books

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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.

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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 – Wording

Words are my thing. I am no worder, powerful within the pages of research books, no academic Brilliantine. But words are my thing. They fly about my head like birds, assault me, trip me up, wake me in the night, confound me in the day when I’m scrubbing the loo. I am a word vessel. So, when words bugger off, their absence is like I’m naked, which I am so not. I can walk deep into my Mother Nature, feeling my way, searching in the brush, the fallen, the ancient, the rising, and find no words at all beyond Wow, or Thankyou, or Shit I just soaked my Boots. Not enough, not good at all. And, yet, resting in the ‘how it is right now’, I consider. Perhaps i need a rest. Perhaps the wordness of words need one too. Everyone is always actively searching for a word, the right word, as if words tumble away into the vast void of everything lost, for now. Right words must be exhausted.

In my younger days, I freaked out if I couldn’t find a word, when, inside my head I had this clear and beautifully perfect one somewhere just behind the bins, behind the confusion and questioning of my life, one which refused to grace my lips. I would leave an encounter, furious at my lack. It thinks me, with a wonder. Maybe it was not for me at that moment, infuriating as that felt at the time. We humans seem to think we are in the upper echelons of pretty much everything, thus, in control. Maybe words don’t want to be controlled. I certainly don’t want to be, so, maybe I get it. Perhaps I am being taught a life lesson, because this is not the first time, and I will be wise to notice.

So, I can flounder, for now, abject myself to a considerably higher power, and wait for the words to fly back in, as the Redwings will soon, the Mistle Thrush, the Autumn visitors. There is no loss, as long as I don’t buy into loss. I know who I am, and there is no weakness in bowing down, in letting go of ego. In fact, I believe it is a strength.

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Island Blog – Radio Gaga

I thought it was Thursday. Certain, I was, and, so much so that I moved my car out of the way for the wood delivery. I also prepped for my counsellor zoom, but, as time twingled on and no lorry appeared through the frantic blur of 60mph wind plus a sideswipe of blattering rain, I did begin to question myself. Then, when I received no link from my counsellor at five to the hour, I could feel a wondering. It began in my toes. and rose up through legs, past butt, and on up through my spine. I laughed, I did. I could be in Thursday, or any day and still be completely present without having a scooby about my connection to the wotwot of days. Days just ‘day’ on. Some of them super slow, like slugs leaving a behinding slime, some cantering on like deer in rifle sight. I never know, never have any control over the wotwot. I can feel drowny, as if I am out of control, or light above the damn waters of it all, in my boat and with my oars and rollicks in place. I know I am not alone in this, met too many people who swivel from a rooted calm to a swindling gale that uproots and fells a body, one with stories yet to tell, a body still determined to ‘alive’, no matter the fall.

Once I got the hang of it being Wednesday, I kind of liked the feeling. It is, after all, Winnie the Pooh’s favourite day and I am fond of the way he takes on life, as if every moment is a foundling, one he will raise it into something wonderful. It also freed me, from wood lorry delivery and that is a thing in itself. The wood bag is crane -lifted over my fence and immediately subject to the slashing rains of the now, in our now. I have a wheelbarrow. I have me, but the me in this scenario is not the strong woman of old. Why do we say that? I want to write, The old woman of young. Anyway, it will arrive tomorrow, and I will move my car again, and will make the barrow trip from open rain-soaked bag to my wood store, and then I will be happy and chuffed and puffed and warm.

It thinks me, and I am happy that I got days wrong inside a week that doesn’t bother me, nor I it. However, soon I go for radiotherapy, just five days, a CT scan before, and I do need to note the days of travel that deliver me into the laser zone of cancer zap. I should have gone last week, but last week was a frickin wild nightmare, no ferry, huge slamdunk gales, punching way beyond their pay grade, and an earthquake that rattled my windows. 

Talking to my lad in Africa, he who knows I am Gaga to of my many grandkids, connected radiotherapy with Gaga. We laughed a lot at the connection.

