beach

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Island Blog – The Dance in the Delight

So much to say, so many observations and thinks. Let us begin with the bump on my pointy finger. It isn’t painful, just there and it and I I do need the odd conversation. It’s possibly an olding thing. Anyways, this bump. I filed it down to a nothing much. Then I went to my laptop to sign in with finger recognition and was refused. I’ve been refused for days until the bump came back.

It thinks me.

Today at the Best Beach Cafe Ever, it was fun, as always, the bosses so flipping great with customers, an immediate welcome, even when we are 10 orders behind them, the chat dynamic and chuckly. Did I just make that word up…? We do all the dietary requirements here with spectacular cakes, quiches, scones and more. I love the twist and the dance of this cafe. I don’t think I have met it before. There is never a ‘No’ but instead a suggestion for a something else. I honestly think anyone who comes here feels immediately welcome, as if we were just waiting for them.

They come, the cyclists, the couples, the young families with wee ones, the folks with dogs, with troubles, with the exceedingly important need to escape to the glorious wild of this island. I met two really fun couples today. Now, here, I am clumsy with myself because I don’t know (old) the naming, labelling of pretty much anything nor anyone, nor do I care. Both couples were married men. I don’t give a bejabers about labels. I just loved interacting with them, their dog, their story. All beautiful people. We laughed in the sunshine. I watched their faces, saw their connection with each other, the familiar, and that is a beautiful thing. It lasts me.

I brought strawberries home, for ‘jammin’. My lovely bosses, who know about weighing and stuff, asked me to weigh (and stuff). I did, I did try, but got lost at 2934 kilograms. Not sure what that all means. The jam will be good, I know that. I have cooked for 40 years without weighing a damn thing. However I was nonsense at costing anything and there’s a story there. This new leadership is young and building and right on the whole lot of it all. I admire that.

It was a day of sunshine and random requests……americano, short with oat milk on the side, triple espresso, with mascarpone and lemon topped carrot cake; salted hot chocolate with a pecan brownie, a slice of lemon polenta, oh, and a fruit scone, warmed, yes, with jam and butter. An herbal tea, yes in a pot, is there lemon, can I have two plates, two forks to share that gorgeous coffee cake?

Yes, every time.

I love working with such authentic people. There’s definitely a dance in such a delight. And, a going on with what is there, just right there, without any botherment.

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Island Blog – Proud I am

Back from work, a busy day in the best cafe ever, above white sands, above history, the place from where many families were cleared, uplifted, circa 1870’s, homes burned, and then wheeched across oceans , without a change of knickers and with no sanwiches, because, and get this, the landownders thought sheep would be more profitable (and less of a pain in the baxxy). than humans. Folk are drawn here. Yes, there are excellent coffees, soups, bakes, welcomes, but there is a ‘more than’ thing going on here. I can see it in their eyes. They have clocked something, but have no clue what it is. Bus tours arrive, all a-flutter, all unsure about whether to go for banana loaf or lemon polenta cake, or maybe a cheese scone with extra Mull cheese and Mull Seaweed Chutney, or soft sponge with strawberry jam or carrot cake with philly icing, or flapjacks, brownies, focaccia bread…… and there is so much more to invite you in and to make happy you as our guests.

When I move out from the hidey-hole, it is, it is my hidey-hole. I confess, I admit. It is where the non-stop washing up-ness goes on, and my safe place. However I hear voices. There’s a nudge in me. I clock two other servers, but I can tell I need to let go of my comfortable scrubber persona. We are a team, we are few but we are each important, and of value. My listening tells me that a whole tribe has arrived. I pull out from the hiding of this work, and I see a big few, a big queue. I hear ‘Can I help you?’ and a backdrop chatter from those not first in the queue. There is a lifting ahead, a wild scamper, a dynamic. The wee team rises into, not a clearing of humans, but, yes, a clearing of humans. Quick fire, one order, two, three, four, five. We have run out of hooks for the paper choices. No matter. We talk, murmur. This, needs this, that needs that, is there extra cheese, cream, jam? I watch us flow through the small space, moving like dancers, pulling back, moving forward, asking for help, two trays for table 8, is the quiche ready, is there more salad….all of that. Two soups with focaccia, two different soups; two quiches; one warmed cheese scone with extra cheese, two fruit scones with local jam and cream, one elderberry tea, two flat whites, one with oatmeal milk, one salted hot chocolate with marshmallows and cream, one with none of those. We work to make sure that they are served on loads of trays, everything hot, everything timed to work with the dynamic of their group. We fill the water bowl for their dogs. We ask about their little ones, engage with Granny, make sure we make sure that every guest feels like the One.

