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Island Blog – The Q uiet People

I had jotted down, as I always do, a trickle of thought, one I wanted to capture. I wrote ‘I love the quiet people’. and there is more to write on that. However, inside my ongoing of a day of preparation and my departure from my beloved island on transit to another beloved place which currently is racking up 40 degrees, I confess to Q. Questions for others, for myself. The facing of the awful Q through check-in, security, passport control. So I decide to find Q in my trusty and ancient Thesaurus. I find Quiddity. It’s an old word, you will know. Not one that finds a place in ordinary conversation, but one that intrigues me for its meaning.

Quiddity is the ‘whatness’ or ‘Who-ness’ which makes something or someone distinguished from others, the universal nature of that thing or person, including quirks and eccentricities. I know why Q came to me today. And in the Thesaurus, it’s in Section 1. ‘Existence’. I have never, in decades of writing ever been wheeched back to Section 1, but as I read down the lines of the first page on Abstract Relations, I feel I have landed. I am Q. So is everyone but most of us don’t get that, until we do. It’s all about the questions and the quirks and the quiddity, but not just that. The Q person has to recognise themself, or is it ‘selves’? A Question for the rainbows.

Packing for Africa whilst I shiver under a panoply of thixotropic cloudage is extremely tricky. Shorts, skimpy frox, teeshirts I have completely forgotton about and which give me some grief as I pull them from hibernation. They’re all laid low right now, swacked and contained, rolled and suppressed and somewhat sat-upon and my case is not full of the ‘right’ clothes. It never was. I never looked as they did. I was a Q although I didn’t know that, and didn’t want that. I wanted to be any other letter of the alphabet, whatever got me into the inner halls of Them. I know different now. When you are a Q, you learn to be one. It’s lonely as hell. It’s dark and unfriended. But if you want to be who you want to be, Own the Q and find support. You’re a Q. You know the way.

I’m in Heathrow now and watching a gazillion people flow by, all joined up in line like a very long and colourful caterpillar. I am not comfortable at all around crowds, fast-movers, noise, cities, people in excess and yet I am calm. I won’t be, of course, once my gate is on the board and I have 15 minutes to get from A1 to Z46 by train, but I have done this before and still arrived in Africa for Breakfast with another Q. My son.

Talk soon from the Spring of Africa, among the Quiet people.

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Island Blog – Now and then

It’s cold, the wind an iceslice with bitey teeth like a ferret, not that I know a damn thing about ferret teeth but I can imagine. Tiny sharp incisors and no filters in the mind of the owner thereof. I was bitten by a mouse once, the tiny rodent I was trying to save from being sluiced down a push of rainwater. I grabbed it, no thoughts of teeth in my own mind and was hurt and upset until I understood an instinctive reaction. I could have been a ferret after all. However, and this is irrelevant, the wound rose red and its subsequent pulsation required a switchback trip to the doctor because I was basically carrying a balloon on my forefinger, thus unable to text, employ finger recognition, or point an accusation at anyone without inviting ridicule. Irrelevant.

This time of year is yahoo Spring although it isn’t yet. I do know, of course i do, that Spring up here on the butt of the west coast of Scotland with the wild Atlantic wheeching up huge waves and making a great big noise about it, munching old rocks into pivots, and flipping sands into a beachy confusion, is to be expected. I remember lambing in April in the snow. Not me, the cheviots. But I was on the early shift and for weeks. 5am, swallowing mouthfuls of darkness and cold, looking for colour. Not moon, or maybe moon, such a fickle light. I’m searching for those undercover, the ewes who take their hideaway in cowers and coppice, under hedges, in the brack and barm of stone dykes. Twins or triplets definitely a challenge. Too much for the exhausted mother. Delivering, shifting tricky ones coming arse first, all out, all ok, pulling off the sticky stuff out of tiny mouths desperate to breathe, sucking the stuff, mouth to mouth, blowing in whisky breath probably, the wriggle and pulse of life in my hands, the shouty thrill of it, in the early dawn. The crows are not awake yet. My job, to deliver if I can, to make safe if I cannot and to leg it back home to wake himself. I can’t do that one, this one. He was exhausted, had walked the fields/parks all the day before right up to Crow Sleep Time. He rose, still clothed and smelling like days of unwashed and sheep. The daytime walks I couldn’t do. Feral kids, guests, dinners, bedroom changes, cleaning, phone calls about cottage bookings, calves to feed, cow to milk, stable mucking out, hens to organise, eggs to collect. Enough. We did well. I know we did, the clueless We who had never done a single thing on that list before. Lambs survived, mostly, children definitely did, guests returned to the Quirky Hotel and now……well, now I have none of that other than what I’ve learned and that is a powerful and energising gift. This is what I did, what we did.

