Family

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Island Blog – Spirit and a Thumbs Up

I’m back from work, a busy one, many lunch and tea/coffee customers, all served well. With my new eyeball I can see which table needs clearing and out I go with a scoosh thing and a cloth and a wide tray. I talk to folks along the way, notice the ones who don’t do ‘talk’ and those who bend in like willows, easy, open, smiling. All cafes have all sorts.

I meet people. People with ready smiles, drivers in cars who swerve and reverse, who acknowledge me in my car. I meet others who don’t. There is ridgity everywhere. I understand it, I do. A holiday, too hot, wrong accommodation, just doing this holiday thing to save something. Been there. I think many have. I have no wisdom here, only experience. And here comes another thing.

I met a beautiful chef and his husband. I see how life can be now in the now of now and it skitters my heart. I work with him, laugh with him, wash his pots and pans and bowls and spoons (too many spoons) serve his food, honour him. I think that my own spirit, my inner rebel just loves and thrives on this and other such connections. I have seen so many faces on the other side of the counter, asking for lunch, for bespoke teas, for incredible cakes and pastries, for soup and salads, for hot chocolates, all from here or nearabouts, and then there comes a sparkle one, dynamic, curious, fun. Could look like anything, or anyone. No code, just that sparkle. Hallo you.

Spirit is strong. It rises my own, confronts my wrinkle thinking and reminds me how I am still very much here. They laugh at me, the young, but they laugh and I will absolutely take that as a personal thumbs up.

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Island Blog – I Matter

I do this checking body language thing, watching people, wondering and knowing, even though there will be never be proof of what I surmise. She is the controller in this relationship and he doesn’t like it but never found the courage to say and now, bowed as he is, it’s too late. Or He is bloat-chested and very chuffed with himself as she follows obedientally, agreeing to his choice of her coffee rather quicker that I’d like. However, to my delight, a pizzicato in the mathematics of this cafe running thing, a young family changed my daily stuck. Young parents, looked easy, together, although I did clock the male as leader. That’s ok and fine and wonderful as long as it doesn’t mean domination and control and, looking at her, I think that’s a Never. They came together the beautiful (I thought) parents of 3 little ones. They bought this, that cake and then, as i washed up for Scotland, I heard their children, their play in the area with a rug and safety with draws of toys, for definitely an hour. We worked on in the washeroo and in the kitchen, serving soup and focaccias and this and that herbal tea, for two, with oat milk, no milk, cold water, and so on, with scones, plus jam, without, lemon cake, flapjack, banana loaf divide into two, add this, possible?

Everything is possible. So we’re told. I think we learn ‘possible’ through difficult times. When everything is easy, we don’t seek anything and certainly not a change option. In fact we actively avoid that. But in the mostways of our days we do seek change even in little shafts of light, just a tiny something, a lift, a beckoning. I met the wrong people at such times, followed the wrong beckoning. I think many do and then those brilliant strong and compromised people become beige at best afraid and hiding, but so slowly and over time. Life calms to mouse quiet and so very lonely.

I am fighting self doubt daily. It doesn’t matter what I have achieved. It’s never about that. It’s always about someone I admire, and respect telling me I matter. Even now.

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Island Blog – Thinks

I did that thinks thing this morning at 0500, my favourite hour. Birds are up already, but I like to be in their slipstream as they just get on with living. After the usual catastrophe of doubt and fear on waking, all the blame on me (always) and then my leap from bed as if the before was a collaboration of bedbugs. I land floor level, barefoot. I always know the light when I wake. I know when it is 0300, a captious and taunting skinny light lemon, cautious, like a new student. I know when the buttermellow trickles in, when the sun is doing his rise thingy, tendrils slipping over hills and horizons. I huff, roll my eyes. Finally you big showoff. Even with cloud cover he speaks.

I downstairs myself in my awful dressing gown and sit, and watch. Birds are lining my fence, They know I will fatball and mealworm them into their day and they are waiting. I wait too, watching their dance and bounce and lift. When I go out barefoot into the clover of my grass ( not mine, just borrowed) they dive and skitter around me, waiting. I fill the fatball feeders (RSPB of course) and tip some mealworms into the sieve bowl. All the while I am doing the thinks. The guilt I woke with didn’t stay back upstairs with my pyjamas. I make coffee and sit to gongoozle. Being in the present is something I know is pivotal. To just watch, to stop, to pause, to breathe, to notice and to reflect. I don’t find it easy, but I want it.

