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Island Blog – Fog Horn, Wren Song and Ellie

Something woke me at 5. It was just light. I could see this ‘just light’ sneaking around my blackout curtains, the wrong light, the too early light. Just before I swore I heard the sound again, a low growly sound, long and breathy. A foghorn, a warning to mariners, although I doubt any of them needed such a warning. The landscape was erased and at sea that is very upsetticating indeed. I remembered, as I wheeched back the blackouts and as my eyes landed on absolutely nothing at all beyond the fallen over daisy-like blooms in my immediate garden, those times when fog had descended on a lone yacht on its way from somewhere to somewhere else. Very scary. The sea is still bulky and yawling beneath the boat, the rocks are still there, hopefully not ‘very’ there, the sky, if we could have seen it, is still there, but the way ahead is a complete blank. Even radar and the other whatnots that tell you where you are have drunk too much, or so it seems as their dials shimmy about between all quarts of the compass. Due north has gone on holiday. I just went below and cooked something at such times in order to halt my thinks. Thinks out there in the middle of an ocean you were watching like a hawk yesterday, one you could track, every wink and every malevolent plan at its inception noticed and addressed, and which now has laughed itself into invisibility, will create a negative spiral in the mind of the most experienced of mariners.

I haven’t heard the foghorn up here for a long time, although I did hear it often down south where the sea was crabbit and contained and it must be tough being a sea when you want to be an ocean, so I get it, the crabbit thing. But here the Atlantic has free flow for thousands of sea miles or kilometres and holds in her grasp depths nobody has every plummeted. Nonetheless, she fogged us up this morning, creating a strange white-light, the clouds following her lead and lazily hanging about all day like bored students. There was no windy mother/father/tutor to tell them to move on.

Back to 5 am and the waking thing. I came downstairs. I always know when sleep has left me and there’s no hanging on for more, made coffee, sat watching the fog. As the morning began to yawn and lift, I heard wren song, so bright, so clear, so pure that it halted me. It sounded so close and so confusing. The blackbird is the first bird, isn’t it? Why is a wren awake this early? The song was so near. I knew all my windows were open for the heat, but still……

She sang again. I turned, slowly. She was perched on a chair behind me. I went rigid. She paused, bobbed, looked right into my eyes. I smiled. Ok, I almost whispered. (Can you deafen a wren?) I rose as if I was in slomo, moved to close the 3 doors into the house and turned back to open the two garden doors, stood back, watched the battering flapping against windows, waited. With a frrrup of wings, she found her way out. She must have been inside all night, so quiet as I drank (there’s no such word btw) my coffee at 0500. All day in my work, in the crazy of visitors, lunches, clearing, providing, protecting each other, I remembered the wren and the fog whilst I thought of one young brave beautiful wren heading into what seems like fog, for now.

It will clear brave wee wren. You have wings, remember? And no fog will ever stop you.

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Island blog – The Plosive and the Fricative

The Cafe was bajonkers today. It seems to be a Wednesday thing, although I imagine, now that most of Englandshire is on holiday here in big vehicles with kids and dogs and a tiny wish they were on a beach in Spain, that Wednesday will not be the only bajonkers day. Serving excellent coffees, an abundance of quirky teas and hot chocolates, a fairground of colourful high rise cakes of many flavours and combinations, people thronged. In fact, there was so much thronging that all inside tables filled over and over again, thus sending those made of tough stuff out into the spitspot of west coast rain. Those ones ate fast, with good humour and in rainproof jackets. It was all smiles, it was, even when the queue was long enough to cause me pause on my return from sourcing more brown sugar lumps and another bag of ethnically farmed (and salted) hot chocolate nubbits, with a lot of excuse me’s.

What all this meant to me as the small and salty washerwoman was a deal of dishwasher management. It’s a great wee thing, maw of a young whale and a very hot wash in five. A purging, apparently, and one insisted upon by the gods of cafe standards. However, I have discovered that this delightful washhelper has her, or his, limitations. He/she is crap at sourdough mix. We all are crap at something, yes, but this dough takes the prize. Soaking, endless, stuck bits, concrete, drain-blocking, spectacular. The bread is gorgeous, so that makes it all ok.

I did notice, pausing more as my arms disappeared into the depths of a mammoth sink, the water hot as Hades, a rise of wordage in my gullet. Such an unattractive word. Picture me, in this cocoon, although I doubt the butterfly bit, surrounded in steam, endless dishes coming at me, and I mean endless. I noticed how I say nothing, just keep moving, keep working. I also notice how my co-workers, decades younger than I, do expel breath, plosive, after a huge rush of soups, quiches, pita with hummus, cakes, scones with this, without that, as they speak out the phew of a break in pressure, pulling back into the fricative when another customer appears and smiley welcome slaps on. They are so professional. And, then I wonder at myself, all quiet in the Washeroo, no plosives, not even a fricative. I know, of course I do. This is training, this is my learning. You just don’t expel anything young lady, not ever, and there is a huge weight of pressure in just that admonition. My generation, my time.