I am proud to work with the young and intuitive owners, and with the funny, beautiful, crazy, sometimes weary, girls with whom I work. I am granny to them. They lift me, remind me of the feisty woman I am, was, am.

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Island Blog – Somebody Somewhere

Back from work and I love to work, particularly there, in the cafe above a big ass, wide sandy beach, white grains, old shells caravanned through endless crashing waves, longtime empty of their inhabitants, and, very possibly, centuries old. Landed here, the bits of sparkly life, ground down, still sparkling, all laid flat like a platitude, for careless feet to scutch up, for kiddies to rebuild into passing castles, for yet another tide to grab with oceanic multifingers, careless, tossing any grab into any wild weather, a constant swirl, no chance to find a home.

It thinks me. Up here, and away from the centuries old thing, there are humans. Weird ones, funny ones, lying ones, avoiding ones, shy ones, shouty ones; those who burst into a room, with a smile like Santa, those who hide behind a load of fitkit , those couples who can’t decide without each other. I notice body language – a closeness to the counter, a big voice, assertive – a pull back, shy, begging a welcome, an invite. I see young parents come in, tentative, with a wee one who just might kick-off. I so feel for them. I see indecision. Where shall we sit, in or out, here or maybe over there? there’s a deal of head snapping on that one, a whole dynafusion of questions. What is my place here? Should I take charge? Did I just take charge? Is that okay? Oh, dear…….The space before the welcoming counter is a whole flipping world of learnation.

I pull back, after having a gazillion chuckles with the frontal guests, fixing their orders and charging them 400 quid for a scone. Ach, it did have extra cheese and a delicious locally brewed seaweed chutney, but, nonetheless, a bit too much. I will work this pingy pay thingy eventually. However, the fun connection created when an eejit like me who never ever said she was ok with such scary equipment, erupts into a body relax across the counter, I know I am in the right place. I am seen, happily playing the fool, and they, I can see it, gentle. Instead of us (the workers) and you, the welcome customers, and this frickingly loaded counter of spectacular cakes and lunch options and just a few of us being very dynamic btw, and rules and that charging thingy, it’s just us humans, people, picked up and moved, tossed every which way by endless life-changing winds.

We are all somebodies, all of us somewhere, all of us trying to breathe.

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Island Blog – Sun, Rain and I will Tomorrow

It may appear that, now I’m in Africa, I have less to say. Of course, it isn’t that, not at all, but more something to do with the sun, the beckoning, the light that opens up a day into a ‘let’s go’. It’s the same back home when the sun finds it in himself to show up at all, and we all respond, leaping into shorts despite the freezeback wind and the threaten of clouding somewhere over by. Kids want the beach, a picnic, play and more play, and thus everyone and anyone heads for the sea, or the river, or the pool if there is one in the vicinity. So, my musing will have it, sunshine and water are strongly linked. Very few will choose a cinema matinee or a visit to Great Aunt Granola in the nursing home. Not on a sunshine day. The film will show again, and she can wait a day or two as it is sure to rain tomorrow or the next, as it always does.

In Africa, rain is a blessing, and a challenge to drivers. I imagine it is also a challenge to those who live in townships, all those roofs fashioned from sheets of tin if you’re lucky, bits of tarp or bin bags if you’re not. But rain brings instant life to soil, fills water tanks, cools broiling bodies, eases tension. The drivers, as aforementioned, however, panic. Slippy roads stultify and confuse, it seems. Capetown, and other places, go slow, and I mean very slow, so that traffic convergence becomes traffic hesitation. Windscreen wipers swing like crazy and every other vehicle flashes emergency lights at any opportunity. It’s hilarious, unless you’re in a hurry, and a bizarre to me who knows rain in every state from slightly slippy road, through compromised vision to roadside puddles deep enough to sink my mini.

I walked again today down to the Indian Ocean. Sounds so majestic. She is warm and wild, her waves no hawking spit but rising above the horizon, backlit by sun, clutching kelp and shells in her grasp, to boom, and I mean BOOM onto the wide arc of white sand. She has a lot to say, and loudly. I felt it today as I read my book, the sonar wave shooting up the beach through me and knew I was connected, as we all are to all things, all the wild things we have, unfortunately forgotten in our rush for worldly gain. I watch dogs scuttle and dash in and out of the waves, their humans wandering besides. I see kite surfers fly above the crests, and canoeists paddle out to investigate rock formations. I hear children laughing as they tumble and shriek through the shallows.

