fiction

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Island Blog – You Crazy Loon

Calm today, light bright, cold wind but no bite. Perfect, really. I had things on this morning, friends for coffee, that glorious invitation into another’s life, so supremely different to my own. Seeing the dynamic of it, feeling the troubles in it, hearing the determination to make this life, their life, work and smiling at their beautiful young faces, voices, opinions, the glorious wild of those who are not old nor defeated. Then I grabbed a lunch bite, read some of a good story, walked out into the wilder. As I ‘tsked’ at the way one, or may be two, big ass vehicles, or maybe a once or twice from the same big ass vehicle has totally squished a lovely grassy verge and not just once. I know it’s not my problem now but it still ‘tsks’ me. I am all about respect for others and their otherness. As I walked back I head a rabbit scream. I know that scream. I pulled down my beanie. This is nature, all are hungry.

Today a woman was celebrated. She was a huge part of our family. She was there at Christmas, births, birthdays, celebrations and when my mum struggled with too many children. She was feisty, strong and powerful in her work with the World Council of Churches. She was a voice out there in the days when women had nonesuch. She was also naughty, ready to challenge dogma, seeing the light in the freedom of NO.

I remember so many times with her. When a dance tune came on, and, remember the timeline, it might have been a waltz or a calypso, and we were in the kitchen or the garden or the street. We clocked each other. I held out my invitation and she immediately responded, We bounced and rounded and laughed and lightened the day.

RIP Pamela Helen Gruber. You were a lift in my growing life and I thank you for that, you crazy loon.

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Island Blog – Now and then

It’s cold, the wind an iceslice with bitey teeth like a ferret, not that I know a damn thing about ferret teeth but I can imagine. Tiny sharp incisors and no filters in the mind of the owner thereof. I was bitten by a mouse once, the tiny rodent I was trying to save from being sluiced down a push of rainwater. I grabbed it, no thoughts of teeth in my own mind and was hurt and upset until I understood an instinctive reaction. I could have been a ferret after all. However, and this is irrelevant, the wound rose red and its subsequent pulsation required a switchback trip to the doctor because I was basically carrying a balloon on my forefinger, thus unable to text, employ finger recognition, or point an accusation at anyone without inviting ridicule. Irrelevant.

This time of year is yahoo Spring although it isn’t yet. I do know, of course i do, that Spring up here on the butt of the west coast of Scotland with the wild Atlantic wheeching up huge waves and making a great big noise about it, munching old rocks into pivots, and flipping sands into a beachy confusion, is to be expected. I remember lambing in April in the snow. Not me, the cheviots. But I was on the early shift and for weeks. 5am, swallowing mouthfuls of darkness and cold, looking for colour. Not moon, or maybe moon, such a fickle light. I’m searching for those undercover, the ewes who take their hideaway in cowers and coppice, under hedges, in the brack and barm of stone dykes. Twins or triplets definitely a challenge. Too much for the exhausted mother. Delivering, shifting tricky ones coming arse first, all out, all ok, pulling off the sticky stuff out of tiny mouths desperate to breathe, sucking the stuff, mouth to mouth, blowing in whisky breath probably, the wriggle and pulse of life in my hands, the shouty thrill of it, in the early dawn. The crows are not awake yet. My job, to deliver if I can, to make safe if I cannot and to leg it back home to wake himself. I can’t do that one, this one. He was exhausted, had walked the fields/parks all the day before right up to Crow Sleep Time. He rose, still clothed and smelling like days of unwashed and sheep. The daytime walks I couldn’t do. Feral kids, guests, dinners, bedroom changes, cleaning, phone calls about cottage bookings, calves to feed, cow to milk, stable mucking out, hens to organise, eggs to collect. Enough. We did well. I know we did, the clueless We who had never done a single thing on that list before. Lambs survived, mostly, children definitely did, guests returned to the Quirky Hotel and now……well, now I have none of that other than what I’ve learned and that is a powerful and energising gift. This is what I did, what we did.

