fiction

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Island Blog – You lifted me Sister

I’m watching the last blooms of my beautiful roses bounce and jounce in the wind, spattered with soft rain, the kind we get here, the familiar, the soft touch of it on windows, the joy of it on my face. We do get the torrential, we do, that cloudal punch which drowns little skinny rivulets, turmoiling them into spate and even into threat. Roads flood, bridges laughing, saying, Well, you get on with it in your big cars and even bigger attitudes! We islanders have lived with this rise and fall of the rain in our lives for centuries. Not me. I am not a borner, not a real Muilleach, but I have learned and loved the ways of survival for over four decades, and I want to live nowhere else. There is an extraordinary to this life, the way humour lifts any circumstance into laughter and a conjoining, usually into music and the pub. I consider this. How many millions of disasters were diluted with laughter and whisky and warmth and comradeship, and a march out to sort the out out? A sunken beast in a bog, a lost dog, sheep, heifer? And all in the twist of a dark and spiralling wind, the Atlantic rising like a frickin menace, spitting, turmoiling, interrupting a meal, an arrest in the shape of the day, the child out there somewhere, where is she? the goats in a twist, the hens freaking out, the milk cow needing a bring in. The whole thing of the thing. Familiar, yes, but there’s this. It might not come. It always does. We know this even as we hope it won’t.

I was there today. Not as the above, although I could wish that back, that need of me to be there, to help with a sunken beast, or goats in a twist, or even hens freaking out, or children who were somewhere. I was. The lonely got me. And here’s a thing about this lonely, and, i guess about me too. I present every single day as ready, prepared. That’s because it matters to me, for me. I plan my day, I mindfully plot my walk through the hours. I make choices. I nourish myself. I walk in the wild, on Tapselteerie, hoping I might meet visitors with whom I will connect, asking them this and that, only because I want them to ask about me. Some do. Most don’t.

The Lonely is a powerful thing. Actually, I don’t think it’s a thing. A thing is a thing, like a jewellry box or a piece of furniture, and the Lonely is more like a living creature, with face, voice, presence.

You called me today, Lu. You lifted me, you laughed me, Thank you wee sister.

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Island Blog – It’s a Choice

Yesterday torrential rain, the burns roiling brown and spit, lifting almost to the tipping spot, yet not. Driving back from work I saw it, the inching up and the not yet thing. I would have paused awhile, just to watch the boil and fold, the coming back to the confines of the channel, the space allowed if it hadn’t been for this big eejit in a four wheel drive who was pushing me back. ‘You reverse around three corners and uphill in your wee mini because I don’t do reverse, nor corners, and definitely not uphill’ was said without words, but through the big shiny fist of that face with a bespoke registration. I did chuckle. That beast could have run me over and not noticed more than a wee lift and a wee backdownagain. As I did the easy peasy reverse thing, swinging sassy-ass up and around a couple of times with a smile on my face because there always is one, I thought only this. I am happy to be who I am and you obviously are not. It reminds me, this modem of thinks, the one without anger or judgement, the natural me in the me of things. Sometimes I share this with others who do rage, do stand against, do challenge. I am not weak. I just don’t want a fight. However, and here’s a sassy-ass thing. If I meet one of those big-ass craturs which has momentarily passed a big sweep of pull-in, I just might hold.

Today big sunshine beginning with birds and pinky light fingering across the hills. Not to upset the shepherds, but the world was seriously pink. Everything pinked, the hills, the sea-loch, the garden, and the pinkers began in the cloud lift and shift. As I drew back the blackout curtains, I laughed, I did. Pink was sucking all the other colours into her maw, and swallowing. It was her dawning. It thought me. Dawn doesn’t last, no matter the wow of pinking. It evolves into the day, the day swiping it into memory. Then, despite a day’s hold on the hours, day also defers, eventually, to the bite of night. Like life, like moments in life. Not everything holds, not people, not memories. I can lose them all. And that brings in a think. What is important enough to keep a hold of? And, more important, do I notice enough to make that choice?

