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Island Blog – Birthday, Trees, Luck Dragon.

Today is Friday 13th December. I know you know that. For some, both the date and the day bring collywobbles. Such a lost word, and a good one. Moving on. It is memoric for me, for our family, because it is a birthday. This boy was born in a frickin snowstorm and in an old folks home on an island because that is what there was. He spent his first few days in Matron’s bottom drawer. He survived all of that and is now a spectacular man, husband, father, although I leave his family to qualify any of that.

As for us, the we in Africa, in the sunshine, far distant from the birthday man, from the minus degree thing that’s going on in the homeland, we moved easy. An early walk, barefoot and skimpy clad to the Indian Ocean, to watch the Luck Dragon/ big dog bound and bond with a load of other dogs and owners as the whapshuck of light-lit waves, the height of walls, pounded onto a slop sand beach. Boom, and boom as the cusp curved and smashed against shell and stone, rounding into gentle . Such is a massive ocean, whispered in, or blocked by the resolute rocks of centuries, and the ocean will respond, raunchy and irritable, banging against resistance, with an attitude I wish I had learned.

We did our own work for a while, a morning while. Let’s walk again. This time among trees. I get that, the need for trees, and not the scrub trees of the bush, bent into an apology, but the huge wide-spread oaks and fever trees and pines and others with fat trunks and an eye on the sky. It’s Friday and we just can go, permission given. And we do. We load up the Luck Dragon and we head for the trees. It’s a drive, traffic is a Friday thug, but we get there and we walk through the space and the silence and the water and the trees and we forget the traffic and the tension and the demands of life and we grow silent. We watch the Luck Dragon welcome every other dog, enchant everyone who sees his smile and his permanently wagging tail.

And we drive home, the echoes of our time under the trees, beside the water, within the peace, still holding us in stasis.

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Island Blog – The Flying Things

I had a dog today. Well, it’s better than a hissy fit or a conniption and certainly more rewarding. She is a black spaniel puppy, well trained and, for the first time, away from her human parents. She knows me, but that is so not the same thing as being left with me, not in her world. At first she was anxious, a lot of looking out of windows and eye-snapping me every time I moved from one room to another, a whole load of following and looking and those eyes were laden with doubt and insecurity. She is beautiful and soft and sweet and I reassured her a thousand times, creaking down on my hunkers to eye-level her, telling her ssshhhh, we’re ok, you’re safe and so on. I proffered toys, kept since my wee Poppy died, and for visiting dogs, and she rushed everywhere, with a pig, or a bird or a hedgehog or a something that has no name I know in her mouth, that spangle tail wagging like a metronome. We walked a little and she was keen to fly. I could feel that in my old legs, less under my own control than they were before. Before what, or when? I think since all this dying struggled me, and cancer too. That’s a something I flap away as if it was a mere cold, but obviously, my body is resulting. I doubt that is good grammar but, as you know I love to sideswipe the rules on that.

Around 1pm I was knackered and that thought me. She, the Spangle, asked nothing more than cuddles. She made no barks, chewed nothing, responded with cocked head, ears full forward whenever I spoke. I could have said Fancy a trip to Ibiza? and that tail would have told me Yes! However, I knew I needed to lie down. So we went upstairs and I did, inviting her onto the bed. She jumped and landed right on me, her paws either side of my face, her eyes staring right into mine. I looked back and she remained with that looking thing until I got the giggles, initiating a whole shenanigan of mischievous palaver, and I just knew rest was wrest from my grasp.

The sun was bright with a hail storm up his backside. We watched it, the hail, storm by, and then we walked again. We dillyed and dallied, endless sniffs abounding as the wind, latent, for now, still creaked the old trees. I switched back to hear their voices. You only speak in the wind, I said, and they creaked back, like old friends, like old memories. We are quiet in the calm, just like you, they said. It is only in troubling times that we need to speak out, much like you will do in your own troubled times, because nobody ever learns a damn thing when everything is easy. Yet, beyond the easy, In the after of an assault, when someone creaks and speaks from experience, there will be someone else who needs to hear, and who will catch the words.

And then, in my looking up, I saw the flying things. I haven’t seen them for many cold months. Insects in a whirl, a lift, coasting the sun warmth, a spin of hope. I watched them whilst the Spangle sat looking too, with no idea what she was seeing. But I did. I saw. And then we moved on.

