Change

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Island Blog – Inscape

Today was modified. After the busy dogsitting day, I knew I was going to allow myself to phew, a lot. Although I woke fine and dandy, I always do, as it is fantabulous just to wake at all when so many do not, I had a weary in my bones and an oldness sort of thinking. There’s a swingbat on that sort of thinking, because I am old and happy about it but I do not like the slump of it, the challenge of it, (thanks Julie) and, although I refuse to couch, or potato, myself, I confess to thoughts that beckon. You could just flop. You could just allow. You could, trust me, you could. I hear that voice, but I cannot take said voice seriously. I am the daughter of a life, of strife, of trauma and regret. I have witnessed and avoided, I have run away and returned, I have no weapons, no desire for revenge nor violence but I have lived a life that, on reflection, only I could have lived. And that thinks me.

I awoke to cats on, not my tin, but my sunroom roof, cats running, not mine, but my neighbour’s, beautiful tortoiseshells and great mousers. I no longer hear the squeaks of the mouse family within my drystone walls, no longer do they keep me awake at night as they scurry about their ordinary lives of survival in my loft, no longer do I watch them rush across what is to them a great divide as they seek fallings of bird seed. I am mousey silent, and there’s a think. Is it ok that these lovely cats are keeping the mice down, or is it ghastly annihilation? Short term, and don’t we always think this way? It thinks me.

A sudden was a young woman stopping at my door with her dog. Fancy a walk? she asked, and I was in. We walked and talked, I said I can’t go far, and she said no problem, just tell me when you want to go back. Safe in that support, I found strength in my legs and breath as we meandered around her life and mine and we both caught that connection which is everything. Neither of us fit into a category, neither want labels, both have known trauma and difficulties. Well, who hasn’t? I believe that our key is to recognise this and to change ourselves somehow. I am further ahead than she, I know this. Our inscape tells us who we were back then, the business success, the marital contributor, the mother, father, friend. We did well. Yes, we made mistakes, ones we may still hold onto as ID, but we are somewhere else now.

And that can mean lost. I know it. ID is a security. When that is taken away, we can become amoeba, floating aimlessly in our loss of identity. What I have learned is to notice that loss, to halt those aimless thoughts and to challenge them. I may be not who I thought I was, but the very ‘was’ of this lost thing is of my past. Can I let it go, that ID of whom I was and whom I believed in for so long? I am always working on that one.

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Island Blog – Zeitgeist

It’s been five days. I miss and I don’t miss, the Miss. I miss her excitement at seeing me, even if I had just been away for a pop to the shop. I miss her huge brown eyes, looking, looking up at me, for reasurrance, guidance, love. I miss the kisses, cuddles and the way she spoke to me, opening her mouth to emit wild sounds, upward inflections, disappointment in me, curvaceous lifts and falls to communicate her needs. I miss the way she hurtled in crazy dashes around the rooms, up the stairs and down again with a bear in her mouth, and all of a sudden, as if the joy of living just got the better of her. I miss hearing her tappy feets on the floor, her skittering and slides, her absolute ability to live in the moment. Her zeitgeist.

I don’t miss the wakeful nights of late, as what heralded dementia began a heavy tread across the delicate tipperies of her brain. I don’t miss the tension in my gut every time I went somewhere for more than 2 hours. I don’t miss her barking, even at my voice as I questioned and answered myself, or opened a door that squeaks (they all squeak), or Alexa suddenly burst into life for no damn reason. I don’t miss the anxiety of walking in the fairy woods, wondering if I might meet another dog, another human attached, one that the Miss might rush up to, barking like a forest of trees in a state of war. She never volunteered attack, but it might have seemed that way.

However, now I walk without her. No more sticks to throw and to chase, no more of her fun and she always wanted fun, play, nonsense, games, sparkles. Even when the mud chased us, the stones wobbled us, the weather bashed us about, she, naked, me, trussed up like a polar star, we, we, we, had laughing fun, returning drenched and shivering and with mud up to our bellies. Still I walk. I drove to the most beautiful beach in the world alone and in fronds of rain, soft it was and gentle, the waves loud and I could see why. Out there, way out there, the crash of wild spontaneity, the sudden, created a dynamic random percussion, its voice travelling many miles. My wild, my ocean, my home. There was nobody else on that wide curve-mouth of a beach, one that once knew families that lived off whelks, seaweed, seabirds; one that held, momentarily, the ship that became a coffin for those ‘cleared’ from their ancient lands. I stand awhile in the soft wet, tip my face up to receive it, feel the cloud-cleansing. I recognise this place, this place of seeing what was, feeling it, and of moving on. A zeitgeist. To accept, or to absorb, accept and engage with the spirit of time. Zeit, means time. Geist means ghost or spirit. And, although the term, as we know it now, refers to an era, a culture, I claim it as mine.

