curious

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Island Blog – Inspiradiation and a Zap Map

Many things inspire me, people too. Something said out loud or communicated through eyes, and in silence, but received, nonetheless. Moments, sounds, lyrics, intuitions, experiences, and many more besides. If I catch these inspirations, like butterflies in a net, they all hold a beauty and intensity, a teaching. But, only if I catch them. I know how it is to barge on through doorways and over sills or along pathways with only a to-do list. Chased by Time, and always just this side of utterly exhausted, it is easy to miss much. When focus is on the familiar, the to-do list, the endless corridors leading to yet another bloody doorway that opens on to more tasks only I can complete, intuition and the chance of inspiration getting so much as a look-in, is unlikely at best. Not now, however, now that I am old and alone and when I have endless time to catch butterflies in the net of my mind. Beautiful things, butterflies, although sometimes I might catch an earwig or a toad, so broad is my sweep. But those critters also bring opportunities for reflection. Perhaps that throwaway comment or that too-quick turn-away upset someone, and this earwig or this toad also have something for me to take in and to consider.  Not all catchings are pleasant, at first. Of course, the key with anything I catch is to eventually release it, be it the beautiful butterfly of epiphany, or the unattractive and dully coloured body of a uncomfortable realisation. One which demands humble action. 

Soon, I am offski to the cancer clinic for a ‘planning CT scan’, where the professionals will create their Zap Map. Through the wonders of technology, they will see precisely where to point the radiotherapeutic laser, ensuring, so they tell me, that all trace of cancer, if any is lurking, will be zapped unto death. Five days is all, and not even the whole of those five days, but a few minutes. Although unpleasant reactions can list bigly horrors, not one of them will affect me, because nothing ever has before. I am blest with ridonculous health, and a big inspiration net, always to hand. I will pay attention to everything and everyone, sweeping a wide catchment area wherever I go. Across the road, in a bus queue, in the hospital amongst others being zapped, the nurses, the doctors. Inside the hotel, the lift, on the stairs, through a window, along the street, butterflies abound. I just know it. And I will return, as I always do, humbled at what I see. A homeless girl, a weary bus driver, someone I meet in a doorway, a harrassed business man in a big rush, a fraught mother weighed down by a cling of children. I will hear sounds I never hear in this wild place. The chatter of a train on the tracks, a colourful hue of voices in languages I cannot speak, the cut of someone’s jib, the smell of exhaust fumes, of perfume, takeaway food and so on. And I will sweep it all in, catch it in my net.

Even the radiation will inspire me, for I am always curious like Alice, eager to learn, not facts but what is really means to be human, to be wonderful, lost, broken, keen, kind, and an integral part of all those ties, colours and stories that bind us together.  

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Island Blog – How we really feel

The day dawns fresh-breezed and sunny and we have jobs to do. We bought sticky tape, non-sticky tape, varnish, oils, turps and scrubbers, many things hardware, for we are preparing this house for letting and leaving. As the lists are made, we see how much there is still left to do, and remind ourselves how much we have already achieved. The five indoor cats watch us through the windows, follow us from room to room, sensing some change is afoot. The jacaranda trees beyond the walls bend and flip in the breeze whilst vervet monkeys leap the branches, sure-footed, swinging like acrobats. Perhaps they watch us too, curious but uncaring. Sunlight lifts the newly oiled deck boards into a shiny conker warmth, one coat complete, a second to reapply, hot work under the broiler in the sky. Various bits of furniture are advertised and sold, little holes filled in, taps re-washered, walls brushed and touched up, door and window frames varnished to a shine. Moving forward, ever moving forward. Sometimes a task presents as too demanding so we break it down into smaller parts until the whole thing is complete. At others, we sail merrily along, buoyed up by sharing the process, bantering, laughing, pausing for breath, discussing the best way to achieve the end result. We allow for rests and diversions such as going out for Eggs Benedict with avocado and strong coffee, or a trip to the dog park to throw ball for the big soft retriever to catch and chase after. And all the time we talk on many things, not cabbages and certainly not kings, but on concepts and reflections, mind-mapping and acceptance of self, gatherings and solitude, our observations on everything Life. We have always talked that way. Not for us the idle chatter of wasted words. We are sentence makers, thinking people, curious and interested in a new way to see old things. We ask each other, How do you see this, or that? and then we listen to and consider the response we hear.