Now, when I still swallow mouthfuls of darkness and cold, I remind myself of what I have achieved and, therefore what I can still achieve, not in the same context, nor genre, nor situation, but I still can achieve. And here’s how I do this achieving thing. Any time the alien thought marches in tooting a trumpet, all important and (somewhat ridiculous) I shake my head. Ah, I smile, no thanks. You think you define me now as, yes unsure, yes with less self confidence, yes a bit wobbly whilst hanging heavy curtains, yes in a dither because my car computer tells me I have a stop alert when I know that everything mechanical is quite fine and always was before computers made us all doubt our own intelligence. I am grafting myself off this failing tree, because I realise I stuck myself here. And, it is so good to notice, to realise, and then to take action. I have strength, huge strength, maybe not physical although don’t tell me I can’t lift this, nor carry that because I damn well will. I have wisdom, experiential wisdom. Not many care to connect with that in these sad times when oldings are written off as a right pain in the arse, and that saddens me. I learned so much vital knowledge on how to cope with life, the world, the isolation, from my granny, my parents, and, I am happy to say that my ferals and their kids do connect with me, asking things, smiling a lot and with no understanding at all of how life was without the internet.

Talk to your granny, grampa. Your wisdom guides. They really never thought they would ever be a pain in the arse. Trust me.

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Island Blog – She

Fingernail moon up there in the blue. Clouds gentle, moving grey and soft and ever changing. Silence, as day sinks away and night rises all black and holding. It doesn’t fear me anymore, although it did once. It’s as if an inevitable Onething decolours, swallows all other things down a black throat, until a wee intuitive light lifts. I can see now, a bit, admittedly, but I can see. Of course in all places of street lights, cafe welcomes, car headlights, Darkness does not have her time on stage. Here she definitely does. The fingernail moon is enough in this wild place. She can, and has often before, lit my way home after a ceilidh, walking among gentle trees, the only sound a burn trickle, a rustle of wildlife, eyes watching me. I’m amazed I never fell in a ditch. The pull of home is ever strong . It was about two miles but with the ceilidh in me, still hearing the dance, the tunes, I knew I would get there, to that door, into that home of children, dogs and safety. I never felt unsafe here, still don’t, not for a minute. I am Island blest.

I did stuff today, kept doing the stuff. Most of it is boring to be honest, cleaning, checking, sorting and that’s how life is. However, and I always have one of those in my pocket, I know I have a choice as I head for the hoover or the power drill or the hose, or the mould clearing squirt. A choice of attitude. I can see myself hearing this and swearing like a fisherman or someone in my local pub on a Friday, and I halter, falter and soften. Dammit. Ok, I will do this utterly boring and repetitious pointless thing again, again, again. I can hear Life laugh. It isn’t a giggle, nor a false Haha, Heh Heh, but a real fall back laugh and I can’t help joining in. Once recovered, I consider this. Ah, yes. To laugh at my self, the one who walked home 2 miles after a ceilidh and didn’t fall in a ditch; the one who got home to begin again the endless round and who regrets not one single second. She.