The Miss is gone. I am here. My zeitgeist.

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Island Blog – The Past Perfect

Blustery, and the garden is dishevelled. Blown this way and that, snatched at and barely returned, the long legged blooms bend and sway, but do not break. Well, some do, and that’s my fault. I planted them late, the Spring flowers, asking them to do what they find tough. To be asked to bloom strongly in the wrong season is definitely an ask. I can relate. But just look at them, yellow, blue, red, beautiful, the whole fricken lot of them. They cut my sky, leaping up into the cloud talk, which, they well may hear. They offer a safety to the wee birds on the feeders, protection from a sparrowhawk. She is ferocious, fast as light and accurate. I don’t begrudge her need for lunch, but I don’t want to hand out a plateful of robins, finches, sparrows or blackbirds. It is a tricky kill for her, what with all my late planted, big ass stemmed blooms. A canopy. I wish I had had one of those in my time.

Today I called The Hub. I love The Hub. T’is a new thing. Heretofore, I called an answerphone with a lengthy tiddleypom of a preamble, finalising in press 1 for this, 2 for that, and so on until my arm grew weary. Not now. It seems, after I questioned this change, that it was deemed more reassuring for those of us with cancer, to have faster access to a human voice. So spot on with that. Instead of having to stand up once the automatic voice clicks into life, I feel heard and cared for, and so will all the others with cancer surgery and treatment ahead of them like a stop. I can speak to Adam, or Karen, after no waiting at all, ask my questions and have promise of connection and response. thank You Edinburgh Cancer Hub.

I asked my questions, was confounded at a few. Now I am here, in this wonderful Autumn wildness, with candles lit and a baked potato baking. The crazy west coast light is outside of me, and yet it is not. I watch it through my windows, can connect with it as I walk out onto the colding grass, and I feel alive. This is my home. My roots are here, even though I didn’t know. And those roots are strong. Planted late, growing, regardless of that, holding sway against the winds of time. Yes.

Ps. Can you still say ‘had had’? Is that the past perfect? I was such a grammar girl, once.

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Island Blog – We Got This

And, then, today. Children, including Little Boots, to school for nine (the older girls), and a new nursery for LB. A new nursery, strange people, other kids, unknown space and all, but she was in like she already knew the lot. How must it be for someone so wee? Looking up noses, level pegging with knees and hip bones. I don’t remember it, thankfully.

The day, as it does for young mums and dads, pulls away like a bolting horse. There is breakfast to wash up, a dicey floor food scrap mosaic for Henry to guzzle up, two cats to feed, washing to wash, dinner to consider and prep, plans to make for later, the swim lessons some miles away, the snacks to make for the journey to appease tired girls, hangry girls. We found the swim pool, swimmed, came home again, home again, jiggetty jig. There is allotted time for ‘devices’, an allotted time that is always way too short for the players, then a wee snack, a peek at the Night Garden and off up the stairs to bedlington. In theory, there’s a night of sleep ahead, but this is never guaranteed, for there be dragons in the dark, as I remember well. Life rolls on, bolts on, lurches from dance class through swim, play dates, parties and athletics, all a drive away, all with a timeline. The time these parents spend in parking slots waiting, and waiting is just a bit part in the huge production of young parenthood. I watch it, and I remember, but vaguely. At Tapselteerie we had no television reception, no devices, no computers, no mobile phones and, do you know what? I am so very glad because I would never have had the patience for what is the norm today. Never.