When we join others, I sit and listen to their discussions on what appears superficial to me. It isn’t that I judge, because I don’t but when the subject under the lights is only about a situation they all know and inhabit, the words just seem to circle pointlessly to me. Unless there is curiosity and reflection, the subject remains solid, unmoving, stuck in time, with the inhabitants thereof stuck with it. There is no right or wrong in the way we converse, but I always want to dive beneath the surface, to discover the depth, texture, movement and flow of this subject. It could be all about bin collection or the lack of it and that could take up a whole evening, resolving not at all from where I sit. It could be any number of similar issues under the microscope, until the minutiae has been thoroughly talked out and absolutely nothing has changed and my legs are itching to move on, to move beyond the tiddleypom and out into the wide open spaces, curious like Alice.

Sometimes I think I am an onlooker in this life. I love people and gatherings, conversation and laughter, sharing a meal and so on, but give me anytime the meeting of true minds, of thinkers and wonderers, of those who live on the edge of all truths accepting none of them and all of them at the same time. I am a loner, a weirdo, different, odd. So be it. Although I have met only a few differently odd weirdo loners, we know each other immediately even if we never met before. We connect instantly and then, as is our nature, break apart. I used to want to change myself, to find complete happiness in evening-long conversations about bin collection or lack of it, but I cannot change so instead I accept who I am and who you are and it is a peaceful warm place in which to live. And, over time, I have learned that to initiate a conversation by asking the right question can result in a shift in direction, in content. I can ask, as the chat on buying carpets is wearing me thin, Have you ever made a carpet, dyed wool, walked barefoot on a silk Persian rug, been to Turkey, or anywhere else, for that matter, to watch a carpet story being assembled in full technicolour? Oh yes? How did you feel watching that, do tell, all the details please. Ah, no, not facts, not facts, not pronouncements, but feelings. How did you feel?

After a few blank stares and some throat clearing, my gaze fixed firmly on my target, a tentative response trickles out and I finally get to hear the voice of the person before me instead of the repetitious rote, the factual quotes, the I-agree-with-him platitudes. I get to the real beneath the mask. It’s exciting and informative and suddenly I am engaged, fascinated and gently questioning further until I see you, oh there you are, just you, no pretence, a warm lively interesting human being.

How easily we bend to a shape in order to fit in, with our statements and judgements, and yet how soft and vulnerable we really are, and how very beautiful we become when just one person shows true interest in how we really feel about something.

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Island Blog – A Warthog, Clouds, Shapes and Colour

I am quickly getting friendly with the heat. It bizarres me that I can go from 6 degrees to 36 and not only love both but able to adapt almost immediately. Walking off the last week plane (Orville from The Rescuers) into dazzling sunshine and a load of hot people, I felt my spirits lift. Of course there was relief in there, somewhere, after gruelling airport and plane-ness, but to feel the slam of heat in my favourite place is more than warming. There is air-con in this lovely thatched African home, cool tiled floors and plenty shade on the outside of In, not to mention a swimming pool from which I just rescued (hopefully) a huge centipede critter with a name like Chingaloolie, with a million legs and a body about 10 inches long, as thick as my dad’s middle finger. I paddled in, scooped it up in a sieve and laid it on the deck. I’m hopeful as I definitely saw its feelers wiggle. This life-saving thingy reminds me of swimming in a Corfusian sea past endless (it seemed) honey bees paddling like dingbats and with no hope of survival. I scooped them up on the back of one hand, holding it aloft as I turned for shore with a lopsided breast stroke. I managed about 8 one day and felt super delighted with myself as if I, alone, had saved all bees. Finding a rock I encouraged the enfeebled to move off my hand. No thanks, they all said with a little tail waggle. Lord knows what they were saying to each other as I became a little nervous of upsetting them into a stinging frenzy. They wouldn’t, I said, not after I saved them from Davy Jones’ locker, and they didn’t.