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Island Blog – And……Rest

Ok, so I am tired of all this resting, now. Extremely tired of it. Since June 27th, when I first had cause and orders, to rest, I have read around 15 books, a record, even for me with my fast eyes and my ability to take in a huge amount of info at a speedy glance. Of course, I retain none of it for long, hence the mesolithic Scots ending up in a cafe with the litigation lawyers, somewhere in D.C. It doesn’t seem to matter in the end of the end, not that I can recall the endings of those stories but I do remember the ‘wowser’ as the twist twisted itself into a bunch of snakes on the penultimate page. I felt as if I was falling off the end of the story into some empty crevasse, quite devoid of wordage or footholds. I just found another book, another tale, another winding path to wander down, resting, resting resting, resting so much that my mid section is no longer a section, more a spread of blubber and fold, gravitation led. My tee-shirt needs to be a small marquee and I will be having words with those medics who said I was too skinny for surgery, or words to that effect. It had better go, along with whatever else gets removed, or there might be a conversation ahead.

Spending hours, sometimes days doing this resting thing has not been unpleasant. I love to read and read and read but I do wonder if I am, unconsciously, immersing myself in any story but my own. I don’t think so, but there’s a ‘maybe’ skittering about inside my mind. How much and how often do we respond to a big impact in our lives by hiding in the wings? A lot, I guess. I have spent many hours in the wings, literally, whilst the action was played out on stage, watching it, a peek through the curtains, breath held, no moving, silent, waiting for my cue. Whether lead or chorus, the wings are safe, short term, but in that tension, lines can be lost, sweats can shine a face (and ‘make-up’ has a fit) and corsets can pop. I remember that. Anyway, I digress.

So, in theory, I am fatly prepared for whatever surgery lies ahead. I am thankful for the resting and for all the stories that merge and muddle, flit and fold inside my soul. They enhance me. I have wrestled with lynx, been burned at the stake, or almost, fought legal battles in L.A courtrooms, ridden a wild horse bareback, fought a waterfall, and won, and danced with fairies in a magical forest where dragonflies sang soprano and all the goblins were banned for life. I have been welcomed, cooked for, wonderfully, cared for, wonderfully. Celebrated, in fact. My scan is on Tuesday, I return to my beloved island on Wednesday and then I will pick up my ordinary domestic tasks in order to redraw my body map. I will also relocate my clothes drawers, having left home with a couple of thisses and thats, all of which bored of I am. In fact, they are so washed as to be considerably thinner than when any of us set sail for my future.

Which is a lot more than I can say for me.

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Island Blog – I’m In Charge

I light myself a candle. Today was a waiting day, one that wakes me with an inner fog. Thoughts rise but fall again before I can set them in order, unlike other days when I am the one in charge. Even in a voluminous nightie, I am in charge. Even before my teeth are brushed and my dragon breath is extinguished, I am in charge. You stand here. I’ll need to think more on you. As for you, thanks but no thanks, not today. And you…..well I have no idea where you came from, perhaps a deep bog, a sinking, stinking one. Begone! However, this morning’s thoughts just swirled like whispers around me, uncatchable, turning to air whenever I reached out for a grab. The ones I haven’t mentioned? Throttled at source. I could tell, just by their colour and smell that they would serve me no purpose.

Waiting is tough. Waiting for a bus in the rain is tough. Waiting for a baby to emerge through the intense agony is tough. But this waiting, this cancer waiting, is definitely up there with the best/worst waiting thingies. I’m not surprised my thoughts have trouble thinking me straight. I am all wonky lines and inner wobbles. Even my walk down the stairs is old-lady cautious, as if my feet might miss a step regardless of all this foot attention I’m giving them. I even count the steps for goodness sake, as if, in forgetting one, I might not arrive in the same house I left on the landing. I’m not hungry, not anything much, until, that is, I hear the chatter of little girls. It is then that I recall myself, remember who I am. I may be waiting but I can do something with it, fill it, distract myself from it, begin to see through the fog of it.