Cooler now, and I think of home, of my friend up there living in a home with underfloor heating off, a range off, looking after my wee Poppy dog who looks quite the thing on rocks by the shore, all fluffy and not bothered with the coolth of these days. It is as if I left in one season and will return in the next, which is true, I will. The missing of that change in my own place, my home place, my bone place, my roots, always comes like a stranger to me. It did in those times I went to Africa one month and returned 2 later to snow boots and waterproofs when I only carried a light jumper, sneakers and a piddly jacket to cover my upper echelons. Waiting for the bus at Glasgow airport, I stood out like a fairy in Buchanan Street. It laughed me somewhat, through the grinning shivers.

As I do this waiting thing, I laugh and chuckle with a scatterdore of children. I watch the parents duck and dive, consider, negotiate, and sensitively, oh so sensitively, work with the new generation, to grow them into strong, unbiased, feisty individuals. I, perhaps, did the same, we did, because it took mum and dad to do this, at least, for us and for ours. It sure looks like we did ok, as I observe the five results out there doing this living thing, in the now of now. I wonder if he noticed this, the dead dad of 3 years tomorrow. He didn’t talk much about it, about how our children ‘turned out’, but I believe he was impressed with the way they grew far beyond us, way outside our understanding, our ‘norm’. He smiled a lot around our young, got grumpy with the noise of young-ness, felt, I am guessing, de trop with a lot of their lives, as I can myself. Too many girls, he would growl. 8 of them and just one boy, nine girls now and only 2 boys. A fractal world in his mind.

So, tomorrow, old sea dog, we will remember the day you died. It was lunchtime, ish. The boys laid bets on the time. It was gallows humour, and anyone who has witnessed the dying of a parent will understand that humour.

And then we move on. We got this.

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Island Blog – Take Another Look

Let us take a look at Olding, from another aspect. Olding can be dire, upsetting, astonishing, in fact, but if we look at it through laughing eyes, it can also be hilarious, not just to those who are nowhere near missing the edge of any pavement, but to we who know how it feels to be anxious about exactly that. Stepping out of a body in some level of decline is to free a mind. It allows a sense of humour to engage with a strong spirit and a still beating heart. Look back, my friend, at what you achieved in your life, how hard you worked to get it right, to BE right for those you loved and whom you still love, here now, or gone too soon. Remember that time you lifted other flagging souls into your arms and carried them over stony ground, through fire, over oceans of shit. You did all of that, we all did all of that, and yet the memories of the times we have faltered or failed, said nothing or said too much, halted instead of running towards justice, fairness and inclusivity always leap to the front of the queue. We judged, yes we did, unfairly. We decided what came next and now we might regret that. We were unkind, dismissive, rude, even. So what? Do those ‘faulty’ memories define us now? I say a bit fat NO to that, even though I can be guilty of such regrets. It thinks me.

Why is it that we daft humans can always find and build on, the times we got it wrong? Do we stand as our own judge? I think we do, but we can also judge others wrongly. We can look at how the world is changing, decide we don’t like it, it isn’t familiar, and diss it all, but I can remember my own ancestors doing exactly that when I was young. I laughed at them, behind their backs of course. Old fuddy duddies the lot of them. Young people move too fast, mumble their words, wear extraordinary, or skimpy clothing, and not enough of it to cover an egg, let alone a whole set of buttocks and they speak a language definitely not grounded in the Oxford English Dictionary. We have come full circle, it seems. However, in my observations of self, I can see that, if this Oldies attitude is allowed to surface and thence to take over, like pond weed in an untended body of water, it clouds vision and grows stagnant. Lord save me from stagnant! How will I do this, how will I bring in the light, clear my own weeds, unblock the blockages that prevent a free flow of fresh clean water, bubbling with oxygen and all of life? To embrace the unexpected, to show interest in it and enthusiasm for it, even if I, the Oldie, must only sit on a bench as observer, is to engage with the unfamiliar and to embrace it.

The Oldies I remember first, and with deep affection, are just bones now but the light they brought to my skimpily clad, fast moving, mumbling life, fraught with agonies and doubts and angst, stays with me to this day. They might have been on that bench as life flowed past their rheumy eyes, but the sparkle was there, the stories just waiting to be told, the mischief alive as a pixie in their hearts and minds. Despite their loneliness, sickness or restrictions, these people could still delight, as was their intention. Not for them the moans and groans, not for them the lack and loss they all must know so well, not for them the criticism of a younger world, young and determined to get things right once and for all, in new ways, ways that really will save humankind from the fiery pit.