Now, when I still swallow mouthfuls of darkness and cold, I remind myself of what I have achieved and, therefore what I can still achieve, not in the same context, nor genre, nor situation, but I still can achieve. And here’s how I do this achieving thing. Any time the alien thought marches in tooting a trumpet, all important and (somewhat ridiculous) I shake my head. Ah, I smile, no thanks. You think you define me now as, yes unsure, yes with less self confidence, yes a bit wobbly whilst hanging heavy curtains, yes in a dither because my car computer tells me I have a stop alert when I know that everything mechanical is quite fine and always was before computers made us all doubt our own intelligence. I am grafting myself off this failing tree, because I realise I stuck myself here. And, it is so good to notice, to realise, and then to take action. I have strength, huge strength, maybe not physical although don’t tell me I can’t lift this, nor carry that because I damn well will. I have wisdom, experiential wisdom. Not many care to connect with that in these sad times when oldings are written off as a right pain in the arse, and that saddens me. I learned so much vital knowledge on how to cope with life, the world, the isolation, from my granny, my parents, and, I am happy to say that my ferals and their kids do connect with me, asking things, smiling a lot and with no understanding at all of how life was without the internet.

Talk to your granny, grampa. Your wisdom guides. They really never thought they would ever be a pain in the arse. Trust me.

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Island Blog – Thin spaces, Intrathinks,Otherness

I’ve been aware for a while of my dead husband. I don’t mean memories of the missing of a life partner, but more an alert, as if he is there in a doorway. He loved doorways, used to stand in them all quiet, just watching me batter the living dalights out of a souffle or a ton of bread dough, lost in my thoughts. It always made me laugh, once I caught sight of him. He’s back now, not standing but in his wheelchair, still in doorways. I am not going mad I assure you. I know he is not there but it does think me. Way up here in the wilds of the West, we inhabit the thin spaces. Have a google on that. The further north, the further wild you go, the veil between the world and the Otherness is super thin. I can walk in woods I have walked through for 47 years and can still catch a glimpse of a beloved dog in a scamper over old roots. I see her clearly for as long as a bubble burst. I can be walking in my nowadays thoughts and suddenly I am back into a memory of my kids laughing, the song of it lifting into a winter sky. It’s just a second of two, the image so fleeting, but it comes and I welcome it, them. They always turn up when I am somewhere else in my head, so I know I don’t conjure them up. I’m not even thinking about them, caught up in an Oh I forgot to buy a bayonet light bulb, or I should probably turn up to do this or that. And that is precisely how I know I live among the intrathinks, the otherness. It can be damn confusing, but only if I try to explain any of it. Rather, I accept, even when it tumbles me, alterspects my spects.

I believe that we are all connected, but the thirst for Armani and Tiffany and Celebrity and the smartest car, don’t do cars, all shiny and tinted and purring and impossible to park, drowns us. We can forget who we are and what we really want. Out here in the thrick of endless storms, home battering, forest falling, we know. Life is simple. Food, friends, family, shelter, ceilidhs, a great local shop, a village hall, a church, a fabulous pub, single track roads, massive potholes, loads of rain, seasons, shared lifts, communication and the openness to an uninterrupted connection with nature and all her wild tantrums.

I have rarely been to his grave, him, dead over five years now. I know his bones lie there but not his spirit and maybe that’s why I haven’t gone to tell him things. It’s as if I am pulled into a maelstrom, down and down and in this downing down, I see a load of differentials. The Intra, the inter, the whatever of logic and what, illogic? I do have a big issue with the either and or of pretty much everything. There is so damn much in between, quietly moving on. So, back to point, I thought today that, instead of just waving at him as I pass en route to the harbour town, I will stop, park, push my way through sheepshit and rain and hurdles of slamdunk wind and go to his bones. I will read his inscription. There is a small space for me. And I will tell him that he was my everything. And then he wasn’t. And now I am here and doing just fine on a sheep-soaked hillside looking very conspicuous and with not a lot to say.