My walk here takes me through an underpass, meaty with kelp-throw, a rush of freshwater strictured after big moon tides and very gloopy to navigate. Then I meet the ocean, flooding like she has a load of tongues, no two with the same sweep. One ankle deep, the next losing most of my legs to the swirl. I chuckle. My feet are safe, sand locked, my frock hem-soaked. I read a while, watch a train chortle by just above my head, wish I had brought my swimsuit. (is that what it’s called these days?)

I will tomorrow.

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Island Blog – There you go

Spring is here. Let me feel it one my skin, beneath my bare feet. Let me hear it, the birdsong, the rustling inside the branches, the dart and dash of new life. Let me watch the creatures return, the gathering of nesting softness, and let me know the fear and the joy of finding a home, one in which to birth and protect the next generation. Let me take it all in, no dash and hurry, no missing any of it. I wander a track squelched by winter cold and rain, the mud ridges trying so hard to firm up and sinking me nonetheless. Last years leaves mulch beneath my boots, pushed ever down into the ground and it smiles me. We are born, we live, we die, but in that inevitable cycle we leave something of ourselves behind, something that can become the ground for a new beginning, one we will not experience. There is a song in that, harmonious, melodious, lilting-sad but a powerful legacy indeed. Our own song may be sung out, but we can bring a new baseline for another generation to stand on in their own times, times of feeling lost, times perhaps of fear or confusion, saying I am here, beneath your feet and you can do this because I did it too, feeling just like you feel now.

The sea-loch is quiet this morning, a late frost ghosting the grasses that run down to where land meets tide. The ancient rocks shine in morning sunshine and the old trees along the shoreline, still winter brown, will soon rise into green. Migrant birds return to sparkle my garden with their impossible colours, goldfinch, siskin, whilst those who stayed home line the fence awaiting breakfast. Birdmusic fills the air, lifting melodies into a soft blue sky, melodies no composer ever really captured. On days like these, hope comes calling. Everything is possible. On days like these, a morning like this, I remember waking to work with a smile, a gasp at the sudden beauty, one in which I played no part. And, yet, my part begins now, not just as witness to a morning like this, but in an active role. Guests at Tapselteerie need breakfast, children need winding out of bed sheets and into school clothing. Packed lunches need to be prepared, wrapped and delivered. A whale-watching trip lies ahead, the boat impatient and bobbing. Get me fired up, get me out there among the sea-birds, the dolphins, porpoise, otters, seals, whales, the wild wide ocean calls, can’t you hear her? Yes, we can hear and we are on our way, human time. There is, I tell the ocean, a process to a morning for our part. We need the right clothing, the breakfast in our bellies, a packed lunch in our knapsack, binoculars, waterproofs, boots for the island landing, our bird books, cetacean books, our cameras, water bottles, an extra jersey, hats, gloves………Good Lord what a ridiculous list, sighs the ocean, lapping faster against the stone jetty. She needs none of those add-ons after all.

It may be a boat trip, it may be a walk or drive to work. It may be a day in school, or there may be no plan at all. It matters not. What does matter is how we do whatever we need to do in a day, our attitude. Are we thankful for this day, this hour, this moment and do we say so? Do we notice every detail with humility and gratitude and say so? I know, having learned how life can be snuffed out in a single breath un-breathed, how important it is to be present in every living moment, to appreciate it and to say so. And, more, how that outspoken presence leaves a legacy for a new young life, as yet un-lived. We come, we go. What we do in between, who we are and how we do what we do is remembered, either as encouragement, nourishment, an example to follow, or not. None of us can change all our circumstances but we can, with grace and our eyes on each moment, each encounter, leave not just our own story, but a lot of invisible threads that conjoin with others, leave kisses on a stranger’s heart. And, the legacy of that is endless.

This day, we walked onto a wide white sandy beach to send ashes back to the sea. This place she loved, he loved, this curve of powdered shells over many many years, where the sea comes in and goes out twice a day and every day; where the sky goes on forever and where we stand looking out to sea, to the great beyond, thoughts lifting, memories, moments, pictures of a lifetime well and truly lived. Through heartache, troubles, joys and laughter, through birthdays, anniversaries, holidays and ordinary days, these two held the line. I hear their laughter as I watch the wavelets lap at the shore, claiming ground. I watch those times they flew above their troubles in the cant and tilt of a seagull, a raven. They walked here once, no, more than once. I see them still, on this beach, distant but there. As I walk back up to my car with my little dog, sand in my boots and shells in my pocket, I know I will not forget this sunshine day, the words spoken, the sight of ashes floating away, the flute melody, the poem, the song, the prayers, the being a part of it all.

Back among ice cream eaters and picnickers I look up. An eagle flies. I wave. There you are my lovelies. There you go.