My granny, who had endless health issues that she never allowed to control her mood, and I sat on a bench once. My legs dangled miles from the ground as I watched my jelly shoes swing back and forth. I was bored and grouchy. What can you see? she asked me. I looked up into her wrinkled and beautiful face, saw the pearls at her neck, the softness of her jumper, the smile on her lips. I turned back to the view of passers by, with shopping trolleys or dogs or husbands at hand. Nothing! I grumped, and swung the jellies some more. Right, she said, now cover your eyes and look again. I covered my eyes. What can you see now? she asked. Oh, Granny, I can see fairies and dragons and there’s Alice in Wonderland, and Pooh and Piglet! I heard her chuckle. Good, she said, me too. Let’s follow them, shall we?

And so we did.

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Island Blog – I Still Am

Well, who would have thought this? Not me. How can one day feel like a funeral march and the next as a beautiful thing, a day awakening after a long sleep. Nothing has changed, the circumstances are just the same, the day just another dawning. I still face surgery, a lumpectomy, a full mastectomy, I don’t know. And, yet, not the same at all.

I woke once in the night, ignored the dog bounce, chances are, at my peril, and re-awoke at 6.45. A lie in for me. And the day just kept her colour, her bright shining. I just flowed free, happy, light and full of ideas. I will knit. Who said that? Not me. I have wools, I have paints and texture ideas for a canvas. I have wires for stringing beads, I have the wisdom of a textural artist. Well, I did, ten years ago. I looked around me. The birds, the sparrows, flutter like gorgeous all around my feeders. They have learned, even with their fat beaks, to grab nuts from the feeder, and I do help them a bit with seed in a carefully placed place, limiting (no offence) the dives of sparrowhawk and goshawk. I just want to watch them, not offer them as prey. It has taken me years to work out the best location for feeders.

I wander through my day. I found Radio 4 Extra, plays and series. I listen as I knit nothing, just knit. I watch the New Moon finally give way to the Ordinary, that space between Tricksy New and then the even more so Full Moon, when the tides are slow to lift, slow to rise, kind of flat a lot. The big ass full is coming, but we, up here, the fishermen, the island women, and some of the men, enjoy a reprieve in that ‘slow’. I walk my small four legs twice around the short loop. We have ‘The loop’ one most people walk without thought. I used to do that. The weakness from being nearly dead has changed that for me. I know my footing here. I love it, the every step of it. I never thought about my steps before. Now I do, so I walk the short, twice a day. I am not afraid.

When i leave my beloved home, dog, island, on Monday to go to Edinburgh and then to the Western General for my consultation, for the decisions on surgery, on the next bit, I feel some fear, of course I do, but the NHS up here is fantastic and the things they have learned and perfected over just the last ten years is so encouraging. i don’t have the mind that knows everything about everything, nor about anything much, but I know I am supported by those who do, family included.

I remember a day in Barcelona, my tiny granddaughter fearful because her mum left her to go for a pee. She clung to me. She is now ten and quite the thing. But I remember that moment and how valuable I was in the moment.

And still am.

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Island Blog – The Soul of my Foot

Stung, I was. I didn’t feel nor register the sting but awoke the following morning to a sore arch. Still I registered not. I just thought, Sore arch, Get moving, Ignore it, as I do when encountering any sort of bodily pain. It wasn’t real pain, more a question. Will I walk wobbly-like in order to favour this whatever-it-is or will I stand tall, walk proud and straight as I choose to walk inside the days of my life. A no-brainer for me. All the day long I favoured not, paced out, never checked to see what was going on down there. I have no idea why I didn’t, but my deeper belief is that, in the face of serious agony, this was a mild case of absolutely nothing at all. This thinking is my choice. I will not catastrophize unless my intelligence tells me this is one, a catastrophe. Much later in the day, as the slight soreness began a sort of rhythmic throb, I did look and there it was, a definite sting hole in my arch. An arch. A doorway from one place to another, from one state of being to another. In other words, an opportunity for inner change. I love that. And I love doorways because they laugh me. I used to say, and it was the truth, that Himself’s mind was wiped every time he passed through one, the other room holding back the unpleasant interchange and that smile on his face as if what just happened never did.