Back to the spin back skinny road stand-off. It’s taken me decades to notice my response to a perceived threat in a conversation, on a skinny road, in my aging, my lonely times. It’s like climbing the wires of music score, so easy on a page, so not in reality, when you doubt your voice, your place, your pretty much everything. I have learned this. Laugh at yourself. That’s what I’ve taught myself, in any situation, in the need to be valued, acknowledged, valued, respected, heard, seen. Just see it light, like a passing dawn, like the person who didn’t wave nor smile, the fact that your warming stove isn’t working, that the crazy rain is flooding your garage, that there are mice in your frying pan cupboard and inside your walls, that dark days are coming, the Winter King in the wings, all of that, and more. I’m not saying I don’t take action on all unexpected tributaries, and warm mother stoves who, after decades of faithfulness, now decide to choke, because I do, but it’s not about action. It’s about how it infects a mind. And, I decide, no matter the choke-hold of my life, the constraints, limitations, confrontations, the losts and the founds, I will always laugh at myself.

It’s a choice.

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Island Blog – Convexity

My fingers are twiddling, flexing above the keyboard, readying themselves. Most of the time, and this is the truth, they do the work, have done for years. I can think something, choose a starting gun, and in they come. I know it’s a gift and I am thankful for that gift, that infuriating nudge when the trudge is mudding me.

So, (when did starting a sentence with ‘so’ become a grammatical ok? ) Hallo Dad. Actually I so value his tuition. I wouldn’t be the me of me without his influence. I realise I am diluting myself into waspitude, too much crititude, and it cringes me until my spider fingers flex and fly. I will regather myself, as the sun, so absent today, has suddenly arrived like Lady Gaga singing feisty as the tide withdraws and the sea-loch stills and there is comment in the wondering water.

A new friend, met in the pub today. We arranged to meet at 3.30 but I was ready for earlier. I arrived and she was there, a woman who clocked me, as I clocked her on first meet. From another continent, another generation, but a welcome nonetheless. Taking this off ground, I would say we collided without damage. So random.

And then another came in, dropped his backpack, pulled out a stool. Hey you, I said, and from then conversation grew between strangers. I learned bits about family history, about the art world, about mother love, about the knife attack of trouble, about rising from trauma, about rewinding a neck for all-around looking, about the unexpected thrusting of pain like a dagger in the gut, about gentle landings, about acceptance, about moving on, about recognition of what i can do in the this of that, about sort of letting go. On on bar stool in one hour.

I know about convex. Never knew there was an upward curve. From limitation to elevation. Like today on that bar stool. I arrived curve down, left curve up.

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Island Blog – The Dancing

They used to say that here, way back in the day, as a question. ‘Are you going to the dancing?’ possibly without a ‘g’ at the end. There were many dances here, fiddles playing, easily once a month and just for the fun of it. When I think about those times, no television, no mobiles nor computers and when Wifi meant the wife, the food provider and the marching ferocious woman storming the pub, intent on the removal of her husband. I saw it often, laughed as he, the Big Provider was dragged out and pushed into the fishbox at the arse of a tractor, whilst she, the Wifi, carted him home for a dry out, till the next time he managed to escape. And he would, and did, many many times over, always with the same result. I recall one evening in the pub when someone came in saying, She’s on her way and I watched him falter, this Big Provider. Never underestimate a determinedly powerful woman. Those days are gone, as have all those spicy, fun, naughty, brilliant characters and we have no regular dances these days because the whole frickin world has chosen to stay home, to watch screens, to scroll nonsense, and, worse, to believe it’s all true. To feel ok about not interacting with other humans. There’s no longevity in that state. Evidence proves that, the escalation of mental troubles and so on and so on.

To the dance. We don’t have them here as we once did. I’ve already said that, so I think wide, not forward, not back, but wide. If we were taught, really taught to think wide, I believe we would evolve from this cocoon state, one which our teens are thinking means ‘butterfly’ at the end, but which means nothing of the sort, into a determined breakout. Punch the walls. Don’t accept the dark. You know who and how you want to be, but you/we all have been duped. The way forward is community, other people, a conjoining in something, anything, because, and this is fact, AI can be very helpful, but it has no heart, no mind, no touch, no cuddles, isn’t there when you slip in the rain, can’t help you lift wood in for the fire, won’t hold you when you cry, make tea for you, sit with you in the dark hours when you cannot sleep and which will reach out, a genuine care in its eyes, and say ‘I am here for you.’

Nor can it partner you in a tango. Just saying.