\We had crazy weather last night, thunder and lightning and colours and magic. Astonishing and brilliant and scary and flooding and scary and the whole sky alight with anger and spectacular. It is calm now. Up here, way north of the heat and the confines and the lack of sleep and the burning fear, we are the lucky ones.

It is the weather now. It is. We should think about that.

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Island Blog – You Did This

An ordinary day. I awoke to my range sputtered out and her sputtering was soot, all over soot. Thankfully, possibly politely and to save me, her spit didn’t go too far. Anyone who has dealt with soot will know how determinedly it holds to itself. Tiny balls of refusal, sitting there, all sizes,complete and resolute. Cleaning cloths are ruined in immediacy. However, I know this game. She, the Spitter, the Fed Up. Someone turned me down too below the hum beat of the home and she obvously struggled to breathe, eventually panting into something big and black and stuck to the wall, like a nothing much. When I arrived down about 6, I could see the story. Ok, I said, because she is very important to me and keeps my winters a warm hug and much reassurance I will call in the sweeps. Your throat is choked and you have done so well, because, if I am honest (confession here), I knew her flues were compromised and did nothing about it. I am not a woman who does nothing about an alert, but this time, I did. I swabbed her down, caught those balls of refusal into kitchen roll and binned them. She, my lovely warming range will have her skirts twirled and her breathing tubes whistle-cleaned and her privates rid of all amorphous carbons next week. A relief for sure.

The day dindled on with a this and a that, gentle and amorphous. I did things, swept floors, enjoyed watching the trickles of my life conjoin and connect. I watched the sky, the cloud bumps and the pull-aways, the almost parental cloudal wrap, as if the kids need corralling. I washed things which required washing. I fed the birds, watched them jink along the fence, saw the long unpainted fence, thought about that. I read awhile, and then something blasted in my phone, a voice saying my mobile is in danger, hacked, all information already absorbed. It was alarming at first, the voice cutting through the audio book I was listening to, I will not panic (I told myself). And it kept coming. Your private information, bank info, passwords, social connections all compromised, all hanging off the cliff. I still didn’t panic. I might be ostrich here. I did breathe a lot, out in out in, mostly out. I thought, child. I thought Stu. In the overtake of my screen, where the invader could not be swiped away, I could still connect with him. He talked me through it all, go here, swipe there, delete there. All done and deleted.

It thinks me. There are a gazillion things I can, and will, sort myself. There are more which I cannot. I believe that the strength, the power in me is knowing that and then recognising it and then taking action. Tripling. I see the tripling gate. If I go through this, ask for help, I am weak, a failure, needy.

I say oh no. You are brave. You are real. You were the strong support once, and through decades of so-called ordinary days full of soot and cold and turnaways, for days, weeks, months, years.

Remember them and smile. You did this.

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Island Blog – Beautiful Words

For weeks I have not been able to drive, not since early May, maybe before. I forget. The initial shock of being told I couldn’t see well enough to be safe on the roads, even these single track roads when most everyone I met coming at me was someone who knew my sassy mini and who waved and whom I recognised. It felt like I had been taken prisoner without the offer of bail. My own home grew bars, my thoughts grew bars, not musical, but steel and silent. Thing is this. Without my ability to drive, I am no longer independent. Yes, I can walk down the village, and I did every day just for conversation and milk or wine or cheese or garlic, but going any further was forbidden to me, just like that.

It began in Africa. Took me a few days of fear and denial to admit that everything was cloudy and at other times a firework display. My son whooshed me to an optometrist who confirmed that the cataract (whatever the hec that is) in my right eye had suddenly come about. Come about was a term I recognised in advanced ballroom dancing lessons, at which I was apparently good at and at which I won a gold medal. My partner didn’t which surprised us both. I thought I was a visionary, one who sees far ahead and believes, but it was as if I had sunk into the depths. I don’t stay there but I have to tell you that the days became weeks, time slowed and the doubts took on caps. I would wake each day determined to be positive, usually effortless, and almost before I had sternly and confidently made strong black coffee at 0500, I felt the downpull.