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Island Blog – Shamshackle

Days slough on, canter on, dither on, as normal as it is for everyone else. Not one of us has the hold of the microphone on this, this takeshot of a life, moments, held, and held too long, or not long enough to learn the something of it all. . The past is whipping at our tails every second, and, as we all know, we do not see things the way they are, but see things as we are. Now that is one hec of a fricker, don’t you think? I think I see the truth and the one beside me, although he isn’t anymore, would turn his head up to me, his eyes astonished, and wag his head. I wasn’t there that day, he said. He was, but only in my story. How in the helikinns are people able to stay together for decades? I have no answer to that. I did. He did. But I am not sure either of us wanted that. It just kind of worked. We were tired, fricked and tricked out, beyond the the beyond of ourselves, as if there was only the Edge left to either of us, and there was no option there. We had frolicked and bolloxed our way through a million miles of forever, sagging together, furious together, lost together, shamshackled. 

I keep walking each day. I keep the rules, my rules, the tidy, the hoover out, now and then, the dust a blow in my mouth and the wheech of it laughs me as it just lands somewhere else. Prettier now, I tell it. I approve. A shift shape is always a mighty thing. I miss the Poppy dog. She was not mine at first, under the ownership of the captain of all ships, including hers, and mine. He was divolute with his training, absent, actually, but when he dived into the earth, heading down into the bowels of the whole thing, I took her on. Don’t be telling me that old dogs can’t learn new tricks because that is a load of horse. She learned, no treats on begging. No begging. No sandwich crusts of a lunchtime. No paw up will soften this mother heart, jeez, have I not know this begging thing and not just from dogs in my dithering life?

But, I confess, I loved her. I still do, and just thinking of her out there under the freeze of winter, coming home to the nothing, of the without her, rises the lump in my throat, my eyes looking for her jounce at the window, her bounce around my feet, every single time.  The way she dashed miles through the home, up and down the stairs, a toy in her mouth, her skids flipping the stairs into slide, so fast she was, her arse bumping against a wall when the curve confounded her.  Was. Not a great word, Not about her. Thinks me about other wases. Not sure there is a plural available just yet. There will be one day. We have new young writers and a serious need to blow the dust of the Oxford Dictionary. Another Shamshackle.

Seeing things as we see, or saw them, is how it is. But, and there’s a butt there. Moving on is never easy. not for nobody. Notwithstanding, if we refuse to move, we will be left behind. I can feel it, hear it, see it all around me, us. The shamshackle of it all. It is a sham and a shackle. Not for me. I am old, I know this, but the fightlight is wild in me and strong and I am hoping it is wild in you too. I think life is not the dream we imagined, but better, because whatever we go through, whatever we face down, sham out, shackle out, we can rise, torn, yes, broken, dirty, but still with the rising in us. 

Tomorrow is the Monday of it all, the ghastly wotwot of having to shiftshape into a someone else. For school, for a job, for the weather, for new clothing, a new identity. You know yourselves. You see and know what you see and know. Be clear on that. It might be a shackle, but it is not a sham.

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Island Blog – Ice and Curtains

I asked a young friend, well, a friend of my sons, who lives nearby, to come help me, on a rainy morning, to help me hang some curtains.  He came back immediately with a Yes. Bless his comeuppance #therightmeaningofthe word. I thought it would be the morra, the rainy morning.  It generally is. But these are rain and wind free days, icy clear and freezing, the child of the Winter King learning how to hold the earth concreate, perhaps.  She is still holding, and I love her, the slip and slide of her icy stretch along paths that could, but, as yet, have not skidded my old arse into flat. An ice tumble.  I wonder about minus 24, when I meet minus 3.  Paltry by comparison, I guess, but this country, this beautiful country, one that has seen control, wars, feeble governments and a complete lack of respect for everyone who lives on this land, suddenly feels a whole lot of cold.

