fiction

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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 Best Cafe Ever

On my way to work this morning to the Best Cafe Ever, two rainbows rose like double ellipses, I had to pull over for a photo catch. I couldn’t see their landing spot but I saw their launchpads. A field, just a field, of scarped silage, the huge lemony bags stacked and ready for the winter ahead. I watched the rise and flow of ancient grassy folds and thought about the old rocks beneath, the upholders. I like to get to work early. I like the set-up, the fill of the water dispenser, the lift of teaspoon jam into the tiny beautiful cups of hand-made pottery. I like the set up of tables, adding wee rubber wedges ‘neath legs which, being uniform, cannot accommodate the tapselteerie of old floor tiles. I like to wash up all of the huge pile of now freed bake tins, cake, scone and bun containers, the whisks and piping wotwots, the many scootcups of tried-out coffee until the maestro gets the blend just right for the day ahead. I tweak what flowers we have now and the lights go on in a welcome. In the summer months we can see many folk lurking beyond the doors, but not now. Now the autumn is here and, with her arrival, visitors few down. Our working hours are less, our visitors more likely to be locals, and we have the time to stop and chat, to hear about their lives. We have one week left and I will miss the connection with the team, with the couple who took the brave decision to make this cafe their own.

I am so glad they did. When I, with much doubt in my mind, asked for work with them in 2025, I really didn’t think they would take me on, old me, but they did and it made me realise I can be a right eejit about myself. I love every minute of my part in the team, a team they have created. Every single one of us work for them because of them. I realise, if they read this, that I am about to embarass them, but it needs to be said. Every step of the way, they have been gentle and kind and encouraging. They have, in difficult situations, found a positive way for us all to move forward. They are welcoming every morning and thankful after every shift, however long, however overwhelming, which has definitely been the case at times with a sudden and demanding rush. For such youngsters they amaze me. To be exhausted, as they must have been over the past two island seasons, and yet still to turn up, to find ways around confounding situations, and more, to keep tabs on each member of staff, to watch, to allow, to show respect and kindness even if that meant one member down, is the evidence and the truth of true leadership.

I look forward to next year, as long as it doesn’t come too soon! I can hear them say that. It remembers me of my time as a young ‘boss’ in the melee and unpredictability of visitors to where (as widely pressed in the press) has earned itself the title ‘The Place to Visit in the UK’. For now, or soon, we rest awhile, even though there may be weekends through December when the cafe welcomes us into the warm and the bakes and the chat and the laughs. And there is always that in the Best Cafe Ever. There is always yes we can do that, unless it’s impossible. There is always, there is a play area down there for little ones. There is always, yes please bring your dogs in, yes please move tables together, yes we will sort the water you brought in on your soaked coats, yes we can do a smaller this, a larger that. It is a Yes place. To work within such a team is inspirational. We need, we want to be dynamic and engaged every minute with full compass thinking and response because of them.

This place alives me. They do, the young leaders. I thank them.

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Island Blog – Looking for Parsnips

An ordinary day. Go to work, work hard, come home, iron things, manifold them because it is a right shite humping a wee iron across the surface of a set of overly decorated and bedazzled super-king duvet covers and then submissioning them into a shape any woman, and it is usually a woman, can manage without personal harmage. I know that ‘housekeeping’ requires this effortitude, but I do wonder how many recognise the work involved. I do not include my bosses because I did elect to take this (small you would think) pile of laundry to help my team at the Best Cafe Ever. A doddle, you might suggest, but not if you are me with my standards, Had you watched me with ‘my standards’ you might have seen my head shake. My recall? Tapselteerie Kitchen, everything dark, all asleep and me ironing bed linen, napkins, table cloths, I could not go to sleep until my standards for me were accomplished. Stacked and warmly loved, I did climb the stairs. It’s my thing and still is.

This ironing thing….a few duvet covers, but with lips and otherness I never had experienced before….. duvet covers were squared off or rectangled off and with no lips or other suchness. They just fitted the damn duvets. Nowadays they need their own voice. Also, they don’t have poppers or buttons. They have folds and inserts and what is happening to this world, because it sure sucks for the housekeeping crew. No question mark required. Is it an aspiration for elevation, as if we look better for all the faff and unnecessary folds and flaps and buttons? I pass on that one.

I like ordinary. There’s a connectional direct with whoever I meet. We are raw, scared, wishing we had done things differently, all that and we meet on a colding rainfold street, looking for parsnips or the daily paper or for a delivery from the island vet or just to connect. Or just to look for parsnips.