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Island Blog – She

Fingernail moon up there in the blue. Clouds gentle, moving grey and soft and ever changing. Silence, as day sinks away and night rises all black and holding. It doesn’t fear me anymore, although it did once. It’s as if an inevitable Onething decolours, swallows all other things down a black throat, until a wee intuitive light lifts. I can see now, a bit, admittedly, but I can see. Of course in all places of street lights, cafe welcomes, car headlights, Darkness does not have her time on stage. Here she definitely does. The fingernail moon is enough in this wild place. She can, and has often before, lit my way home after a ceilidh, walking among gentle trees, the only sound a burn trickle, a rustle of wildlife, eyes watching me. I’m amazed I never fell in a ditch. The pull of home is ever strong . It was about two miles but with the ceilidh in me, still hearing the dance, the tunes, I knew I would get there, to that door, into that home of children, dogs and safety. I never felt unsafe here, still don’t, not for a minute. I am Island blest.

I did stuff today, kept doing the stuff. Most of it is boring to be honest, cleaning, checking, sorting and that’s how life is. However, and I always have one of those in my pocket, I know I have a choice as I head for the hoover or the power drill or the hose, or the mould clearing squirt. A choice of attitude. I can see myself hearing this and swearing like a fisherman or someone in my local pub on a Friday, and I halter, falter and soften. Dammit. Ok, I will do this utterly boring and repetitious pointless thing again, again, again. I can hear Life laugh. It isn’t a giggle, nor a false Haha, Heh Heh, but a real fall back laugh and I can’t help joining in. Once recovered, I consider this. Ah, yes. To laugh at my self, the one who walked home 2 miles after a ceilidh and didn’t fall in a ditch; the one who got home to begin again the endless round and who regrets not one single second. She.

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Island Blog – The Dream of It

We all have one, a dream for the future of one. I say ‘one’ because this dream usually begins from the seed of a furious teenage bedroom, if you’ll pardon my choice of wordage. I spent any hours allowed in my yellow and white wallpapered bedlam confines, dreaming. It was going to be perfect, brilliant, long-lived, shared with the other Perfect and free and wild and finally I would get out of uniform. I won’t say that didn’t happen but the happening wasn’t Disney. In fact it was bumpy as hec because what this dream thing doesn’t bother to tell you, much like a PA I worked with once, she who had it in for me from the get-go because I was pretty and younger, is that the distance between you and your dream is an exhausting quixolatitude of desert and thirst, and the ‘im’ of possible is a constant wasp in your face and there are endless lonely roads and so many swinging signposts that even the strongest and most determined travellers sink down and fade. And that’s the truth of it. Had I known this for certain in that bedlam confine, well, who knows and I do ask myself that. No question mark required. Obviously I can’t answer from that teenspace. I can’t feel her anymore although I can in glimpses. I see her rising from the side of bed, the looking out window barred, the lovely garden beyond. I see her knowing there is a night out. I feel her sparkle, fizz like fun, the wild luffing her sails. I watch her stand and move slowly towards the long mirror. She was me once. She looks good. She looks scared. She looks beautiful. She is empty. She is ready. She has a dream.

She hears a call. Ready?

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Island Blog – A Bed without Fences

Last night I dreamed that I came upon a young gardener creating a new flower bed. The soil was sodden, dripping, mud basically. As I neared, watching him pulling earth towards him and into shape, I confess to a smirk. This will never work I thought but didn’t say, and in the few paces it took me to get near enough to exchange a conversation, my optimistic mind proffered a wider map, not one I know, nor had experienced with all the deer, the rabbits, the careless touristic footfall of my ‘known-ness’. It was a new spread, the map, as if this single action could be a beginning. I said Hallo and What’s This?’ with a big smile on my face because I am genuinely interested, nay fascinated when I meet boundary breakers, their courage and hopefulness, their determination to make this thing work. He explained a bit, none of which I can recall, nor did I on waking, but the image of him working, pullkng earth, levelling, making a new shape stayed with me all day. And, it thinks me.