It is too hot to walk the dog except for early doors but not too early because Lady Leopard might not have managed her night kill and still be hungry, not that scraggy me would fill her belly. Even the big dog, although more her style, wouldn’t be enough. I’ve seen the size of her dinners half way up a tall tree, where she dragged it away from a hyena scavenge, impala legs sticking out like bicycle spokes, its glazed over eyes no longer with sight, whilst her Ladyship lounged on another branch, yawning. It’s too hot today to make foray over the decking which burns like fire under naked feets. The good news is that, once I got the hang of the mechanical options, the washing will dry in about 30 minutes, unlike back home where clouds (obviously watching for the chance of mischief) gather and merge to dump their load just after I’ve gone back indoors. I watch the dragonflies, rainbow coloured, dart and dive through the garden. Electric blues, vibrant reds, butter yellows, like the birds that sing and whoop, screech and chitter through the acacia. So much colour so much life. I read and watch, startle at a bark. Baboon? They come, you know, without any idea of boundaries, leaping and bouncing through gardens, over high walls or to swing down from trees in search of food. The abundant Grenadilla hangs heavy with fruit and they love it. But, no, it isn’t baboon, this time, but a neighbouring dog with a talent for impersonation. I relax back, for now. I remember the last time I was in Africa, inside a wildlife reserve and working on my laptop on the stoep. I heard the bark of the head male, a massive creature with big yellow teeth and scarpered inside just in time to hear the roof drumming with baboon. Mothers with babies a-clung, exuberant teenagers and himself, the patriarch. I ran to lock the windows and doors. They pull doors open. In no time they were gone leaving my ears ringing with their screeches and thumps, my heart beating so fast I had to hide in the loo to calm down. It took me some time to ginger back out.

Yesterday we did walk through the reserve and enjoyed a stand off with a mother warthog. Her piglets squealed around her and we were careful, very careful, not to get in between her and her young. Those tusks are big and she will charge in a flash. She wouldn’t budge off the track. We inched forward as everything in me screamed TURN AROUND! My African son held my hand tight and slowly we moved onwards. She watched us pass, through those piggy eyes, as if we were no big deal but for the rest of the walk I was on tenterhooks. I had always considered warthogs to be hideous creatures but this far-too-close- encounter. showed me how stunning they are with that red-dust colouring and those fine lines. Nonetheless I would rather see them ways off from now on. Driving into town I see a male giraffe, his head way higher than the trees, whilst overhead huge vultures wheel and loop through the blue. Nothing compares to such sightings, so close, so free to roam, so endangered. Much of what I will see, have seen, will be nothing more than a picture in a school book in the not too distant future, a sad thought indeed, albeit an inevitable one. At least I have seen, with my own eyes, the real deal, watched it lope, run, pounce, climb, swing, charge. I know the Go Away signs, the body language, what not to do in the event of trouble and these come with feelings and memories not many future generations will ever experience.

A scoot into town for a coffee and I am thrilled to be remembered. The welcome from Cosmos at the Rock Fig was warm and smiley and the coffee as I remember, hot, strong and delicious. Thence to the material shop because I plan to sew a story using soft linens, threads and wools. Sewing without a scooby as to what will reveal itself, just working on instinct and with colours and shapes already seen, the insects, birds, animals and people, is deliciously freeing, the result oftentimes a complete surprise. It thinks me. A life is painted this way, starting at the beginning, being curious, trusting instincts, with courageous application of every small step. Looking back on my own life I can see the patterns and shapes I never saw at the time, not believing that these apparently insignificant choices and decisions I made could ever become a whole painting, become just that. We need the bland hues, the times we thought nothing much was happening, would ever happen, for the vibrant lifts of rich colour to really show. Life is a lot about waiting for something to present itself, a new path, a new relationship, a new opportunity and those times demand and require a patience we find lumpish and pale, like yesterday’s porridge. But Life has her plans. All we need to do is to show up and to keep showing up; to fake courage and a can-do attitude no matter how grey our sky, how full of colluding clouds; to keep taking another step and, most of all, to be curious like Alice, however old we might be in years. It is easy to falter, to fall and we all do it but there will be someone nearby who is upstanding. Reach out a hand and hold on tight, eyes wide with the looking and something or someone will appear to colour up the bland, to inspire, to startle our canvas into electric life. A new way to work with the old things is like sunshine on a rainy day, an eyelet through which we can see for miles. They were always there, the miles. We just needed a wee rest for a while.