I check my phone every 30 minutes. 15, actually. Just in case the consultant or nurse has called with an Oops we made a mistake you don’t have cancer after all. I read until my eyeballs threaten to abandon ship and my head can no longer sort out the protagonists of any one of the stories, merging them together until the mesolithic Scots tumble with the Harare prisoners on death row. Not a movie I’d recommend. But that doesn’t matter, the tumble of characters, because to read is to escape and I can think of less healthy ways to do that.

We, those of us not attending our first day back at school in smart green sweatshirts and black breeks, go out to visit a farm shop a short distance away. There’s a wonderful cheese counter and we ogle the selection from Stinky Blue to Not Stinky Goat and everything in between. We sit for a panini lunch whilst Little Boots, the smallest girl not yet at school, enjoys a multi-coloured lolly, on my knee, plus multicoloured drips and multicoloured chatter. I laugh. I now look like an abstract painting. This and other little distractions distract so cleverly. It thinks me, now that my head is fog-less.

I light myself, that’s what I do, that’s what I can do, all I can do whilst I am waiting. It’s me taking charge even though I am not in charge of anything outside of me. But I am in charge of that bit, and that ‘bit’ is me, the Bit Part in a huge production called Breast Cancer. I read that actors in such huge productions spend most of their time inside a trailer, waiting to be called. Waiting and waiting and who would know it once the finished film is on screen for our pleasure? It looks complete, everyone busy all the time, as if that is how it was put together. But it wasn’t like that at all. Nor is this. I will, I know, look back one day and forget the pain of waiting, the length, breadth and depth of it. It will just be mentioned in a sentence. I had to wait. That’s all. But now look at me, all bright and cancer free and filled with my usual overload of beans! And not waiting any more, not for nobody nor nothing.

I watch the candle flicker, the flame waver and wend in the airflow I create just tapping out words. I see the glow of it inside the glass jar, the shine of the melted wax, and it smiles me. This candle may snuff out, but so will the waiting, and the treatment and the anxiety and the fear and the pain. I may be a bit wonky chops when all is said and done, but I will still be in charge, of myself anyway, and that task is not for the faint-hearted, I can tell you.

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Island Blog – Tigger

The trouble with me, or one of the many troubles with me, is my Tigger bounce in the early mornings. It’s ridikkerluss. I must have driven my children mad with all that early bouncing, especially on school days. Waking in this ‘darking’ at 3.30, wide awake, excited about nothing and everything, I have to get out of bed. Thank you bed, I say with a reassuring pat, as it’s a bit startled. Most people, I add, would just turn over but I never believed in turning over anything with the exception of new leaves, naturally. I would be marvellous on early shifts in, say, a hospital. I would burst into the ward, my smile leading the way. Good morning! I would sing, as I reinflate the flagging night watch, flip on the kettle, brew coffee and head off to cheer the post and pre-ops, soothe the sad and weary, have a blether with the janitor and make him laugh but not too loudly, naturally.

By 6 I have cleaned the cobwebs and wiped the walls that have been hidden behind the Family Furniture for decades. The walls look startled too, suddenly aware of their nakedness. The cobwebs are all fluff and dark materials; very dodgy, but easily removed with my eco cleaning spray and a determined scrubber hand. Before I wipe them away for ever, I watch the way the webs float and lift as I pass, like wisps of smoke. I check for lodgers, but they have already scuttled off into a safe corner, probably temporarily blinded. I can see where the painter didn’t paint, couldn’t reach behind the Family Furniture. I pause to wonder who will buy these big pieces, who will thrill at the very sight of them, a must-have for the perfect place inside their home. I wish them and the furniture many blessings and a very happy life together. And, good luck polishing those brass knobs. I am done with brass knob polishing for ever. I have also moved furniture, stacked books and it’s not 7 yet.

I blame my mother. She was just the same. I remember us going to visit when the kids were young. I was up early, but himself, who could sleep all night and longer, remained in bed. Mum wasn’t having any of that nonsense and she wheeched off the duvet revealing his naked splendour and tickled his toes whilst singing something nobody recognised. He never got over it, not for years and years. Ah, well, I told him. You are not alone in this. Most people never get over my mother. So thanks Mum for the Tigger in me, the mischief, the fun and the way you were the most impossible woman who ever lived and probably always will be.

