Family

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Island Blog – The Cusp and Check the Nuts

We’re always on one, a cusp, those of us who run too fast towards a something or a someone, or a dream. For now with my sensible hat one which, if I am honest, never did fit and always fell over one eye or both, we are on the cusp of a stormo dueblo. It dithers me, like you on the cusp of the unknowable. We will be here again and that’s for sure. We are already are, in a different dimension, among the squigilliounaria of the fictious confines and controls of social media. Most of it I can laugh at, but I am not 15 and lonely and rejected at school because I have specs, spots, big boobs, no boobs, white skin, black skin, big feet. Etcetera. Those kids are on the cusp every single day. Did we clock this as parents in our busy working lives? I didn’t.

Back to the storm. Today, I walked into an unnatural still in my friends, the trees. I stopped for a chat with the Horse Chestnut which always yellows before her sister a few feet away as if she thinks she is older, and she might be. She is also skinnier, older and grown in a water challenge. I admire her, and say so. Further up the track, and all alone, I meet stripped silver birch, hazels with few nuts. I have seen this before. A learned old guy told me that trees will produce what is required for the ahead of time, for the winter. No conkers either, or is it neither? So, in theory, there is less need for nuts.

I hear people talking though. Less nuts, oh dear, a loss, a fear. Honestly, I want to laugh. I/we pursued a dream and landed here, but even before that when we farmed in Norfolk, there were years of no nuts, no a lot of things, failed crops, the scant knickerless blank of fields failed. It was a cusp, of course it was. The horror of loss and lack and the fear of going again an almost joker in the midst. But we had really good workers, wonderful dynamic people who turned up every day on their own cusp, bringing their own hopes for being involved, valued and paid. We kept going, as we did up here in the tangles of island switcher winds and wildings and sudden capistrata. And I am glad we did. I remember the savings and the smiles and the come into the warm and the wild out-there crazy nights, the camaraderie, the togetherness, the sharing. What do we do when, as I hear, food will become short? Of course it will (duh), because thousands of fields burned in their wheat/barley/oat grow. Farmers are seriously on the cusp.

The thing that bothers me most is that far too many of us expect to be ‘provided for’ expecting that what we once had, the nuts and the fields of barley are somehow our right. They aren’t. I watch the sky, sense the birds and their changes, listen to the wild, walk into it. Check the nuts.

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Island Blog – The Sudden

There’s a silence now and a shiftshit in the island air. I can feel it sniping through the cracks in my old stones. The afternoon sun is a dalliance, and then said sun dunks down into Australia, or wherever and turns into their friend, leaving shiver tails of cold. I light my fire. It’s up to me to do that these days. The light, I am watching it, tumbles into umber yellow grey, the wind rising. The forecast is compromising ferries, la la la. I tie down my wheelies, close my garage door. It’s only 56mph the morra, but it will probably arrive early like an infuriating guest for a party with a confident Halloo, when you’ve barely got into your corset, never mind the slinky dress.

I don’t think much of the outside world comes slowly. It comes suddenly when you’re busy with all the stuff of life, the noise of it, the intercantobulation of dealing with a thousand things in a single day, every day. I think about that in my singular life, in the soliloquy of just one voice, one woman, and even in that life there are Suddens, because everything changes all the time, no permission required. And they bring noise and alteration and acceptance, defiance, reliance. We have met that this week in the Best Cafe Ever. A small team because Why Not, it’s the end of the season? Not. This week we have experienced a surprise of customers. We were prepped, the chef and Jess there early, me clocking in at 0900, all in place, lights on, ready. But I know we didn’t expect the inflow of customers. They came and came and kept coming. The Suddens. Who were they? Those who come for Autumn; half term parents with wee ones, adventurers who love the chiaroscuro of this time of year, single travellers, many interesting folk. Were we ready? Did we have enough food? Oh we worked with that, talked about it, made decisions, wanting to make everyone happy. It is such a multicolorum. And that is a dynamic that all such cafes have to work with.

In the Servery, when we met, we laughed and talked nonsense and rolled our eyes and cleared tables, separating the ones shoved together in order to allow new customers in twos to have their space. I met many beautiful dogs and their smiley owners, a blessed pause in the wheel of the work mill. I talked about words and their meaning, the way grammar was not taught to my children, the way words can upspell a mind, create curiosity and a skidder through the woods of learning. I brought up a word.