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Island Blog – There is old and there is laughter

I notice a thing or two these days, well, maybe a thing or three. Although I am young inside, my thoughts still girlish, I cannot dash as I once did, dammit. The way I could spin and jump, run and skip are now a memory. I could even catch an escaping child once, and although I accept the hilarities of growing older, there are times when the whole thing bugs the bejabers out of me. It makes me snort and stomp and then, as if snorting and stomping were big deals, I have to sit down. I don’t remember when this all began. In my short term memory I remember being able to lift a fallen husband from the floor. I could dash here and there, had to be able to dash here and there what with all the calling out of my name, the cries for help. Perhaps, since he died and with my to-do list barely covering the back of a postcard, I am allowing sedentariness. This does not sound good, not to me. I also notice that with an armful of bedding en route to the washing machine, I am very cautious as I descend stairs I used to hurtle down, arms full. I am more chary about where my feet land as if they’ve forgotten the way.

I still walk daily, move any time I feel a bit stiff from sewing. I still keep up an active and mobile life, although not to the same degree because there is no need, no name calling to react to, and more, no real requirement for that morning planning. Prioritising tasks is unnecessary now. I can take all day to one thing and sometimes I confess I do. I eke out the task, moving slowly, simply to fill in the hours. Oh, I know I am not alone in this limbo of puzzlement. Many of my age feel the same. How did old age creep up so quickly? When I do recount my own experience of this unfortunate process to others, we very quickly turn to the funny side and this is the blessing of it all. We regale each other with experiences, errors of judgement and our mild to horrific encounters with embarrassment. We throw back our heads and laugh, showing what teeth we have left to the sky. The magnifying mirror is now required to check we have our face on the right up and around, the dress not inside out, the shoes match, the car keys and sometimes the whole car are not lost. The way we might paint on eyebrows only to discover we have two sets having forgotten the job is already done. The discovery of hair in places that were hair free just last week, or so it seems. The way a younger person studies our faces just a beat too long so that we just know we are out there in public and impersonating a Belisha beacon. We write Washing Up Liquid four times on the shopping list because we remembered it four times, even if we only need it once. And the way we tell ourselves over and over again that we are not in danger of any marble loss, we are fine, this is normal.

Although I have no issues at all with the natural circle of life and death, I honestly never thought it would come to me. I have been one of those laughing at an orange face or two sets of drawn on eyebrows in my time. I have rolled my eyes from behind a dithery old woman in a shop queue whilst she counted out £30 in two pence pieces. I have scooted past the slow movers, been impatient at those who take two days to ease into a car, travelled behind that car on my hurrying way into town, swearing and flashing my lights for her or him to pull over and let me by. Old is hilarious until Old arrives with a lot more than overnight luggage.

I walk, along with my peers, through a limbo of opposites. If I decide to hate it, which I do, then I lose because this pugilist is way stronger than me and besides, hating anything never brings peace. But and but there are ways to accept whilst always seeking the funny side of this aging thingy. It is all, as it always is, up to me to choose how I respond. In my case, the red rebel fire still burns. I will still adventure, still walk in curiosity and gratitude, in humour. So what if my teeth are falling out. So what if I must needs take my time in rising my body up and out from my low slung Mini Cooper, whom I adore as she resembles my final freedom from having to accommodate, well, anyone else. So what! If I ever think wistfully of the days long gone, I quickly remind myself of how raggedy they could be, how little time there ever was for myself, how tired I could feel and how defeated by the endless demands on my time and my skills.

They say, whoever ‘they’ are, that we women should glow red and gold in the Autumn of our lives, how we should continue to walk sassy, to speak with confidence and with a truth reserved only for the over 65s, the grannies of the world, wise, hairy and albeit cautious as we descend the stairs. We should continue to shake our booty, to swing our creaky hips as best we can, to take care with our dress, checking for food stains which now invite an ‘Oh dear’ from anyone with younger eyes. I get it and I do practice this booty shaking thingy no matter how old I feel on any given day, but I shake with caution, sass with my eyes on the ground in case of trip alerts always hoping against hope that I don’t fall over, a laugh held in my mouth just in case I do.