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Island Blog – The Dream of It

We all have one, a dream for the future of one. I say ‘one’ because this dream usually begins from the seed of a furious teenage bedroom, if you’ll pardon my choice of wordage. I spent any hours allowed in my yellow and white wallpapered bedlam confines, dreaming. It was going to be perfect, brilliant, long-lived, shared with the other Perfect and free and wild and finally I would get out of uniform. I won’t say that didn’t happen but the happening wasn’t Disney. In fact it was bumpy as hec because what this dream thing doesn’t bother to tell you, much like a PA I worked with once, she who had it in for me from the get-go because I was pretty and younger, is that the distance between you and your dream is an exhausting quixolatitude of desert and thirst, and the ‘im’ of possible is a constant wasp in your face and there are endless lonely roads and so many swinging signposts that even the strongest and most determined travellers sink down and fade. And that’s the truth of it. Had I known this for certain in that bedlam confine, well, who knows and I do ask myself that. No question mark required. Obviously I can’t answer from that teenspace. I can’t feel her anymore although I can in glimpses. I see her rising from the side of bed, the looking out window barred, the lovely garden beyond. I see her knowing there is a night out. I feel her sparkle, fizz like fun, the wild luffing her sails. I watch her stand and move slowly towards the long mirror. She was me once. She looks good. She looks scared. She looks beautiful. She is empty. She is ready. She has a dream.

She hears a call. Ready?

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Island Blog – A Bed without Fences

Last night I dreamed that I came upon a young gardener creating a new flower bed. The soil was sodden, dripping, mud basically. As I neared, watching him pulling earth towards him and into shape, I confess to a smirk. This will never work I thought but didn’t say, and in the few paces it took me to get near enough to exchange a conversation, my optimistic mind proffered a wider map, not one I know, nor had experienced with all the deer, the rabbits, the careless touristic footfall of my ‘known-ness’. It was a new spread, the map, as if this single action could be a beginning. I said Hallo and What’s This?’ with a big smile on my face because I am genuinely interested, nay fascinated when I meet boundary breakers, their courage and hopefulness, their determination to make this thing work. He explained a bit, none of which I can recall, nor did I on waking, but the image of him working, pullkng earth, levelling, making a new shape stayed with me all day. And, it thinks me.

I remember how excited each one of my five ferals were when the cot bars no longer confined them. I also remember the endless night walking as a result of that freedom, even as I got it. I was once a baby behind bars and now I am totally growed up and free to wander. What’s not to love about that gift of independence even if it will take me another 15 years to learn how to spell the word and then a lifetime to understand how to live with it as a friend? Those bars don’t just relate to babyhood, that confinement and also that safety and security, for many choose to stay behind those bars even when they are long rotted away or have been used as kindling. Safer that way. Again more thinks.

We are urged and taught to make ourselves free. There are a gazillion books, most of which talk at me from elevated situations, an I’ve Arrived Here thing and with a list of excercises or therapies that just iss me off and I move the book on with a smile. It isn’t that I dislike such helpful books, not at all, but I am looking for ‘real’ and not finding it. I don’t want an excercise plan, one which I just know I won’t sustain. I want someone who has been through a load of tough to tell me that even if I just take the lisp of my tongue, the stutter in my sentence, the limp in my gait, the falter in my forward progress, the hesitation in my conversation, the slight of my strength, that I can begin again from the exactly me of me. Include the falters, the falls, the regrets, the way I stuck behind bars because I was too afraid to step out alone, include all of it and let me lift all by myself. Now that would be. a book I’d buy.

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Island Blog – Light in the Dark

I love the dark, the way my eyes adjust, the way I can see something of the way ahead. I love the way it prevents forward motion through the fear of it, and the way I can feel that fear whilst the my of self says, stop, stand still, look and see, and I do. I suddenly do. A terrain of black grows light just because I bring the light. Fear still lurks like a smirk but I can allow its companionship. It’s just a kiddle, a scurry, a nobody much. I can step out into the island dark, unpolluted, only stars doing their twinkly winkly thing, no threat, and pull out annuals which have, heretofore, hidden wee tulip hopefuls, their green thrust a whoop in my discoveration. Hallo you, beautiful you, wonderful powerful you, so strong, so bloody determined. You inspire me.

