coming, but my advantage is my human brain. I have worked out the math of this particular pole, considered the level of scratchy branch activity, the then width of the track, the level of recent rainfall and its ability to soak my calves. It’s a daily game and only infrequently I am required to say enough is enough. This day was one of those times. The pole would have held up an elephant’s weary head, no bother.

Up in the woods I heard childlaughter, my favourite sort. Poised on a rock and looking like a dream, a little girl squeaks with delight as her father completes the construction of a swing. I can see she will begin on the rock, but the fall away of the hill and the subsequent leap into the sky takes her 20 foot off the ground. She is tiny, wiry, slim and excited and I want to hide. I see a thousand disasters, but she sees none of them and nor does her father. He has swung many times higher in his time, almost to the moon and back, and, for all I know, touching moon base. He is, after all, my son and all of my children are risk takers and always were. I have no idea where they got that from. After successful launch, momentary panic as she looks down to see the blue planet below her tiny butt, followed by a happy landing back on the rock, the game is on, the shift from land to outer space completed.

Back home there is a shift. A sudden shift. In the journey that is dementia, this is oft how it works. Plateau, shift, level out, plateau and shift again. Everyone involved needs to catch up, learn, accept, take action. This is where we are now. Just 2 weeks ago the plateau felt like it was staying flat, for some long time, with only little skips and twirls that showed a gradual demise. But now on this road, the pilgrim has met landfall and it seems there is no way around it for him. He doesn’t want to eat, cannot move anywhere or anyway without help. We, his family, are coming to terms with that but I won’t say it is a natural nor an easy thing to come to terms with nor accept. How could it be? This is Dad. This is the strong provider of 50 years and then some, the one who knew the answers to everything and, if he didn’t, never let on. I remember a violently horrific North Sea crossing when I was so terrified I thought I would faint clean away (but didn’t), with a force 10 gale battering our boat, full sails up because it had come in so fast there was no time to reduce, nor crew (me being terrified) to strap on, walk the slippery deck in lashing rain, and then find the strength to work the winch. But, and but again, he never left the helm, navigated us home to within a few maritime feet of home harbour, using his skills and whatever stars he glimpsed. 17 hours of rocking and no soft cradle in sight, but he got us home and intact. This is the Dad who took risks, flew high and taught all of us to trust in him and to shut up and fly.

This shift is tough. I want to reach out to anyone and everyone who is going through this end game or who has gone through it. My utmost respect and admiration to you all.

Even the dog knows something’s up. She keeps looking at me, a million questions in her eyes.

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Island Blog – Steer Your Heart

As we move into Easter, the weirdest yet, without family around the table, perhaps even without eggs, we are having to be inventive. I think that is one of my favourite words, perhaps because I have been re-inventing myself all my life. I like this, no I don’t, I like her/him, no I don’t, I want to be an air hostess/intrepid explorer/dancer/aid worker………no, maybe not. Perhaps we are all like that as new fizz comes into our mental veins on hearing of someone else doing any of the above, until the morning comes and with it an abundance of realism, dammit. I often think morning has a lot to answer for. By the afternoon, anything is possible, I am possible, what I long to do is possible and I can go to bed with the absolute certainty that I will awaken to a dawn never known previously, one that affirms my breakout plans. It hasn’t happened yet.

Today is Good Friday, or Easter Friday if you don’t buy into the Good bit. Either way, it is a time we look forward to, as we do Christmas and Birthdays. Our own, anyway. But this year we can look until our eyeballs fall out but we won’t see what we want, what we have always known. First time ever for my generation and below. The Aboves knew it of course. War was woven into their memories, as this one will be for us. Everything this Easter must be done remotely, or from a distance. And it matters. Regardless of how inventive (there I go again) any of us are, it still hurts. There’s a slump in it as if life is lying doggo and we have no idea how or when it will wake up again with a Ta-da! We are moving along, going through the days, hope alternating with despair, bright and beamish one minute and sad as Eeeyore the next. It’s normal, its acceptable, more, it’s human. We long, we love, we care and without touch it feels like homesickness. Nostomania. Our instant leap to logic creates a pedagogue. This teacher is one of those I longed to flick cold chewing gum at, without being caught. Telling ourselves we must only think of the positive can send us captious. We might criticise others for walking twice a day, or those who shop every day and we know they do because they live upwind of us and the shop is downwind. We must take care we don’t let that thinking be our guide. Each one of us is required to make our own choices, our own decisions at this time. I remember, weeks ago, people saying to me….We will wait for the official decision on this, or that, whilst I had decided to release the carers and lockdown. Waiting never suited me.

So, I say, people, steer your own heart. It will guide you right, always. I notice some visitors have come to the island. I have a few opinions on that, not least because they may extend this time of lockdown just by travelling here. However, I won’t let myself become the judge. Instead, I will continue to make my own decisions, listening to my own heart, my best friend. As, I am sure, will you. There is no room for dithering these days, nor waiting for the official ruling, nor, even, asking someone else their opinion. After all, we all know at our deepest level, what we need to do to survive and to make sure our loved ones do too.

Happy Easter my friends. I wish you serendipities by the score. No matter what is to come, we may be broken, but we are not beaten. We are strong, intelligent, wise, loving, emotional, caring humans. I salute you all.

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Island Blog 154 Reality Check

Rumi wisdom

As I sit here tapping on the keys of a laptop, waiting for my friends to wake up to another glorious morning in Argyll, I consider our conversation last night over dinner, on Perception and Reality. We had spent the afternoon developing depth and texture on one of my songs. Again, they said, sing that again, only, this time, shorten the vowel sound and give it more breath. Slowly but surely, a single line of melody took on colour and light. There were six of me in the end, in as perfect a repeat as made no difference. It’s interesting how difficult it is to sing exactly the same over an original melody line, not so much the rise and fall of the notes in sequence, but more the length of beats in a single word, such as ‘gold’ or ‘right’. If the consonants don’t land at precisely the same point (and a nanosecond matters) then it can sound like a shower of bullets. T-t-t……etc. I considered bringing the importance of such perfect repetition into ordinary life, hence the conversation. I may walk through exactly the same situation as you, but our perception of it can be chalk versus cheese.
Why is that, and is it okay, good, even, to have different slants, sometimes as many as there are people involved? Of course, it can make for war, and often has, and will continue to do so as long as people walk the earth; one that seems to be managing to extinguish rather a lot of its inhabitants. On a goodly sunshine day, and in a warm, easy, light-hearted situation, such as a merry meet in the bakery or on the street, our differences in perception and ‘reality’ matter little. We can walk away, wave, think what we like once the meet is done, but life isn’t about merry meets all the time.
Sometimes we butt up against an opinion we do not share, but however skilled we are at marketing our own, however loud we talk, however clever our words, we can never change the perception of another soul. We do not live their life, share their dreams and longings, feel their pain, know their joy, understand their song. And we have never looked through their eyes. We may try to do just that and call it empathy. We learn to listen, some of us, and then to mindfully consider that our own perception of reality, the one we are absolutely convinced is the blue print, just might be a blur to another.
At the moment we are all facing a Perception/Reality check, as the country moves towards election day. Some of us will shrug it off, not bother to vote, asking What’s the Point when Nothing Changes? We are bombarded with arguments, one party shouting its promises, another berating those promises as so much rubbish. Accusations of past failure, one-upmanship, clever quips and outright slander is all around us. Who is right to lead us and do we believe in the depth and texture, the perfect unity of their song, or do we feel bullet-battered and uncertain of the melody line?
One thing is for certain. If we bother to vote, at least we make it clear that our own reality matters to us, however we perceive it.