fiction

by

Island Blog – Random, Fun, Chance,Respect

Thing is, we seem to forget these, as if they belong, belonged, in youth, something we have left behind with apologies. My ‘recalcitrant’ youth. My ‘misspent’ youth. And that wild and exciting persona is dumped in the past, trampled over in the obscene rush for success, ‘success’ because that word tastes different in a million mouths, in generational expectation, in the midden, and madden of thixotropic stultification. I know it, felt it. What is it you want? Well, who the hell ever asked that question (Im dithering between a question mark and an exclamation here). I do remember feeling lost in a swirl of long hair and crazy outfits and the need to be noticed, the danger in that, I remember. But, and more buts, how come it all gets chucked out with the garbage of what always comes next, the work, the deadlines, the trials of any union, particularly when a babe bursts into what was, heretofore, reasonably orderly?

What I see, out there, and not everywhere, is a dulling. Not here, not on this dynamic island where fun rises from the potholes and with the lift of wee new flight birds winkling right in your drive path to an appointment. They didn’t get the memo, obviously, because the winkle thing can take a while. But I hear of it, read it, in cities in confines of many sorts, the dulling. As if Fun is for someone else, but not me. I know shortage of earning is tricky. I know that there is almost no hope for an island home purchase. But, what I have learned over almost half a decade here, or, indeed on any island, and trust me, is that we need new blood, new ideas, we really do, to come, to engage with the recalcitrants, the pub, the local shop, those who will still hold tight to the place they value above all, bar their mother, and to ask, to befriend, to engage. And not to give up.

The islands are very happy as they are. But in the future, the economy will need any of you who bring random dance, fun, the chance to learn from you and you from us. I’m a passionate islander. I am brung (new word) up short as I watch a searing of a hillside in the creation of a new home, well, hopefully home. I see the changes, the invasion, as it might feel on first encounter, but I know we need those who want to live here to engage with the communities, to bring new hope but….. be cautious and respectful to a gazillion years of knowledge and a working understanding.

I just went to the pub. I laughed and shared and learned, and I would not live anywhere else out of choice.

by

Island Blog – Somebody Somewhere

Back from work and I love to work, particularly there, in the cafe above a big ass, wide sandy beach, white grains, old shells caravanned through endless crashing waves, longtime empty of their inhabitants, and, very possibly, centuries old. Landed here, the bits of sparkly life, ground down, still sparkling, all laid flat like a platitude, for careless feet to scutch up, for kiddies to rebuild into passing castles, for yet another tide to grab with oceanic multifingers, careless, tossing any grab into any wild weather, a constant swirl, no chance to find a home.

It thinks me. Up here, and away from the centuries old thing, there are humans. Weird ones, funny ones, lying ones, avoiding ones, shy ones, shouty ones; those who burst into a room, with a smile like Santa, those who hide behind a load of fitkit , those couples who can’t decide without each other. I notice body language – a closeness to the counter, a big voice, assertive – a pull back, shy, begging a welcome, an invite. I see young parents come in, tentative, with a wee one who just might kick-off. I so feel for them. I see indecision. Where shall we sit, in or out, here or maybe over there? there’s a deal of head snapping on that one, a whole dynafusion of questions. What is my place here? Should I take charge? Did I just take charge? Is that okay? Oh, dear…….The space before the welcoming counter is a whole flipping world of learnation.

I pull back, after having a gazillion chuckles with the frontal guests, fixing their orders and charging them 400 quid for a scone. Ach, it did have extra cheese and a delicious locally brewed seaweed chutney, but, nonetheless, a bit too much. I will work this pingy pay thingy eventually. However, the fun connection created when an eejit like me who never ever said she was ok with such scary equipment, erupts into a body relax across the counter, I know I am in the right place. I am seen, happily playing the fool, and they, I can see it, gentle. Instead of us (the workers) and you, the welcome customers, and this frickingly loaded counter of spectacular cakes and lunch options and just a few of us being very dynamic btw, and rules and that charging thingy, it’s just us humans, people, picked up and moved, tossed every which way by endless life-changing winds.

We are all somebodies, all of us somewhere, all of us trying to breathe.

by

Island Blog – Thinkscape

I’ve done a few things today. In an elemental olding, I am guessing a few things amount to much. It thinks me. Some, no many, don’t get this far and there are times I wish I hadn’t. Not many, though, to be honest. I meet and greet young people, and I see my own young life, the way nobody can take this away thing. I love to see the tipsy don’t-care attitude. I remember it. Nobody should ever tamp out that flame.