I travelled to my cataract operation, as you already know, and the hoped for change in my life took about ten minutes. Seemed too easy. But the doubt kept whacking me in the gut. I applied the drops, didn’t bend over my waist (who does that anyway?) didn’t lift anything heavier than a half full kettle. Seriously? For 4-6 weeks when I live alone? What about the box of bird fatballs or bringing in wood? What about pulling on my shoes? What about the fact that I am the only me in this glorious wee home and things happen, heavy things, bendy things? I followed instructions nonetheless. My eyes are everything. My driving my independence, my sudden choice to go here or there, to give a lift, to get out and beyond my thoughts.

Today, this day, the day after Solstice, the day after Father’s Day, I go to the mainland and the ferry works to time. I have time, arriving way early to be safe. My heart is overbeating herself. I tell her, wheesht. We are fine, even though we might not be. Whatever comes, comes. We can do this. I wander. I never wander in Oban. I get out quick. Too many people doing this wandering thing, much pavement dodging. A non-stop stream of cars, although that word doesn’t work. Not a stream, more a punch. I stop at a cafe, settle outside, order a black americano. Delightful place. I converse with a couple going to St Kilda, and two young women who had bought crofts and had sheep. They all lifted me as I watched the doors of Specsavers open. In I go.

I brought in so many fears I am surprised we all got in. I know this place and the welcome is fresh as a new morning. I sat, not long, called in to the optometrist and resisted telling her she held my future in her hands. She was beautiful and gentle and laughed with me and still the unbeliever in me has met that before sentence was delivered. And then she said. ” You eyes are healthy, no problem anywhere. Your vision is sharp now. You can drive.

I never heard such beautiful words.

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Island Wife – Be Brave

I remember being told that my book, Island Wife, would resonate with older women. I sat there, across a table with my publisher and my agent thinking, older? Yes, I was 59, but sassy. I was still in complete charge of my accoutrements, faculties and agendas. I could move like a dancer, arriving in some sort of wild costume and just off the Oban train, complete with a jaunty herringbone cap. Older for me was my mum heading for 80 and, although still feisty, a bit cautious over rocks – still game, though. I get it now. I started early, in love at 18, married at 19, mother at 20. Nobody does that, not in the lasting game, as mine was. I suppose that I just could not relate to the ‘older women’ thing. The ones I had experienced were tired, downtrod, got their make-up wrong and spent a huge amount of time pretending they were ‘fine’ even though that word meant something so different to me. Fine was about spectacular art. Fine was the way a butcher cut a fillet just right. Fine was how someone arrived looking magical into a gathering; a spectacular arrangement of flowers; a perfect sorbet. Now it has become a dismissal, a middling beige nothing.

I do remember the train journey to almost home, the stunning landscape, the chacha of the train along winding tracks, around lochs, through endless scapes of empty deliciousness, past the Hogwarts Express bridge, the winding of endless drover tracks, the moody mountains, the clouding, the spritzer of light. My thoughts carolled me to the ferry port. ‘Older’? I got that even as it thinks me. I realise I was being a mayfly on the surface of real life, aka, the truth. I believe that as I walked onto the ferry for home that I sunk a bit, got it, and it freed me. Of course my story will resonate with others who have experienced such a life.

There is so much vanilla out there, so much beige. On the out-there forums, everything is ‘fine’. It isn’t. Where is truth? Where are the young writers going through rebellion? Facebook and more are all about memories and wonderful moments. I do love to see that but it is not the truth, not real. If I said anything in my story, it was raw truth, still is.

Be brave.

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Island Blog – Im Patient, Com Promise

I’ve just reversed out from under my desk. Not my desk. A desk inherited with uneven legs and good drawers and with a fallen sharp thing hidden in the down below. Much like me. I had, I noticed, flipped my Winnie the Pooh calendar to September which, even for twitchy, fast-running me, is an overdash and so I set to correct, losing the lot down into the spider depths, hence the reversing thing. This, as you may guess, is a complete irrelevance.

I am (searching for an adverb) fed up with not being able to do whatever I suddenly, and twitchily have done without any thought and for years. I cannot bend down lower than my waist. Well, that laughs me. Waists are, from my own observation, all over the place. However, I know where mine is, and I do not bend below. This constricts, obviously. I am required to curtsey before the saucepan cupboard, before the washing machine, the freezer, before the cupboard under the stairs, before the picking up of any fallen objects anywhere. I can hear my white goods, my doorways laughing at me.

