April 18, 2014 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 130 Wild Flower

I know I write often about relationships, but, let’s be honest here, they are fundamental to every step we humans make. In order to move forward in any area of our lives, we need to form them and feed them and acknowledge, within them, the parts we don’t resonate with. We must allow each other to be who we essentially are.

Unless I meet my doppelganger, (which could throw up no end of trouble if you think about it) I am always going to have to deal with the things in you that are not in me.

As are you.

I may be loud and laugh like a donkey. I may have an irritating habit or six. I may bring, and undoubtedly will, into this relationship, my baggage from my own past, my own hangups about being told what to do, for example, fixed, pigeon-holed. Or, it may be you who has spent a lifetime wanting your voice to be heard and then listened to and who is fed up with pigeons, and their holes.

When we embark on a new relationship, there is a kind of euphoria at first, if, that is, we click in a way that appears bathed in a glorious and magical light. Then, after a little time, this wonderful light begins to pale, it has to for the true person to show their face. We might not like this bit. Why is that? Because now we see beyond the mask, and we all wear them. There are ways we wish to be seen and ways we do not wish to be seen, but it is not possible to keep that mask on for long. Human nature is too strong for us, we are at its mercy.

What we are all seeking, is to be accepted as we are. There are probably thousands of books on this very subject. It’s called Agape love, as distinct from the type of love known as Eros, which is the one that comes bathed in light. It cannot last, Eros, although it’s dashed useful as a starting gun, unless it matures into Agape. The Greeks had many words to describe love, as do other languages. It’s only we English speakers who have the one word and it can fankle us up something rotten as we wander through our lives. For example, over time, love can grow weary of loving. This is something you might say to me. Love flickers like a candle in the winds of time, and can sometimes snuff right out. But not Agape love, I will reply, because this love doesnt seek domination nor control. It doesn’t ever want to make another feel small or scared or unsafe. This love protects and encourages, even if there is no obvious point upon which we both agree, especially then.

A mother’s love for a child can be this ‘warts and all’ type, although such total acceptance is often lacking between herself and the child’s father. And yet, didn’t they set out together to make a shared lifetime? Of course they did. So what is missing? If we can allow a child to grow into an unique being, how come we work so hard to de-unique a partner? I’m not saying we all do this, but I have found a common thread or two in the relationships I have watched and studied.

I am wondering if the starting point is outside or inside us. If it is outside, then it must follow that we are always at the mercy of the world and its complex entanglements, a world that expects us to do or be something and someone, in order to fit, to take our place in the pecking order. If it is inside us, then why can’t we change things? Perhaps it’s because we don’t really want to. Maybe we feel we have done all we can and why should we be the one to change? If you tell me I am too over-bearing or judgemental, too quick to put you down, and you only see, before you, a person in serious need of repair, then you are obviously not going to budge. And if I rather like whatever it is about me you don’t like, or I don’t even recognise these, so called, faults in myself, then nor am I.

If I could go back again to the early days of my adult life, not that I would want to, for a minute, I might have wished for more training on relationships and less on geography and latin. Emerging as a student with qualifications might indeed lead me into a certain area of work, presuming I could find any that is, but it doesn’t help me one bit in the art of relationship building, nor its ongoing maintenace. If I am one of those fortunate children who was loved with an Agape love, then I am even less well-equipped, in theory, for haven’t I been allowed to be myself in any and all situations? How on earth I am going to be able to ‘fit in’ to the shape you want me to fit into?

When I am working with school children, little ones, I can see who is confident in a goodly home love, and who isn’t, by the way the child behaves, shares, steps back, or doesn’t. I came from a large and competitive bundle of children, and I notice how we all want to be heard, our voices rising to cap the general white noise inside a crowded house, to lift above it. When I leave that nest, I take that need with me. At first, you might have found it rather cute, but over time, trust me, it could well become a pain in the aspidistra, and build on itself until it becomes a ‘bad’ point, something that needs fixing, although we may not ever agree on that one.

What I have learned for certain, over many long years of relationships, is that my strength is also my weakness, and my weakness is my strength. My excessive behaviour, is just creative energy lacking in direction, like a weed, which you may want to pull up and cast away, but which, in truth is just a wild flower in the wrong place.

March 2, 2014 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 127 Reasons to Stay

Since writing my book, Island Wife, I have received many emails and letters from women whose own story relates to my own. Some of them are short, some long and detailed, but many of them have the same question to ask me. Why did I stick with my marriage?