What I have learned, through copious reading in a zillion genres, in talking to others, has taught me fire. I meet, and daily, awful stuff in my age group. I see, and did today, in a short, happy conversation with a woman who dressed so sassy, so wild, so beautiful, that I could not guess her years nor that she is facing a lot of something. We lit a fire between us, like we were young again and checking each other out. It was a few minutes, but I saw her and she saw me.

In the waiting, the olding, there are a lot of Thinks. Time rolls slow, or it can. Those of us previously agile and in some way compromised and let me say this out loud, and as a challenge to them, youneed to stretch more, to reach more, to find more, to do more. It is so easy to sit and to give up, ‘bring me this, get me that’. If the ‘more’ is not an option, that’s good enough. It has to be enough for me in a day when I am doing little else. And the reason for this doolittle, not-much bollix? Ah, now there’s a thinkscape . A tinder burn of a long life, a fire burn of memories, of dances on sand, under moonlight, with a band who never knew when to stop; when the morning arose long before me and brought a ferry in to lift me over a bumpy tidal flow, when i honestly thought this would go on forever. I like the Thinkscape. Takes me above land, under sky, halted for a few moments in memories.

by

Island Blog – Fly Safe

There’s a thing about an upskittle. It, well, upskittles. And that’s okay because life is no straight line, no matter the planning. We do have to plan, of course we do, but then, all of a sudden, the incoming is not friendly. So be it. Sleepless nights ensue, the buggers, and in those hours of not sleeping, as I might imagine everyone else is, I walk through the fog, the mist of it all, and I accept. I believe that to be key. Key to what? Key to the door of acceptance.

I had a commitment today, a hair cut, a meet with a dear friend. I was cold, shivery, after all the night fog, the walking about, the cold unhug of such a longtime, and considered saying I Can’t Come Today. It’s a give-up to me, a mistake, at a time like this. It isn’t always that way. If I had scarlet fever or if the mountain river had broken its banks and flooded my home, then such a retraction would have been absolutely correct, and appropriate. That was not the case this ditzy morning, when my eyeballs worked independently and I could barely pull on my knickers, let alone the rest of my kit. Even applying eye makeup was a challenge, and I will go nowhere without that.

Time ticked on. I watched it, tick, tick, tick, the minutes not minute at all. Each one was loud and thorough with contradiction and discombobulation. To go? To not go? And then it came, as ‘it’ often does. Oh for effs sake, get on with it! Boots on and go. No excusing the fog, the missed, neither of them. I heard a sound, one I recognise, but haven’t heard for a year. I twisted up to look, as this sound came from the sky, I knew that. Five Whooper swans just outside my window, in a tight formation, in the rain, the windthrust, in the wild, in the now, going somewhere, going on, going on.

Hey, Lizzie. I said that, spoke it out loud, my breath flickering an early candle. Fly safe.

by

Island Blog – Dividing Walls, Yesterday People

Today was a strange wandering. I’ve been here before, in this strange wandering thing. Dreams are interrupticating, waking me in a surety, which becomes a questioning, which then becomes a cold reality. What I left behind as I fell asleep, is there to greet me on waking. It’s as if I have wandered through many doorways, many dividing walls, meeting, as I do, those who no longer need shoes, nor do an earthly walking, the yesterday people. I rose, as ever, made coffee, triangulated my thoughts, pulling them into a shape I could manage, although I was never good at triangulation to be honest, even as I completely got it. However, I knew this day would be a day of challenge. I am up for this, I said, out loud, as I sipped coffee and looked out on Venus and heard the rise of another hooligan. that’s island speke for a big gale, btw.

I touch my skin, my throat. I know I still have voice, still am upstanding, still competent, still strong. Looking out into the darkling and recalcitrant sunrise, I begin to release the night, the dreams. I am here. Many are not, and I won’t be some day. However, I know how important it is to acknowledge these dividing walls, t’ween the dead and the living. I still meet my husband in doorways. I still find what I’ve lost in doorways, I remember things in doorways. The symbol of a doorway transects worlds. Have you ever walked through a doorway and felt an immediate desire to run? I certainly have.

