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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.

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Island Blog – To Disturb Gravity

There’s still a hooligan outside which is a damn sight better than one inside. At Tapselteerie one was the other but making different sounds. Outside it was all crashes and bangs and thumps, whumps and with a refusal to own up to any of them, whereas inside the whistles and toots, the rattles and shakes seemed quite happy to locate themselves. Many newspapers gave their lives for a gap filling, holes in the walls, gaps in the window panes, cavernous splits in outer doors, the underneath of which had never touched ground for decades. Rain found its way in, under, through and over. Even my children were damp of a morning, wondering, as they did, if they had wet the bed. Even I wondered that.

Nowadays, as the hooligan refuses to let go of it’s fury, my home is better protected, even though it is as old as Tapselteerie. Yes, there is the odd leak, and it isn’t wise to open a wind facing door to greet the exhausted postie unless I close it smartly behind me. The ferry didn’t run so. he had to wait for the possible next one, which wasn’t possible, thus demanding another two hour wait. Hey ho, island life. The disturbing of gravity is quite the thing up here. Lord knows what it must be like further north. Today I returned 8 wheelies to their upstandment, wheeched over and obviously nauseous judging from the mouthal eruptions littering the track. Interesting, nonetheless to see the food choices and waste of others. A load of plastic wrapped somethings, dog poo bags and a ton of wine bottles. Moving on.

Disturbing gravity, according to my ancient Thesaurus, refers to ‘being ridiculous’. I immediately jumped on that one as a brilliant interpretation. It thinks me, as I was talking just this lovely morning with a very dear friend about the importance of fun, of being, I suppose, ridiculous. We take too much seriously, especially ourselves when all we really want is to have fun. And it is entirely possible. In me it is natural. I can be in the most ‘serious’ situation, with everyone being ‘serious’ all I want to do is to play the fool because I can see the ridiculous. Not to hurt anyone, of course, but just to remind these wonderful doing-their-best humans that it is so much easier to let go of pretence and to be honest and thus, individual. I remember this in my younger days, but, like most, keen to be accepted as one-of-the Ones, I spent hours dressing myself up as someone who would fit. In short, it was not good enough to be who I was.

Now, over 70 I will be who I am and give diddly squat about trying to be someone else. However, I do acknowledge the young now, the ones still stiffing themselves into the wrong clothing, employing an almost alien language, a new shape, just to fit in. I. look, hopefully, towards the wise parents who probably suffered those restrictive chains themselves and who will now look carefully at the young of our future and get to understand them, to listen and to learn and to ask them the questions most of us have never been asked.

Who do you want to be?

What would you like your life to look like?

And then, and then, to sit and listen.

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Island Blog – The Fly, the Mouse, the Rat and School the Next Day

An eclectic combo, I’ll give you that. They all arrived today, slotting neatly into my log. I should, perhaps, give some background. It begins with the mouse. For decades I have dealt with mice indoors, scrabbling through the scuts of plaster behind the walls, making innapropriate homesteads in my halloween of a loft, helping themselves to lagging, which no respectful neighbour would ever consider, and diddling through and over my frypan cupboard. The last is unacceptable. However, I am no killer and that’s the tricky bit, but there is also in me a refusal against invasion. I have seen myself, in my wild pioneer dream, as a woman who would stand against invaders. They weren’t mice, of course, but big fighty men with bludgeons, no compassion and with a determination to take over the homestead, one fixed lightly down in a rickety space where wolves and bears, snakes and marauders were as regular as clockwork and the neighbours 20 miles away on horseback.

There was a housefly, no, two, on my window, and they aren’t the only ones to get stuck against glass, banging themselves into failure and refusing to be caught and freed. It’s late for them, so they are slow, but a slow fly is not slow at all. the gymnastics are impressive. I know they will die out there in the torrent of cold rain, the freeze of the night, but, if I can, I will ding about with a tea towel, catch them soft and let them go. Not so the mice. Oh, I have done, in the past, long past, humane traps and they are a laugh because unless you take the sweating and terrified mouse at least 3 miles away from your home, their home, they just return. Poison is not an option, although I tried it once when the mouse invasion was so alarming as to be overwhelming, and the way it takes them is slow and horrific. So, I set a trap in my frypan cupboard.