The ‘how’ of it, I can answer. Despite what appeared to be going on, and growing shape and form, I could always find one good reason to stay, one reason, however small and squeaky. There may well have been a thousand reasons to leave, but it only took one to keep me in place. In the early days, the reasons numbered five. My five children. I was confident and strong in the knowing that, were I to abandon ship, they would be damaged. I make no judgement, nor did I ever, on women who do leave. In fact, as I re-investigate my heart right now on this matter, I feel no critical twinges, nor any sense of superiority beside those good women who made a choice, a really tough one and one not without considerable personal angst and pain, guilt and fear. I just couldn’t do it myself, not for long, anyway.

I used to watch other wives and mothers, as they flew in on warm winds to stay at Tapselteerie for their family holidays. I warmed myself in the light of their eyes, eyes that told me they had found a nourishing bond in their own relationships, and that they were, yes, happy. Of course, I have no knowledge of them now, but those glimpses into another’s life both helped and hindered me. On the one hand, they made me envious. They had managed to find a man who honoured them just as they came to him, not in need of any re-arranging, not faulty. The new light they brought to the marriage was something he needed, wanted to be around, in order to find fulfillment. He basked in it, sought her wisdom, let her be. On the other hand, they made me feel that, had I been like them, I would also deserve such freedom within a relationship. Oh poor little me.

As the children began to try out their wings and, eventually, flew the nest, I became increasingly aware that I was being abandoned by the five who gave me context. Who am I now? is a question I often asked myself, as the rooms hollowed out and the quiet of ‘just us’ settled like dust. People, friends, told me that this was now my time to do something for me, and, yet, after decades of not doing something for me, I had no ideas at all. When someone has ploughed the same furrow for that length of time, investing fully in the work of every day, and night, it is almost cruel to take it all away and to offer a wide horizon. What could a no-longer-girl like me do with a broad horizon? I’ll tell you what she does. She stands there looking at it, mouth open, eyes wide and head empty, and then dives back to wash the kitchen floor, just to feel safe again.

In a different sort of relationship, one I observed in others and dream-wove from novels and movies, this woman would be given free rein to investigate, to research new roads, and, most importantly, encouraged gently to find her own wings, to grow new confidence as just herself in a new context – that of the big wide world. If that encouragement is not proffered, and if it matters as much as I think it does, then she will hold to what she knows.

I know about monkey mind. That chatter inside a head that always works to undermine walking out a dream. I have worked hard to quiet that voice, and still do, for it is not the truth. To imagine another life, without stepping into it, is just that. Dreaming. I found my way, by writing my story and setting it free in the big wide world. You might say it was written in the hope for understanding, for empathy. You might say I hoped it would bring a flash of remorse and a new beginning. And it might do all of these. It has already brought me a new self-confidence because to have a well-known and respected publisher take up your book, you must be able to write, and in these times of excellent writers, doubly so. It has also taught me that feeling sorry for myself and doing nothing to change my situation is, well, pathetic, at best.

In those times of finding just one reason to stay, I discovered other ones, hiding in my attic. In any relationship, there are at least two people, each with a very different perspective on life and ideas on how to live it. Bring into each mix, parental baggage, school history, sibling rivalry and so on and then dress this damaged person in cowboy boots, or high heels and call it an adult. Then shove it out into a world of high expectations, judgements, parameters, boundaries, social constraints and no mappage, no DIY manual on the subject, but only other opinions formed by those who came before, each one lumbering along under the weight of their own ‘stuff’.

I believe I have just found a new definition for Chaos.

Living now, each day as it comes, I learn something new. Something new about me, about my marriage, my choices, my life thus far. I still find reasons to keep walking, keep looking around, keep my heart soft and my stride strong and purposeful. I have bad days, black dreams, bouts of self-pity and I can still make the house shake with a powerful door slam, but these are just a part of the whole. What I love is a challenge and life is always thus. I find only momentary delight in winning an argument if my opponent just backs down, remaining certain still of his own belief. I find there is little (if any at all) point in going over who said what and when and in what tone of voice. I find no future in paying the slightest attention to either of us in a grumpy mood. I am learning that perspective is king, and that grace is his queen.

At the end, whenever that may be, I will reflect on my choices, made by me, for me, and be content to know, not that I got it right, but that I got it at all.