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Island Blog – Potluck and Possibilities

As the island opens up to visitors and there’s a load of thronging going on where not so long ago there were long stretches of nothing and nobody we didn’t know by heart, there is a natural confoundmentness. We who live here still long for connectivity, for friend meets, for adventure and for the chance to enjoy our glorious wild spaces and yet, it is almost as if we are on trip alert. I know it is not just us here. It must be the same all across the country. We want to share, of course we do. We want to welcome, to accept and acknowledge that there are so many who have felt trapped and confined for many, many months. We do indeed live in interesting times.

This day my friend and I plan to meet for a cafe lunch above a beach. So simple, so ordinary, once. But I falter and she agrees. The sun is out. It is warm. It is half term for Englandshire. There might just be a great big thronging thing going on at lunch time. Fortunately, neither of us are throngers, so we opt, instead, for a potluck bench picnic at my home. It is the best. Uncomplicated by orders, masks and hesitations, we just flow. We talk of everything, of anything and nobody interrupts us. We don’t have to fuss about distance or touching or standing in the marked spot. So very freeing. We also talk about how much we feel we need to tidy up if someone comes into our home, and we laugh because who the flip gives a damn about a clean floor or whatever when the chance to connect is the main goal? Did this thinking, I wonder, make us into islands? Did this need to be, what, perfect, prevent us from free flow, from potluck? I think it probably did. When I remember the ordinary take-for-granted freedom of movement among peoples, my biggest panic was how clean is my house. What hilarious nonsense! I am hoping we can all learn from this, learn to be more spontaneous, more adventurous and less caught up in the old games which were never games btw, but more like paralysing strictures, as if we were in starting blocks with a faulty release mechanism. We long for contact, for connectivity, for connection and yet our nonsense heads tell us we can not unless the home is spit spotless. Let us think on that.

I walk in the sunshine with my little dog, now shaved and looking marvellous. I can see all her wiggles now that the overlay carpet is gone. She trots beside me through glorious tree hang. Bees come to check me out, like right up to my nose in spectacular hover control. Hallo, I say. Welcome. I watch greylags with goslings in tow cross a narrow inlet and there’s a load of chat. These parents are strict about safety, vigilance and behaviour. I can see that. A female lesser spotted woodpecker comes in, close. She is on a fence post, her head snapping left, right, her colours fabulous. A single movement, my hand to my mouth in awe of her beauty, and she is gone. I hear young tits deep inside the drystone wall cheeping. They hear my footfall crunch, think parental boots and call out. You are safe with me, I whisper, but be cautious little ones. Not all incoming is friendly. The wood floor is alive with blooms and the grass still soft and emerald. As the Summer progresses, these grasses will tire, grow sinewy, yellow. This is the time to see the island, when the green is filled with new life and hungry to lift towards the sun, when birthing is so very important. It thinks me. This strong reach is all about the next generation and we are not so different. Creation is a very important word.

As I watch my own children creations parent and adult up, I know they are all good strong humans. They learned how to live adventurously in a wild safe place. No matter that they did not get the latest overpriced something-or-other for Christmas or birthdays. They learned to make their own fun, whooping through trees like monkeys, devising potluck games and surviving them all with just a few cuts and bruises. They had strict parents when it came to table manners, respect for all others, kindness and wide-open thinking. Possibilities are always right there, we told them, just waiting for you but it is you who need to grab them for they won’t grab you. They will just catch your eye, or whisper in your ear and you must be vigilant, ready, prepared for action, my little birds. Always. Now they are teaching all that to their own little ones and it happies me. We did ok, no, we did very well considering the fact that parenting is a terrifying and turbulent process and not one of us can lean on experiential wisdom because we all learn as we go along. It is only when looking back to join the dots can we see how we succeeded and how we did not. The did nots can confound in later years, the guilt glueing a parent to the past. I know it, but I choose to focus on the dids. It is always a choice, the thinking thing, the remembering shape and colour, texture and dimension. I can build on either, as can you.

Possibilities can find me at any point inside this day. I can decide to be curious, open hearted and ready for them. When, as always happens, self doubt or fear or anxiety nudges my elbow, I am vigilant, ready, strict with them. You are not helpful, I tell them, please leave. Then I reconnect the wild in me with the wild out there. It has to be a daily practice because if I am not vigilant then I open up the runway for incoming unfriendly. And, it is not complicated at all, but simply a decision. A decision not to waste one single moment of this beautiful and fragile life.