I remember music in doorways, no matter the noise within the house, music which impacted me way back, a cathedral perhaps, the entrance to a theatre, the turn through an arch and the switch left to see African dancers on a street, the duck under an arch to find candles and a warm fire in a welcoming cottage. I remember. I know that, every single time, I walk in other’s footsteps, many thousands in some cases, a few in others, but. I feel it.

Today, as I went out, as I always do, to greet walkers with a dog or two, I was barefoot and stood on a thorn. The wind was a slam dunk, the rain cold, slicing. We laughed, talked, and I turned back to the same doorway that brought me all those smiles, that dogfest, minus the thorn.

by

Island Blog – Woman Gone, Pineapple Chunk

It’s weird. I eat, sleep, rise, clean the loo, sort the wood burner, fill the bird feeders, puddle through the rain, buy veg and cheese and a toothbrush at the local shop. I play online scrabble with friends, drink coffee, wonder when, if ever, the dream cleaner will come to crush the dust with some poisonous spray in a schmancy bottle, a load of squirts rising into the corners of my spidery home. I wake to find hours and hours ahead of me, even though I love the waking thing, the morning offer of opportunity and chance. I decide to make a coffee and walnut cake. Lord nose why. I don’t eat cake, any cake. It’s a thing to fill the hours, and this one proffers me 45 minutes plus another 60 of baking. It helps, the thought of it. The cake, once retrieved from the oven, is beyond help. I fling it, as my darling Granny would say, in the bucket.

I have only connected with the Woman Gone, now and again over the decades. I married as a teenager, birthed my beautiful first born son at 20. She, the She of this, was already rising into the world of music, and she soared. Her voice. More than that. She, and I remember this, was good at her piano practice. She stuck when I wanted to build fireballs and to run. She stuck, she held, when I lost myself in the running thing, going pretty much nowhere. And then one man held me safe. I had no longing for a career, unlike her. I just wasn’t steady enough, I know that. If the running is in you, in your feet, you probably need someone to, not stop you, no fricking way, but in a gentle hold, breathe, wait, let’s talk, thing.

I have known death, watched it come, and often. But this, this woman, too sudden, too fast, too much. I know how well she was loved, how shocked those who thought, as I did, that there was no chance Death would softly take her. There will be a funeral, memorial, of some sort. And, to be honest, I am glad I will be there. The confusion of this whole frickin awfulness may, just may, find solace in a gathering.

I remember us at the bus stop right outside her house. I walked to it. I’m a primary girl, 6/7/8/9 and on. It was bloody freezing, the frost thick, the snow holding the cold, pushing it into anyone who passed, and particularly into feet and fingers. She laughed at me as I trudged towards her. As I moved closer, I noticed her fur-lined boots. How did she manage that? My mother had read the rules (always), and my shoes were regimen. No fur. My toes were threatening gangrene even then. We boarded the bus for the 25 minute ride to a school I hated, in a uniform that didn’t fit, was grey and puckered in all the wrong places,for me. We moved to the back, as we always did, being early birds on the pickup list. She dug in her lovely schoolbag, coloured and soft, whereas mine, of course, was a hideously rigid satchel, and pulled out a pineapple chunk.

I will never forget that.

by

Island Blog – Someone or No-One?

This is something I performed once. It begs a performance. There is rhythm, rap, and begs a reading out loud.

Wherever you grow, bloom strong and petal wide, don’t hide but spread your colour, blue is it, or red, or butter yellow, white? Be right with it, your colour, it is yours alone. Hold your own, make it known, alone, not lonely. Only you know your ground. It may be rocky, maybe rich and soft, a mountainside, a beach path, garden, grey street, river bank. Give thanks for wherever you find yourself. Hold out your petals, reach and reach up to the light, breathe right. Your breath is life, in joy or strife, breathe on. In shade or sun, you are the one.

Make a difference. Have fun and look around you. Who grows beside, or over there? Another soul with hopeful roots just pushing through in fear, perhaps, delicate heart, easily broken by careless feet or the lash of punishing rain-words, to die in silence. Cry out in anger, but stand your ground. For those who stand will remember the ones who fall. All of them.

And share your light, your bright, your coloured heart, still beating like a drum on the battlefield, and there, don’t yield, but glow with life and, tender-fingered, lift a drooping head. Warm a faltering body. Say ‘I am here, and I will not leave you’. Share your mystery, your very soul. Hide nothing, let nothing cold you, hold you fixed in ice or fear, as if the end is near.

