book-reviews

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Island Blog – The Romance

I remember it, so well. Those moments of spin and wild, the light in another’s eyes, the thrill which began in my toes and was the only thing that, or is it which, moved up my legs to the beyond. The belly thrill, the lightening of my heart, the overspill in my face, lips curving up until they almost made a circle, I remember it so very well. I’m not sure I see it around me anymore. Oh, I see couples, a lot, in the cafe, and there is ‘game on’ fun with some, but there seems to be an awful lot of functionality. A kind of this is how we are now, after all this time.

I know I am a real romantic. I am. I want a man to take me dancing, to swing me. However, this is not on offer. Is romance dying? I hope not. In my very early teenage years, there seemed to be plenty of it, it was the way of the day. No girl would accept less than a door being opened for her, a protective arm around her in an awkward situation, a coat offered in the cold, a lift home, and respect for her girlhood. I honestly believe that still lives on, but what may not is the man in this mix, the boy who wants to be a protector, a respecter, because he is unsure about the who of him in this culture of Big Man, all muscles and the filling in of the doorway.

omance,alive,My point is this. Romance is not old, not dead, but in us all. We just let it fizzle out as the demands of earning, fear of loss, parental pressure and more, overkill the light maker in us. And the demands do it well, they always have and over many many years. There is a fight ahead, and if any of us seriously believe that life from now is not a fight, then the any will fall away. We are up against a lot more than we understand. Romance is ours, so lovely, so light, so glorious, so thrilling,

My sister and her husband began with romance. They still dance, they still romance after decades. It’s possible, and for all of us. The functional sensible in you just needs oiling.

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Island Blog – Random, Fun, Chance,Respect

Thing is, we seem to forget these, as if they belong, belonged, in youth, something we have left behind with apologies. My ‘recalcitrant’ youth. My ‘misspent’ youth. And that wild and exciting persona is dumped in the past, trampled over in the obscene rush for success, ‘success’ because that word tastes different in a million mouths, in generational expectation, in the midden, and madden of thixotropic stultification. I know it, felt it. What is it you want? Well, who the hell ever asked that question (Im dithering between a question mark and an exclamation here). I do remember feeling lost in a swirl of long hair and crazy outfits and the need to be noticed, the danger in that, I remember. But, and more buts, how come it all gets chucked out with the garbage of what always comes next, the work, the deadlines, the trials of any union, particularly when a babe bursts into what was, heretofore, reasonably orderly?

What I see, out there, and not everywhere, is a dulling. Not here, not on this dynamic island where fun rises from the potholes and with the lift of wee new flight birds winkling right in your drive path to an appointment. They didn’t get the memo, obviously, because the winkle thing can take a while. But I hear of it, read it, in cities in confines of many sorts, the dulling. As if Fun is for someone else, but not me. I know shortage of earning is tricky. I know that there is almost no hope for an island home purchase. But, what I have learned over almost half a decade here, or, indeed on any island, and trust me, is that we need new blood, new ideas, we really do, to come, to engage with the recalcitrants, the pub, the local shop, those who will still hold tight to the place they value above all, bar their mother, and to ask, to befriend, to engage. And not to give up.

The islands are very happy as they are. But in the future, the economy will need any of you who bring random dance, fun, the chance to learn from you and you from us. I’m a passionate islander. I am brung (new word) up short as I watch a searing of a hillside in the creation of a new home, well, hopefully home. I see the changes, the invasion, as it might feel on first encounter, but I know we need those who want to live here to engage with the communities, to bring new hope but….. be cautious and respectful to a gazillion years of knowledge and a working understanding.

I just went to the pub. I laughed and shared and learned, and I would not live anywhere else out of choice.

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Island Blog – A Crooked- Voiced Crow

I’m hearing sounds unfamiliar to me. Above my hotel lurks a crow with a crooked voice. Sounds to me as if he has wrongly wired vocal chords. I watch him make these strange calls and when a mate joins him on the CCTV camera, it thinks me. I might have, and did, at first, consider him a case for sympathy. With that voice, will he ever attract a mate? The rasp is more ‘Go Away’ than ‘Come Hither’ after all, but how wrong was my judgement on the matter!

Inside the warm and welcoming Maggie’s centre, I watch people. Over there is a man who has throat cancer, his voice, produced via a box implant is a hoarse and raspy whisper, his own voice gone forever. Was he a tenor or a baritone, loud-spoken or honey gentle or a bit of both, depending on circumstances? Did he shout, once, as he will no more, or sing, or summon the troops into battle? I will never know. Then there is the guy who has terminal liver cancer and is just out of hospital. Despite this, he is full of jokes and twinkle, talking to everyone, ready, always ready to laugh.

I watch newbies wander in, eyes darting left and right, looking for a safe landing. I hear the welcomes from the staff, the ‘Come Hither’ in their warm and compassionate eyes. Gradually, the newbie’s coat comes off, she is guided to the kettle, the coffee and the tea, the bowls of fruit, chocolates, biscuits and cake. We sit in sunshine behind the glass walls, talking, wishing each other all the hopes for full recovery. I am aware that some cannot hope for that, but, in talking to them, laughing with them, I can see the cancer slide away from their eyes, just for a moment, an hour, a day. Back home, back into the relentless barrage of tests and therapies, reality may well re-invade, and hope can be a heavy weight to lift up each day, for some. I can afford to play the fool, I am well and ridiculous and always full of mischief. (Mischief…….interesting word to pull apart, methinks.) But, even though I am so lucky, so without pain or a possibly hopeless road ahead, I am accepted because I have cancer. We are a new family and there is much to learn about each other, many random conversations to have, many opportunities within which to uplift each other. If I lived here, I would definitely volunteer in this centre. I would meet and greet, lift and encourage, play the daft eejit, sympathise and sit beside another broken bodied soul. And it isn’t just the one with cancer who needs such. There are partners, children, siblings and friends, all in a permanent state of shock, all battling with an overactive imagination, or with a sharp and agonising truth.

I am learning, as we all must, not to hide our diagnoses nor our feelings around them, but to stand up and out, as survivors, however long that survival might prove to be. To find each other, people we would probably never ever meet, had cancer not found a landing within our trusting bodies, a chink, a broken paving stone, a pothole, an unintentional welcome to a predator. I hear, and see, multi cultures in here. I see all shapes, all sizes, listen to all accents, and all of them are beautiful to me now, in a way they never were before. How easy it is, especially in a city, to march past all of this beauty without even a ‘Hi’. I’ve been ‘Hi-ing’ my walk to my radiotherapy appointment each morning, sometimes to the astonishment of the person coming towards me, so used are they to their own agenda and a perceived unfriendliness of everyone they don’t already know. Mostly, however, I receive a smile and a ‘hi’ back and that thinks me too. We can become so very lonely as we live out our lives, not because we want to, but perhaps through fear, or the ordinary process of keeping our broken parts invisible to all. We cover them in clothes and make-up. We keep our arms close to our bodies, our voices low. But what we all long for, in truth, is connection. We just don’t feel confident enough to reach out for it, to face the risk of rejection, for fear of looking foolish. But if we could just, like the crooked-voiced crow, call out anyway, smile to each other, say ‘Hi’ to a line of folk in a bus stop, a queue for radiotherapy, anywhere, everywhere, I know that loneliness would lift, just a little, and, who knows, it could lead to new friendships, as it has for me.

For anyone interested in learning more about Maggie’s Centres, I am visiting the one in Glasgow, on the Gartnavel Campus, opposite the Beatson Cancer Centre, but these havens of support are everywhere.

Just go to http://www.maggies.org