December 19, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 117 Animals I have known

It’s cold here today. I’m looking out across the sealoch through a hail of white bullets. A huge white-tailed eagle has just flown past the window, pinching all the light. The trees are quite stripped of any whisper of autumn, thanks to the endless storm force winds that plunder the nights. Last night the roof tiles danced as if there was a load of Gene Kellys up there, singing in the rain. Sleep gave up on me around 4am and I woke to a lime green glow casting weird shadowy shapes around the room as the curtains fought to stay connected with their moorings. Oh hallo moon, I said. Full she was and quite chuffed with herself sitting there all alone in the sky, quite the big cheese. I checked my clock, though what for I can’t tell you. There was nothing to be learned whatever it said, with it’s luminous hands morse-coding the passage of time. I suppose if it had read 7 o’clock, it would have meant I could get up and make tea. But 4am is not the right time for anything other than going back to sleep, which I didn’t manage.

On summer mornings, when I wake early, I can bounce (quietly of course, although I bounce a bit more noisily these days) down the stairs, make tea and feel warm and excited about the day ahead, as I write. In the sleety wind-battered winter, the very thought of pushing back the duvet and stepping into the chilly room is enough to remain me beneath the goose down. So, I lie there thinking about things like sealing wax and kings and sundry other daft forays into the world of my imagination. One such journey showed me a mouse, made of velvet and the colour of chocolate which is very swish for a mouse by the way, and I bet you’ve never seen one.

Animals often appear in dreams and play large parts in whatever drama unfolds before my eyes. It has always been the way of things and not least, I imagine, because of all the hundreds of animals I have shared my life with. I remember the working horses in the flatlands, those gentle chestnut giants with slow gait and kindly eyes, with broad backs and feet like meat plates. I remember watching them pull a plough, bracing their wide chests against the harness and leaving, in their wake, deep straight lines across a field that reached to the horizon. After their work was done, we unclipped them and turned the huge collars around on their thick necks to give them some relief. The children, just toddlers, always wanted to ride them home to the stables and a welcome bucket of nuts. They looked like coloured dots, perched high above the rest of us, and clinging on tightly to the wiry manes, laughing with glee as they rocked and rolled their way down the track. We never had to lead the horses, for they were weary and only looking for food, water and rest. I remember someone making a hoo-ha about the danger we put our children in and it made us laugh out loud. They never fell off, couldn’t fall off, not with that width of back beneath their little bottoms, a back that could have hosted a small tea party quite safely.

Then we had collies, labradors, hens and cats, one, named Cosmic Creepers, whom we found with a rabbit snare embedded in it’s neck. It was wild and had a set of extremely sharp teeth that it enjoyed sinking into arms and fingers. Mum and I spent ages snipping the wire, bathing the wounds and minding our fingers. Cosmic Creepers became part of the family, as did Isobel the hen as you will know if you’ve read Island Wife. Isobel was also wild, but, thankfully, quite without sharp teeth. We had pet calves and lambs who always got daft names. Mint Sauce, for example, and Bovril, and Lamb Chop. Once we had a crow called Jim who lived in a cage in the barn and smelled dreadful. His wing was hurt, and after he was set free, he hopped around the garden as if he couldn’t quite remember what to do next.

Living with animals is never dull. They teach me. If I only think as a human I miss something, an extra dimension, for animals are quite honest and rather definite about their needs. They don’t fanny about wondering if it’s convenient for me to serve up dinner, they just whinny or moo or march into the kitchen, which is okay-ish if we are talking Hen. A working horse might have caused a bit of a stooshie, had she got indoors, but I caught her in time. She just followed me back from the stable and……well…..kept coming. I fed her a carrot and turned her smartly around. She did wander back, but not immediately, deciding to visit the farm veg shop on the way for a big mouthful of winter greens. I could see them hanging out of her mouth as she sashayed up the track, and wee Polly, who worked in the shop had to go home for a lie-down.

I always thought of myself as a wild horse. I said so, to the island husband one day. He snorted, which was a bit rude. No, he said, not a wild horse, oh no definitely not!

Okay……….thanks for that……….what then, if not a wild horse?

A hen, he said and thought it was terribly funny, for quite some time.

December 13, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 115 Primary Three

Thirty Three years ago this morning, a child was born. A boy. The Third Boy – 3 being the first prime number, the lucky prime, the only prime triangular, the triad, the noblest of all digits, and the only one of five to be born on the island; the only one to spend his first night on this earth in matron’s bottom drawer.