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Island Blog – Look like Ballet

Another busy week in the Best Cafe Ever, and it isn’t just me who says this. In between the days, family stuff, although ‘stuff’ is the wrong word come to think of it. In other’s lives, there are happenings, not great ones, in fact not great at all, but wait. See that ‘wait’ word? Always bugged me. What is immediate and all consuming spirals a mind, every time. The encouragement to wait is, from my experience, very Buddha, and I like it, just don’t always know how to buy into it. The urge to run, to travel, to support, is strong, very strong. But……wait. It thinks me. As I’m faffing about with thinks, all blind in the clouds of it all, I do get it. There is a time to go and a time to not go, although not going sits like a burr under my arse. Ah, bless the olding times. We seem to get better at knee jerk, even if we can knee jerk like the best when required. So I feed the birds, tend the plants, scoot off to to the Washeroo and work, notice my thinks, notice how my team mates are dealing with their own lives, retain a strong hold on the present whilst sending prayers and great visuals to those who can do with them, big time.

I am open, wide open, and I know it. It has taken many decades to arrive at this point. I believe in equality, in inclusivity, in compassion, kindness, friendship, in action. And the last is important to me. It is wonderful to spout the prior beliefs, but without action, they’re just pointless words. Would I stand against injustice, my voice clear? Would I move forward, or against, something or someone who didn’t? Do I remember old Sally’s needs as she pines for her long dead husband, her dog, her cat, her rabbit? Am I so busy with my own agenda that it’s as if these ‘poor’ people are as of nothing? Or have I trained my mind to be aware, way beyond my own thixotropic ‘stuff’? As I notice something that bothers me, in any situation, do I shake my head and continue my dash for last minute food and the bus, or the train, or the whatever that consumes my thinking? Do I?

Back home from work and a pecan coriander pesto to make. A shower to be had. A list for tomorrow to be made. A twisty cloud sky to watch. From full moon, the half moon is sudden. In the full, there is turbulence, big winds, huge tides, a load of show-off in my opinion, not to mention all those who get no sleep while this showing off is going on. Talking to my African son, suddenly, and jerkily, a red deer hind and her very young calf walked by my window, all unsure, alert, their skins healthy and their legs long and strong. They looked at me, I looked at them. Go safe you beauties. Go safe. You look like ballet.

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Island Blog – Lucky

What is Luck, beyond being a word oft wrongly understood? In my ancient thesaurus, the word has many and diverse meanings. These days I meet those who consider ‘luck’ to be a chance happenstance, a random beneficence and they have reason to fix on that belief. However, in my study of words and wordage, I discover more. ‘Luck’ can mean opportunity, a new chance to shift something, to make it anew. Well, not anew, because there’s nought new in this world apparently, although I disagree with that too. What the writer meant was that all humans are humans, after all and after all, as if we are all either robots or born from the same womb.

So, when I say I feel lucky, I can just hear the triproad of rocks in my path with all this analytical tiddleypom, all rising into mountains only they can see. My through road is clear. I feel lucky. I can see. I can freely walk around a rip-tidal Atlantic coastline any time I want. I can smell the sea, watch her stories rush in, pull out, rush in again, and I catch some of them. I can see a hover of gulls, hear their screeching, watch the lift and luff of their agile wings. I can taste the clean rain on my tongue, feel its healing on my skin. I can walk. I have wonderful caring friends. None of my children died, nor theirs. I can buy the food I want to buy. I can travel. I live in my own home with a view (I will never say ‘to die for’) that others envy. I live in a warm encompassing community. I belong. I have shoes and boots, warm clothing, a comfortable home. I am not belittled, marginalised, racially attacked, afraid of any walk on the streets. I have not lost my voice.

So many right now have none of this. It disgusts me.

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Island Blog – Fog Horn, Wren Song and Ellie

Something woke me at 5. It was just light. I could see this ‘just light’ sneaking around my blackout curtains, the wrong light, the too early light. Just before I swore I heard the sound again, a low growly sound, long and breathy. A foghorn, a warning to mariners, although I doubt any of them needed such a warning. The landscape was erased and at sea that is very upsetticating indeed. I remembered, as I wheeched back the blackouts and as my eyes landed on absolutely nothing at all beyond the fallen over daisy-like blooms in my immediate garden, those times when fog had descended on a lone yacht on its way from somewhere to somewhere else. Very scary. The sea is still bulky and yawling beneath the boat, the rocks are still there, hopefully not ‘very’ there, the sky, if we could have seen it, is still there, but the way ahead is a complete blank. Even radar and the other whatnots that tell you where you are have drunk too much, or so it seems as their dials shimmy about between all quarts of the compass. Due north has gone on holiday. I just went below and cooked something at such times in order to halt my thinks. Thinks out there in the middle of an ocean you were watching like a hawk yesterday, one you could track, every wink and every malevolent plan at its inception noticed and addressed, and which now has laughed itself into invisibility, will create a negative spiral in the mind of the most experienced of mariners.