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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 – Long Shadows and a Someone

Here is something I really don’t understand, even as I sort of get it. First part of that sentence, good grammar, the latter ‘now speke’. Just saying. Although I have lived all the way from grammatical stripulation, something which drove me right up into mini-skirts and the climbing out of windows after 10pm to hook up with a market stall owner and an E Type soft top, to the now of ‘like’ being the first word before pretty much every single word. It used to be ‘Um’ and that meant a knuckle rap, even in my day. In a moment, She said (all of 4 feet tall behind her desk) of hesitation, hold the silence, use your eyes, lift your chin, make it seem as if you are about to come up with something utterly profound. Your brain will catch up. She was right btw. And I thank her. She cast a very short shadow, but I remember her longer.

I walked today, this afternoon, and noticed that the grasses interrupted the track. It stopped me. I hadn’t noticed shadow before. The light is shifting, the balance too. The dying fronds luffed and danced in shadow talk. I could see it across my boots as a soft swish of goodbye for now. Onwards and into the woods, I see anew the arse end of a fallen pine, the roots highwide and skyward, a curve shadow which was t’other side before the Autumn arrived, which seems very sudden. After that I did a load of noticing, shadows longer, strange, almost confusing. Maybe shadows always are and maybe that whole confusulation is what notices us as we notice. Now there’s a happy thing. There is a theory that we miss places and times, but what if they miss us? I have places in my mind, pebbles in the wilderness of my story, which halted me. Still do when I remember them. I smell decay, the erupticus of the land taking back. The leaves turning, almost happily into red, gold, brown and falling. It is as if the earth rises up in welcome hands.

Perhaps it is something to do with the colding, the change into the dark and away from the endless summer light, when the shadows finally get their say, longing. And they do ‘long’. They are longer than the one who actually walks the earth. We are finite, minute, temporary and yet we are extraordinary, magical, pivotal, powerful, and we make a point, a mark and each of us is a Someone.

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Island Blog – The Disappearing Road

I like pathways or skinny roads which disappear beyond my vision because they invite me on. I like conversations which tail off in the face of interruption. I like the look on someone’s face when there is no chance of finding out more. I like chance encounters at a coffee kiosk, on a walk, in a shop doorway, in a luggage collision in an airport, when faces tell me so much and voices tell me little, if anything. I remember, as a child, hearing words from older mouths and looking up into faces to see something which made me suddenly unsure. I had no language to explain it, even to myself and, chances are I just skipped on as little girls do, but now it thinks me. What I saw when I did look up were the scars of life, the lines of worry and the brilliance of learned concealment. I have them on my own old face but instead of giving me issue or a rush towards an appointment with a cosmetic surgeon, I love them because they invite me on. To look further. Where will I go now? Where do I lead myself? What does that twisty spindrift of a barely drivable road lead next? I am still curious like Alice.

I like the seasons, the way they take for fricken ever to arrive as if not one of them has ever learned to be assertive. We, down here, winkle our landlife through indecision for weeks, cardy on, cardy off, thermals needed one day, becoming a fitted boiler without thermostat the next. Windows open until they slam shut in the fist of a gale. A clear blue inviting a gentle walk until, not quite half-way through, the sky closes in a grey whooha and a million clouds dump their load as if they had held on far too long.

I like the way the islanders respond to all of these things. I met the same acceptance in the 70’s among the wonderful men and women who worked at Church Farm in Martham. I had never, till then, met truth from mouths which connected with the expression on a face. I remember a light in my heart then. Here are people I understand, even though I was the farmer’s wife and they were workers, it didn’t matter. I could see where that disappearing road lead. Here, in my island life, there is a shrug, a nonchalance, an acceptance in pretty much everything and yet with a curiosity, a mischievous challenge, a ‘let’s go’ thing.

When we are born into a family, there are plans made for us before we can piss straight. This is normal and everyone does this, including me and himself, even though every single baby proved enough for a dissertation. As new parents always believe they hold the reins, and they do, for a short while, even as a new and often uncomfortably independent spirit is born with every child. This can prove awkward, even embarrassing. Oh, we all know of teenage angst, of hormonal turbulence and think, as we laugh through it all around a table with parents going through the same thing, that it will pass, the whatever of the whatever of it. It may not.

I, for one, found my way. I say nothing against my parents, my loving safety, their patient opportunities for furtherance. I was loved. But I always longed for escape, to follow the disappearing road. I didn’t know why. Perhaps it was the million miles between words and truth, perhaps the carefully defined road connections, the marked out parking spots, the rules of controlled living. I live no longer under any controls although I find my own both severe and opportunistic as if I have to choose. Ok, I will. I accept the severe, the self-judgement, the list of my crimes and failures.

I still love that sleek and slim disappearing road.

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Island Blog – The Will Be of the Might Be

It rained all day. I woke to the lash of it, the slam against my bedroom window, the leaks. I paddled downstairs, almost enjoying the wet beneath my feet. It felt thrilling. The wind was up, no idea of its identity as I never did. I needed my husband to understand such frillary and he is very gone. Just wind, then, slamming rain like an old woman with no teeth and a mouthful of spit and way too much freeway. She woke me, a lot. I slept once I recognised her and refused to engage. She’ll lose breath soon enough. Always does. However, this rain, this old woman/ spit thing does seem to bring Ground Control into a standstill. There must be something about the way she moves which brings in a certain turbulence. I confess that a part of me is wondering at my words because every single year this particular windolence moves in and does just what we are experiencing right now, we at ‘Ground Control’, it seems, are astonished all over again. It thinks me.