I studied the sting. Well, study is a bit of an exaggeration as I can’t really see the close up details, but I can feel it with my fingers, the perfect circle of red, the pin prick centre stage. It’s rather beautiful, from back here behind big spectacles and wonky chops visionary skills. I experience a slight botherment when I consider how my eyebrows, my face, my close up details must look to a youngster with 20/20 vision, and bat the botherment away. The arch thinks me. You know that. The sting thinks me too and off I go in backtrack wonderment. I do walk barefoot through my grass which is calf-high now, allowing for three things. One is that I want the wildflowers to welcome the pollinators, the second is that the guy who cuts my grass hasn’t appeared for ages and the third is that I could step on a stinging thing. I look out over a considerable festoon of dandelions, the flowers of growth, hope and healing, the bluebells which have escaped (I suspect, deliberately) the confines of a flower bed, the violets, wood anemones, sorrel and something I love the colour of but cannot name. I must have gone through a doorway. I also have considerable trouble locating the small dog poo of a morning, even with my spectacles on, but smile at the tiny tracks she has carved into what must feel like a jungle to her, a jungle of green, with many a place to hide.

So, swimming down into my soul, I have a sting in the soul of my foot. This is clear and obvious, even without spectacles. It throbs a bit, itches more, and is in my arch, a doorway of change. In any life, the gift of the ordinary, if noticed and considered, can flow and weave into any area of that life. A ‘something’ that happens on the outside of us can proffer a doorway in. How is my life, your life? What slight wounding on the outside can illuminate a deeper wounding within? For me, change is afoot. See what I did there? It is no random happening, not for those of us who recognise an outside event as an inner message. We may not, probably do not, understand what is being sent to us, but if we just acknowledge and wait, the voice of the. higher self will communicate. We all have sudden ‘stops’ in our lives when the love in the sky wants us to take notice. Could be sickness, could be a car bump, could be a sting, could be anything that stops us. We are mistaken if we bat it away as nothing. If I could tell anyone anything profound, I would say, Listen and Wait. Those two angels have served me well over many decades. Our souls are strong critters, way wiser than we are with our skin keeping us in. And my soul appears to be lodged in the arch of my foot, for now.

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Island Blog – Courage and Change

I remember turning 50. It was the first year of my freedom. I had, the previous year, hit a brick wall, in a manner of speaking. The road well travelled, the wife and mother, the business partner, the following, always following, stopped me one sudden day in my tracks. I looked around to see nothing new although the horizon lay wide and open and, in my case, uninvestigated. I turned and saw the mud and trudge marks, my own, winding back, back and into the far distance. How orderly, how obedient, how thoughtless. Thoughts rampaged through my brain as if released from prison, all tumbling and somersaulting with glee at their new found freedom. They chattered about new beginnings, about hope and choice and other constellations beyond the one I had, heretofore, considered the only one out there, the only one a-sparkle in the heavens above me. It scared me to death. It lifted my spirits. I had no idea what to do next.

What do you want to do next? The question came loud through the chattering, tumbling, somersaulting chatter. I caught my breath and looked around for what? An angel? Suddenly I felt the cold and numbing wind that blew across these acres of plough and winter and shivered. I was alone with this, with the stop, the wall, the track and the crazy rebel I had suddenly become. I’m not saying I hadn’t rebelled before, never kicked against the pricks, all of them, but I had done my rebelling cautiously and often in secret. Never had the thought of such a walk away from what was expected of me landed in my head, my heart, with such a determined thump. All the way back to the dismal rented cottage squatting uncomfortably within these acres of plough and winter, I talked myself back to sense and sensibility. Behave. You said you would. You’d be letting him down. People will tut and judge. You will tut and judge. All the rest of that day I was battered by opposing factors, big strong factors, and equally matched in this ring of indecision. And then he came home. I saw his smile, his welcome and felt like a creep, the worst kind of creep. I had, a few days before, contacted a local college about joining an art course full time. I had an interview on Monday next. As I sat him down and told him my plan, he didn’t understand. More creep. I told him of the interview. Next year, he asked, smiling his approval. No, I said. Now. Even more creep.