Unless I take over that role, of course.

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Island Blog – The Light On Ordinary

When I was a small child, barely able to see over the dining table, roast potatoes and Yorkshire puddings looked like a range of hills, some jagged, some round as parliament mounds. Slices of roast beef became cooled larval plates and vegetables a compost heap, like the one my dad forked and raked into submission, until the new additions joined the mass of grey. It was only when I had climbed onto my chair that I saw how ordinary it all was, and how temptingly delicious ‘ordinary’ can be.

I recall sitting to ‘Listen With Mother’, only Mother always fled the room having seated us and was long gone before the welcome music had stopped. I remember being immediately drawn into the story as the teller’s voice led me away from the pestilential; my woolly underpants, my too tight shoes, my nails bitten to the quick and beyond, my disappointment in life. I dreaded the end music. I waited, my heart on pause, as the story slowly came to its conclusion, the teller’s voice falling back to its final chord and my underpants reminding me of to disseminate. When I heard the music heralding the Archers, or, worse, the Shipping Forecast, I knew I was doomed, for that meant bedtime and darkness and utter loneliness. Until, that is, I picked up my book and moved immediately into a story not my own, a story fashioned from smoke and stars, wild water and silent red skies, of adventures and choice and freedom.

I am the same now. I do not choose woolly underpants, nor do I bite my nails to the quick and beyond, but I do feel a clutch in my heart when Steve Wright says, It’s time to go, and plays the end music. It is all about being thrust back into the so called disappointment. At five to five I leap up to turn off the radio. I do this because, I now realise, I don’t want that same pattern to repeat itself; that slump back into ordinary; the moment when I need to lift my reluctant self back into my life, when I must leave the story or the music behind and do things like cooking or bathing whilst wondering what on earth I can do to shorten the long hours of evening.

It was the same throughout the latter years of caring. Initially, when himself was still mobile, when he still enjoyed going out for a meal (our favourite thing) or playing scrabble beside a feisty woodburner and surrounded by candles and talk of what we would do tomorrow, I had no such slump when Steve Wright said, It’s time to go. It meant nothing. It was just a wee reminder that dinner might like to be prepared and that a warming bath with scented candles awaited both of us. I didn’t even mind his derisive snort at the festival of light I had prepared around the rim of the bath. For me, it meant stories, stories flickering on the ceiling, the plash of water as I moved, the shadows like creatures from another world, all showing me hope and choice and freedom. I could barely wait to get into bed for all the reading I would do throughout the night.

Latterly, as he sickened and regressed into childhood, he wanted a supper of mulch at 4.30 and was ready for bed two hours later. Then I found little interest in cooking for one, for myself and absolutely no interest in the evening. He sat, headphones on, engaged on WhatsApp with who knows who or watching Casualty, something at which he would have scoffed away before, as mindless tripe. Now, alone, it thinks me. I connect again with the child who imagined a mountain range at eye level when it was just a plate of food to everyone else. It reminds me of the young wife and mother I once was who suddenly realised that life is ordinary. It reminds me of just a few years ago, when, pre-dementia diagnosis, I actually still believed things would change for the better, like in books but with me as the heroine.

Is the alternative, then, a slump into the ordinary? Hell NO!

To my delight, this child who saw mountains that became roast potatoes is alive and kicking within. I find her in the books I read, that curious child who longs to wander through the pages of a story. I ask myself, is this me hiding from the world? Perhaps. I ask, Am I going slowly mad, reading two books a week? Perhaps. Who will deny or confirm? Not I said the goose.

Well, that’s good enough for me. In stories, in books, in reading, I change my thinking. I learn, through novels, a new way to see an old thing. I find that ‘ordinary’ is not such a slump; but that ‘ordinary’ begs my light to shine from within and thus it lifts and lift until my ordinary is your extraordinary. Here’s my hand, I say, reaching down. I can pull you up and here’s a book. What book? you might ask? whilst grabbing my hand to avoid falling into the abyss. Oh, I reply. the one you need for now.