Subito. Means Suddenly. However, that word in Thesaurus or Dictionary is ‘strangled’ by the next word right beside it. Repente. repent. I am ‘suddenly’ ashamed of what I have sought answers from for all my years of writing.

We will laugh about that tomorrow as we lay place for whoever arrives wanting coffee, tea, cakes, lunch, company. What matters now is not grammar. It’s connection, and the fun this wee team can generate in a sudden moment.

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Island Blog – There’s no point Sniffing

I am just home again after a big travel to the city for an annual cancer check. I was anxious, not about the check, no, but about the thrust of me into a chaos of too many people, the train station thing, the push, the rush, the not feeling sure about connections, the dizzy of bright boards telling me this/that and the very sure possibility of me, little me, having to negotiate a change. I felt even smaller than small as I walked (purposefully) onto one of so many platforms and into a crowd of those who, it seemed to me, knew exactly what they were doing, easy in their waiting. I was cold and unsure, hesitant. This is not me, but it was me in that environment. The journey was 0k, standing all the way and wondering, as a million people travelled with me, if I would ever arrive at Waverley Station. I remember a young mother with three toddlers and a great many men who felt fine taking up all the seats. I thought of my boys and just knew they would have been on it, vacating seats and helping such as this young mum with smiles and assistance. They would have Noticed. It smiled me as my legs fought to stay upholding me. I remembered a young woman, too, dressed for a night out, who reached for me, said, you go before me, as the throng pushed to ‘alight’ and I thank her.

My time with family was glorious. To be welcomed into a young family is not a given, not in the way I was welcomed. Young girls, all teenage and angsty, all soft and loving, loads of crashes, soundus eruptus, then gentle mellow, new puppy in the mix, who does this, who didn’t do that. I sort of remember it, but it was so long ago. Every time I am in the thrix of it, I am initially startled, until I find my feets. Ah, here we are, and then the memories quicken like fire in my mind. I have obviously lived the alone-ness for a long time. But sitting, as I did whilst staying there, outside, alone, watching the big sky over the East Coast and thinking, I can see how it is. I don’t understand it, the now of now, but I see it and here’s the thing……I can flap it away or I can knock on the door. I did. I respect personal space, even if it never existed in my youth. Come in, she said, and I did. There she was, they were, in their private safety. I just came to say goodbye for now. She rises and hugs me like I was so valuable.

I can see what my young are going through even though I am a million miles away from helping any of them. All I would say is this. There’s no point sniffing because it will keep coming until you blow. The katabatic wind is gravity driven, comes down from mountains, glaciers, way beyond. In the cosytuck of the world, the surface life, this will sound looney, to suggest that the force of downdraft needs attention. But think. How many times has anyone felt completely south of the north of themselves, as if a whole hemisphere is tangled? I think we need to simplify. Who am I? What do I want? What is my name?

All these confound. Who should I be, who was I as a child before, what I want needs approval, my name? Not the one I would choose, not now.

No Sniffing. Blow.

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Island Blog – Flick the Indicator and Sing

It’s windy. and rainy. This is so not news, not on the way-out-there of us on this almost most westerly point of the UK. Wind, rain are a thing here, loads of both. I can see it in faces, wrinklewrapped but in straighter lines than those on mainland skin, as if continuation actually fixes anything in place. Which it does, when my thinks think me. If somebody continually focusses (too many esses) on gloom, doom, disaster, failure, then guess what manifests? I remember an ongoing conversation way back about being a realist as opposed to a ‘fantasist’. The latter was the term applied to a positive thinker. It laughs me now, but it was a furious one-thing-or-the-other bargument back then, as if there was no opportunity for the in between. Nobody then, nobody at all ever even considered the power (definitely not that) in the electricity of the mind, the fact that it only needed a human decision to fire up the electrons, particles and all the other stuff about which I know zip. I learned it early and I am glad of it.

Anyway, back to lines on faces. I meet the curved lines of dissatisfaction, the downturn, the defeat, the settling, mostly on visitor features. I also meet the ‘scars’ of women and men who have lived here, faced down the wintersmith and laughed back into a hesitant spring and for decades. We can notice, if we care to notice. Life is tough and for all of us. However, and here’s a thing. In any conversation between two ‘solids’, there are many opportunities to divert. There is a wealth of colour, tone and hue between black and white. It’s about belief, and belief is a choice and a confidence and a decision. I’ve made such choices often without a scooby, no idea what might come down on me, appear for me, many, many times. I recommend it.