But he came with me for the interview. You’ll start on Wednesday, said the head of art. The course has already begun. I accepted and he said nothing against my decision. I had no car. Small inconvenience he said. Small? We’ll find one. And, within 24 hours, Miss Daisy came into my life. Although he didn’t like me baling the business, abandoning him just on a ‘whim’, he only showed his disapproval through silence, sighing and a bit of head shaking now and then. The following year is history now, the subsequent sales of hundreds of paintings, the move back to the island, the way freedom spoke to me that day and turned my whole life from tinned peaches to crepe suzette. Had I continued the obligatory trudge, I would never have learned to really live.

Now I. have a son about to turn 50. It hardly seems possible. I hope freedom speaks to him too. Freedom is a decision and it lies in the grey of life. The ‘either’ and ‘or’, the black and the white, are just dilemma horns. In between lies the opportunity for colour, a blank canvas, the chance to create a whole new story, not necessarily requiring an abandonment of commitment. Relationships can survive, even thrive on change, however uncomfortable that change may be for a while. But many, no, hundreds of thousands, stay on track, unhappy, unfulfilled, un pretty much everything. We are not here on this earth, in this life, to be humdrum nor trapped. We are here to create magic. And, it takes courage to turn around, I know, courage we all have.

So……what do you want to do next?

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Island Blog – The Tomorrowlands

This morning begins, for me, at a time that bothers me in its insistence. No! I almost shout but don’t, modifying my shout-ness, even though there is nobody else to hear, this is no longer acceptable, this 05.30 lark when even the larks are slumbering on. And, yet, my body clock ignores my remonstrations with the tenacity of a teenager. I give in and get up. The light is the right light, the morning light, and the day is dawning whether I like it or not. I do like it for I am an inveterate morning person. What does inveterate mean? I forget, but it fits because other people use it around such subjects as chips with vinegar, reading crime novels and gardening, to mention but three inveteration opportunities.

I digress. Risen and with coffee on the brew, I wander into the conservatory which is cold. The nights are cold, star-backed and sometimes frosty, a relief from the heat of the sun. I am not complaining. Sun and heat are rare gifts in this island life and nobody with a modicum of sense moans about the odd times we enjoy both of these together. Oh we know the sun is out there somewhere, behind a depth of cloud cover that could halt an entire Scottish regiment, a feat most opponents have historically failed to achieve, but the ability to get the old boy to push through has confounded us longtime. Wishing doesn’t cut it, nor do prayers. Weddings can, and have, capsized a whole bride. Nonetheless, we island on because the beauty of this lump of rock is second to none.

The day slows down as I feared it might. Some days are tortoises where they used to be hares, way back when a clamjamfrie of children, not all my own, plucked at my skirts for biscuits and pressed for attention, then disappearing alarmingly, returning just in time and in dire straits, when food was required every 30 minutes and when life had her hand in the small of my back. Move on, move quicker, MOVE! Now there are no such demands, no pressure from life, in fact she is now telling me, the skeerie minx, to slow down, to ca’ canny, to rest. But even as I dislike this sudden, for it feels sudden, lowering of my sails, it is here with me now and I must needs welcome it as I welcomed, and thanked, the spirited life in my limbs. I decide to shift the limb spirit into my mind. It seems to work. Instead of bemoaning a loss of spirit and strength, I welcome it into my thinking. It decides my thoughts which decide my feelings which decide my actions. I have learned this from life coaches, a few of whom, or is it which, are in my family, and I have imbibed the truth of it and taken it as ‘read’. Funny that word. Read sounds like ‘reed’ and we know what it means. Read sounds like ‘red’ and now we are much confused. Heaven knows how anyone can ever comprehend, pronounce or employ such tiddleypom when learning English, especially the old English, a language quite beautiful to me but if I were to launch into it in, say, a Glasgow pub, I might not get home at all.

I’m still digressing. What I wanted to communicate was and is that my day was slow. It took me half hour stretches of resistance to restlessness, holding, controlling my desire to lift, walk, move, and it thinked me of the sea, the waves on the beach, fretting at the sand as an old woman plucks at the bobbles on her old cardigan. I read a bit, walked a bit, went to the shore a bit, made a feta and spinach dip, a bit, sewed a bit and la la la. I know it is right and proper for my children to have their own lives. I celebrate that. I know that it is right that my old china is dead. I celebrate that too, because it was always going to happen and could have been so much more upsetting than it was. I know I am perfectly tickety-wotwot alone. And, I also know that there are so very many other people out there who know exactly how it all feels.