If I did pay attention to the news, the buffed up stories of what is happening out there, I could forget my inner laugh. So, I won’t go there. I will, instead, focus on not falling on my arse on the ice, I will lift and swift with the birds who stay close, albeit nervously, as I fill the feeders of a morning, whilst cocking a snook at the Sparrowhawk, up there, somewhere in the ancient pines. Each side of the track looks frozen, is frozen in stasis and beautiful, shapes held by tiny iceflakes, stopped dead like a photograph but in 3D. I stoop to study the way the ice has caught in groove lines, each shape outlined in pure white. The Star moss is a perfect forest, albeit in miniature. Enlarged it wouldn’t be out of place in a Lord of the Rings movie, thick and impenetrable. On warmer days, I could walk by without a second glance, caught up in my own thoughts, but now it takes my breath away, breath that puffs out of my mouth as if I was a kettle coming to the boil. I watch the steam dissipate and think of those crazy mountaineers with icicles on their moustaches, not that I have one of those myself. I squat down to snap a shot on my mobile. I never used to take this thing on my walks, but now I do, what with the flat-on-my-arse possibility, no matter how cautious I am about holding my body directly above each step. 

Walking in nature has been much written about, the healing, uplifting power gained from just getting up and out, regardless of weather. And, I find it is the truth. If I am feeling a tad weary in my alone life, bored, perhaps, my brain scratchy and unitchable, unable to find much joy in the prospect of domestic engagement, I make myself boot up and out. Every single time it works. I tell my scratchy brain to shut the ef up and to notice, notice, notice everything. A sudden bird flip across my path, the moss, the lichen on tree bark, the twisted limbs of the hookah trees, skinny now, bare, ghostly, waiting for Spring. The track is either a straggle of mud or solid as rock beneath my yellow boots. I might meet another walker, perhaps with a dog, always a delight. We might chat for a few minutes, share a laugh, as the dog pushes against my legs for attention. Or, I may be quite alone, just me and the sky and the ghost trees. A young hind watches me walk by, her ears twitching forward as I say a soft hallo and reasurre her that I mean no harm. It must be a lean time for deer now, no grass yet and everything frozen hard as stone. 

I return home refreshed and lively to my cosy island home. I build up the fire, make tea and sit to watch the garden birds, the spread of ice on the tidal loch, the darkling hills beyond. Smoke from faraway chimneys lifts into the blue, spirals of warmth rising straight up as there is no wind to snatch them away. The tea is hot and nourishing and I might just get out the hoover now, now that my mind is cleansed of sludge. The task is still a dull one, but that connection with the out there of my life has soothed my itchy brain into calm. Thankful for such a wonderful life, I rise into action, whilst my curtains watch me from inside a plastic bag. You will hang one day, I tell them, and then wonder if I might put that another way.

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Island Blog – Lightmare and My Wee Sister

I feel absent from myself. Unnerving, at best, but this is where I am, finally alone here in the placeI love best, alone and just me and that’s that on the whole alone thing. I had family, a husband, dogs, distractions, a massive to-do list and now……..nothing. Well, not nothing, because I still have me, and my kids somewhere out there busy with their busy lives, but in the day to day living of this alone thing, t’is just me. I love it and don’t like it at all, in wavy curves, an anomaly, a conundrum, an apogee, something wordy, anyway. But, and there is always one of those, life lives herself on and through me and I am glad of it, for she still wakes me, aways before Dawn even gets her pyjamas off. Life, the liver, the giver, the one who (not that/grammer, people) shiggles me into life and out into the glory of herself, no matter the utter shit of whatever is going on. And that, is a gift, even if the me of me is absent and silent, lost and alone. The wotwot of this place presents, not as breakfast in the dark alone, again, but also as a rocket up my arse. I feel it. I invite it because without that rocket I could easily fall. I have always walked on the edge of things, felt the pull of madness, of the tipping that might take me over the edge, and I did look down, I did, and was tempted, but no, t’is not for me. I know this edge, my bare toes feeling their way along the ridge, the cusp, and there’s a thrill. This place. I can see others come here, chaotic and unthinking, and I can be the thinker. I can hold and hug and comfort and stable. I can question and settle with them on a rock and tell them no, not now. Let’s go for a coffee. I know a place.

All of that might sound weird to those who never go into the depths of themselves. I know it. But I do, and I know so many others do, even if I don’t know them. We appear as chaos, and we are chaos, but in the understanding of chaos, there is a resolution. Chaos cannot sustain longterm. It will always resolve, and into something beautiful. The waves of the ocean speak volumes, they flow and crash, pull out and into something much greater, the snatch of the wild, the moon, the winds, the everything we cannot, nor will ever explain.