I read for survival and for pleasure. The well written word is more glorious to me than jewels; scratchy nickers and long empty evening, lose their power as do lost dinner dates and the ending of things. The light I find in books is endless and there is not ending in endless, for as long as people live and breathe and write, there will be stories upon stories upon stories, like a feast; like a roast dinner that looks one thing at eye level and quite another when ‘ordinary’. I have hauled my way up rocks and over mountains, through floods and deserts and only because I read books and books have always lit my way.

And as long as I live, I will keep that light on. I have ten grandchildren, and two step grandchildren and they all read and are ripe for books. That’s twelve potential families moving out into the future. Now that’s not ordinary at all.

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Island Wife – Hallo Happiness

Today the temperature stands at 36 degrees and feels like 40. I know this because, by this time I have got the hang of 40 and I recognise the colour of it and the weight. Add to that baggy-bellied air a humidity count of twice that and you just know I am melting. The pool, to date a pleasant cooling aid, is hot enough to make tea and the bobbing thingy full of chlorine has a sun-twisted top. As makes perfect sense in the aforesaid scenario, my son has just lit the braai and the smell of the wood shoots up my nose, propelled by a lot of over-excited flames. We will feast on chicken joints, butternut squash brushed with rosemary olive oil, a crushed garlic clove au centre, roasted peppers and maybe a corn or two on the cob. From time to time we all dive inside for the blessed coolth of the aircons which never go silent out here. I cannot imagine what it must be like for the shanty dwellers in the townships and, in remembering them, I know I am very fortunate indeed.

This being fortunate indeed way of being constitutes my library of inner thinks. Despite the truth of getting older or feeling scared about pretty much everything or, perhaps, looking back over my 67 years with a critical eye and with a resident judge to pluck at my vocal chords, I focus on things that make me happy. I know that many of us set orf to India in search of this holy grail but I have never needed to do that, not least because I discovered some 30 years back that although Happiness may well reside in India, she also lives with me, and with you and with everyone else to cares to notice her. Although life at times may deal cruel blows or bore the bejabers out of me or trip me up so I fall and break my spirit, Happiness doesn’t go away. She is there at the end of a whisper. She shows herself in moments with a loved one (Oh……why couldn’t it have been longer…?) or on spotting a bright blue dragonfly on a flower (Oh, NO, I forgot my camera) or even in that moment when a stranger smiles at me (weirdo..) but it is entirely up and down to me to notice and to keep the moment without blemish. I could miss all of her visitations if I allowed the negative responses to her beauty. In short, nothing of her is kept and I have not changed for she has not changed me. I need to control my mind not the other way around. Even if life is tough, even if I am hurting or afraid, full of doubts and delusions, my mind is under my control alone. Will I let it keep Happiness moments from me?

Okay, now back to the library. I cannot sort this dichotomy out by myself. I have always known that the only way to learn and to understand a hidden depth is to pull up someone who has already plunged it. I find these sages in books. Only a fool with an over-active ego thinks she can move on without guidance and I am no fool. I know how noisy and compelling the shouty world is. I know how easy it is to believe that this world is all there is and how much disillusion lies in that belief. I know about getting lost and going hungry for something to change. I know about disappointments and sadness, grief and rage but so does everyone else. This is the human state and when I last looked we are all humans. What makes the eternal student stand out is their decision to control their mind. To practice noticing everything that lifts a heart. To stand in Nature and to watch light move across the hills, or to study (as I did this early morning) a single dung beetle pushing a huge giraffe poo along the sand track. I watched it succeed for a bit and then topple over and get stuck underneath . I saw it push its way out from under, only to see the prize roll back down the incline. I watched it go back and start again. I had no camera to hand. I just watched, holding my breath, willing this brave soldier on. And I was happy.