In my life there have been one or two whose recognition of who I am brought light to my eyes, my heart, lifting my step, giving me self-belief. I was walking in the dark, so much dark, the unfriendly kind, and then someone came, someone said something, didn’t judge, correct, didn’t try to fit me into a shape I could never fill, but oh my I was trying so hard to do that. It was like being a size 16 and being in a fitting room with a 12, longing for it to fit. But this person, this person saw me. She saw me. She didn’t do the parent thing. I wasn’t a number of many. I wasn’t an outsider. I wasn’t too loud, a showoff, an embarrassment, a girl to be kept away from gatherings of others in order to avoid the upskittle of bone china coffee cups with her quick wit and the flicksnap of her dance shoes. Nothing predictable about her, about me. Eye roll.

I think this has learned me that darkness is actually see-through. Even at an early age, there is cognition, even if the early-ager doesn’t know how to work the whole thing out. I remember well the moment when a woman, my mother’s age, said to me, stopped me with her hand on mine and looked me full bore, her eyes stars. ”You need to be who you are. I curled away, all broken and lost and 16. You are talented, beautiful, gifted, even. Take that. Own it.” I didn’t know her. I don’t remember her name, but she shifted some blockage in me and for the first time I found the light in my dark.

Right now, and for my own reasons, I want to raise a glass, a light, a life-changing Thank you to all of those who notice, care, speak out and recognise all of we who feel they are worth notalot unless they fit the shape required. You have given us the courage to step out, step up, move forward, and to pass it forward to the next darkling we find.

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Island Blog – A Gallus Vocabularian

I remember those who tried to scumper me with smart wordage. Not the individuals, just the slimy snake thing about them, as if they had swallowed the dictionary and spent hours, if not days, trying to sort that confusive vomit. I despised that tactic as it was only used to put me down enough pegs as to sag my personal washing line. I was a girl and a woman of my time, I know this, and the snakes were often men in those days, but not always. It is true, or was, that the biggest judges of females are usually other females. I am not sure that’s a ‘then’ thing. It allows itself yet, this upperhandedness, as if we still haven’t exhausted the desperate need to be better than another still feels old.

I didn’t know I would be a vocabularian. All I knew was that words and their usage fascinated me, drew me in, the way they can tip and bend a sentence into an entirely new meaning, with skill and a musicality. Words change their meaning all the time, becoming elastic, fluid, non PC, redundant, just worn out. And new ones come, across continents, through engagement with new languages, cultures, and colloquialisms, and I welcome them all. New ways of saying old things, old tired things, oft repeated around parental tables, invite new landings, new lands, new opportunities for the brave Worder.

When one of the last above does speak out new words, perhaps faltering and definitely feeling like Gulliver in Lilliput, there’s a big element of risk. But, and here’s my challenge, because if we don’t speak out just because we believe we sound ridonculous, what does anybody learn? I say my word. I am immediately corrected. What now? A sink back in my chair in defeat? Or, do I rise up and correct the Corrector. No, not that word but the one I already said. See, the thing about rebellion is about numbers. My Thesaurus is a tatterley old man, the wordage good enough, has been for decades but as I dive into the pages of it these days I find a lack, flack. I may be, as I indeed am, a Gallus vocabularian, t’is blood in my veins, but I am still wide open, wider, to listen to and to learn from new wordage, new words, new meanings to old words and to be okay watching the beginnings and endings of the longest words falling off the edge of the world. They need to go.