I watch my gnarled fingers dance the qwerty keyboard. They look wizened and yet still dance. Words still flow down my arms, the dance begins and, again, I am absent from myself. I chuckle. I have always been this way, and, even without family, husband, and now, faithful dog, I am still me, like me or not. So, in this state I drive to the harbour town for this and that. As I swift down the curve and into the downfall of one of the two downfalls, I spot a lightmare. It is just after nine am, (I refuse to say ‘in the morning’) and these multi-coloured lights are abundant and flashing. I wonder if they did this all night. I wonder about the other residents in that big block of flats. I move on, and by. And, i am thankful that, in my absolute solitude, one that trips to cusp me and often, is my home with no lightmare.

Thank you, my wee sister.

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Island Blog – Poppygon

Polygon, 3 or more sides. Hexagon, 6 sides. Octagon, 8 sides. Poppygon, multiple sides. Whilst I bother, somewhat, with all the other gons, which never got a mention, I can’t go with that thing just now. I look out at her grave, the fresh earth light and obviously from the deeps. That is where she is right now, deep and dead. My wee companion, the dog I fought not to have, became my love. She insisted on walks, her time clock set for 2pm, and, no matter that I really needed rest after her waking me at two, three, four, am for a going out that resulted in nothing more than barks at the stars, she would still dance around my hopefully sleeping form, lifting me into action. I confess, I do, that irritation was arising in me, and I hated that. So, I watched her dance, looked into her huge brown eyes that looking like a piercing, the wild in her and it would smile me. Okay, I said, let’s go, and the dance became a fiesta, her watching me rise, the excited twirling, her making sure I decant the stairs, pull on boots and jacket and then she would bounce and huff and bark with excitement until I was finally prepped. Holding out her collar and lead, I suggested, with my open palm, for her to sit. I could see her arse jig. She managed an inch above the mat, so excited, to be out there with me. I know it was walking with me, her thing, because others had invited her for a walk before, sans me, and found her resistant, looking back. She was mine, and I was hers.

Buried, she was yesterday. My friend, the vet, came softly and sweet. The ground was frozen. I’ll bury her for you, she said, and she did. I could never have done that, don’t have that strength anymore. I ordered Poppy tubers to plant above her. They’ll arrive soon. A remembergon. I see her big brown eyes and the looking of them. Her beds and rugs and food and snacks are now moved on. Needs must, on those sudden sharp jerks. But, when I walk, without her, I still look back for her, running behind me, having sniffed a gazillion things I just walked past without a care, and I say, hallo, my poppygon.

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Island Blog – The Joy of It

I swam today, not, as I would like, in the Atlantic, but after a long and sunshine drive to the pool, I clock in. This pool is affixed to ground control mid island, as is right, accessible to all of us who live sprachled over hillsides, down tiny access roads, and with posties confused for miles and many many miles apart. Like last time, after two lengths I loathed the whole thing, my neck aching with all that looking up required from a breastroke. Two other women were there, early doors, pre lessons and wotwot, the pool calm and the sunlight fluttering against the walls, in our eyes, a sunshine mosaic, fractal, beautiful. I pushed on. Last week I managed 20 lengths, this week 25 and helped big time by the chat in the shallow end. I learned of other women who live here, have done so for frickin ages, just like me.

I didn’t lock my mini. It was a choice. I thought this think. This is an island. People are good. I abandon my control panic la-di-da and I lift, like Bouddicca from this sprightly mini and into my swimwear and onward. Always onward, to hec with, well, pretty much everything. I watched a coach welcome folk from the hotel, off on a voyage somewhere on this beautiful rise of rock, and I waved a smile.

Home again and you’d think I’d been gone for a century for all the welcome I got. The dog was watching through the fence rail, waiting, waiting, but trusting. I always tell her to stay and that I won’t be long, and, knowing that she has no idea of time, I won’t be. But she waits, and she watches. I am it for her, and she is the it for me. We walk, slowly, and, thankfully, into the shade. I clocked 26 degrees pre leaving, but, once into the fairy woods and then to the shore, it will cool. I notice there are no conkers on the horse chestnuts. I wonder why. I have no answer, nor do I need one. The turning of the world over millennia has shown loss, failure, rise and ebullience, over and over and over again.

