I love my days of. rest. I also love my work. The rest days see me different, hear me different, slow me into a wander. I use them well. I was crap at rest days back in Tapselteerie and that thinks me. I watch other youngsters dash against rocks, refusing rest, thinking what…….oh, if I stop will everything else? If I admit to ‘rest’ does that make me weak/pathetic/a failure? Do I hear my mother’s voice, my father’s? I remember all that. My mother was very strong, had gone through shit I have never experienced and taken control and courage and carried others along into a better place. The resulting mother expected the same in her girls, the four of us. Her boy avoided that but got what we never did from our father. Voices from the past have extraordinary continuance. I’m changing paragraph now.

I watch the sun dapples on the flowing tide, higher now and rising to the incoming full moon. The gulls are wheedling, sorry wheeling over the ebb, strickling for sprat, for silly fish that fly too close to the ceiling of the tidal inflow. Pickings. I see everything here, feel it all, hear it, smell it. I know when a tide changes, when the wide sky is grumpy and threatening. I feel the change and that’s the thing of living wild, connected with all that is important. Things mean little out here beyond the need for a ferry, for basic supplies, for help when needed, for music and ceilidhs, for the craic of island life. We can dress up, and we do at times, but we can turn up at a wedding in dungarees with earth under our nails and nobody would bother at all.

Talking about ‘bother’ I had one. Apparently we are Superfast here now, whatever that means, and I was in gracious receipt of a new router and plugs and wires. and instructions, all free. I looked at the box for 3 days as if it might release, when opened, yet another demon. Then, exasperated with myself, I rose from the floor of denial and split the seams. I understood not one word. This is not for me, I said, and closed the box. Another 3 days and I get an email. from Marc at Tech Support telling me I haven’t connected my new router. I could see myself, back of the class and with no ink in her well. I dismissed and went to sleep but my dreams were all about. falling off cliffs. So, today, I shucked off my cardigan and hunkered down beneath my very old desk, a courie-in with the cobwebs so black they must be years old. I swiped and cleared. Thinks and fears. Thinks are pull everything out, everything. Fears are ‘what if I lose wifi? I did it anyway.

In that space and place I found autonomy and courage. I have no clue about technology wires. I don’t understand the WAN from the IP, and there were many more. I just sat under that desk and tried to be powerful. I plugged in this and that, found they didn’t work, but rested there because the new router sprang to life. I did send up a thankyou, but we are not done yet. However I knew my skills were done here and then I caught some young friends walking by with their wee one and dog. They came in and got me online. I must confess, after my cliff falls and my fears of being stupid and old that I never countenanced this happiness.

A breakthrough. I have had many of them. I hope you do too.