When releasing my washing from the cylindrical drum, I am required to kneel. I was never good at that. I pull out the sheets, towels, tees and jeans and turn towards the skids. Still on knees because I can’t lift anything heavier than a pregnant hamster (they don’t say that), I work my way to the pulley. I rise, good core muscles, and take each piece by itself. It thinks me. I never did that before, just wheeching the whole damn lot onto the struts without noticing a thing. I notice things now. My olding pants require either new elastic or a trip to the bin. Perhaps this is what I learn from this limiting limitation, my eyes so very important, so momentarily com- promised.

Without my work in the Best Cafe Ever, I am remote, stumped, awkward with myself. That’s one truth. Another is the wealth of help offers for lifts, deliveries, friendship. This glorious community. I know I am an im patient. I remember being compromised in Tapselteerie days, so sick I was falling over, but there wasn’t the time nor the opportunity. I was the It and there really was nobody else who could fill my role. I am so rarely decked and thank the bejabers for that because I am twitchy and need to move on. Although I would love for arms around me, for someone to bring me fresh food, light the fire, the candle, gentle the evening, I am alone, strong at times, weak at others. Hearing swans overhead, rushing out to see their traverse, watching still tide, seeing the lushgrow across the sealoch, catching the firelight, hearing the music.

A com promise.

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Island Blog – Rebel, Conformist, Fear

When you have the rebel pusling through your veins, following rules feels like being really good at dodging bullets, those fired from the gun of ‘authority’. Whenever I am required to conform, I get this itch, everywhere. As a youth I didn’t always employ sense. I am altogether great with sensibility but going only with that has led me up some very dark alleys, and so I have grown up, sort of, although the call to irrationality is strong. For decades I thought there was something wrong with my wiring, that I was, and I was, a rebel without a cause. I like the word Rebel and for sure there are many times in life when a rebel is a very good thing to have within a pack of conformist ditherers, all drunk on fear. They say this so we should comply, even if we don’t agree nor understand and even if it feels horribly wrong. We will settle. I remember, once, visiting a very proper house with everything in place, dust free, with everything either beige or polished and being taken into the ‘front room’ which had obviously only been used at wakes or on Sundays. Take a seat on the settle, she said, pointing to one, an arthritic looking straight-backed L-shaped thing, and as rigid as a born again, and deciding I wouldn’t. I walked to a chair instead and parked my butt. I could tell from the snort that I would not be invited again, but I just couldn’t do what she asked. The very word riled the rebel in my red-blood heart and that rebel took over.

So, when I come back from eye surgery with a loooong list of ‘don’ts’ I manage my own snort. I know it is important to comply in this instance because I want clarity, but there is so much about fear in just about every ruling and I won’t play with fear. I know that I make choices others avoid, but here’s the thing. I have common sense now, although there is nothing common about it, and I thank my parents and my granny for gifting it to me. For all they complied, they were rebels, not overtly, but subtley. It was in the twinkle, the suggestion of mischief, the stepping out of line as the line dozed off in boredom and compliance. They had a voice and they used it. It’s nothing to do with birth, nor wealth, nor privilege, nor the desire to be better/louder/cleverer than the next person. It’s a blood rush, a have-to and it is all about bringing mischief back, bringing fun back.

In the Premier Inn, Braehead, I met many ordinary folks over two days of consultation and surgery and I noticed, as I always do, that everyone feels alone, that everyone welcomes a smile, a chat, a craic, everyone. Conforming is doing a grand job of turning us into robots, lonely, silent robots. I watch someone heading for work, worried about something or someone, light up and twinkle me back. A fireworker, a builder, a nurse, a medical supply driver. We have nothing in common and yet we do. We have a few moments of conversation. I could have said nothing but I said something and from that we connected. Each time we both left thinking of each other. They probably left with a chuckle, this old woman outside a hotel watching the diggers dig the life out of a spread of green to make room for yet another building, but that’s ok with me because I saw the twinkle, the fun behind their eyes, and I heard them, I saw them.

We need more rebels.