Delusional thinking appears to be well ingrained. I can see the need for a link to Ground Control, the voice of definicity, the assuredness that, even now, we can shape our world. And that thinks me again. Why not, indeed? I have in my time washed the diorama off the jeans and tees and sweatshirts belonging to the uprising of my babies as they touched 6 foot and beyond. Were they not about to reshape at least a part of the world? And, in my own time, did I reshape too?

My text said, confidently, that my delivery of whatever will be delivered today. It has rained all day long. The roads are or could be flooded, the posties drenched. Add to that the ferry, the big one, which didn’t run today because of something or other. Endless hiccups, endless problems and endless angst. Island Life. It is smurry out there, can’t see the hills, only rain. It’s beautiful, though, like a painting.

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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.

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Island Blog – Just Flying On

I did my own housework today. It’s so damn boring, my own housework, whereas I am like a woman on fire when it comes to someone else’s. I am can-do, let’s do this, even if the job appears magnifluent with horribleness. What is that all about? I ask myself this as I lug stuff for washing to the washing thing. No answer comes beyond the flip dash of swallows madly encouraging their second brood to fly, ffs. I feel for them, not that I ever knew resistance from my kids, as they almost went without a lookback. I pulled myself back to myself, as they say in SA, and grabbed a hoover, then a bucket and mop and sorted things that needed sorting. I like my home to be clean even if nobody ever sees most of it. This is about me and how I care about me, my personal standards.

Bring that back, roll it right back to the core. I have standards, yes, but just for myself. I feel no judgement when I meet others who don’t share what I choose to be my level pegs. It doesn’t annoy me. I cock my head at this. Really? Well, yes, probably, but I contain it. I have five grown children with five grown partners. I have met walls and fences. I have learned. What haveI learned? Acceptance, obviously. Was that easy? No. So How did it become the normal in those relationships? Did you remember yourself in these new dynamics? Not always, no, although once I got to know the partners, I found myself loving them and that was me being me. How did you do that? Asking questions without agenda, just interested in their life, their own thoughts, the she or he of she or he. And, I interrupt my questioner, of continuing that through the years. Instead of the easy homey conversations with primal children, elevation is required, I have found. To show interest and to ask about the partner of my beloved, the one, let’s be honest, who took that beloved out of the maternal/paternal sphere and into a new ellipsis.

I made chappit tatties just now. It’s a Scottish thing you might need to google. I also made a salad and all of the before was delivered on Friday, fresh island produce. I can smell the island on the lettuce, salty, safe, wholesome. I love the ground of this life, the wild, the silence and darkness at night, the safety, the community, the song and strength of it, the way we move to help each other, the way we can step in or fly out when it’s an urgence. The way we understand that the earth breathes, the sea breathes, the world is changing. We don’t know what to do next beyond the fact that we don’t have a clue.

In the now of now, we are flying on.

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Island Blog – The Before of Us

I have a big pile of books on my kitchen table. If I wasn’t at work on a Tuesday, I would gather them up for a swap, but I am working and so the level rises in tales of other lands, other times, of those whose lives I have never lived, of whose pain I can only catch in sentences. Most stories talk to me in a voice from the past, of challenges and overcomings, of loss and mostly, of moving through and onwards. They all inspire me because of just one single thread, the one that securely connects most of us, all of us, to the before of us, to the insertion of a generational electoid in a daily script. I know this. I picked it up with my own children, spilling out rulings that often confounded me, as if I had no control of the spilling. As soon as the electoid had deflated, I regretted. This is how we learn. We make mistakes because we just do. Without our acceptance, or acknowledgement, we spin the same tale and, in a place of authority, we deliver it. I did. Do I regret? Oh yes. But the damage was done and flifflewaffle is redundant here. The before of us is what every generation must learn from. This one in this generation and in my experience is a lot about chasing money, no, fighting for it and against everyone; It’s about mothers at school gates looking beautiful, sharing tips on well-being spas, nail decorators, hair stylists, the answer to all internal dilemmas costing a gazillion an hour. It’s about looking beautiful. Looking. Beautiful.

Looks fade. Just saying. My book pile is fingered and bented. Some pages are blobbed, twisted, stuck together. This is life. The sun is out now after twinglerain, sharp shards of it, the sun diddling about up there between cloudal shenanigans. It’s cold, it’s hot, it’s windy, it’s a party game t’ween the weatherness and our attitude. We must adapt, move on with new tunes, new attitude, new intelligence. As we must beyond the before of us.