Ancient

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Island Blog – Susurration, Perhaps

Outland, Outsea, this unpredictable giant of salt water, gluttoning on random rivers, streams and a million other acolyte trickles of water, bursting from deep, deep within the belly of earth, all desperate to conjoin with the Outsea, the glorious escape from endless confinement. They cannot resist the ancient call, no matter how Man levels and compromises, poisons and redirects them for new housing, for a wrong forestation. No matter the poles thrust deep, no matter the planting of invasive species just because nobody educated us in time. These bodies of water will find a way, however patient they might need to be.

I watch it all through a reach of glass. Gannets slipside a wind I cannot feel, sitting here behind a double shot cappuccino with chocolate sprinkles. I cannot sense the slant and shift as they rise and float so close to an unforgiving granite cliff. Below I notice seaweed flopped over the stony rocktops like mermaid hair. When the tide rolls back in a great big yawn, the patient weed will lift again and float away, always on the move, a survivor in a deeply awkward life. And then cometh another storm, or the oceanic and angry response to the way we humans are making life very difficult for the flow of water, and that weed will look like a victim as it is blattered onto rocks by the fist of gravity and into new places. But don’t be deceived.

Ice white spume froths around the rocks, falling away, back into the green. Under-sea blow sends shadow pulses then takes them away. Catspaws echo each puff of wind, a feisty wind, footsteps. Gulls crowd on a spit of rock, a jagged tooth. They look like jewels from here. A shag stands sentinel right on the end, sea-facing, wings out like a black angel. None of these know I am here, high up on the cliff. watching the wind taunt the water willow, the scraggy grasses, watching the long reach of every wave push across the sand; watching each one retreat, return, repeat. Across the poppling water, the Outlands are clear, striations on their rocky faces. I can count them and see a peppering of cottages, a mast or two, a ship hugging the far shore. The gulls weave a sky web, the gannets dive, the shag stands dark sentry, and up here, behind the double shot cappuccino and that reach of glass, I can hear nothing. Susurration. perhaps.

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Island Blog – Mind over Matter

I have a wood thing going on here. Well, not just me, it seems, but everyone who burns wood for heat on the whole of the West Coast. Blimey! That is a whole load (no pun intended) of not-woodness. I’m not sure any of us saw this coming, or, it might just be me who never saw it coming, what with my focussed presence in the present and with no reading of news or paying much attention at all to the slivers and shivers of doom talk in the village. Notwithstanding, there is no wood. It wonders me. What about the old and cold folk? I hope they have heaters, that’s what I hope, although it is a backside hope considering the sudden rise in utility bills. I can, at least, stand, walk, split big logs. What of those who cannot, and, what if this continues all the way up to winter? Let’s not go there, spiralling into that cold flapdoodle. Let us remain in the present moment, something my counsellor advises me to do, a place it is best to be because if I step out into the stratosphere of chaos and imaginary collapse, I just might never return. No, that isn’t me. I will always return because I have the gift of good health, strong limbs, (ish) no medication, no condition beyond widowness, which, for your information, isn’t even a word.

My wood box is empty. It’s a big old box and I am never happier than when it is full. It used to be so easy. I call, I order, the split and seasoned wood arrives with a cheery smile. I stack, and grin, the abundance thing always grins me.. My log box smiles back. I think about the trees, the felled trunks, the gift they give, these felled giants and the warmth they bring to my bones. A merry fire, merries. Another not word. However, I have some old pine woodland out back and the trees, over 130 years old now, are beginning to die. Can you begin to die? I suspect, yes. Felled by an expert feller, stacked in the woods, some, and a few of the bigger rounds brought down to my garage. These rounds are ready for splitting. Hmmm. The biggest waist girth a much bigger woman than I, but, I encourage myself, they are light, seasoned, ready for the axe. I apply stout boots and go to lift the first. I can do this. The other rounds snigger, I hear it and shoot them a fierce look. They quieten. Now, I do know about splitting wood, how to avoid the knots, where to place the axe, or, in this case, the wedge. I grab the mell and almost fall over. It is way heavier than I remember. Bracing, my stomach muscles ready, I place the wedge and swing the damn mell. I connect and the groan from this huge round tells me I picked the very spot. With a great deal of puffing, missing, and foot darting as the whole thing leaps off the block, I chop enough for one evening. One Evening? Yes, I am afraid so, just the one.

One morning I decide to attack a twisty one. It is ready for this as am I, or so I thought. I whack the mell and whack the mell, the right groans coming from this part of a lovely old tree, and whack and so on and so forth and fifth and even sixth until the wedge is deep inside the determined roundness of the round which remains, well, round. Rats! Now I have my only wedge wedged and completely buried. I hear a chuckle and raise my hand like a schoolmarm. I step back to assess. I will not call my neighbour, a weak 70 year old pathetic woman, I will not. My brilliant brain kicks into life. Observing the stuckness of things, what can I do to free this wedge sans man help? What I need is a pole with a point, that’s what I need. I have one, surely? I do. I place it beside the sniggering wedge. It is too high for me to whack with a mell which is weighty as a ton of lead. I think again. Elevation, that’s it, for me. I heft the stuck wedge and the pole and big round of ancient pine onto the concrete floor, stepping onto the block. Perfect. I whack and whack and so on. Suddenly, the pole achieves my aim (thank you pole) and the wood breaks apart. I am exhausted but so chuffed with my body and brain power. I am not done. I may be alone with these alone things, I may be 70 but I am not done.

And tomorrow? Well, I go again……..

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Island Blog 39 – The New Old

Me on the boat

Today I am 60 years old.

When I was a young thing, bouncing carelessly through my days and nights, my greatest concern was that I looked like everyone else whose stocking seams ran in a straight line all the way up to their sensibly clad bottoms, and whose mothers approved of them.

I never managed it.  In fact, it was rather fun to see just how many winds of seam I could wrap around my leg before I choked and fell over.  When tights came in, everything went to pot on the wrapping fun, for reasons I am sure you can quite well imagine.

Those women of 60, to whom I looked up, or so they thought, and, to be honest, some of them earned an upward look, seemed ancient as fossils.  They had looked like their mothers since they were 25 anyway, but somehow, at 60, it all set like concrete, in their attitudes, their faces and in their moral confidence.  I can still roll my eyes and want to hide up a tree just thinking about them, as they pinged my mother’s doorbell and were allocated seats for luncheon. It was there in those lips pursed for ‘a small sherry’ and in the hush of gossip.

Is this now me?

No flipping chance.

I and my 60 year old peers are breaking that mould.  We are no longer ‘mouldy’ nor are we up for being moulded.  Although we may have become shape-changers, we are doing it our way.  Not as a group, which is what the previous generation seemed to do, but as individuals.  It is not necessarily easy nor simple this being an individual thing, but the more I speak with my daft female friends, the more determination I hear and because we support each other, not to be the same as we are, but to be whoever they are, through the filter of their own life, their own heart, I do believe we are about to cause chaos.

I can see that such a change might not be too everyone’s taste.  After all, our mothers happily retreated behind mounds of fluffy scones at just the right time, allowing us to leap out of the conjurer’s hat and into a surprised world as the ones to watch from now on.  Our mothers’ sensibly clad bottoms became just bottoms, when ours invited conversation.  Their voices fell back into an appropriately domestic hum, whereas we say blow to baking on a regular basis (not least because our husbands might grow too fat), and the confident voice of the new olds reaches up and out and can silence a room of men.

Now there’s a thing!

So get ready world, for we are coming and worse, much much worse, our daughters are watching.