The first morning, I can barely look. It takes hours before I can brace my pioneer self, she who has seen dead everything, including humans in this wild place, and check. Clean, gone. I am no killer but and but again. This is my space, not yours. The next check was a little easier, the one after, ok and now it is normal. I am not immune to it, to finding a life gone, but I am easier in my skin. It will go on because they are hungry and it is winter beginnings. And I know this place. I know that creatures will come in to the warmth. I remember it when we lived wilder, on Tapselteerie, when it was normal for me, for my kids, to welcome in the coldings. We couldn’t save them, but we gave food and warmth for a while. We didn’t have rats in the house, and. I am thankful, but they were in the byre and the barns. I have only met one once and its confidence terrified me.

I was staying overnight with a schoolfriend on her parents farm. I was under 12 and not a good guest in that I had no experience of country life at that point and had yet to connect with the wild in me. In short, I was scared of it all, the confidence of my friend, the way she swung from ropes in the barn, danced among the pigs, marched confidently into a map of cows, pushing at their flanks when they growled at her, shouting words and laughter. I was put to bed in a cold room with damp sheets and the dark was immediate when the light was turned off, although I had my wee torch. I lay there, tried to sleep and it took ages. I felt something heavy move over my feet, jerked up awake, flicked on my torch and the movement stopped. Two bright eyes clocked mine. A big rat looked at me from the end of my bed, I felt it’s weight on my feet. A second, and it was gone. I yelled. People say they scream, but they don’t. They yell. Someone adult came. I wan’t to go home, I sobbed. Insisted, despite reassurances that the rat had gone. My dad came. We drove the miles home. It was almost morning. I was never asked about my trauma, only told, in a kindly way, that I was over reacting.

School on Monday was interesting.

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Island Blog – The Twirligation

We have one now, well, not just us, but all other Everyones who are currently trying to stand upright whilst refilling a water can, or on a walk to the village pub or just to maintain some modicum of dignified taking of the few steps to and from the car, holding on to bloody anything fixed firmly to the ground. Not that being firmly fixed means much, not after Amy, when hundreds of ancient trees fell politely to the ground, killing nobody. I always wondered about this politely falling thing. I have known it for over 40 decades and it still trues itself. Trees fall respectfully, politely, and kill nobody, huge ancients with girths I could never wrap around, 200 years old, old friends which supported bird nests, held whispered secrets in their inner core, absorbed insults, the derilection of duty overheard, and the magic, the imagination swifting from spoken to hopeful whispers late into the absolute dark of an island night.

I have candles, am ready for blackout as the gustpunches elevate and will continue overnight. I know that power (so called) will drop like a bomb. I have what I need. Neighbours, a community, candles, a range to warm food, gas to boil a kettle, a woodburner and wood. Nonetheless, I confess, even after all these years, the gales afear me, a bit, no matter my ready to twirl mentality. It is fierce black out there, no lamplights, no false lights at all and there’ll be nae stars tonight. But, you know what, and just let me get the know what thing for myself before I continue……I have been called out into the darkest of the dark nights, all Twiddlesticks and Fallover to find an ewe struggling to deliver, with torches and clever hands, to the outer edges of Tapselteerie when a canoeist was missing, when the dark was twirly and confusing, the rain all focus and drenching, the night an endless black.

Not any more, although my body memory remembers all of it. So, when gales, hooligans, barrel in like a takeover, you might forgive me for an overreaction because such of this, or these, take me back to being out there, out there in the wild, in the dead of night, half asleep on the back of a quad, bumping into darkness, over trackspit, my face rearranged by the gale, to help deliver a calf, the mother to be a growling, twizzlestick of fury. We could hardly see each other, no stars, just another bloody shut down gale. She was black as soot. Follow her eyes, he said, and moved in. I stuck to the quad, knew he needed help, fuck………legs jelly, follow instructions, I told myself. It was almost morning on a frissball February night and right on the edge of the world. I could hear the thrash of waves, the wild of the night. Something moved me. I know me. I will always answer the call, no. matter the fear. The mother was grinding, growling, fighting, but he moved on. She would not lay down, the wrong hooves showing through her, the wrong birthing. I watched her growl, turn, eyeball him, he a minuscule in her eyes, so huge and ferocious was she. I watched her allow, I saw it, and finally I moved from the quad. The cow sank to the ground and in moments he clocked one front hoof, one back, no good, and gently pushed back, pulled forward and delivered. Immediately the mother grunted, turned, licked the babe into life. It was hailing, big ping pong balls, so cold. As he rose to leave the cow turned, rose and bumped him. He almost fell, but didn’t. She didn’t want that.

You want to. drive? I asked. No, he said, you go. and I did.