I love the new.

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Island Blog – A Precious Island Life

The mist is definitely on a mission to smudge. I saw it first around 4 am, woken as I often am when the circus of the skies, the cosmos, opens for business. I know there are conversations going on up there, ones we need to hear and to understand, but, sadly, I only talk human, child and dog. I feel it nonetheless, and there is a freedom in that itch, that discomfort, because it connects me to more than me, to more than the solo and the loneliness, to more than ridondulous concerns about which wheelie to put out.

Work today was busy, wild at times, and tiring, until I approached my own tiring nonsense and sharpened it into a soft lead pencil. I can write my own next sentence. I always can. It felt a bit limpy, nothing for a while and then a big invasion of lovely customers, so smiley, wanting soup, quiche, cake, hot chocolate, iced latte, extra bread, focaccia sandwiches, and yet, do you know what all of them really wanted? A welcome, a recognition, a pull to forward, an invitation and a hallo and we are so happy you came, thing. Chances are, not one of them will get that, but I do, and so do the owners of this welcome cafe. They, the visitors, are spinning through life, escapees from huge pressure jobs and lives and here they are under the mist mission with a chance of blue. It must take time to process. Actually I hate that word as I have never consciously, nor knowledgeably, processed a damn thing in my 70 years. And then, these big and possibly powerful folk are gone back to the whatever of possibly powerful lives, leaving us with the mystery of mist mission, the lift of sky birds, the wild of spatter rain, the thrum of maybe thunder, the friendship in the pub, the people long here, grown wild from the nonsense and fun and hard work and deprivation of a precious island life.

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Island Blog – The Leapist

As life twiddles on, all contours and corners, some parts expected, many not, the old roads rising up like snakes, or a beckoning, clear and flowered, I, and my curious Alice mind, notice it all. Actually, this Alice noticing thing can be a pain in the ass, a lot of the time, but, and but again, I have the Alice mind and it is my mind and I am always curious. I stop, a lot, see a little ‘weed’, see a butterfly on a bloom, and I question. I see huge invasive flattening in the mud where careless cars have quashed a whole story, a whole tiny life story, now just tyre marks and unfertile ridges. However I bemoan nothing beyond an initial gasp at the uneducated. It is as it is, and, beyond the well-known fact that Nature will survive and revive way after we eejits are dust, I don’t want to carry judgement. It’s like wearing lead boots. I do wish, nonetheless, that more of us understood the precious gift of our lives, our responsibilities, even our place in this time, this Now. I wish, too, that everyone would be curious, ask questions, be open to learning. But, it isn’t like that now. I know, I know. There is an expectation that beyonds me. We want, I want, this, no, not that this, this this, and now. I know not the language to engage in that conversation, were it one beyond observation, nor would I.

I didn’t have work today, although I did delight in collecting and delivering the bread, the croissants, and the pain au chocolat to the Best Cafe Ever. I wound my merry way along the complete wiggle and turn, cornering, rising in speed, slowing because the bracken is frickin and holds the view in completous. (my latin coming out there) and I did meet a few eejits who cannot reverse, but we worked it between us. Driving home in the sunshine, the heat and still smelling the glory of newly baked sourdough and the fresh pastries, I had a think. I am listening to a beautiful audio book. I should probably name it. Harry Potter and the History of Magic. It’s all about the making of the books, including in detail all the research Rowling immersed herself in. It is way more than my initial assessment of her, to my shame. As revelations arose going back centuries, to beasts, beliefs, to christian evolutive paths, her research brought together magic and belief, unbelief and choice. It thinks me, a lot.

Church today, a few of us. These days folk come because they want to, not because they ought, or should, or are told to. The theme was about stepping up to genuinely bring good. I used to wonder. about the consistence of that ‘good’. You can be one person in your good giving and then you. come back home as mum or dad in very bad moods, and ‘what changed?’ So confusing. I get it. However, I am a Leapist. I can understand magic and faith. I disagree with a lot on both sides, but I am open, curious and always learning. What I do learn is about the stops. No, this, No, that, on both sides. Perception on both can be sqewed, cultures are BIG on tidelines, on either or. In between there is the chance to leap through. I’m there.