Slow days, they come, but the joy of living in this funny, clever, resourceful and dynamic community is something I treasure and will treasure again at 05.30 in the Tomorrowlands.

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Island Blog – Homecoming

Oh I did not want to come home! The heat, the sunshine (dodging it a lot) at upwards of 30 degrees from sun up, the red sand, the bush, the Africa of Africa, the music, rhythm, even the mosquitos, all of it had become my familiar. After two months, that is understandable if you’re loving every minute. Washing dried in minutes, the dog was too hot to walk after 9 am, and my bare feet on the wooden stoep burned like there was a fire beneath them as I oiled, sanded, varnished and painted. I wanted to help. Don’t tell me to sit down. I can do ‘sit down’ for a while, and longer than a while indoors with the aircon blasting, but I will always choose to be involved and that whole involved thingy thinks me. I knew I was coming back to just me.

The life out there, three long long flights away, plus a train and a ferry, is a whole different life. It has its disadvantages, for sure, the usual irritations, the added falafel of dodgy drivers, slow responses, (a lot of shoulder shrugging at any confrontation, plus a wide toothy smile), the heat day after day, the impossibility of finding parts for your car, the lack of Helmans Mayonnaise. I was a visitor. Visitors have no say at all in a place of lives being lived. They, we, I, have no clue as to the reality of the it of it. Just saying. I know, for example, how visitors here on the island for a sunshine week #rare, wax lyrical on the benefits I enjoy living here. I have no right to complain. My eyeballs roll every time. And it thinks me. On the way we perceive what we see, the snapshot of it, the processing, the decision made. Fumph. T’is thus. No. T’isn’t.

Anyroad, I take three flights, the first most pleasant, a slight rise in a half empty plane with comfortable seats, an old girl for sure but sassy and just for an hour. I am still in slight clothing. Then I get lost in Jo’burg airport. Possibly not easy to do but I manage it, finding myself in Baggage Collection when I should be (and soon) in Connections. I right myself, and speed up. It is only a short about turn and march and then another 3 miles to the gate. Which gate? The signs are now and then and mostly then so I, not worried at all, ask someone. He, an official with a badge, is super kind and walks with me to the appropriate corridor. he smiles, all black and wonderful and really cares. My strength of spirit returns. I arrive at Gate 10. I sit. Gradually, a lot more passengers arrive, all muslim robed. Because it is now 5 pm, they lay out their mats and bow to Mecca. I watch them praying, their devotion. It warms me. Not my thing but I still admire anyone with deep faith. More arrive, and more and suddenly I am unsure about my choice of gate. I rise and ask a sharpshooting black woman, official. She tells me, smiling, this is Emirates Gate. Oops.

I set off again. Good heavens this airport is huge, but I am not stupid. These muslims are heading the same way as I am, to London, so I must be in the right zone. I totter, yes, I am weary now, to Gate 14 and I find my people, I can hear the Glasgow accent, the banter, the tired voices, the helping of each other. I sit once more. We are called and because I am seat 20, I am almost first on. But as we queue and queue and queue on the ramp, I realise we are not the first. No, First is first, then Business Class, then us, lower case.

We walk by Business, seeing the beds, knowing they can stretch out for the 11 hours in the air, will have the taster menu, champagne et lala. And we take our seats. I am at the emergency exit. I ask the little lady near the window if she knows how to work it. She says she hasn’t a clue. Nor do I. And then he arrives, built like a cathedral, a professional golfer with tree trunks for legs and muscles that might challenge his flankers. She at the window sleeps the whole night. He, fitfully but so polite with his body. Me, not a minute. However, we didn’t have to employ his strength as we arrived safely in Heathrow. An unsteady walk to the next gate for Glasgow and into oh my goodness, the cold. From over 30 degrees to 6? However, there was a warm daughter to hug me warm again, a hot bath and a warm sleep. Home now on the island and so very thankful for the whole shebang. All of it. I learned so much, and I am thankful and curious and, do you know what, if you do nothing else to shape up a change in your life, just be curious. She, Curiosity, is a wonderful leader.