fiction

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Island Blog – Aestival and a Hotchi Witchi

Work today was a spin and a din. Lordy, I swear folk decide to arrive in a gamut, they do. From zero to bonkers in moments, and it is moments, not minutes, although, technically they both may add up to 60 seconds. But it’s the moments that trixillate the arrival thingy. A drift of one family, small noses level with the cake counter, a scarp of I Wants spilling across the wood, echoing, developing. Big parents minding them with hand fusses and gentle remonstrations. Tired, I bet. I remember that time. Nothing pleases for long, minutes, maybe. Maybe. A group of time travellers. Well, they look like Time Travellers to me, all lycra and speedo and helmets and smiles and buzz. Then, older folk, white-headed, gentle, of their generation, polite and smiling, asking for tea for two and cinnamon buns, yes please. These sell out in minutes. All of the baking is ridonculous. So soft, so inviting, so tasty. I plate up, plate up, out it all goes, and in come the compliments, the thank yous.

The spread of the Best Cafe Ever is a good sprawl. Tables not too close and there is, on days like today, sunshine enough for a spill outside into sunbeat or shade, the circular bench tables offering the chance to chat among the feral and opportunistic sparrows who have so worked out crumb snatching. They are even brave enough to sit right beside delighted customers, heads cocked. I so admire them, and the customers who don’t swat.

I love the team of Us. the summer now is full of folk for from Englandshire, school holidays and a choice, I guess, not to fly to abroad, wherever that is, but coming instead to a beautiful island, thrumming with history and the chance to get out there on a boat into the biggest ocean, the Atlantic, the one who controls lives for a gazillion coastlines, carrying as many stories on her back and within her depths as would delight a bedtime child all the way up to adulthood, if said child hears something that lights a light within. And there’s no given on that.

As I drive back home from work, I notice that some still spray poison. I also get it, not that I would ever choose to spray poison. But, I do remember, I do, the overwhelm of bracken, stealing foodal ground from cattle and sheep, and our own internal battle with the choice between poison and the slow and endless alternative. However, there is a disallowance in me now. Where we were dealing with frickin miles of green and the skin-legs of grisly cattle and skitter sheep. this poison is in small gardens, constructs within a wall of hedge and strappish fence. There’s no need for poison here. It’s quick, yes, but it also kills wildflowers, insects who tap down, any water supply, albeit deep down, any birds, spiders, bees, wasps (we need them), flies too, ditto. I do really wish that, in the crevasse that divides generations, there is a wise person, an Hotchi Witchi, one who would not let a single young thing pass until they proved they wanted to be a facilitator of intelligent change.

That’s what I wish for future aestival days, ones I will never see. Maybe I will be the Hotchi Witchi. If so, plan your responses, you young things.

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Island Blog – Invectus

Last night, Buck Moon, btw, full and shouting, although I missed the earlier rise into sky disco mode, because I was in bed by nine, still light, still opportunity out there, but my opportunity opening had closed. I was happily Beach Cafe tired and there was a good book awaiting me along with my nightie (sorry for the detail) and a big mug of knockout drops, aka, Chamomile, 2, Sleep tea, one. Works a treat. I can actually leave the night unattended, she gets on with herself, darkling corridors and alleyways and rocks on the shore, inviting the night creatures out like a disco queen.

However, and this was a big However for me, last night when the night disco raised hell for neighbours and when the Buck Moon was rubbing the velvet off his antlers, asleep was I, calm and well-read, chamomile drugged, my heart the rhythm, a gentle beat. Actually, that’s a lie. I am hellfire in my chest, the beat of acid house, or whatever that hysterical thrumming beat is called. Anyway……is there another word for a crossroads in direction? Happy to receive ideas. Let me begin.

I think I fell asleep around 10. I flipped off an extra pillow, felt the fresh breeze pushing in the wide window, and gloried in it. T’is done, I said, I did, out loud. Sleep now. And we did, the breeze and I, until the carbon monoxide monitor rose into a soprano that would split any ears, all ears. It began as a chirrup, which I ignored. I’ve done well on this island ignoring alarms, any sort. Mostly, they are nonsense. However, this scream would not be ignored, rising into a definite panic. I came downstairs, checked the house and found a citronella candle still burning, encased, yes, but burning nonetheless. I had forgot.