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Island Blog – Sinklight, Ice and Curiosity

When I was a child, I broke a massive rule. Not one of us was allowed anywhere near a food source and that included the larder filled with delicious leftovers and the big Prestcold fridge, fatly green and bulging into the room like she needed all of the attention. At the top, there was a freezer mouth, with enough room for ice cream, home made lollies and not much else. One day, whilst not being watched, nor followed, which was rare, I opened said mouth and noticed a spill of orange juice from the lolly rack. I could not resist. My hot tongue came out in anticipation of a sweet lick.

You may well guess what happened next. My hot tongue met arctic ice and melded. I was stuck. I could not move. I couldn’t even cry out because cry outs depend on a free tongue and mine was absolutely not that. I don’t remember what happened next, although I do know that my suspicious mother would have been quick after me, no matter where in the house I had forayed alone. I am sure she was kind with warm water. I am also sure she was harsh with remonstrations. My tongue, my poor tongue, was half ripped apart by then, the sheer terror of being trapped my driver.

I do remember, inside that terror of being caught in flagrante, that I did pause to look deep into the void mouth of that fat-bellied Prestcold fridge. I saw, just for a few moments, an arctic landscape. In spite of my mother’s studious attention to levelling everything so she could dust/control it, I saw lift. There was no light in there beyond the backlight from the neon (oh dear) kitchen light, and the gusts of my panic breath, that altered the ice mountains ahead of me. I wondered what it would be like not to be stuck by the tongue, but, instead, free to roam those mountains. And they were mountains. A big grown up woman looking in might tut about needing to defrost, but me, on my tippytoes and absolutely stuck by the tongue saw different.

I like seeing different. Today has been a day of sinklight. Rain from dawn to dusk. Endless, confining, tongue twisting, stuck. We have many of these days, and many more to come. But, through that sinklight we can stand on tippytoe and move into the landscape. It isn’t what we think. It never is. With my vulnerable back to the room and my tongue stuck, therefore the whole of me stuck, I could choose. Panic or look in. I chose the latter, even knowing the butt whacks would come soon enough. I think that was the very first time I made such a choice and the power of it has never left me. Once a curious child learns to look beyond the situation it is like a whole new world opening up. There is this thing, this one thing and yet it is not just one thing at all. The difference is held within the hands of curiosity.

Obviously I am not still stuck to the ice. Obviously it hurt a lot and obviously I was gently melted off, possibly pre butt whacks, I don’t remember that bit. In the days of Now, I see many things that may look dire at first, that may ‘stuck’ me for a bit. But I have learned how to look again in curiosity and it serves me very well indeed. As I care for an ailing, failing husband, a whole lot of what I do might make you recoil in horror. It did for me, at first, but not now. Now I see beyond the obvious drama of it, deeper into the landscape, following with my eyes the contours of new land, ice land, desert land, rolling land or sea, skies that go on for ever. This is hope. This is faith. I am not stuck. Nor are you. It is all in the curious looking.

This is the only way to live.

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Island Blog – Hide and Seek

Peering out this morning, through rain smeared windows, the birds look like they are fraying at the edges. The flowers too, poor bowed soldiers in the face of a strong opponent, flagging beauty, ripped petals, but still standing firmly rooted. I had a wee chat with them this morning when I went out to fill the bird feeders. Stay strong, I told them. This too shall pass. Returning to the warm and coffee and a chattering woodturner, I think today will be a day to hide in. Not from, but in.

As a child, hide and seek was the best game ever, especially in a friends house where there were many more rooms than people. Connecting corridors, secret doors, lofts and cellars. the ‘hider’ could disappear for days on end in that rich man’s castle. However, the slightest sound of incoming sparked a rich anticipatory excitement in my young breast. I wanted to be found. I had been inside this old wine barrel for ages, my twisted legs were sound asleep and I wanted one of Cook’s jammy dodgers. Funny how things change. At first, I wanted to stay hidden forever and then, at the first creak of a floorboard, I longed for deliverance. It thinks me.