So, a gale means something, and a very big something else to others.

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Island Blog – Shambles

Rhymes with brambles. They’re all gone now, obviously, blackbirds, robins, mice, people, sharp still. You don’t mess with brambles, not here. Sheep can die in the twist-hold of brambles, thorn sharp and clutching. However this is not about brambles. The rhyming thing just a rhyming thing, even as it thinks me about life, about lives, because a bramble sharp and clutch can hesitate, at best, a life. Or, it could lead to shambles, chaos, confusion, as if a dense wood just marched around a person, those huge darkening trees, stealing all the light, predatory.

I know this place well, although the darkening trees change. It’s still dark and the consistent thing is me, alone, cold, lost in the forest. Been there, seen the nowhere, got caught in the brambles but I am no sheep, and that’s the change in this, the invitation to freedom. Me. You. In the dark, it is compelling, stay here, stay here. You can’t see anything. It’s so very capsulate, almost safe. We need light, even unlight, any light. And what we need is recognition from someone we respect. that may sound frivolous, as it did in my young days when no man would/could ever say more than Well Done with a shoulder slap, moving on quickquick in case he was questioned. They needed it, and we thought we needed it. However, in the we, the we of the long ago, when men took liberties most of us will never talk about, it felt like we had to be ok with the falsehood. But now, in this open age, when what I accepted through fear is no longer acceptable, I, who allowed am still looking for a someone who just gets me, who recognises what I have done, who I am with no skimming, no polite flapping of hands, but someone who says something that makes me stop dead. Someone saw me today. Someone recognised my talent. Someone who really knows, beyond my mum, my sister, my friend, not that I dismiss them, not at all, but this is a Someone in my climb out of the brambles, who smiles at my courage and bravery, who recognises my talent, my gift, my light, and that stops me. Not stuck in the thorns now, not confined but fired up, strong, actually believing in myself.

Just a few words of recognition that really land. Now, there’s a power.

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Island Blog – You Turned me

My Thesaurus is lacking, I confess. Granted, my copy dates from the early 70’s which probably explains itself. Language and the metamorphic elevation (or devaluation for some) of it has me quandarying somewhat. I’m looking for an intuitive alternative to the word Thankfulness and what I am finding is a definite slide into Obligation. Oh no. Definitely not that shit. I want to be wildly thankful. I don’t need a landing. I just want to send my gratitude out into the sky like a lift of birds, a whorl of butterflies because someone, somewhere, tilling their rice fields in a country I will never visit, might just sense something in the air, and smile for no reason.

Looking through old writings today, I found something. 2016. On to today. I had gone to a conjoined church service, sort of mid island, a good 90 minutes drive away, but the journey was fun, the low sun a complete block at times, spectacular but definitely a sudden stop as the road disappeared completely. We met in a village hall. We do this, we islanders, grabbing a venue for all sorts of things. The roads windy, the window views endless hills and what some may see as a lonely nothing, but there is way more than nothing out there, if you have eyes to see. All I felt, in the lulls of conversation, was thankfulness, and I live here. This is my beloved home and more, every single moment I learn something new, or anew, which is somehow better. The theme of the service touched me. What do you long for? Do you judge yourself harshly? Is that in your way? I may have got the wording wrong, but those questions almost cried me.

This is what I found, written June 2016. I know it was smack in the guts of dementia care, but I recollect nothing more. Here goes…

‘I am a brilliant and prolific writer.

To those who squashed my creative growth, who never wanted the best for me, who chained me up and pinned me down, who convinced me I was a show-off, too loud, too selfish, un-special, untalented, untrustworthy if set free, fluff-headed. Those who told me my duty lay in conformity and fed me daily guilt and self-doubt, who stole my life. I thank you. You turned me.

To those who encouraged me despite seeing clearly my handcuffs, ball and chain. You who brought me back to myself, asked me. something about Me, and listened with interest, who liked me for who I was, not what I could do, nor how well I could accommodate, or behave, or change shape. You helped me keep myfaltering light alight, you gave me hope. My first, a teacher in primary school, my second the mother of a widlfree family. The first looked me in the eye, said nothing, didn’t need to as her eyes said everything I had never seen before. The second spoke out. You are lovely, she said, as she whacked the bejabers out of newly gathered salad leave. Just be yourself. I was astonished to realise that it was an option at all.

There are many of you, many more than two and to you all, from my heart, I say this….

Thank you for telling me it’s not only ok to be me, It’s wonderful.”