I pulled the CO2 thing off the wall, after extinguishing the candle, and pushed every damn button. It screamed on. I sat with it for moments, doing the pushing thing, but that ear-splitting scream continued and I mean continued, non frickin stop. I made tea, sat, shook my head a lot. I knew I needed sleep, there was no gas leak, no nothing, all windows open in this heat , no threat. I filled a bucket with water and dropped the monitor in it. I had already unscrewed the back from the front, always, in my opinion, the best advice to give to anyone, no matter the problem, but still it shrieked, even underwater. I went back to bed and applied ear plugs, slept a bit, but when I woke about 3 am, I could still hear it, burbling away drowned, not drowned. Apologising to my, now, exhausted fluffy dressing gown, I literally caterpulted downstairs. It is 04.30. I have work tomorrow, no, today. There is no danger here. Still shrieking in the drowning bucket. Ach……Ok, you, I thank you for being so wonderful, I think. I put it in the fridge and still it beeped. I got some sleep, and loved my day in the Best Cafe Ever. However, when I did come down at 04.30, I knew there was a reason for all this nonsense. There, like a new planet, the full Buck Moon. Held, in sky stasis, right in my face. I didn’t need lights.

Thinks me. Someone who irritates, something that irritates. What can we learn about another and, what’s more, was there a random something that led us here, this now, one we might not have chosen, but one which may give us the insight we need?

I am happy to say. that, with help, my feisty and wonderful CO2 monitor is no more. I will buy another one because I know, and this may be a big shift, that when something alerts me, no matter it electronic, I am alert. I honestly don’t believe that things and people are apart from each other. After all, and think on this, we constructed the things. We are connected, as we are with the tides and the moonflows, even if we live in concrete and streetal limitations and confines.

If only we believed,

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Island Blog – The Mary Thing

I’m home and back into a precious silence, just the birds, the gulls screeching like a mother who is way past tolerance, urgent, a call that cuts like glass. I’m watching the shift-light, the white skinny, almost saying something. Blue sits fat and patchy, here and there, confident in its canopy control. I am always here, but playing hide and seek and damn good at it. I’ve been hours away this day, caught and captured into a gathering. That’s what we call it here. A gathering can occur on a hillside, within the walls of a completely unprepared cottage in the middle of nowhere, a sudden thing. But, this one was ready for itself. We all knew it was coming, the date set.

I was unsure about what to wear as all of my clothing fits a rainbow and this was a sad gathering, no matter the celebration of life thing. A very long life lived, a load of children, a big team of grandkids and a football stadium of great grandlings. 97 or so years of twinkling and working like not many women would these days. I knew her, a bit, but in talking with one of her grandsons (so handsome, as they all are) about body language and the words we say without saying a single word, I felt I suddenly knew her better. She was a generation above me, ahead of me, but she was so approachable, so welcoming, so naughty, perhaps not all by herself, but there was that sparkle in her eyes that told me she was up for anything. A very gracious lady, and I mean Lady.

We laid her to rest this day in the old graveyard, her beloveds, spanning generations, lowering her into the ground beside the love of her life, gone some years before, above the bay, with cloud dip, slight rain (very polite and thank you) and a lot of old, young, very young, all there for her. She leaves with them, her inspiration, her encouragement and acceptance and a lot of tears and laughter. And Billy, who brought her home was as he has always been, respectful, working with whatever a family chooses, so compassionate, so professional.

What a legacy Mary. You leave that with them, with me, with all of us who remember you now, and who will talk about you for frickin ages.

Thank you.

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Island Blog – A Stopping

The day begins. I rise, dress, and head for a what I believe will be an ordinary day. I’m thinking about myself, the what-I-will do, my plans, my things, me, me, me. We all do it, and it takes something outside of ourselves to shock, to shake us into the outside of our fixation on self. It’s a very big world out there, a load of people, situations, circumstances, troubles we will never experience. We forget in the fuss about clothing dropped on the floor, the loo seat left up, the greasy fingerprints on furniture, the abandoned sweet wrappers, pizza boxes not emptied, not cleared, and I could go on for a whole year on that stuff. I was there, I remember it all.

And then something happens, news comes in. Suddenly we are twisted and twizzled into a spin, one that sends our eyes open wide at first, and then into a crazy spiral. As suddenly, the whole shit about clothes on floors, careless loo seat attention and abandoned wrappers become a nothing. Just like that. Because this news is so big as to automatically and perspectively diminish the things which, moments before, sent us into a snort of fury as if they were our only vision of our lives, we stop. What we were doing, or about to do, birls in our minds, and away into the mist, the rain. We cannot see them anymore.

Death is part of life, obviously. We all have to do both. It’s ok, sort of, for an old and beloved to leave the world, even though he or she leaves a big and wide grieving family. The dying in this case of a mum of many, grandmother of gazillions, was expected, and she was well into her 90’s. Still, the loss…….