I remember how excited each one of my five ferals were when the cot bars no longer confined them. I also remember the endless night walking as a result of that freedom, even as I got it. I was once a baby behind bars and now I am totally growed up and free to wander. What’s not to love about that gift of independence even if it will take me another 15 years to learn how to spell the word and then a lifetime to understand how to live with it as a friend? Those bars don’t just relate to babyhood, that confinement and also that safety and security, for many choose to stay behind those bars even when they are long rotted away or have been used as kindling. Safer that way. Again more thinks.

We are urged and taught to make ourselves free. There are a gazillion books, most of which talk at me from elevated situations, an I’ve Arrived Here thing and with a list of excercises or therapies that just iss me off and I move the book on with a smile. It isn’t that I dislike such helpful books, not at all, but I am looking for ‘real’ and not finding it. I don’t want an excercise plan, one which I just know I won’t sustain. I want someone who has been through a load of tough to tell me that even if I just take the lisp of my tongue, the stutter in my sentence, the limp in my gait, the falter in my forward progress, the hesitation in my conversation, the slight of my strength, that I can begin again from the exactly me of me. Include the falters, the falls, the regrets, the way I stuck behind bars because I was too afraid to step out alone, include all of it and let me lift all by myself. Now that would be. a book I’d buy.

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Island Blog – A Barrel of Soil

Sometimes I can sit watching wallpaper, times I feel I am looking out through shutters, thin pencils of light, bodies moving by in a glimpse of swish and fabric, the lift of laughter, a catch of words shared close like comfort. Baubles in the dark, a winter of the soul. Sometimes. Not all the time. And, if everyone is ever honest, so does everyone. We just don’t talk about it. So not British. It is as if we would rather pretend we are always ‘fine’. which is ridiculous because the effort required to sustain such an elevation is impossible.

Talking of effort and elevation, I met them both in an old dustbin half full of soil. Two mice. They will have been drawn in by my spill of bird seed some days ago, hungry. They could slide in, easy, but the plastic and perpendicular walls proffering the out of in will have outwitted them. As I filled feeders a morning or two ago, I saw a flash of movement and focussed. They looked up, big brown eyes, stilled in question. Oh dear, I said, softly. They showed me a load of jumping and failing. I noticed a wee circle of cooried earth where they just might have rested and it smiled me, the resourcefulness. Everyone needs a wee rest after a deal of futile jumping. The first time I found them, I lifted and lugged the heavy bin out to the garden, tipping gently until the pair of them slid unto safety. Good, I thought. All done I thought. This morning the pair of them were back having learned nothing at all and I told them so, albeit sotto voce. Then I realised something. This is ongoing. They are cold. I have seed. They are looking. They are dynamic survivors. In my own home there is evidence of mice and I have no fear of that. A new hole in a carpet against the skirting. A skitter in the night. Not new for a farmer’s wife/widow. I don’t like it, but it is as it is. So I found a piece of old wood and canted it like a ladder so the mice can escape. They did. It thinks me.

In the sometimes of shutters and striations of light and winters, when we might be looking out and seeing only slivers of life, it might be time to notice, even as the critics tick like clocks on speed in a mind. We forget to rest at all in this cultural and manic rush for success (which means money) success elevated in entirely the wrong place. It is people who matter, kindness twogether (hallo new word). It’s conversation in a shop, a queue, a train station. It’s a removal of earpods and ears open. It’s about looking about without fear and noticing this old man over there, the tricky issue this woman is having with her big suitcase, the problem this mother or father is having with a double buggy and a noisy dog. It’s about putting aside a personal agenda and actually engaging with living, loving, lost and friendless humans. It’s about sharing meals, inviting in. It’s about risking a dirty mark on the carpet of a sterile life. My generation lived this way. I am hopeful, as are those wee mice in my barrel of soil.

