It is, I tell you. Well, for me anyway. Setting aside (why don’t we?) the immense lack of sleep, the immense lack of sleep……no, wait…. my dad has appeared “You cannot have an immense lack of anything, only a surfeit”. Thanks Dad. Who would believe that after over twenty years of being thoroughly dead, he can still appear to check my grammar? Perhaps, and this is up for discussion, but not right now when I’m busy flowing, I might be the one who calls him up.

We might also set aside the jolly fact that a nearby burn, turned torrent, pushed through the vent in my garage’s nether regions and created a whole new tributary, nameless but only because it was obviously a lightweight body of water which, apart from soaking all my logs and taking my wellies on a walk, one they have not enjoyed for years, disappeared as fast as it had come. Then there are the inside leaks. Only two these days, since goodly stonemasons, rubbing their chins as they peered into cracks and poor pointing, at a wall face without facia and inadequate rain resistant piping, managed by some miracle to plug the other 3 opportunities for ingress, 3 openings that our West Coast rain will always seek out and take full advantage of. I confess to a moment of sadness as I considered what wild creature may have found itself walled up.

I have walked, honest. Each day of this clanjamfrie/chaos, when the rain comes slantways and suddenly and utterly soaking, I have dragged Little Boots out for a rush and a bark at the deer, or a car, or even absolutely nothing at all. I wish I had her energy. I wouldn’t mind a rush and a bark at nothing at all. It might take my mind off the fear and the anxiety, and, more, it might mean I could let my roar out, which is something I have rarely, if ever, allowed. It feels like mental constipation. It probably is. When I awoke at 3 am I did sigh. I don’t mind 5, or, at a push 4, but 3 is just not right. The dark is pitch, the wind a howl, the rain a battering and yet, and yet, it is a new day, I am awake, and I get up and out, make tea and spend a lot of time addressing my thoughts. In my sleep, it seems to me, I am free of them, but not for long enough. It’s as if they crowd in the waiting room, just waiting for my eyelid doors to open, double doors, to submit to their pressure. I am told to be polite to them, to address them respectfully, but, much like the relentless days of rain and punching wind, I am losing the lady in me. She is becoming fishwife.

I didn’t go to the shop today. I just sat and sewed something without a name, listening to a whole audiobook (when did that become one word Dad?) thus losing myself in someone else’s story. I did sweep the floors, stack a ton of wood, lift my eyes to the sea-loch when a Whitetail Eagle made a hoor of a stooshie about something, or someone. I heard stags moaning and roaring in the rut. I watched, and hissed at, drivers who shot past my home, through now deepened potholes, splattering the arse of my little mini puddle brown. I listened to the click and crack of the woodburner munching wood. I listened to music, a bit. Actually the whole frickin day was just a bit of this, a bit of that. I have been up too long this day.

I think it’s the waiting. Waiting is, as we Celts say, shite. Always. And then when the waiting is over and the result is clear, we settle back into the clanjamfrie of our lives, as if the leaks and the rain and the inability to roar, and that interminable waiting meant absolutely nothing. As I will, no doubt.