This is going to sound weird, but I like to be reminded out of my own small agenda. I don’t like the news, don’t like the fallout of a big family home, one I remember, all sparkle and can-do, all fixed and sure, all young out there, naughty, finding their way, moving out, moving on, loving and loyal.

RIP Mary. I will remember your smile and those twinkles in your eyes, always.

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Island Blog – Sense ability

We forget, don’t we, to notice what our natural senses tell us, unless someone. shoves a fragrant bloom under our noses? So busy is life these days, so disconnected from the beauty of the wild. Where once fields scattered in glorious disarray, there are housing estates. And it’s all very well to shout about the loss of ‘green’ but where would all our people live? In caravans, wicker shelters? It’s definitely not an easy conversation piece, nor a simple decision for the big cheeses in our world, our cities, our villages. I remember a time living in Glasgow, in a flat. So not my thing, but there we landed, short term. There was a ‘washing green’ for all 6 flats. A stumbly plastic spidery thing stood in the small patch of grass, a few pegs attached. One sunny morning, after washing a load of boy stuff and with nowhere in the wee flat to effectively dry anything bigger than a couple of boxers, I lugged the basket down to the back door. I had already bought pegs and hoped the thing that looked like a big umbrella with plastic connectivity and the ability (apparently) to move with the breeze, not that there was one, would never be one, not in this square of overgrown grass, fenced in like a punishment, would dry the load.

I pegged and swivelled the thing. It squeaked and creaked and tipped and I just knew that nobody, from any of the flats which, all of which proffered a scummy window view of me out there being a loon, used it. I stood back to check my affixings. All seemed pegged up. A window opened. A woman poked her head out. I looked up. Hallo, I smiled. Just pegging out my washing. Aye, she said, and chuckled. You won’t do it twice, she said. Everyone takes their dog out there and never clears up. She was right on that. I remember that moment, as I moved back into the confines of a flat, having known the fly-freedom of a west coast home, all space and nature, most of the latter moving in with confidence, and felt an overwhelming sense of loss. I won’t live this way anymore, I said to myself, even though it seemed there was no way out.

Life is different now, and it thinks me. I would have diminished there, starved, lost myself. I am a wild woman, a creative, a solo. Returning to the island gifted me, eventually, a reconnection with all that was familiar. Instead of traffic noise, I came back to the birds, remembered their songs. Instead of grey pavements, I returned to peat-foot, to a ground that bounces with me as I walk. Instead of incessant chatter, I returned to conversation. Instead of a thrum of people, an assault, I met individuals.

Today, just today, my five senses lived, really lived. I watched a young otter dash to hide under my car, a fleet, yes, but I saw it. I watched sea eagles cut the sky in a spirograph. I heard the loons way down there on a lifting tide. On a walk I saw wild honeysuckle, blousy and determined, create a bouquet of delight from the roots of a huge fallen pine. I stopped to touch the delicate but feisty blooms and breathed in the fragrance. Home again and I sat to taste a home-made hummus, salad, a wild garlic Tapselteerie pesto, toasted seeds. I heard the loons again. They’re down there somewhere.

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Island Blog – Can you see me, hear me?

I repot the Money Tree. I’ve had it for decades and in the same pot, the escaping roots lifting it all wonkychops. I cannot think how long that feisty wee bonsai darling has allowed the wonky. It thinks me, about wonky, I mean. I had heard it ask for a repot, for a long time, but, as happens to us all, I was just too busy with the what now of pretty much everything so that its asking floated into the air until I couldn’t hear it above the insistent demands of each day. Until I did, hear it ask again. It now stands in a slightly bigger pot, roots tended and loosened, wonky no more.

I think about re-potting, about asking and about not being heard. Today I had no work and I was very tired, all bog-eyes and rising from a very restless sleep, if sleep came at all. The dynamic in work is a great place to learn, about others, about the space, about the levels, about wonky. My mind scoots back to the times I have listened to the angst in a workplace, the strife of it all spilling from another’s lips, the obvious wonky. Having lived this long, I know that it is natural to look for a solution outside of oneself; the wrong dynamic, the wrong allocation of duties, the member of staff who is so in your face that you just can’t find a way to work with them. The ones who avoid duties leaving them to you. The getting away with it just because they are who they are, damn good at their job but not able to work with emotional intelligence within a team. I’ve heard it all. It’s wonky.