The practice of Happiness costs nothing. It requires no level of education (in fact, academia can present a big stumbling block) no required apparel or status. It doesn’t mind what colour your skin is, nor how old you are when you decide to whisper Happiness in. The only thing she needs, in order to blossom and flourish, is for a person to decide to notice everything that lifts his heart – the polar opposite to the way the world thinks. Instead of grumbling about someone’s rudeness, look elsewhere in search of beauty. It could lie anywhere so look up, down, ahead, behind you. I promise you will find something that lifts, and, when you do that as a daily practice you will find that when someone is next rude to you, you will see their hurting spirit and be gentle with your thoughts on them, because your core thought control is on Happiness – and not just for you – because once Happiness is a choice, you want it for every living soul.

And then the magic begins. No matter what turns Life takes, if I am in control of my thoughts, every part of me is filled with something I have yet to find a name for. All I do know is that this nameless thing has stopped my acid reflux, calmed my heart, grounded me and shown me the great wide sky. Something has changed because I decided to change and that something is showing me how, in seeking Happiness, I have no need to travel further than my library of books; no qualifications beyond my desire to learn; no appropriate clothing, footwear, status, colour, creed, religion or history.

I only need to be open to new learning and willing to make it my daily practice.

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Island Blog 62 – Saying Yes

Island Blog 62

There are two of us leaving the island tomorrow.  One is me heading to Edinburgh for a book signing day in quite a few goodly bookshops and then on to Glasgow for my interview with Sally Magnusson on Friday for her programme ‘Sunday Morning’ which will air at 7.05 am on Sunday June 2nd.

Note for diary.

And the other is my little red laptop because she has decided to air her rebellious female side and has taken the initiative to add extra letters to the words my fingers ping out on her shiny black keyboard.  Although I do like a rebellious woman, am one myself and recognise the song of another in a crowd of hundreds, to this behaviour I have to say NO.

Now don’t get all ‘aw’ about it.  She is my tool and I need her to stay in line.  When I am writing a song, a blog a tweet or a piece for a monthly (is that why they are known as ‘periodicals’ one wonders……?) I must know that what I decide to lay down as a word smith, is what is laid down.  I cannot have random violations of that rule, any more than a pianist can have a sixth finger ping out a discord right in the flow of some enigmatic cadenza.  It just wouldn’t win the audience.

So, my lady in red is off to Germany for the second time.  As you may remember from her last ‘collapse’ into depravity, I diddled about for ages in the worldwide web to find the Laptop Hospital.  This time I knew my way and answered all the questions correctly.  I know this because that rather handsome delivery man is coming to collect her in the morning and I have the Collection Number.

I thought me a bit about saying No.  I think we women find it hard.  I know we do.  It’s something to do with our mother’s mother’s mothers who rarely said no to anything, just to keep the country going.  I honour their way, but it doesn’t work today, and it may not have worked for them, but they were way too good at stepping back into the wallpaper without a murmur and giving their lives as a gift for just about anyone who stepped into their space.

Not us girls.  I say ‘girls’ and laugh at myself with all my wrinkle potions, but you know what I mean.  Saying no is still hard.  Oh, I can be so very wise with someone else’s No dilemma.  I can advise them into a very tight corner, where all they can do is nod because the rest of them is pinned down by my Wise Words.  It doesn’t change them, even if they recognise the wisdom and hope they can walk it out into their own lives, but when they leave thinking how remarkable I am, I think for a moment about how well I manage to say NO at times in my own life when I am scared of rejection and judgement.

The answer is that I am full of wind (as they say up here) and the work I need to do on myself is still there.

But, what I can tell them, all these women, young and old, who fight to say NO to something, someone and to rise beyond the fear of rejection and judgement, is this:

Try it.  Just once.  And taste it.  The freedom of it.  The wild crazy headiness of it.  Ok, the person you said No to didn’t like it.  Of course they didn’t.  Would you?  But they coped with it and they reset their internal picture of you and they left feeling weird but really rather intrigued.  They might have said…….wow, good for her!

Because, what I do know, is that when you say No to someone else, actually say it, gently, without anger or blame (recognising that you have fed this all along) and with love in your heart for them, for yourself……..

You say YES to you.