Notice every season, but not too much. Touch another, lift, don’t drift, for Time moves on, fleeing like a thief in the assault of misbelief, no crime committed in the touch. Some of us long for touch, not much to ask, small task, withdrawn through fear and that worldly slime, the snake of self-doubt, out with you, damn spot, you are not the true voice, my choice, I touch.

Hold each blooming moment, roots in the earth, head in the sky. Let pain go by, toss it to the wind, the changeling wind with stories on her back. And, remember this. Never miss the chance to lead another to the dance. Show your light. Be curious, like Alice, and leave your smile among the trees for the bees to honey up and sweeten. Reflect the sun, the rain, the moon. And do it soon, because you know that a winter of the soul will come, and, for some, it is already here. No matter your ground, make it better for your being there, nourishing, flourishing, sharing, caring, thankfully placed just where you need to be to learn something. Let laughter fill your throat and let it fly out like birds or butterflies to smile a flagging soul up and out of sadness, and to spin their own bitter into glitter. A million rainbows lie within you. Let them show, because you know, no matter the chatter, that you have the power to choose.

Am I someone, or no-one?

by

Island Blog – Itchy Knickers, Mary, There is Life

I send my mind out into the world, and pull it back quickquick. The thinks, the sheer expanse before my mindal eyes, the troubles I can’t even spell, rise into a swirling fog. Maybe a good thing. I know about the corruption in governments and want to smack all of the leaders. Did your mummy not teach you anything? In the pull back, I focus on the immediate, on where I am, on who I am, on this very minute. Oh, that’s easy. Let me think. Ah, instead of sinking into my current bog, let me find another someone who might love to hear what I I think of them. Avoid superlatives, an early lesson from my English teacher. It hesitates me. Superlatives are basically lazy speke. Amazing. Wonderful. Excellent. The Best. And so many more. They’re like uncontrolled dribble to one who considers how much spit goes into intelligent consideration. A little at a time, that’s how. And those superlatives can apply to a packet of crisps. Just saying. Hallo, I begin, You are just short of amazing. Let me find the word (that is just short of amazing). Doesn’t work.

I think that navigating a world where language and street rules change so fast has never been easy for me. I’m the girl, now woman, in the wrong kit. I remember arriving to a poetry challenge at school, all elecuted up, strong voiced and in itchy knickers (uniform), wondering, as I did, how the hell all those other ‘gels’ managed to look part of the landscape. I saw many smirks and although it irked me, I longed for whatever bonding they had with a) their itchy knickers and b) their ability to be an easy dot in the pattern. I could see the connection. And then, there was me, all tumbelshift and awkward. Or that is how I felt. The fact that I was chosen for the poetry rendition, that I came away with the silver poetry cup, meant zip, at the time.

In this time, the autumn of my life, I kind of get it, mainly because if I don’t get it now, what hope do I have of ever understanding the point of me? A rhetorical question. Looking back to that super lost, itchy-knickered girl, I smile. I have found my people, here, on the island, for sure, and that has settled me, given me place and point, to a degree. Perhaps, as my lovely wise sister-in-law told me, it isn’t wrong to feel out of kilter, as she may have done. Rest in peace Mary.

Sometimes I scrabble for purchase, when I see others step out in confidence and the furies rise in judgement against me. Their eyes are wild and bright, their confidence evident and overwhelming, but I’m a daughter of the moon and the tide, I (whine) tell them. I continue, itchy knickers and all, I feel everything, sense so much, notice every tiny shift in this breaking world. I don’t know how to explain anything, have no shape nor map to guide me, but I feel it, see it, hear it, all of it.

I remember Mary saying to me, once, way back when she was vibrantly alive and wise as Merlin, that I would have been in danger when any girl or woman who sensed moon change, tidal shifts, changes in nature around them, people becoming irritable, a slip slide into anger, a rise in the river, was doomed if she spoke out, or was noticed noticing. I am thankful that, nowadays, writers write about those who can see the beyond, and anyone can btw. We just have too much noise and too little belief in our skills.

On the cusp of a flight to Africa, I watch the skies, the moontide, the chat in the clouds, the copper comment, the wild shapes. I see the raindrops held on branches, like showing off as the sinksun sequins and sparkles. I see the straggle of shrubs, climbers browning, the flood in my garage. I feel the rainwater, the hill rain under my bare feet, the chill of concrete. I feed the woodburner. There is life and I feel every moment.