I have also learned that love, compassion, a listening ear and recognition of another is key to solution. It takes humility, yes. It asks for a choice to make something work, together. There are many people, all awkward with their things, who cannot communicate as perhaps I or you can. They just cannot. Nonetheless they are asking to be seen, heard, loved, kept safe, and, if that is determinedly acknowledged, the wonky can find a level. Not their wonky, but the one of the whole. Imbalance is a sea thing. God, don’t I know it, out there where each wave blocked out the whole sky. I know it in a bumpy marriage, a tricky parentage, an uncomfortable time with my own children. There is wonky everywhere. But here’s the thing. It isn’t about being perfect, or, maybe it is, because not one of us can aspire to that, but being the one who allows, who befriends, supports, nourishes, even if another is a complete alien in our perception, that one can actively prevent a serious wonk, one which just might tip the whole thing over into disaster. If we all stopped thinking so much about ourselves and our own wants and needs ALL of the time, we might hear the little voice asking.

Can you see me, hear me?

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Island Blog – The Romance

I remember it, so well. Those moments of spin and wild, the light in another’s eyes, the thrill which began in my toes and was the only thing that, or is it which, moved up my legs to the beyond. The belly thrill, the lightening of my heart, the overspill in my face, lips curving up until they almost made a circle, I remember it so very well. I’m not sure I see it around me anymore. Oh, I see couples, a lot, in the cafe, and there is ‘game on’ fun with some, but there seems to be an awful lot of functionality. A kind of this is how we are now, after all this time.

I know I am a real romantic. I am. I want a man to take me dancing, to swing me. However, this is not on offer. Is romance dying? I hope not. In my very early teenage years, there seemed to be plenty of it, it was the way of the day. No girl would accept less than a door being opened for her, a protective arm around her in an awkward situation, a coat offered in the cold, a lift home, and respect for her girlhood. I honestly believe that still lives on, but what may not is the man in this mix, the boy who wants to be a protector, a respecter, because he is unsure about the who of him in this culture of Big Man, all muscles and the filling in of the doorway.

omance,alive,My point is this. Romance is not old, not dead, but in us all. We just let it fizzle out as the demands of earning, fear of loss, parental pressure and more, overkill the light maker in us. And the demands do it well, they always have and over many many years. There is a fight ahead, and if any of us seriously believe that life from now is not a fight, then the any will fall away. We are up against a lot more than we understand. Romance is ours, so lovely, so light, so glorious, so thrilling,

My sister and her husband began with romance. They still dance, they still romance after decades. It’s possible, and for all of us. The functional sensible in you just needs oiling.

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Island Blog – Skinny Dip and Washeroo

Work in the best beach cafe ever was dynamic, busy and fun today. I notice the invitation from faces, the longing for recognition and connection. I remember noticing the same whilst welcoming Colonel and Mrs Tiddleypom after their very bumpy traverse along the Tapselteerie drive. That look. It is universal, on any, no, every face. Seen it in Africa, in Glasgow, in the Edinburgh queue for opera, in airport security, in the aloneness of a bus shelter, in the face of a beggar, the face of a starlet, the face of a terribly important high-flying-big earning business man. (There never were women in those so-called elevated roles in my back-in-the-day.) There is a longing for connection, skinny as hec, yes, but the eyes win, every time, no matter the flicking away, nor the make-up. I can dip into that, you who are right in front of me, as I am in front of you.

There’s a lot of dipping around in the wee space where deliciousness is delivered. We dance well, the skinny we of the serving team. We pull back to allow a big tray of quiches, soups, cakes, coffees, teas heading for a big table and zip sideways, which makes sense. Another, incoming tray of clearings, equally requiring the zip thing, and we pull back or lead, doing it for hours. My role, one it seems I have taken over (which might not be right) is the Washeroo. Is this my mother thing, the historical one who believes she is the only one who can wash up properly? Hmmmm

In the Washeroo, I am listening, peeking out to see if there’s a human on the other side of the counter who wants, yes, to order soup, quiche, cake, but more, someone who, regardless of their worldly elevation or wish for it, or feelings of loss, despair, failure, whatever, just wants a “hallo, what can I get you? Yes of course your dog is welcome, please sit anywhere. And they do. I have noticed that folk stay long beyond their food, talking, laughing, feeling happy, welcome. A lot.

The pecan brownies are delicious, the quiche, oh yes, it comes with a fresh salad, the chocolate cake, I’m sorry it’s gone, but there are flapjacks, cinnamon buns, rhubarb crumble slice, lemon polenta, blueberry muffins, and I have to tell you, this baker knows about air in her baking because EVERYTHING is light.

So, the skinny dip in and out of our work to serve the lovely people who come, just them as themselves, and the work within this skinny dip team, is such a privilege. I honestly don’t know that I have ever been in this dynamic before. I haven’t. We are making a new thing.