Let me paint the picture……….It was a wild and stormy night (which it was) and I was determined to miss the last ferry. I knew a-plenty about birthing by then, had already had 3 labours (one being the Only Girl) and did not want to be inside a hospital. The first two had been home births and the process is straightforward enough anyway – I mean, there’s only one direction to go down, and all I have to do is swear a lot, push when told to and trust in the doctor and nurse, both of whom I knew well. So, in the middle of this gale, and in the darkness and in the crankitty old landrover with its binder twine door hinges and sheep food in the back, we rattled to the old folks home and Mrs MacFlorrie’s bed. Not that she was sharing with me, you understand, but was, instead, shunted down the corridor to bunk up, temporarily, with another ‘old folk’. That is how it was in the olden days, for we had no island hospital back then.

He was small and stayed that way for a while. They suggested a growth hormone, but we said..

‘Leave him be. When you have this many children, it’s handy to have one you can just pop in your pocket. Whilst other boys are growing and talking about how big they are, Rhua squeezes through the gaps. he is as wiry and as fast as Spiderman, and just as fond of heights. Look at me! he shouts, aged two and half, from half-way up a cliff face, or from the top of the massive old oak tree, and we all do look, just to keep him quiet, and we keep looking, although I must have looked away at least once, as there is another baby on the way.’ (Island Wife Chap 17)

When he came home to Tapselteerie, he spent any sleep times, never longer than 20 minutes, day or night, in the tea towel drawer, whilst I worked in the kitchen. Because the house was so huge, I could never have left him upstairs, just below cloud level, for goodness knows what he might have got up to. He was the one who tipped all liquids and powders from all bedrooms into the loo and mixed up a cauldron of seething bubbles and curious smells. He is the one who left home aged six in the dark of a wild night, with only his toys as luggage. He is the ‘chef’ who signed up for trial of a deep fat fryer, one that arrived in the back of a big lorry. The delivery man did not believe me when I tried to send him away, saying it was a mistake. He would not countenance that he had driven all the way from the depot in Glasgow to this isolated place, with moon rocks and pitfalls and nothing but sheep and heather for days. I had to show him the 6 year old chef, before he would even consider returning to base camp.

It was this third boy who rose from his short sleeps with a head full of ideas, and a deep sense of purpose. I found him once frying bacon on the aga, start naked, aged 2. For our breakfast, he said. He had already laid the table, with brandy, bread, salad cream and red sauce, tonic water and chocolate. It was hard to be cross. How he managed to lift the heavy aga lid, without nipping his manhood in the bud, still amazes me.

I took to sleeping outside his bedroom door, lying across the narrow landing on the servants floor (no servants to be seen) in order to save us all from this boy’s nocturnal ideas and sense of purpose.

When he finally grew into a young man, he hit the world with a force it might not have been ready for. Wherever he went, wherever he worked, he was enthusiastically bonkers, and very successful. And now, as a father and husband, and broker in the flatlands, he still is, but it is not the outward success that matters, but the man he has become. A man I respect, admire and adore. One who makes me laugh, whose heart is huge and strong, who can blag and wind up, who can reach too far, fall down, and get up again in a nanosecond. Although he is born of me, he is himself as are all my kids, and each one of them delights and surprises me.

I remember the illnesses, and the times of trouble. I remember the nights of worry, the fears and hopes, the dreams dying, the prayers a-plenty, but when I look at them, at any of them, I am so very proud. All we ever wanted for our children, was that they find their own way into a fulfilled life. I know this is not a thing that comes gift-wrapped – indeed no,t for it is a process, and a long one, but to see young people on what appears to be the right track, is indeed a blessing for any mother, or father. We couldn’t give them life on a plate, or expensive tuition or finishing school in Switzerland, but we gave them Tapselteerie and we gave them adventures and memories.

‘From the mound of dogs and kit, they(the children) marvel at everything, and, in their marvelling, I can taste the freshness of seeing things for the first time, the elation and sparkle in that seeing, like having lemonade in your veins and butterflies in your head. There are no seat belts in the back of the Landrover, and no law to put them there, so the children bounce and whoop and flip like monkeys, free as air, as the car rocks like a boat in a storm.
Suddenly, my head is bursting. Enough! I roar, causing everyone to freeze mid-flip, and Alex to swerve. He is not pleased.
Why are you shouting? he asks with a frown across his face, deep as the Limpopo River.
I don’t bother to respond, enjoying the sudden silence. Instead, I turn to fluff up a very flat collie and to settle my sons the right way up.
What are you going to spend your money on? I beam at them.
Jake is buying a Lego set, one of those big ones with enough pieces to block the vacuum every week.
Rhua wants an Action man. Well, that figures.
And Solly? Well, Solly wants a gun and chorus.
A gun and chorus?
Yeah! Gun and chorus, like Duncan’s at crayboop.
He is getting upset, as he always does when we have no idea what language he speaks.
Okay, okay Sol, that’s grand. We’ll find one.
Cassie, seeing my predicament, pulls her finger from her mouth.
It’s a dinosaur with flashing eyes. Duncan’s got one and he brought it to playgroups. It’s called a Gunnacaurus.
She says all this in a monotone, staring straight ahead, like a code breaker in a spy movie. I wonder what we would all do without her translation skills.
I bend my head down to hers. Where do we get one? I ask.
She looks at me in puzzlement. A dinosaur shop, she says.
Of course! Silly me. (Island Wife Chap 21)