We walk to the shore, me and the wee dog. She always wants to go there. When I am tired, I divert her. Home, I say, feeling guilty. I always regret it, that slope to the shore, where grand girls dived in wetsuits, lofted onto dinghies, crab fished, scrambled the ancient rocks with bare feet, light and easy. Today we went there. She was a scoot on the green download of the earth, all the way to the crunch of sundried kelp, still there, wild flowers, holding on, some canoes, kayaks, tied tied to hazels. The blue moon tides have been, well, luscious. Over the top. Well over. Boats need to be secured. I walk by them, remembering their launches, remembering my family, not here anymore. And it thinks me.

I sit on a wonky rock. My arse slideyways, my feet ditto. I hear an irritation of herons across the sealoch, watch diver birds dive, rise with a splash that laughs me, then dive again, I see an otter flip a fish, the rainbow flash an indent in my mind. As we wander home, as the crunch of new life supports my feet, as everything I have never known begins to unfold in the now, I smile for the joy of it.

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Island Blog – Blue Tit and Game On

I drive the wee dog to Heather, for a groom. I encourage her to remain on her soft mat in the passenger footwell, the dog, not Heather, a new thing for her since the old man died. He had her on his knee, on the back shelf or jumping from front to back and all before we’d got through the village. Sent me crazy. I didn’t know, half the time, if I was changing gear on the car or the dog. But no amount of words altered his mind. His way was THE way and if I had a problem with it, well, tough shit. They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but you can and I did. She trusts me and sits quite joco on the mat, trembling like a leaf for a few hundred yards and then lying down for the journey. Heather is wonderful with her, patient and professional in her dog grooming anti-hair pinafore. I leave to visit a dear friend for coffee and a catchup. She will ask about my situation, the whole hoo-ha since June 27th, a hoo-ha that tried to get me, and failed. We talk about life, about the island, about our visitors, about adventures, about addictions and choices and being alone without ever being asked if we’re okay with the whole ‘alone’ thing. She, like me, is a widow. I think ‘weeds’. What are widow’s weeds anyway? Her man fell off a mountain, too young, too sudden. Mine took years to dwindle away, but we have the aloneness in common. She is feisty and fun, bright and lively, intelligent and wise. Perhaps I am too.

All too soon it is time for me to collect my manicured dog. Cathy and I agree to meet again, for lunch somewhere, for longer. We never naturally get to the end of our flyabout conversations, those that dart from people to places, through memories and learnings, into new understandings and a new acceptance, the acceptance of being alone and then, from that point, of finding the feet to walk it into a new sassy light. The weather is balmy, unusual for this time of year on the island. The wind is from the Serengeti, I swear it, and a stout walk feels like a bad idea, but a walk is needed. I watch bout 20 snow geese fly up the sea-loch, and marvel at their beauty. Soon the Tundra, or Trumpeter, or Bewick swans will fly in from the arctic on their way south in search of food. I hope I am watching when they come by, to hear the melody of their wingflight, to hear their soft murmurings of encouragement to each other. In the starry starry nights, in the absolute darkness of the island darkness, their sound wakes me, no matter its softness. Flying way up into the ice skyfields , I cannot see them, but I can hear and I can wish them safe passage. I am connected to the creatures of flight, know their sounds, hear them like music, like a call to find my own wings, my own feathers.

Flight. Feathers. Connection. It thinks me, and it may sound daft, for I am utterly as glued to the ground as you are, but I have an integral belief in connection, to others and to otherness. Laughed at as a child for this ‘knowing’, I am freed of that now, mostly because, my dear, I don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks of me and my connection to otherness. In this time of waiting, for a decision on surgery, for the next tests next week, for the wotwot to come, I think of flight. All my many tattoos show flight. Dragonflies, musical notes, a feather, a butterfly, pegasus. Then, thanks to my son, I consider breast art after cancer. The pictures I google are many. It is, it seems, an art, and I like that. To lose a breast, or even to be altered by a lumpectomy can be a shocking shock. I will know one day for myself. To look the same as before, tempting, essential, perhaps for some, but not for me. I have had two breasts for 70 years, albeit the pair of them a tad wonkychops, one bigger than the other, but I had them and I am not a young woman any more. Had this happened when I was 30 or 40, well, I might have felt differently. I may still retain these breasts, but they may be even more wonkychops than before. For now, this is a mystery. However, and there is always one of those, I am planning a tattoo.

Robin Redbreast? I suggest to my African son. He nods, waggles his head. Better, he says, Blue Tit.

Game on.