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Island Blog – Sense ability

We forget, don’t we, to notice what our natural senses tell us, unless someone. shoves a fragrant bloom under our noses? So busy is life these days, so disconnected from the beauty of the wild. Where once fields scattered in glorious disarray, there are housing estates. And it’s all very well to shout about the loss of ‘green’ but where would all our people live? In caravans, wicker shelters? It’s definitely not an easy conversation piece, nor a simple decision for the big cheeses in our world, our cities, our villages. I remember a time living in Glasgow, in a flat. So not my thing, but there we landed, short term. There was a ‘washing green’ for all 6 flats. A stumbly plastic spidery thing stood in the small patch of grass, a few pegs attached. One sunny morning, after washing a load of boy stuff and with nowhere in the wee flat to effectively dry anything bigger than a couple of boxers, I lugged the basket down to the back door. I had already bought pegs and hoped the thing that looked like a big umbrella with plastic connectivity and the ability (apparently) to move with the breeze, not that there was one, would never be one, not in this square of overgrown grass, fenced in like a punishment, would dry the load.

I pegged and swivelled the thing. It squeaked and creaked and tipped and I just knew that nobody, from any of the flats which, all of which proffered a scummy window view of me out there being a loon, used it. I stood back to check my affixings. All seemed pegged up. A window opened. A woman poked her head out. I looked up. Hallo, I smiled. Just pegging out my washing. Aye, she said, and chuckled. You won’t do it twice, she said. Everyone takes their dog out there and never clears up. She was right on that. I remember that moment, as I moved back into the confines of a flat, having known the fly-freedom of a west coast home, all space and nature, most of the latter moving in with confidence, and felt an overwhelming sense of loss. I won’t live this way anymore, I said to myself, even though it seemed there was no way out.

Life is different now, and it thinks me. I would have diminished there, starved, lost myself. I am a wild woman, a creative, a solo. Returning to the island gifted me, eventually, a reconnection with all that was familiar. Instead of traffic noise, I came back to the birds, remembered their songs. Instead of grey pavements, I returned to peat-foot, to a ground that bounces with me as I walk. Instead of incessant chatter, I returned to conversation. Instead of a thrum of people, an assault, I met individuals.

Today, just today, my five senses lived, really lived. I watched a young otter dash to hide under my car, a fleet, yes, but I saw it. I watched sea eagles cut the sky in a spirograph. I heard the loons way down there on a lifting tide. On a walk I saw wild honeysuckle, blousy and determined, create a bouquet of delight from the roots of a huge fallen pine. I stopped to touch the delicate but feisty blooms and breathed in the fragrance. Home again and I sat to taste a home-made hummus, salad, a wild garlic Tapselteerie pesto, toasted seeds. I heard the loons again. They’re down there somewhere.

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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 New Beginning

I started work today, at a new venture, or an establised venture, now in new hands, which means it’s new. btw. Moving into a new place, even if the venue, the stones and location are the same as they ever were, a newness is created. There are new ideas, changes, alterations, a personal stamp stamped. I always love new beginnings, have no problem with change, mostly speaking. We greeted, checked out the lay of the land, heard the ideas, decided to be dynamic. Let us go, I thought, as we did just that. I knew it before, the way it works, the flow and rhythm of what had been the been for yonks, shifting its gaze into a new sky. This, I said to myself, is a be. Not a been…… and I am in.

We worked, and hard, and busy, fixing, trixing, laughing, sharing, sticking, unsticking, wiping, washing, tide-fighting, tide-aligning, talking, finding out about each other, watching, checking. We are creating a new dynamic. There are wonderings, doubts, fickle-twiddles, stopstarts, upskittles, solutions flying in like birds through newly sequined window panes. Tables – juxtaposition, chairs too, wall hangings yet to be wall-hanged, or not, lights to be twisted this way, that, this something to be considered, this something else to be moved, or removed, all a considering, for now. It’s like a birthing, and I am at the business end. I have no idea what I am doing, beyond the obvious, the cleaning prep work and the beyond of the dance of mischief I will always bring to anything. However, there is no fun, nor mischief (interesting word if you. break it down……mis…..chief…….just saying) if there are no-ones to work with, to laugh with, through tricky stuff, when this isn’t working well and that isn’t working either.

We had fun today. My first day. I loved it. I’m as tired as the others, but so excited to be a part of this new beginning.

I thought I was all out of those, to be honest!