So, to the First Odd Prime Number I say…….Happy Birthday!

September 23, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 103 – New Things and Clown Fish

There are things I have never bought. I’m not talking yachts and diamonds, but household things like a new sofa or a multi-functional, all purpose blender. I have looked at them online and not believed one word of their wonderment. For a start, in that exciting world of sofas, which, by the way, fails to excite me at all, I puzzled over two things. One is the material and the other the exhorbitant price. In my world, a sofa could be wrecked in one short day. It could be stained with all manner of tenacious colourings and smells, be flipped on its back to become a defence against military attack, or offer a comfortable resting place for swamp creatures such as collies or children just in from the rain forest, so I never bought one, not ever, relying instead on second hand ones already ‘broken’ in.

However, the multi-functional all-purpose blender has niggled at my peripheries for a while now. I do have a small liquidiser, which can whizz up easy stuff like over-ripe strawberries and yoghurt, and an old magimix which belonged to Granny-at-the-gate and got left behind when she went northwards to heaven, but it leaks and, besides, is not multi-purpose, whatever than means. I also have a bread-maker that produces amazing works of sculpted art. I sprayed one once with enamel car spray and it lasted a whole winter of island rains before I threw it over the fence. It hit a rock and I wasn’t sure which one had shattered.

So, last week, with a helpful link to a good one from my healthy eating sister, I ordered my own copy. A few days later, when dashing out the door to feed the 15 doves who have adopted me as mummy, I fell over a box the size of a small bathroom, which had been silently delivered earlier that morning.

Can’t be. I thought. Are there half a dozen of them in there? Oh, no, of course not. it will be all packaging and poly bags warning me not to put them over my head, or that of any in-house child.

I find myself, at this point, wishing I hadn’t ordered it at all, because now I have to do something like unwrap it and assemble it and then, worst of all, whizz a few somethings into a whole new something. Then, I will have to spread it, or slap it on meat, or fish, or drink it. The very thought brings on a yawn and I go to do another job for a while.

Eventually I have to face it so I lug this huge container inside the porch and grab a sharp knife. Ok, here’s the top of the whizzer and here’s the bottom. So far, so good. Isn’t that enough, I ask myself? Well, in a word, no.

Ten bags are nestled among the moulded corrugations of cardboard, each one wrapped in polythene danger. I remove it all and lay each piece out on the counter, which I can no longer see. Even the Clown Fish in the tank dive for cover.

I begin to assemble. 30 frustrating minutes later, I still only have the top and the bottom identified. There are round things with small holes, round things with big holes, whisks, plastic discs, a small rocket, metal blades contained in immovable shells, each yelling out LOUD PROMISES of finger loss should any contact be made. I am now a bundle of nerves and have to call my healthy sister who just giggles unhelpfully.

Did you assemble yours? I shriek at her.

Nope, she says. Her husband did.

Well, I have one of those but he is at sea, so that doesn’t work.

She guides me gently onwards and the motor leaps into life, although it has nothing to do but spin around at a terrifying speed, for now.

Later I bring together not a well-thought-through list of ingredients from a tried-out recipe, but just what I have in the fridge. A bit of almost mouldy red tomato pesto; half a bag of raw spinach; one apple with the brown holes removed; one floppy carrot; a clove of garlic; 5 pitted black olives (ha! you thought I was going to sabotage it with pits didn’t you!!) and the juice of one orange.

Well it whizzed for two seconds and stopped. I poked about with a wooden spoon and it whizzed again for another two seconds and stopped. It went on offering me the same resistance, one I have only ever met before in myself, for half an hour, but I was determined to win the fight.

What I ended up with is a paste that resembles the inside of someone’s liver, but it tastes delicious. It made me think of how important it is for something to look good for us to want to eat it.