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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 – Hallo and Thank you

Today I woke too early, my head full of monsters. Will I have major or minor surgery? Will I be strong enough to deal with it all? What will be the treatment after? Will I forget my headphones? (locate my headphones), or miss the ferry because the milk lorry has capsized in the Glen? Will I arrive, as I did for the Nearly Dead hospital visit, with one nightie, no cardy and no tweezers? Tweezers? Seriously? Will my little beloved dog fall ill when I’m away, and how long will I be away? Will the chimney sweep come, will the garden go to riot because I’m not watching it? Okay, you get the monsters. They all say YES, to all of the above, of course they do, the negative bastards.

Right, you lot, I said, startling the small dog into barks and a leap from her bed. Right! No, Wrong! You is NOT getting me in a right fankle at 04.30 whilst still inside my nightie (take 3, maybe four, do I have four?) and with my eyes barely focussed, you is not. We all rose from the tangle of duvet and I did try to leave them upstairs but they had a different plan. We watched the early birds, the light spreading over the sea-loch, over my garden, over the land, like a new story. Heretofore, this has given me a new vision, a new day, a new dawn, but this morning, no. The damn monsters of fear and anxiety, of a still resident exhaustion in my battle to be undead, kept up their clatter-chatter. It is a longtime since I had to fight them in this way. I tell myself, it is okay to feel these feelings, but it isn’t okay at all because they give me indigestion and backache and a squiffy head and no inner peace. I tell myself that anyone else would feel this way, but that doesn’t help either.

Do I not appreciate the support and love from my family, friends and blog readers? Yes, I do very much. So, why isn’t that enough? It thinks me, a lot and those thinks lead me to the (possible) conclusion that, no matter how many are around us, surround us, we ultimately sail alone. We need to manage our own craft across all sorts of dodgy oceans. In the knowing of that, I managed the hours of today, just. I rested a lot, read a whole book, walked into Tapselteerie and met not one soul, something that would normally delight me, but not today. Today I wished for an encounter, just a wee hallo and a passing chat. I went to the shop for a few bits now that my ‘recovery’ and ‘preparation’ demands a whole load of dark green vegetables, pulses, seeds and probiotics. I didn’t even know what that meant before now. I just cooked and ate.

I have decided that this living alone thing is not much fun, not when you want a Resident Familiar to proffer balance in the face of inner monsters. That smile, that joke, that ‘come on, let’s go out for coffee’, or to the beach, or something. Although my Resident Familiar left the relationship a long time ago when dementia arrived to take up residence, he was still here, a sometimes warm, living Familiar. I don’t want him back, but that is not the point. When a girl is swept off her feet at just 18 when she still has no idea about life beyond the parental home, she can be forgiven for feeling somewhat lost after 50 bonkers years of marriage to a dominant male and on the adventure of a lifetime. Being alone means I have to instigate everything and others, who have a Resident Familiar, are, well, busy until next Tuesday. I get that. I was always busy till next Tuesday, and for decades. But, on the other side of that, being alone is marvellous, so freeing, so uplifting, so damn new. How bizarre.

I am not moaning. Tomorrow will come and will proffer a new set of ideas, new feelings. Today is just today. So why do I write a blog? Should I not, instead, keep all of this to myself so as to spare whoever reads these words? Possibly, but I have been a polite girl/woman for a very long time and right now I feel raw and bloody and honest and congruent. I don’t want phone chats, don’t want visitors, don’t want anything at all, in truth, other than for these feelings to melt away. I am effortlessly positive as a rule because that is how I see this gift of a life. Perhaps, then, I am simply in a place I do not recognise, one that upskittles me, tries to trip me right over. Yes, that’s it. I don’t know this terrain and it is hostile. Simples. And it really helps to write and to post. Really, it does. In writing out my feelings about whatever is going on, and to send it into the ether, whatever that is, my spirits lift into a reassurance, that no face to face contact can give me. I think of you all, in Canada, In the States, in Englandshire, in Scotland, on islands across the world, and I reach out, saying, through my own stories, Hallo and Thank you for being there, for clicking on the ‘follow’ link to my blog, for reading my words. I also imagine your lives, tough at times, maybe many many times, easy here and there, the infuriations, the lifts, the shocks, the abundance and the lack. The bones of a life, the flesh and the guts of an ordinary/extraordinary time on this goodly earth. Life, I love you. I truly do.

See? I feel better now, just writing this. Hallo you all. And Thankyou.