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Island Blog – We Just Are

Thing is, if I don’t write, I begin to feel uncomfortable, as if my knickers are back to front. It’s been a few days, not the knickers though. Enough on knickers.

My thinks are nonstop, even when thinks should be fast asleep in their beds. Some of us are like that, born as ‘troublesome’ souls, too many thinks. I, and many like me, have been, and. still are, accused of overthinking. Accused? My point, precisely. I’m not going to say the us of we ever asked for all this tiddleypom in our brilliant brains which, inevitably result in a brouhaha the world finds ‘troublesome’ because it breaks the silence of complicity. And can be messy. I, for example, can see a wardrobe anywhere, in a shop, a garage, an anywhere and immediately think Narnia, my mind heading into another world, way beyond the rigid limitations of living in this one. If I see a track lifting up and away in a wild place, and disappearing around a corner, I want to follow. There be opportunities out there, although maybe not dragons, unfortunately, and my thinks lead me on.

However, life is here, and my imaginatory thinks, the possibilities out there, need to be turned into a module (that’s me) acceptable to the where of my life. So I walk among trees. I stand beneath their astonishing height and strength, think how brave they are. And I thank them, talk to them, tell them, every one, how wonderful they are. They found their way within a chaotic dynamic, seeds earthing, sprouting, lifting into a density of an already canopy. Light is a fight for them, for us too. I stand awhile, although my ‘awhile’ is about fifteen seconds and that’s because of the thinks. I have watched people stand for ages, yoga, mediation, all those things I can’t do because I am my thinks. I must be moving, shaping, changing, learning. I am a seeker and knowing that is oftentimes a pain in the ass. I have tried, am still trying to corral my thinks, but they are wild and free and the goodling about them is that I get to see what many do not. In a wild sea, I can see the depth, feel the anger, sense the history; In the woods I can hear the trees groan; in ground that was once free and is now a clickfit home, I can hear the rumble of all that is now trapped. None of it is loud, but I sense it as I walk by, even as I like the friendly people waving from their new home.

Hallo to anyone else out there who knows what I’m talking about. We are. That’s it. We just are.

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Island Blog – Two Sparrows

I love my work. I’ve said this before, I know, I know, but I am happy to say it again. The energy required, the energy generated, both are like two sides of a something that has two sides, which, pretty much defines all of us. Our bright talents can go dark, but that is all about personal management, a noticing, the ability to uprise road blocks should one be careening, and our inherent goodness, because we all have that. It is slightly off-pissing that we need to keep a hold on the wonky planks of our personal attics, to ensure that the ‘cobwebs’ don’t become thixotropic, dense. cauterising. Oh, we who are honest, know that place, and there’s a choice thing there. Actually, it’s mostly an ‘oh bugger’ because what we inherently know, regardless of parental influence, is that we don’t want to harm, that we are listening, noticing, learning.

No idea why I went there. Perhaps it is because on my journey to work I meet eejits who are, very possibly wonderful people but who don’t feel the need to wave a thank you as I skid off into the briars and sludge in order that they, in pristine big-ass vehicles with one wife and possibly one dog, slide by. I’m happy with the slide, and I always wave first, but when another living, breathing, vulnerable human makes no eye contact, proffers no acknowledgement of my skid into the briars, I confess I do ‘miff’. Momentarily. It wonders me. Is this how life is for them in wherever they come from? What I do know is that it isn’t a warm community, like a remote island, wherein we all recognise the need for each other. And that is sad.

Today, as the cafe filled with soup orders, dogs, children, bikers, walkers, holiday folk with a hunger for delicious scones and fantabulous cakes, coffees, herbal teas and a welcome that seems to bring everyone together, there was just me, behind pots and bowls and a sort of lull. I heard a sparrow cheep, insistent, and recognised it immediately (the benefit of a mostly silent island life) as a young one shouting at dad. It’s usually dad. Mum has had enough. She is not there for the endless ‘feed-me’ demandings. I emerged from the pots, nobody else there and followed the sound. As I passed by the tables, conversation flowed, nobody else caught this, to discover two sparrows inside the door, on the stairs, baby shouting, dad (I imagined, exhausted, with a ‘what now?’ in his voice}. I slowly rose the stairs, the door behind them, the birds, thankfully open. I gentled ‘ off you go, you guys’ as if they could understand me. Eventually they did.

Inside the busy, the curriculum of any work, the random, the sparrow, will fly in and will think you. Some will notice and respond. Many will not. I want to notice everything, everyone, all of this life, the random, the awkward, whilst learning the ability to accommodate, even to whisper a freedom. For me, there is nothing else.