Trouble is, I have only used one tenth of the flipping thing. The rest of its working parts slumber in a dark cupboard. Just the thought of working out what they do makes me want to join the Clown Fish.

September 20, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 102 – Memories

They are funny things, memories, but not necessarily in a ha-ha way. If anyone has ever asked a couple to describe their rememberings from any area or time of their shared life, you will have felt, as I have, that they definitely weren’t there together.

When my own mum recounts something from my childhood, she tells it in a way that assures me I was in another family at the time. I used to think she was right and that I was wrong – ever the swing from either to or – and that this ‘wrong’ in me was because I……..what? Wanted it to be different? possibly. Refused to acknowledge the truth? possibly. Had blanked out reality in favour of fairyland? possibly.

Nowadays I see it differently because I understand that she saw me through her own eyes, as a child inside her life and that wasn’t how I saw it at all. I looked with my own eyes, filtered each experience through my own emotions, needs, hopes and dreams, which were never hers. She has ideas for me that I didn’t like or understand or even want. So, the battle begins early in a life, the battle for a good hold on reality.

And who is to say what Reality is?

Even in a marriage, where two supposed adults, really still children themselves, encounter days and times and moments together, the looking will differ to varying degrees. Where one sees rain, the other sees the light inside a raindrop. One feels he cold, the other doesn’t, so was that house a cold, uncomfortable one or was it a wonderful home, or was it both at the same time? And, in the spinning out of the tale of of it, who will name it?

Then, there are the ears that hear that tale. Are they on one side or on the other according to who or what they personally relate to? If I am angry about something or someone, I will, however ‘good hearted’ I may be, paint them in certain colours, and colours stick, words stick, take root and grow.

It isn’t as simple as the glass half-full, half-empty cliche. Cliches are always too simple, sounding like goodly truths but lacking substance, texture, depth and context. They may help to elevate our thoughts and this is helpful indeed, but no living soul is ever one type of person or another. To get from black to white and back again, we must allow and embrace a thousand shades of grey, and it is inside those greys we mostly live out our days.

So, now, as an old woman (I love being an old woman, choosing, as I do, the picture of old age as a cumulation of experience and wisdom and of letting go) I can hear a story re-spoken and learn, from it’s presentation, more about the person speaking it out than I ever do about the ‘facts’. I even hear my own voice doing the telling and notice where I put the emphasis, what colours I choose, what body language I employ, what tone. And it often smiles me a lot.

On days when I only see the rain, there is a moan and a whine in any telling out. The simple question How are You? can see me grabbing someone’s hand and leading them into a miserable dark wet cavern littered with the old bones of all the women I hoped to become and allowed to die without a voice. On days when I am energetic enough to slip between the raindrops, pausing to catch the warmth of their reflected light, I can swirl us both into the sky along with the fairies and the angels and actually feel critical of their need to tell me about the bunions on their big toes.

Same circumstances. Exactly the same circumstances. The days are the same, the tasks the same, the view the same, and yet everything is different.

So, although we are all within the parameters of this day Friday September 20th, and even if we spend a part of it together, we will tell very stories about it’s 24 hour span.

Which of us is ‘right’ I wonder?

August 15, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 93 – Tapselteerie Dreams

Last night was an awfully big adventure. Sometimes nights are like that. Short on sleep and long on dreams; dreams that skitter away in the process of waking, so quick as to leave me with the odd snapshot, and a depth of emotion I can’t necessarily fix into a shape.

Whenever I dream there are a couple of venues that consistently provide the backdrop for the drama. One, oddly, is a little corner flat in Glasgow, where I only lived for a short while after Tapselteerie and before moving back to the island. Those dreams are often good ones and I walk through the park or sip coffee in a busy café and there are no obvious lurkings of menace in any shadows.

The other and main venue is Tapselteerie, I know it is, although the stones and layout of it are often wildly wrong. For example, we had a roof over our heads there and walls and floors, the usual household structure, but in dreams, they are often shaky if not completely absent. When I am inside one of these dreams I am always looking for my children, which, for those of you who have read Island Wife, will not be a surprise at all. The stones are grey and cold, the plaster walls missing, and there is often sky overhead instead of a white ceiling.

In these dreams I always have to fly to save them, my children. I always know that I can fly, but each time I must find the courage to do it again. I have sat myself down to think deeper on that search for courage, once the morning comes and strong black coffee brings me in to land. Is it courage to take on the ‘saving’, I ask myself, or is the courage to fly again? And, if I know, as I do, that I can fly, why would I need courage? After all, I don’t need to think twice about walking, running, skipping, now do I?