I haven’t heard the foghorn up here for a long time, although I did hear it often down south where the sea was crabbit and contained and it must be tough being a sea when you want to be an ocean, so I get it, the crabbit thing. But here the Atlantic has free flow for thousands of sea miles or kilometres and holds in her grasp depths nobody has every plummeted. Nonetheless, she fogged us up this morning, creating a strange white-light, the clouds following her lead and lazily hanging about all day like bored students. There was no windy mother/father/tutor to tell them to move on.

Back to 5 am and the waking thing. I came downstairs. I always know when sleep has left me and there’s no hanging on for more, made coffee, sat watching the fog. As the morning began to yawn and lift, I heard wren song, so bright, so clear, so pure that it halted me. It sounded so close and so confusing. The blackbird is the first bird, isn’t it? Why is a wren awake this early? The song was so near. I knew all my windows were open for the heat, but still……

She sang again. I turned, slowly. She was perched on a chair behind me. I went rigid. She paused, bobbed, looked right into my eyes. I smiled. Ok, I almost whispered. (Can you deafen a wren?) I rose as if I was in slomo, moved to close the 3 doors into the house and turned back to open the two garden doors, stood back, watched the battering flapping against windows, waited. With a frrrup of wings, she found her way out. She must have been inside all night, so quiet as I drank (there’s no such word btw) my coffee at 0500. All day in my work, in the crazy of visitors, lunches, clearing, providing, protecting each other, I remembered the wren and the fog whilst I thought of one young brave beautiful wren heading into what seems like fog, for now.

It will clear brave wee wren. You have wings, remember? And no fog will ever stop you.

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Island Blog – Celtic Sea and Me

We were born, before the wind, some of us. We are irrefutably connected to the mystic, although there’s nothing mystic about it, not for some of us. We’ve always known it. Trouble is, with all this concrete covering over earth, all that burying, that disguising, turns our land into, well, Pleasantville. Watch the movie. It has much to say about the falsehood of our lives. We, out here in the blast of the thrawn Atlantic, still bumping over tracks, still able to walk barefoot without (sort of) any fear of broken glass shards, used needles, cutting things, are still connected. It wonders me, as I think back to my time living in a flat in Glasgow after so many years in the wild, that pavementing damage to a human connection to what once was (and still is) so vital for a goodly life. Over years, over time, the strive for money success, the building over bones, over history has taken us up many miles by now. We are lifting ourselves beyond oxygen.

At work today in the cafe kitchen, working with the team, filling the quick-steam dishwasher over and over and over again (and more), we fried, all of us, but we knew we would, and we kept each other cool just by asking “you okay” a lot. It’s a very uplifting question. My thoughts as I sank my old fingers into the deepsinksink scrubbing pots and pans and kitchen whizzy things went to the oceans, the seas of the world. I don’t question my thoughts anymore, nor did I much as a young woman. I know I am connected and it is a warm bond, like a cord, like a chord. I saw and see what those caught on pavements may well, and do, dismiss, although not so much these days.

My thoughts today as I batted away a persistent wasp sailed on the Celtic Sea. I love that name, feels me at home, my sea, although it isn’t. However I came home and studied a bit. This Sea, which immediately tells me it is confined somehow, like the `North Sea’ and thus, a possible grump. However, this sea, a big tradeline traverse, has the blood of the massive Atlantic in her veins and that smiles me. She will be feisty for sure. I check more. Celtic Sea, Basin Countries (the ones she bangs up against) Ireland, Wales, Breton France, Cornwall. She follows a tricky coastline and, knowing skippers (sons) who have launched into the Bay of Biscay in slight trepidation, she has a temper. She is also the minder of part of the Continental Shelf, where land falls away into scary depths. She curls around landfall, so she needs company.

I love her already. She sounds like me.

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Island Blog – Fiddle Work

I was thinking about fiddling today. I was. We do fiddle about, do we not, with fingers, with ideas, with olding, with blockades, with the constant push against the barriers we meet on a daily basis. Should there be a question mark here? Honestly, the whole ‘how you do grammar’ thing was once my absolut. Don’t mess with me on that word. It doesn’t need an ‘e’. There are kids this day bothering about results on where the eff they place their ees, never mind their hyphens and dashes and please don’t bring up exclamation marks, which, btw, were just fine a few years ago, and which have now become a yawn. Turmoil at worst. Fiddling at best.