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Island Blog – Light in the Dark

I love the dark, the way my eyes adjust, the way I can see something of the way ahead. I love the way it prevents forward motion through the fear of it, and the way I can feel that fear whilst the my of self says, stop, stand still, look and see, and I do. I suddenly do. A terrain of black grows light just because I bring the light. Fear still lurks like a smirk but I can allow its companionship. It’s just a kiddle, a scurry, a nobody much. I can step out into the island dark, unpolluted, only stars doing their twinkly winkly thing, no threat, and pull out annuals which have, heretofore, hidden wee tulip hopefuls, their green thrust a whoop in my discoveration. Hallo you, beautiful you, wonderful powerful you, so strong, so bloody determined. You inspire me.

In my life there have been one or two whose recognition of who I am brought light to my eyes, my heart, lifting my step, giving me self-belief. I was walking in the dark, so much dark, the unfriendly kind, and then someone came, someone said something, didn’t judge, correct, didn’t try to fit me into a shape I could never fill, but oh my I was trying so hard to do that. It was like being a size 16 and being in a fitting room with a 12, longing for it to fit. But this person, this person saw me. She saw me. She didn’t do the parent thing. I wasn’t a number of many. I wasn’t an outsider. I wasn’t too loud, a showoff, an embarrassment, a girl to be kept away from gatherings of others in order to avoid the upskittle of bone china coffee cups with her quick wit and the flicksnap of her dance shoes. Nothing predictable about her, about me. Eye roll.

I think this has learned me that darkness is actually see-through. Even at an early age, there is cognition, even if the early-ager doesn’t know how to work the whole thing out. I remember well the moment when a woman, my mother’s age, said to me, stopped me with her hand on mine and looked me full bore, her eyes stars. ”You need to be who you are. I curled away, all broken and lost and 16. You are talented, beautiful, gifted, even. Take that. Own it.” I didn’t know her. I don’t remember her name, but she shifted some blockage in me and for the first time I found the light in my dark.

Right now, and for my own reasons, I want to raise a glass, a light, a life-changing Thank you to all of those who notice, care, speak out and recognise all of we who feel they are worth notalot unless they fit the shape required. You have given us the courage to step out, step up, move forward, and to pass it forward to the next darkling we find.

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Island Blog – Inspiradiater

I watched the cloudal shift, the way a lemony sun blasted out at every chance, and it laughed me. I tipped my head towards it, and it was gone. I felt like a photograph. Is the sun looking at us as we look at him? As nobody can answer that, I’ll take it as a definite possibility. We know so little of everything beyond the acceptable colour of baby spinach and the fact that we are certain we will recognise our own children as they barrel through the door after school. Thing is I love the Mystery of life. Yes, there. are many givens, but also a continginous load of give-ins. One extra vowel, not by chance an ‘I’. Now there’s a think. Hyphens, just to say, arise like diving boards, differenting over Timelines and Thesauruses, and for one who does the best leap from the side of anywhere, that hyphen proves oftentimes to be an irritating restriction. I think I wanted me as an English Language tutor. What fun we would have had with all we angry, curious, unlimiters who just wanted to fly with words like birds, lifting sense and fixtures into a cloudal shift.

Visiting a beloved friend this morning, bursting in, flumping onto the sofa (so good) I settled to talk my head off and then to ask about her. We are 47 year old friends. Together we have gone through babies, teen angsty shite, hurts, losses, births, sadness and joy. We are easy with each other. When I left to drive through 400 potholes, aka half a mile if that, I remembered old times, the terror of being ‘Christmas’ for a big family plus blow ins. Everything had to be perfect and that meant I had to be perfect with timing, precisional cooking, a massive weight in itself, and never mind the arrival of the inlaw grandfolks who hosted grandventures effortlessly, or so it seemed in the telling. I was all itch. None of my clothes fit me as if I had morphed into Morph overnight, although it wasn’t overnight because I had been shapeshifting for weeks. I was so tense you could have lit a candle off my skin. I was the inspiradiater. Someone had to do the heavy lifting as those around felt fine about shuffling the slow waltz just because the cloudal shift means more rain and the ferry isn’t running and the turkey isn’t dead enough and arthritis has flared up again and it’s dark and cold and so bloody on.