And I find no answer to that.

One dream took me into the empty ruins of the place, cold it was and abandoned, the grey stone bared, the layout changed beyond my recognition, and yet I knew where I was. I was alone. The crunch of fallen debris under my bare feet echoed around me and I could feel my heart beating fast, hear my quick breathing. Looking up, I could see my children way up high, higher than Tapselteerie high, flattened against the walls, no ground for their feet. Each one was hooked to the wall by their clothing, and they just hung there, making no sound. Much younger and smaller than they are now, they looked like friends of the Artful Dodger, all raggedy and torn and grubby. There were no stairs, no structure, however skeletal, there to allow me to climb. There was only one way up.

I had to fly.

The resistance to just taking off, knowing I could, surprises me every time. It seems, in my remembering, to take a lot of wasted time, dithering about in the ruins of a broken house, when I could be up there gathering children off hooks. But I always do it.

Then, suddenly, I take a deep breath and lift and the feeling it wonderful, the process effortless.

Once, I met Shrattle (Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake), or his lookalike half way up, but he was balanced on a spindly ledge and quite without wings, so no threat to any of us. I lifted each child, light as a feather, off their pegs and into the sky, waking with that glorious light-hearted feeling that always follows flight.

Last night is already leaving me, the memories of the dream, but I do remember one thing. This time it was in colour. Never before has Tapselteerie shown herself in colour, and yet she had bucket loads of it. She gave me walls and ceilings and laughter and spiders and bats in the cellar. If I came down all those stairs, during a sleepless night to make tea, I had to remember to make light, because in the dark I would have ploughed into the huge migration of slugs from somewhere (I never knew where) to the wine cellar. Sometimes a dozen deep and many feet long, the army flowed in silence to wherever they were going. It was a marvel to behold and much less of one to land in the middle of it in bare feet. People said salt will kill them. We said, why would we kill them? We lived with a good number of wild creatures and managed to do so, in the main, without disasters, although the floor in the back hall always needed a wash of a morning.

Dreams I know have symbolism. Mine are often a chorus of many influences. My past, my fears, the book I’m reading, the present circumstances, the last thing I watched on television. Add to that something on my mind, a new truth learned and understood, a forthcoming event and so on. But whatever the graphics, however bizarre and unbelievable the storyline, the emotions of it linger longest, so, to a small degree I can understand what my imagination played out for me and why.

Tapselteerie looked just fine in colour. It may be 20 plus years since I moved inside her walls, heard her song and moved to her rhythm, but she is alive and well and with her own place in my heart.

June 19, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 68 – Songs for the Girls

fig via: futureengagedeliver.com

I wrote a song for Jenny and one day I will sing it out, perhaps after the funeral. And then I wrote another for my little grand-daughter, the youngest thus far whose naming ceremony is being celebrated the weekend after.

How life organises these things I cannot say, but she always does and it makes a sort of sense. It’s not about one life replacing another, but more that the sharp-edged void created in a heart, when someone dies can be softened by a new life. These two girls will never know each other; will never come together except in my heart, and that is something rather wonderful and quite uniquely precious.

When I write my songs, or create my paintings, or lampshades or cushions or whatever, I work for one person. I think of who they are and what colours they wear and what stories lie in their eyes, and I work to honour and recognise them all. This is why I won’t create a production line, nor paint the same, but in blue, to match the furnishings. Every single piece of work is a one-off.

Much like a life.

The song for Jenny celebrates her as a woman of the sea, of the world and now, of the beyond, wherever that is. The words are taken from a well-known poem and personalised, and I don’t suppose anyone will mind, because they will hear what they want to hear and think what they want to think about Jenny as they take it all in. The music will lift them and pull on their heart strings and someone may well recognise parts of other melodies and other phrasing from a different song for there is nothing new under the sun.

And yet, everything is always new when someone catches a thing and forges it again in the fires of their heart.

The song for my granddaughter is different in that the words are all mine, and the melody pinched from a couple of other musicians who won’t know and wouldn’t mind anyway. We are not talking chart topper here. The words had to be bespoke, just for her, and with respect paid to her mum and her dad and the fabulous crazy wild people they are, and all those attributes now handed on to one little girl. It’s light-hearted and fun and will bring smiles to all the faces watching me stand and deliver.

We are all unique, but it is a rare bird that can fly alone into a busy sky, with its own song to sing, certain that just by singing it, everything is new.