When I meet the arrogance of word ‘control’ the uppernance of entitled supremacy, I do two things. One is the overnaturally dissolution of self, that’s me in this, sinking back, folding, giving in, and then I remember who I am. I am not aggressive, no antagonist. But, if you’re asking, I’m holding my place right here, and peacefully. I won’t try to climb the ladder to your command of language. No. I am down here in the welcomes of new lands, new people, not having a clue what they’re saying, just knowing they hurt, they’re here, fearful and have lost everything and are bringing me a light into a new language. By goodness, we need it.

As a gallus vocabularian, I can almost feel my rebellion red beret.

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Island Blog – Fly Now and Thank you

Just before the possibility of a power outage, I will write of today, the funeral of my very first friend here on the island, she who seemed always calm, always positive, mischief in her eyes, her welcome absolute. It’s very wild here, very wild, with sideslash rain and a torment in the air, all clouds blown into a flat grey nothing. The gusts are blowovers, unless, like me you have a lot of attitude.

I set off early, unsure what to wear. On ordinary funeral days, it’s not so hard. Something waterproof, yes, always that, but beneath something clean, jeans or warm leggings because nobody politely dies in Summer, the rest never sees the light of day anyway, a scarf perhaps. But this one was a challenge because this beautiful lady, and I use the word knowing its full meaning, lived her life on a flipping hilltop high and on the determined jut of land which sticks, full upper thrust, into the wild Atlantic. I chose layers, tried to do the matching thing that she and I so often laughed about, and managed a few greens. I remember so many meetings together, when she lived in the castle and then when she moved to her own place/s, when we would talk in a more honest way than I had ever known before. If you had looked at us, you would have been right to see her as the queen and I as the court jester. We made a grand pair. Where she was gracious, hardly swore, I met her with a load of swearing and attitude and rebellion and, I can see her face light up, her eyes sparkle, her smile wide as honesty when we met as true life companions. I loved who she was and she loved who I was. Her husband, Phillipe talked about how she loved rebels, was one in her own heart, but chose to show herself as not-one, even though, having heard of her feminist passions and activities over her years, I do wonder how she managed to keep that control. However, having listened to the poignant words from her children, her grandchildren, I believe that she did reveal her wild heart to them, and. that is a powerful legacy which they all acknowledged.

We left the castle with her coffin affixed to a sheep trailer pulled by a quad. The pipers, already drenched stood in place. We walked into the battering rain, following, followers of her. Umbrellas blew inside out, walking was threatened and. the puddle I had parked in an hour before had become a lake, the mud. slidey and defo collapso. I didn’t go to see her put in the ground. I don’t need that. I didn’t stay for the wake, the stories and the drinks. I just wanted to be alone with my rememberings of the most beautiful of women, the strongest, the survivor, the one who came from privelege and who stood strong against any challenge; the one who chose this island and loved it and all its people with all her heart, who welcomed everyone, no matter who, who paused before issues, thought a bit and then presented opportunity and the invite for conversation; the one who gave someone a chance, who suggested something new, who just made things happen, dealt with the consequences as if she knew they were coming, even if she didn’t; the one who would say ‘It will be fine. It always is.’

Rest now Janet Nelson Rigal. Trust me, you did a bloody good job. You taught your young and they will teach theirs and so it goes on, and not just them but me too. Remember that book you gave me, the ways you saw me, the rebel, as someone of value? I won’t ever forget those gifts, the times we laughed over coffee, wine, lunch, so so many times. Your beautiful. face, even at 80 something, stuck in my head. Fly now with the wild. And, thank you.

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Island Blog – The Twirligation

We have one now, well, not just us, but all other Everyones who are currently trying to stand upright whilst refilling a water can, or on a walk to the village pub or just to maintain some modicum of dignified taking of the few steps to and from the car, holding on to bloody anything fixed firmly to the ground. Not that being firmly fixed means much, not after Amy, when hundreds of ancient trees fell politely to the ground, killing nobody. I always wondered about this politely falling thing. I have known it for over 40 decades and it still trues itself. Trees fall respectfully, politely, and kill nobody, huge ancients with girths I could never wrap around, 200 years old, old friends which supported bird nests, held whispered secrets in their inner core, absorbed insults, the derilection of duty overheard, and the magic, the imagination swifting from spoken to hopeful whispers late into the absolute dark of an island night.