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Island Blog – Tanglewood and Scuttlebutt

I know both. So do you. So does everyone. The tangle wood clutches, trips, confounds, all of that tiddleypom. That’s on the outside of us. It’s in the running, the hiding, the defending, the fear, the confinements. Wherever we walk, we are wary of potential fetters. Those of us concomitant with endless tangle woods may well be ready for the twist and fist and the damn roots that grow sideways and strong as a boxer’s biceps, but even we can be felled. The thing is to learn how to fall. I have learned this, in my mind, anyway. Don’t fall flat, if possible. Don’t reach out arms to defend a fall. Roll. Learn to roll. I have experimented with this, in my mind. I watch how rolling fallers roll and thought wow. Pretty much. That twist away from a frontal stramash, impressive. Takes courage. Are there classes?

So, this damn tangle wood. I thought I knew it, but it denses itself in my not-looking days, growing thixotropic, unwilling to deconstruct, even for me, a long serving member. So rude. And, faced with that regrowth whilst I was busy not growing at all, scoots me to scuttlebutt thinking. I should, I could, I ought to have, I might have. Old voices, judgmental. I reside with Well, I didn’t. Not great. It feels me like the runt puppy or the also ran at a race meet. Or, better, the second son, the second daughter in those days when second really meant invisible and unimportant. It bemuses me that such complete and absolute nonsense yet infects some. It does, including me. This is Scuttlebutt.

Scuttlebutt. Inner talk, gossip. Outer gossip. Nothing positive about it. There are too many shoulds and coulds and didn’ts, too many chances to tangle a human doing the best they can, no matter circumstance, no matter judgement, no matter history. Keep going, that’s I tell myself. At least the tangle wood has no malicious intent.

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Island Blog – A Thingummy Tree, and a Surprise

Another lovely warm morning, too hot, actually, to read my book in the full sun. I look to the Thingummy tree over there, all that dancing shade and the two pigeons coo-ing on a branch. David Bowie, I think, as I take in their colourful feathers, flagrant and sparkly bright, as most creatures are in Africa. They even coo musically, more the beginnings of a melody and not irritating at all. Beneath is grass trying to grow, elephant grass, tough and fat-leaved, but failing somewhat in the growing palaver. Mostly, I notice, there are ant mounds, wee ones, not termites, little tumps of sand with an air hole I am careful not to block with careless step. I consider what to lie on that close to the ground. I’m thinking snakes, beetles, all those other crawly things, none of which I mind as long as they don’t sting or bite me. I haul out a yoga mat, towel, pillow, book, glasses and the ever necessary water bottle, and lay down. All goes well for sometime, the shade most pleasant, the David Bowies hopping around me, the flying things remaining in the air. So far so good. I had just finished The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, a fabulous read, and, becoming completely captured by Marjam Kamali’s The Stationary Shop of Tehran, I failed to notice that something was crawling up my body. It, or she, had managed quite a distance over clothing, and it wasn’t till she arrived on my shoulder, and tickled, that I snapped my head around to look. It’s always wise to look before swatting in Africa.

The sun was almost blocked out and I kid you not. This insect is huge. 2 inches long, an inch deep, scaly and brightly striped, red and black. She was, I swear, as startled to see me as I was her and, I confess, I did swipe her off, apologising as she plumped to the ground beside me. She took a minute to gather herself and then, snail-slow, no hopping, she began to wander into the bushes. She is a female African Great Grasshopper, at least seven times larger than the male and spectacular to look at. Our encounter, albeit harmless, kind of put me off lying there like bait. I read the same page twice, darting looks over my shoulder and jumping at every tickle. Ridickerluss, I know, I know, but once the thinks think me, I am done for.

I had made a promise to myself on the yesterday, I remember, and when all my hearty thoughts rushed in like I knew I had to push them away and just go. I couldn’t take a bag, a house key, anything pinch worthy, particularly not on a Tuesday when dawn rises with a lot of noisy lid closing as many poor folks, knowing it is bin day, riffle through old rubbish to find whatever they can to eat, to sell, to repair, to make into something. Not a day to be leaving a bag on the beach, even if it is always in sight. Starving folk run fast. So, cozzy on, shorts and a sun top and the always bottle of water and off I set, marching down the road towards the Ocean. Skies scud skimpy clouds, the blue endless and white teeth flat welcomes and greetings from black and coloured faces. I met the fire service attemting to stem a burst water main, a massive burst of water arcing way over my head, and we joke about me getting soaked so ‘move quickquick Ma, Ayeee!’ The car guard who watches over parked vehicles wishes me a lovely swim, and on I go, ducking under the road, dodging piles of kelp, through the freshwater flow from the Flei (marshland) and onto the white hot sand. No more thinks are thinking me as I strip off and head for the waves. The water is warmly glorious, the waves lifting and lowering me, the salt delicious on my skin. I swim a length or two, then sit dripping myself dry in no time. I watch other swimmers, dogs in the water, children at play, and I smile.

I surprise myself sometimes, when the thinks don’t think me and I take action.