At times I want to hide away. I can see me now, in my mind’s eye, dropping like a stone behind the sofa when someone knocks on the door. I remember dashing upstairs to dive under the duvet, blocking my ears from the ‘Hallooooo!’ noise as someone just walked in. I don’t answer the phone, avoid the picture window through which everyone looks as they walk by. In short, I invoke no intrusion on my hide-ness. Of course, on Hide days everyone and his wife call, visit or peer in. On Seek days, when I would happily host a convention complete with light refreshments, the world is silent, mouthless, happy doing something else that doesn’t involve me.

Hiding during isolation and lockjaw (down) is simples. Almost nobody is out there. In fact, for all I know, the island has set sail for other lands; perhaps Englandshire is no longer attached to Scotland; perhaps all the islanders, bar the odd one or two who walk by, have emigrated to Australia and there is just us left, hiding from nothing and no-one, never again to be sought. The thought smiles me, but only because I know it to be imaginary nonsense. Of course everyone is still here; of course we are still joined from south to far north and of course all the islanders still inhabit the homes I know belong to them. That’s true……isn’t it?

Half the fun of Hide and Seek was getting lost myself. If I was seeking, creeping on silent toes, avoiding old creaker boards, and not committing to memory the way I had come, I could find myself half way down a completely unknown darkened corridor with someone coming my way. It could be her ladyship, in full sail, as ever and with a tongue inside her thin strip of a mouth that could cut through steel; or it could be his Fumbleship, the ancient old grandpa who thought everything a chuckle, especially his sharp edged daughter in law. I remember overhearing her tell him once that he was only living there because of her great beneficence. I didn’t know what that word meant, but he did, and after a great hoot of laughter, one that nearly carried him downstairs rather faster than usual, he continued his merry way leaving her pink faced and puffing. He found me that day, hiding behind the desk he always sat at to read his paper. Hallo little one, he whispered. My eyes were wide with rabbit terror but he just chuckled softly. Shhhhh, he said. I won’t tell. And I was more than happy to remain hidden, hearing his gentle breathing , the snap of news pages, my nose inhaling the smell of his pipe.

I felt both hidden and sought. And in that moment I knew I could be both at the one time. It filled a space in me I never knew was there. Instead of either this or that, either black or white, either yes or no, there was a whole wonderful world in between and I for one decided I would step into that world, curious as Alice.

And so it is, still.

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Island Blog – The Circus, Night Fairies and Life

I have baked a honey cake and drizzled it, put a wash on, changed a bed, dressed, applied slap, made a cauliflower cheese for supper, wished a grand-daughter happy unicorn birthday, swept the kitchen floor, prepared a salad, ate breakfast, fed the birds and the dog, danced to Ronan Keating’s new single and it is now 7 am. There is something manic about me, I am beginning to believe. Residue automatic morning-ness from when the tourist business was up and running, endless children, many of whom I didn’t know, also up and running, and food food food required by hundreds kept me cartwheeling from first light. Half the time there was little point washing up as meal demands bunched together like giggling girls on an outing. I whisked, beat, baked, stewed, roasted and steamed mountains of produce. It thinks me I am unable to step out of those running shoes, even now, when days are slow and gentle, mostly, with the exception of the odd crappy day wherein I cannot run for the life of me. My legs are leaden and my mind is a roundabout on speed. However, I am happy to report that such days are rare, not least because I can’t be bothered with any sort of sickness, mental or physical, disallowing either much space in the room. Be off with you, I say, but don’t go bothering anyone else because you are just not welcome. Try outer space.

Mornings bounce me like Tigger. I wake with the birds and absolutely cannot turn over for more sleep. Despite my passionate love for my recycled plastic bottle filled duvet and my feathery down pillows, I have too much energy fizzing through my veins to lie a minute longer. I have to be quiet, though. Himself won’t rise till about 8 and my kitchen is a floorboard below his bedroom. I don’t think they lagged things much in the 1870’s. I tiptoe through my tasks, interested, excited, curious and particularly curious when I discover that the washing pile is gone. Who has gone-d it? There is only me who washes in this house. I discover it a little later through a downstairs window, bobbing like bunting on the line. I have no recollection of hanging it there. Perhaps I didn’t. Perhaps the Night Fairies did it for me. How sweet they are. I remember them from my young harassed mother-days. They always surprised me with their kindnesses but there were times when I would rather they told me what they’d done because I might then have avoided wasting precious time in search of something I knew I had left just there the night before. Just there stares back at me emptily. I began to suspect collusion with the Night Fairies. Once, when I was certain of a pile of bed sheets awaiting a spin in the belly of my washing machine, I found them half way up the stairs, draped into an Aladdin’s cave and with two guilty looking collies curled up inside, each one enjoying a bowl of muesli.