But when you are born with more mischief in your veins than blood, there is a calling, and never more so than at Christmas. I am certain I was birthed in Faerie. Now that my mum is dead, I wish I could talk to her about that. Ach, she would have batted me away and said,….You were always weird, I have no idea where you came from, and many many more appearingly dismissive things, but she loved being with me, chuckled a lot. My beloved friend today talked of her. She was full of mischief, she said, and I stood a moment, laughed, yessed in my heart. For all the difficult times, she was an inspiradiater. And so am I. It’s a choice, tell you why. Many come to a Christmas gather, bring a wrapped gift or many, but once the wine flows and more, the welcome, warmth, the sharing thing, out comes the reality of a life yet unlived. It takes an inspiradiater to work that one. Not to dismiss nor deny but to hear and to listen. There are too many who feel unheard, unlistened to. It takes no study, no qualifications. It is just sitting with another, saying nothing, being there.

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Island Blog – Fly Now and Thank you

Just before the possibility of a power outage, I will write of today, the funeral of my very first friend here on the island, she who seemed always calm, always positive, mischief in her eyes, her welcome absolute. It’s very wild here, very wild, with sideslash rain and a torment in the air, all clouds blown into a flat grey nothing. The gusts are blowovers, unless, like me you have a lot of attitude.

I set off early, unsure what to wear. On ordinary funeral days, it’s not so hard. Something waterproof, yes, always that, but beneath something clean, jeans or warm leggings because nobody politely dies in Summer, the rest never sees the light of day anyway, a scarf perhaps. But this one was a challenge because this beautiful lady, and I use the word knowing its full meaning, lived her life on a flipping hilltop high and on the determined jut of land which sticks, full upper thrust, into the wild Atlantic. I chose layers, tried to do the matching thing that she and I so often laughed about, and managed a few greens. I remember so many meetings together, when she lived in the castle and then when she moved to her own place/s, when we would talk in a more honest way than I had ever known before. If you had looked at us, you would have been right to see her as the queen and I as the court jester. We made a grand pair. Where she was gracious, hardly swore, I met her with a load of swearing and attitude and rebellion and, I can see her face light up, her eyes sparkle, her smile wide as honesty when we met as true life companions. I loved who she was and she loved who I was. Her husband, Phillipe talked about how she loved rebels, was one in her own heart, but chose to show herself as not-one, even though, having heard of her feminist passions and activities over her years, I do wonder how she managed to keep that control. However, having listened to the poignant words from her children, her grandchildren, I believe that she did reveal her wild heart to them, and. that is a powerful legacy which they all acknowledged.

We left the castle with her coffin affixed to a sheep trailer pulled by a quad. The pipers, already drenched stood in place. We walked into the battering rain, following, followers of her. Umbrellas blew inside out, walking was threatened and. the puddle I had parked in an hour before had become a lake, the mud. slidey and defo collapso. I didn’t go to see her put in the ground. I don’t need that. I didn’t stay for the wake, the stories and the drinks. I just wanted to be alone with my rememberings of the most beautiful of women, the strongest, the survivor, the one who came from privelege and who stood strong against any challenge; the one who chose this island and loved it and all its people with all her heart, who welcomed everyone, no matter who, who paused before issues, thought a bit and then presented opportunity and the invite for conversation; the one who gave someone a chance, who suggested something new, who just made things happen, dealt with the consequences as if she knew they were coming, even if she didn’t; the one who would say ‘It will be fine. It always is.’

Rest now Janet Nelson Rigal. Trust me, you did a bloody good job. You taught your young and they will teach theirs and so it goes on, and not just them but me too. Remember that book you gave me, the ways you saw me, the rebel, as someone of value? I won’t ever forget those gifts, the times we laughed over coffee, wine, lunch, so so many times. Your beautiful. face, even at 80 something, stuck in my head. Fly now with the wild. And, thank you.