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Island Blog – The Thread of Kindness

A new Monday at the Best Cafe Ever with a difference. In just a few days I discover I need help along my way. However asking for help when you are fiercely independent is tricky. I know this place and within the confines of it, I have learned much. People want to help. I want to help. It feels us needed and valued when we can proffer a something the other one doesn’t have, or has no access to. I have mellowed in my fierce independence because the only thing I was left with was empty space once my Go-Away hands were believed. I would watch the offer, gentled and meaningful from the mouth of a real friend, dissipate like breath in the air. Okay, I decided, this isn’t working because I do need help with various varieties of vagiaries and something else beginning with ‘v’.

Until I can drive again, once my eyeballs are relocated successfully, all-seeing again and quite marvelling me. I need help. Actually, I will remember this time, when someone with controlled eyeballs can see and watch one bird in the sky, I see two and both are blurry. They could be gulls, small geese, floaters. I enjoy the whole thing but can’t tell you what I’m looking at. Yet. At work I have to ask for help. Is there a table that needs clearing? I make much laughter about the whole thing because I know it is fixable and soon. Meantime I need a lift to work and back and my asking for help has brought me both. This kindness, this extra journey in the time of rising fuel prices, astounds me.

I was tired towards the ending of a day serving and washing and joking with lovely customers and my friend just turned up to bring me home. My boss also offered me a lift. Neither of these men were going my way. This kindness. I never expect it. I know I can get the bus both there and back, but that day is long and my work, (I love my work) is full on. Actually, no. I am full on. I need to work intuitively with the dishwasher, with the plates which need to go through quick, the teapots, the cups and mugs and I love the artistry of my role in the dynamic of cafe life, always, always, unexpectedly unexpected. We can welcome half a ton of human wonderfulness for coffee and cake, 25 ditto for lunch, more for tea, or we can welcome a third of that or a third more. No day is a given.

What thrills me to work each day is the knowing that we work as a team, that our motivation is service and kindness. The owners of this beach cafe lead us and need us. We who have the privelege to work in this place learn the ways quick and it is all about serving. Service in my ancient history was proffered to those of us who had failed all exams and had no idea what the heck to do with their lives. I see service so differently now. It is an honour to serve, to help, to reach beyond the menu, to step beyond the servery. To love a dog, to make another feel welcome, to settle, to allow, to warm another human being. Such an honour.

And that is how I will think and thank my beautiful friends who, in this pre-eyeball relocation, offer to drive out of their way to help me to work and back. I am so full of thankyous and yet I get it. We humans are a team, inside work, beyond it, in a community, everywhere. Kindness is the thread of life.

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Island Blog – New Light and a Fizzywiggle

Life is not a straight line I have discovered and keep on discovering even as I forget my initial discovery. I wake thinking that I have learned it all only to discover I have not. That’s a load of discovery for two short sentences. When I realise these things, I am usually in a situation wherein there is no proffer of conversation, even if it were ever possible. I could be the mouse, scurrying, or the reader translating or the shopper buying something to stop my eyeballs falling beyond their seams and thus causing immense and innapropriate dilemmas all around me. Or, I could be buying a cabbage. I even have conversation around that. I have so many words in my head, so much desire for conversation beyond the ordinary. I want to learn about constellations and the majesty of the sky, about the way flowers grow and why they die; about the way trees work to support each other, about the way they grieve and they surely must grieve.

Last night I was in bed by 7pm. I did think a bit about those just heading out to the pub, for dinner somewhere, for dancing, for fun. I did. In fact I heard the cars drive past. As I climbed the stairs, as I noticed my climb, my tiredness, I did smile. I do remember nights out, dressing up, quite the fizzywiggle, the music, voices, nonsense and unpromises of a summer’s evening. And I smile at the memory. I loved them all.

I remember what it was like to be young and fluid. I loathed myself, hated my awful body and felt like a lump of concrete and in the way of everyone. I throw light on this. I see her, oh she was pretty, young, freckled, lumpy, badly behaved, with too much imagination, and an imagineer, a liar, a girl we just don’t want here. She meant nothing to me. I remember my yellow rose wallpapered bedroom, well lit, mine-ish, and all the hours spent there. Half a teenagedom. Not because my parents didn’t love me. There’s no because.

As I move dynamically through my olding years, missing most of the cut of conversations in the Cafe, I see new light. The dance and the flimflam of chat in the kitchen and the servery are so uplifting and inspiring that I find conversations about stars and wild things and new understandings, about AI and subterranean influences and about all that is hidden from us above ground. And I feel a sense of landing.

However I am still a Fizzywiggle. Just saying.