Let’s fiddle. Fiddling requires finger movement, dynamic finger movement, in the fingers, that is. Limited, yes, unless you have learned how to. In the mind, different. There’s a wildscape in that head which (not ‘that’,….never ‘that’.. #grammarqueen) can spiral the brightest mind. You might go low one day and all the old stuff rushes in as if a tide has suddenly turned on you. It stutters, physical momentum, there are stumbles, hesitations, pauses, a want for hiding. Other days, and for no particular reason, the fiddle mind plays a wonderfully dynamic tune, and your heart is light, your clothes feel right, your make-up worked, the path ahead clears like a walk into bright opportunities and surprising serendipities. What you expect, you will attract. I know this. It is a fact and proven. So what is the thing about days when your fingers tangle-damage your scarf, when, in irritation at said tangle-damage, you wheech off a precious gold chain, breaking it; when you forget your keys, can’t decide what to wear for an important something or someone or when your ego is way below knicker level, in fact it’s ankle deep and asleep? There’ll be days like these. Mama said.

I had one today. I know these days of old. They’re trying to be the seventh wave, and maybe they are. They do piss me off, nonetheless, because I never gave them permission to diffuse me into a spread I feel incapable of. I wanted focus, a strong light ahead, a clear path, and now you straggle me into a general illuminator. I don’t care who else can see. I just want light for myself. Ah! there it is, the conundrum. So I don’t appear to be the master of my own days. Instead there is a force I cannot see which confabulates my story, my plan, me.

When I arrived at work, I felt as if my outside, all uniformed up, didn’t belong to me. At the door, I pulled up, said some stern words to myself, got to it. But it didn’t shift. I listened to the laughter from my delicious co-workers, chatted, heard their news, cleared tables, engaged with customers, laughed with them, loved their dogs, filled water jugs, cleaned endless kitchen equipment (inventively), but I still felt I was limpish . I thought ‘tired.’ I thought ‘old.’ I watch my fingers type this out and I laugh. Tired, yes. Old yes.

Ach, wheesht! Fiddle on. Always fiddle on.

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Island Blog – Escape, Inscape.

Today was a Wednesday of exception. Actually, we were run off our feet, trays flying, clearing, washing on a hot and constant roll, and for a big load of time. Soups, two, quiches, two focaccia sandwiches, 3 flavours like roast veg, goat’s cheese, salad, Mull Cheddar with a musical dressing, I forget. It was diaphanous. There was a lot of eye rolling in the Washeroo, which, btw had three busty thrusts of plates, cups, glasses, little pots of little potness, small pants hot chocolates, dough bowls, teapots offering every sort of herbal tea. Balancing is a thing here. Not just the trays for the wishdosher, but for us all. We keep checking. You ok? you ok? Bosses do the same. They are the best to work for, so intuitive, so watching, and I know that place. Nice, nonetheless to see it in the young uns.

As I arrived for work this morning, I parked below a willow. Love her, We have great chats. Ahead of me, t’other side of the car park, stood a camper van, a big one, doors open. Too early for a cafe opening, but they were waiting. I walked by, we smiled, said hi. Nothing happened.

And then, it did. I wash steamed up, eyeliner gone, washing and washing and a man came in, saying he had backed his camper into my mini. He could, so easily, have driven off. He didn’t. So many good people in this broken world. We talked, smiled, tried to fix things. Nobody died. We agreed on that, and the damage did not stop me driving home from work. We exchanged insurance tiddleypom, and all that it fine and dancey. However, it thinks me.

scape,inscape,love,happy,There I was, finding this Wednesday as a loud haler, shouting, you are too old for this stuff. I did. I spoke it out, my body bending, my arms, thumbs, whatevers drooping like a load of nonsense. This is not me. I love my work. I love this cafe, my co-workers, my canny bosses. Today, the mini crunch, the family connect, the random of it. Driving home with Ellie, such a dude, btw, we laughed about the beeps on my onboard computer which has no idea at all about the relevance nor location of itself, thus requiring a shut the eff up with your beeps, and watching her, Ellie, walk up to her home, I thought a think. We escaped today, the insaneness of today. We’ll go there again, oh yes we will. The inscape of it all is many more thinks, no, perhaps observations and reflections in the gentle quiet of an island evening.