I have candles, am ready for blackout as the gustpunches elevate and will continue overnight. I know that power (so called) will drop like a bomb. I have what I need. Neighbours, a community, candles, a range to warm food, gas to boil a kettle, a woodburner and wood. Nonetheless, I confess, even after all these years, the gales afear me, a bit, no matter my ready to twirl mentality. It is fierce black out there, no lamplights, no false lights at all and there’ll be nae stars tonight. But, you know what, and just let me get the know what thing for myself before I continue……I have been called out into the darkest of the dark nights, all Twiddlesticks and Fallover to find an ewe struggling to deliver, with torches and clever hands, to the outer edges of Tapselteerie when a canoeist was missing, when the dark was twirly and confusing, the rain all focus and drenching, the night an endless black.

Not any more, although my body memory remembers all of it. So, when gales, hooligans, barrel in like a takeover, you might forgive me for an overreaction because such of this, or these, take me back to being out there, out there in the wild, in the dead of night, half asleep on the back of a quad, bumping into darkness, over trackspit, my face rearranged by the gale, to help deliver a calf, the mother to be a growling, twizzlestick of fury. We could hardly see each other, no stars, just another bloody shut down gale. She was black as soot. Follow her eyes, he said, and moved in. I stuck to the quad, knew he needed help, fuck………legs jelly, follow instructions, I told myself. It was almost morning on a frissball February night and right on the edge of the world. I could hear the thrash of waves, the wild of the night. Something moved me. I know me. I will always answer the call, no. matter the fear. The mother was grinding, growling, fighting, but he moved on. She would not lay down, the wrong hooves showing through her, the wrong birthing. I watched her growl, turn, eyeball him, he a minuscule in her eyes, so huge and ferocious was she. I watched her allow, I saw it, and finally I moved from the quad. The cow sank to the ground and in moments he clocked one front hoof, one back, no good, and gently pushed back, pulled forward and delivered. Immediately the mother grunted, turned, licked the babe into life. It was hailing, big ping pong balls, so cold. As he rose to leave the cow turned, rose and bumped him. He almost fell, but didn’t. She didn’t want that.

You want to. drive? I asked. No, he said, you go. and I did.

So, a gale means something, and a very big something else to others.

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Island Blog – Convexity

My fingers are twiddling, flexing above the keyboard, readying themselves. Most of the time, and this is the truth, they do the work, have done for years. I can think something, choose a starting gun, and in they come. I know it’s a gift and I am thankful for that gift, that infuriating nudge when the trudge is mudding me.

So, (when did starting a sentence with ‘so’ become a grammatical ok? ) Hallo Dad. Actually I so value his tuition. I wouldn’t be the me of me without his influence. I realise I am diluting myself into waspitude, too much crititude, and it cringes me until my spider fingers flex and fly. I will regather myself, as the sun, so absent today, has suddenly arrived like Lady Gaga singing feisty as the tide withdraws and the sea-loch stills and there is comment in the wondering water.

A new friend, met in the pub today. We arranged to meet at 3.30 but I was ready for earlier. I arrived and she was there, a woman who clocked me, as I clocked her on first meet. From another continent, another generation, but a welcome nonetheless. Taking this off ground, I would say we collided without damage. So random.

And then another came in, dropped his backpack, pulled out a stool. Hey you, I said, and from then conversation grew between strangers. I learned bits about family history, about the art world, about mother love, about the knife attack of trouble, about rising from trauma, about rewinding a neck for all-around looking, about the unexpected thrusting of pain like a dagger in the gut, about gentle landings, about acceptance, about moving on, about recognition of what i can do in the this of that, about sort of letting go. On on bar stool in one hour.

I know about convex. Never knew there was an upward curve. From limitation to elevation. Like today on that bar stool. I arrived curve down, left curve up.