Perhaps when life has been a circus for long enough, the circus becomes the life and each performer becomes the circus. I think I have. And I don’t mind one bit. I think the circus training has kept me bouncing through all sorts of horrible, kept me mostly up and taught me that nothing in life is going to get me down for long. I just wish I could share this with everyone else. Life is such a precious gift, and always too short. Living it right up to its end is the only path to happiness.

After all, stumble stones can always be turned into building blocks.

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Island Blog – The Ambience of Time

‘Ambience – the quality or character given to a sound recording by the space in which the sound occurs.’

That’s just one meaning of the word but one I like, on consideration. Quality, Character, Space In Which The Sound Occurs. In other words, the Moment. Life is but a series of moments, so many missed, wished away, ignored, rejected in a lunatic hurtle to either a new beginning or to the end of it. In a quest for happiness we can miss it all. No wonder so many lie on their bed of death in a cloud of regret, not, perhaps at their whole life but at those moments missed, ones that now take on the aspect and the voice of the Final Jury.

Ah, foolish man, foolish woman. There is enough well-crafted literature out there for us all to become professional livers of life, words gifted to those with eyes to read, ears to hear, minds to learn and feet to stay grounded in each moment, turning up for every one of them. It is easy to understand the rightness of such thinking, such a way of being but the world is loud as a bully and equally as daunting. Although we know that a bully is all fur coat and no nickers once ignored as we might a persistent bluebottle, the daunt is still there like an overwhelming fear, and it can confound the best of us.

However, knowing something is for the logic brain. Feelings, by contrast, riddle our minds, our hearts, our choices and our definition of self, like bullets from a machine gun. It’s spaghetti junction inside, a tangle of ups and downs, rounds and backs again, and appears beyond our control, as indeed feelings are. But here we have a choice. My choice is to say ‘Okay, I hear you all. All the feelings, all the logic learned from others way wiser than I and nothing makes a jot of sense. There is no flipshot way I can sort this tangle out. None of you agree for a kick-off and I am down here, little me in my frock and wellies wondering how deep the puddles will be today, bothering about my piddling worries, the state of the world and whether the battery on my phone will last until I get home again. So here’s the plan. You carry on disagreeing and tangling and arguing with each other and I am going to spend this day watching the moments as they come to me. I’m going to notice each one, be thankful for them all as they come and go and when this day is done I might check in on you bickering brats, or I might not. I know you are a gift. I know that all you feelings and all you counteractive logicians are, and have been, wonderful guides throughout my life, barring the times you meet each other across the valley of my mind with staves and spears, guns and a lot of yelling, but this day you are too much for me. There is a life down here being lived and it is I who am living it. So I choose to ignore you and to settle like a fatling hen upon her eggs for this day alone’.

I only have today. So do you. So does every living soul, regardless of status (perceived or real), colour, creed, race, history, size, plans and wealth. Just today. How will I live it? How will you? Will we hurtle in our steely rockets, slicing the moments into forgettable fractions or will we stop and share a smile, buy a beggar a burger and mug of hot tea, ask a colleague how they really are, phone mum, write an encouraging letter or email, study the pidgeon on the window ledge until we really see it?

There will always be a tangle within. We are humans with tangles. But if we forget to live our lives moment by moment, our life will still be lived without us being a part of it. Letting go of the tangles won’t bother them much, at first, but in choosing to notice everything and by some magical and out-there process, this tangle is no match for a person who lets go and who lives just this day as it is, who simply turns up, curious and wild at heart.

I leave you with a wisdom from Sarah Manguso:-

‘Perhaps all anxiety might derive from a fixation on moments – an inability to accept life as on-going.’ and, in her writing about keeping a journal…..

‘I just wanted to retain the whole memory of my life, to control the itinerary of my visitations, to forget what I wanted to forget.

Good luck with that, whispered the dead.’