Flick the indicator. See what happens, and then deal with it, holding tight to your own song, because if you don’t sing it, who ever will?

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Island Blog – Go for it…. The Green Light for Risk

Pre 1974 the British never said this, the Go for it bit. In fact, and I remember well, there was none of that wild nonsense. In fact there was far more Don’t you dare go for it, for girls anyway. And It was never going to change. Breaking out was a big risk. Many did and I admire them. But I am not talking about historicalness, more about cooking and about the way I cooked for all those years without a clue. I had musical talent, I knew that. I was a creative, I knew that. I had one recipe book. I knew that too. It was the birthing of 1980 on an island in the wilds of wilderness with shitfaced gales and striated rocks upholding the peripheries and intense freezing cold and no fricking fires in the homestead, or none that would stay alight without bellows and a load of swearing. About floors so cold it was impossible to walk without boots on, about ice in the threadbare spouts of carpet. I remember them. Going up to bed, a mile of stairway, I saw those ice spouts glint in the moonlight. They did smile me even though they solved not one of my problems.

I remember the mile long stairway.

There were times I walked up and times I walked down. On each journey, mostly, I conversationed myself. I knew steps to be an opportunity for change. I hate this, I am cold way beyond my bones, I want out. I am ready, I can do this, How many pack lunches today, how many dinner guests, how many knocks on the door to say Here’s a lamb. That’s the only one that angered me.

Positioned before the big blue aga, I found inventions. Each evening from April to October, we worked together. She was testy, up and down with the blow of the switchy winds, puffing out and pulling in, but we got to know each other. She helped me produce a load of made up recipes, the go for it green light strong in me as I pulled back from a book recipe thinking no, not enough lemon, garlic, whatever. Guests were happy, effusive, booked for next year. I cooked intuitively, and as I grew more confident and less doubting, I became courageous and a good cook. However, it wasn’t just in cooking that my intuition served me well. When the next disaster arrived I trusted my quick decision making and took action. Oh, I am not saying I didn’t doubt myself because I always did, and nor am I saying that I was always right because I absolutely was not, but it seemed to me to be the only way I could operate. Unlike many who spend a long time thinking things through, something I wish I could do even occasionally, I jumped in the deep end immediately as if I was the only one who could save the day. This is obviously ridiculous. There are many things which do require a lot of thinking through and those things were undoubtedly startled at being brought firmly to a conclusion they had neither expected, nor needed, but I would have missed their startlement completely. Where did this not-thinking-through gene come from, I wonder? When I do force myself to think for more than a few seconds about a problem, my mind wanders off in any number of irrelevant directions. I try to pull it back but this wild horse is determined to bolt. Perhaps my brain was inserted upside down.

Now that old bones tell me just how old they are and that Time is also slower on the move, I consider all of the above and it wonders me, the way we are made, the influences of our childhood, the genes we inherit, the talents we learn in order to be Somebody among millions. I suspect we will never be able to unpick the fabric of ourselves, will never understand everything, or anything much about how we are who we are. The most important thing, I do know this, is to value and be thankful for all the things we have achieved in our life and not just to focus on the failures which I do, a lot. I blame school reports. ‘She has too much imagination.’ She has considerable difficulty in sitting still.’ She is disruptive in class, too cocky, too badly behaved.’ and so on. These told me, of course they did, that I was someone undeserving of all the glowing congratulations bestowed on those who would never have disrupted anything and who could sit still for days if required. I was bright and intelligent, funny and mischievous, witty and daring, but none of that came home with me at the end of term, so it’s understandable that I misremember myself, even as an old woman. I sincerely hope that my generation is the last, or almost last of subjugation and the disinterest in individuality, for there is brilliance out there in our children and their children and we need them to grow into themselves, ready to risk, to Go for It, whatever ‘It’ is for them.

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Island Blog – Equinox

The one 24 hours when day and night are more or less equal all over the world. Happens twice a year. That’s a big thing. In the days when we, the eejit humans of now, were completely connected with natural life the tomorrow would be a day of celebration and of introspection, not that most folk could spell either of those these days. I know this and accept it, but it won’t stop me mentioning the old ways. Most of what I ever see rising into Facebook or other social media platforms seems to centre, a lot, around the best make-up. Perhaps there’s a truth therein, something about concealment, pretence, I don’t know, even though it does, I confess, bother me. I remember mornings leaving a warm bed, pulling on something waterproof and protective and heading out with a torch to tramp many lambing pastures. I remember hearing my squelchy footsteps, facing down a frickin gale or diminuited by hail or snow. Make-up could not have been further from my thoughts, let alone face-lifts nor the perfect frock. And I am glad of that.