June 10, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 65 – Follow me follow

Yesterday, the Bee Father decided to investigate all his hives. It’s the time for swarming, he tells me and I remember one of those not so long ago; a great blackening of the back garden and the Sun quite peely-wally behind a thousand whizzing bees. I heard the noise first and went up the garden stets, well, two of them, or maybe just one. It was mightily clear to me that the cup of coffee awaiting me on the table was going to go lonely cold for I, sure as hector, was not taking one more step into that melee. I could have disappeared completely and would likely have swatted and begun a war. The swarm finally cuddled up with the New Queen on a bough of larch, bringing it at least two foot closer to the ground. The solid ball hung there in a perfect shape until the BF climbed up to unhook the ball and drop it into a cardboard box and covering it with a piece of white cotton.

Whilst he worked high above me among the lofty Soldier Pines, where the sun dapples the wild orchids and the bees live in harmony and peace, I could hear a marked rise in the tonal buzz.

We are not enjoying this, all of us, it tells me, for we buzz as one.

After the BF had gone right through 3 hives, discovering all was well, that there were not too many queen cells growing new queens to generate a swarm or two, down he came, quite bridal in his white and veil, to sit and eat a quiet lunch with me. I had carried up an array of dishes, bits of this leftover and that leftover with salad. For a few moments, all was peaceful munching, until She appeared.

She is a Follower, one of those female worker bees, set the task of making sure any unwelcome visitor goes a very long way away. Whilst he sat quite still, she bumped against his face and his head, never landing. After a few minutes, he got up and walked slowly down to the cool of the garage, thus planning to let her know he was leaving. He came back without her but it was only minutes later and she was back, bumping her warning against his face, head and neck. She came nowhere near me and I was right beside him. I watched him never swat (fatal) and sit calmly, waiting for her to get bored or decide her point is made or whatever it was she wanted to tell him in no uncertain terms.

3 more times he walked away, waited a little and returned. 3 more times she found him. By now I’d had enough of this lurching lunch and removed myself indoors. The little bee had popped over to check me out, but I was spooked by her right in my face. I don’t mind once or twice, but she was just too persistent.

Much later in the day, after another hive was checked, the dog walked, church over and thoughts of supper in my mind, we went back up to sip a glass of wine in the warm evening sun.

Within seconds she was back and bumping round and round his head.

I think it’s that aftershave I put on this morning, he said, as we re-settled inside, but we both know the real truth.

Charisma.

May 3, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 54 – All Roads Lead

I had arrived as a surprise. My daughter met me in the hallway and we hugged and exchanged greetings. A little voice from deep inside the house asked ‘Where is Granny talking from Mummy?’ and we both laughed, as did the little girl once she found me.

I could have been using skype as my road, or the house phone on loudspeaker. Her last thought was that she would round the corner and find me standing there.

But there are many roads we cannot see, such as a span of years or a scene from the past. We can only find a shape to those inside our imaginations, and no two imaginations will find the same route, although the destination is the same.

Driving Miss Daisy the other day, through the wintry island wasteland, I pointed out a wonderful stone formation, obviously man-built as support for the rise of a narrow track, that wound its way down towards the Atlantic shoreline. There was not a drop of mortar holding it together, but only the skill of the dry stone builder.

We considered the time when this track would have carried man and his animals, and nothing weightier than a pony and cart loaded with hay or feed for the hungry animals. We could hear in our imaginations, the slow march of a day long gone by, the lowing of the cattle, the call of a ewe to her lambs, the odd shout or whistle of the shepherd, and the bark of his dogs. For a moment we could count the day in hours, smell the changing seasons, according to the rise and fall of the sun, or the flow and ebb of the moon tides.

But our pictures would have been very different.

Sometimes in the clipping season, or when the ewes are brought in for dosing, the hill road from the little town grinds to a halt. The local shepherdess is gathering her flock and calling for them to follow her, through the open window of her truck. Those of us forming an ever-growing snake are required to dig for patience as we lurch and stall in the wake of a hundred woolly legs. There is no opportunity to overtake, and no possibility of speeding up.

Some of us click our tongues and roll our eyes impatiently. Some of us smile, knowing we have arrived in an afternoon where time is not the issue, and to hurry along would be to risk lambs becoming separated from their mothers. And we can notice, at this slow pace, the first buds on the heather, the marsh harrier overhead, the way the clouds change and reform into new shapes above the gentle roll of the hills. We can catch the soft calls to ‘follow!’ as they float back to us on a breeze.

And we will all arrive at our destination.

In the end