Although the equinoxal shift is not actually felt, it does mean something, even now in this material world. And, for those who are curious (my favourite word) the Autumnal Equinox has a word to say. Because night and day are of equal length, there is the opportunity for a balance shift. It is like being in a Thin Place, and you might like to look that one up. We have plenty here, on the island, on the edge of the edge. When life is out of alignment, such as a balance between work and rest, giving and receiving. This equinox mirrors trees losing their leaves, the surrender of old habits, heavy burdens, old commitments, none of which serve now.

As I left work from a very pleasant day at the Best Cafe Ever, in the slapdash of rain, a crow came down over my car, lowering before me. The road is a winding for sure, and this crow followed every turn, leading me. I watched its wings lift and shift, staying with me for a long time. I have never experienced that before. At one corner, it lifted away to land inside a Rowan tree laden with berries. I slowed as it settled, looking straight at me. Thankfully, the oncoming traffic was non-existent.

In the old ways, Crow is an omen of change, of the knowledge of right and wrong, way, way beyond the limitation of human thinking.

Happy Equinox.

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Island Blog – A Very Big Man and Sea Bear

I knew this one, him and his wife and that multitude of kids, wild as scatter stones and yet close as could be. Together, that’s what I thought. We met on the CB radio, at least I did, as Sea Bear, my husband, reached out to communicate with another islander, one beyond the one we lived on. The men had met, of course they had, out there above the feisty challenges of the wild Atlantic wavery. Not that that ocean ever wavers. She is always super confident it seems to me. The CB radio sat in the Tapselteerie kitchen, in the corner, crackling and snorting away with half sneezes, faltered messages, broken at times. This was the way we communicated way back in the day. For all its frustrations, it was the only way and, somehow, we settled within such limitations. They also pushed us into inspirational ideas, these limitations. We always found a way and even if I was catering to a load of dinner guests with way too many children bursting in and out, the smaller ones crawling about under tables and work stations with tonka digger buckets full of earth and wet stuff, asquirm with puzzled worms and tickety beetles, I would dash to the CB and say, Lady Q here. Lady Q, for goodness sake. I blame my posh accent which did me proud in elocution lessons and later on stage, but here among the west coasters I just sounded ridonculous.

Many winter nights when dark fell like a surprise and the gale-propelled rain slammed like hammers against the wispy single-glazed windows, we shared family info. Our lives could not have been more different. There we were living in a mansion house, a load of acres under our belts, and there they were. It didn’t seem to matter one jot. We just really liked each other. We laughed together as we rarely laughed with others. These people get real. They had a naughty streak we were drawn to. They knew how to live outside of the uppity nonsense we had bought into. Of all my memories, and there are gazillions, of my 48 years here, our times with this family, even mostly over the scratch of broken CB radio, stand tall and bright.

Now both men have gone. Two unlikely friends, for they were just that. If I go deeper in my thoughts, this gives me hope. It didn’t matter, the difference between us. What mattered was the spark, the naughtiness, the fun, the mischief, the solidarity of like-minded humans. We went over once, as a family, for a meal and sleep over. In our slow, very slow, boat, it took ages, but we got there to a glorious welcome. We feasted on their catch from the sea and we drank whisky and whatever else and we shared stories and laughed as the rain blattered against the stone walls, warm by the fire, warmed by each other. I won’t forget that evening.

RIP Big Man Frank. I hope you’ve met up with Sea Bear, wherever you both are.

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Island Blog – I want to be

  1. Compassionate, so that when I am tired and fed up and in an inner hurry to get back to myself, I have enough to stop me, just enough, to remind myself of my ears for listening, to expand my heart, to feel the human music of my pulse; to bring about the reduction of hyper nonsensical blood flow like a sliver-river of me me me, to dam it, to bring the beavers in.

2. Welcoming, when I seriously wish I had a shotgun in my hands; when I am interrupted mid snip of rose blooms, when I thought I was alone with this rose snipping thing.

3. Kind, as so many have been kind to me.

4. Thoughtful, when most of my thoughts are about how old and limited I am, or think I am.

5 Loving, when I am here alone and my family is/are miles away and I do wonder about that, the collective ‘let’s get far away’ thing.

6. Curious. Well I am definitely that. And, as 6 is my favourite number, I am sticking.

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Island Blog – Fidelity to Self

I remind myself of myself, here, solid, living, human, but only after a turbulent ten mile hike with the shenanigans of ‘take over’, which I meet around AI. I wanted to book a train ticket. I also tried to purchase an online voucher from a clothing company, done before, many times with all the birthdays in my life. It isn’t straightforward now. With my train booking thing, I do remember, with a pastfull wistful sigh, calling Steven in the Oban Office, having a catchup with him and his life, asking about his mum and dad, great friends whilst he found me the best deal, felt me safe. Those days are definitely gone.

Talking to my son, he recognises that his generation, is it X or Y, I don’t know, is the one which is going through the greatest change, and I agree. As the eldest daughter of a father who returned, somewhat intact from the 2nd world war, I’m not sure that the X or Y generation is more of a changer than we experienced back then with silent fathers who weren’t the dads they might have wanted to be. I know there’s no comparison. One was trauma after war. However…..there are many who see AI as invasion as war. I don’t and it thinks me. Of course it can and will be abused. Even in my ordinary booking of a train ticket or my attempted purchase of a gift token for my granddaugher, or in the writing of my blog, or even as I choose music to suit my mood, AI invades. I decide to live with it. Many, oh so many of my generation, refuse and go hide in the dark cupboard under the stairs, as if that ever helped anything, which it doesn’t. I learned from an early age that the only way through is through, not around, not blind, not hiding, because what comes in such force, comes anyway, and those who hide just stay hidden. Even if I don’t know my way through the force of an ‘invasion’ I still won’t hide, because, and I realise this as I write, I want to be seen. It thinks me.

There grows a division between my generation and the X or Y of now. I’ll tell you what that means and what that invites. The first is an incremental division, a pulling away, a retreat back. Ok, you linguists, I just repeated myself there. A retreat is obviously a backward step. I’m leaving it here. But what happens is that the older ones, the ones you find hidden in a cupboard under the stairs are someones who have a lot to say beyond their fear of the way the world is now. They have stories. Has anyone asked them, taken the time, met them in their old and foggy memories and shown interest? Chances are you will learn something astonishing, pivotal to your own life and your own unanswered questions, for they have truly lived.

There was a wedding today at Calgary. I was delighted to meet the young bride and her son as they bought ice-cream yesterday. I looked in her eyes, felt her delight and her energy. It might rain, yes it might, but it didn’t and the day is beautiful and warm and sunny and I am thinking of her on such a special day. It seemed to me as she talked with Lou, the owner, that nothing and nobody could spoil her day. I also saw life lived already in those lovely eyes. It matters not her generational letter. She was a woman in love and excited and, I believe, being true to herself. I remember being that woman many decades ago and regret nothing.

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Island Blog – Tearaway

We start with a plan. I did as a young mum with a tumble of kids. In my plan, in our plan, we were excellent parents, mother, father, we were. We weren’t. In the melee ensuing of business development, of invasive strangers, of things collapsing, falling in, stopping, as in water flow, of freezing pipes, of bat invasions, mice, cold, we did falter, our dream did sink somewhat. It felt boggish. But we were not going to go there because, even though we dreamed and thought deeply, we were above ground people. If you are a person of the land, the field, the marsh, the emptinessof soil and space, who know the fear of drought, of flood, of loss and gain, the singularity of joy, the sharing of it, then you will recognise something. Possibly more than something, because everyone knows what it feels like to sink, what it feels like to choose ‘above ground.’

I employ the above ground as an adjunct. Today was remarkable at the Best Cafe Ever. No, it was overwhelming. There must have been hundreds of customers, in line and for 5 hours. I did feel like sinking. I didn’t check with the others in the Servery because to be honest, we barely met beyond a pull back or let go in a narrow space as we served and cleared and tried to make the soup last. I did turn into the Washeroo thinking, I can’t do this. That lasted not even 5 seconds. I have great inner talk. Don’t be ridonculous, ya eejit, rise, RISE. It works.

I like to tearaway from, well most things if I’m honest, but on this one, from inner giving up. Too many do this, too many times I have been tempted. and then the Tearaway comes in, like thunder, like a smile from Joe the new postie, from a word of recognition, a smile from eyes really connecting with my own, and a tune with lyrics which stop me, the tune that takes me to my piano, makes me pay attention.

Tearaway. From old confines, from old controls, from old myths and mistakes. Tearaway.