fiction

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Island Blog – Do You Remember?

I walk today in the Tapselteerie woods. After a refresh of rain, after yesterday moving through a thick of tourists and shoppers, there are no Excuse Me’s here, no need. I am alone amongst the hidden faeries, the ground-dwellers, the dripping leaves, alone in the glorious, yet musical silence, even though it isn’t silent at all, not with all this dripping and faerie chatter. There’s a thrum from the soft ground, I can feel its rhythm through my soft shoes, my toes connecting with the gentle buzz of conversation, nature speke. I stand awhile to listen, just stand, to take in the peaty smell, think ‘whisky’, laugh at myself, the sound caught up in the air, held in the massive branches overhead, then released back into silence. I see a broken limb, a huge one, and put my hand on the beech bark, murmer something, a thank you. You are old, you are fallen, I see you. My fingers, gnarled and bent look like my mum’s now. I never saw that coming, but nor did the beech limb, thrust out wide, fighting for light, tangled in it, too far, too high, too ‘out there’ to survive.

I move on and out of the woods, the only sound my rainproof jacket (awful noisy things) and begin my walk home. There’s a mist across the sea-loch, a smokey rub-out, a loss of definition. Everything is lush, green, ebullient, a disguise. In winter everything is clearly defined, the start and the stop, the contours of rocks and hills recognisable like a something laid bare, naked, a woman without make-up, just woken. I slow my pace. The rushing in me is like a burn in spate, a river, even, a tidal flow and this is not always a wonderful thing. I know that my life required a great deal of rushing, but not now, yet still I rush. To slow, to sit, to wander, to ponder, all can feel like anathema even as I see others who can and to wonder why I cannot.

I think back to the fallen limb, to all the fallen limbs I have encountered throughout my years among the Tapselteerie woods, as an islander. I remind myself of all the moments I have calmed and gentled others in turmoil; how many times I have heard said that my bright spirit has uplifted a falling soul, how many I have welcomed in with warmth and light and music and ideas. And then I remember how easy it is to forget the legacy of what I have given, of the who I am, of the how I eased life, of the when I showed up, stood tall, made laughter a bridge of opportunity for another. I did that, and I forget that.

I’m home now, and writing this, but my mind scoots back to the old beech. She gave and gave, proffering her strength for a ‘great place for a kiddies swing’ as she pushed and fought for light within the canopy. She struck out, braved herself, gradually over a long time, silently, determinedly, proudly, independently. I did too.

And so did you. Do your remember?

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Island Blog – Eyesotropy

I would have been thrown out of English Language class for this one, but, as I often was, I stand strong on this one. Back then, in the days of switch ruling and rigid definitions and absolutely no questions ever asked when a bright and (obviously) challenging student rose like fire in an actively cool environment, words were only acceptable if there was proof of their existence in the old dictionary. It was, I’m sure, born from the fear of the fire. Moving on…….

I’m just back from a trip to Specsavers on the mainland, meaning the rest of the world, btw. You are welcome to it, all of you who enjoy filling pavements and streets with a bosom and butt closeness which (never ‘that’, thanks Dad) ever has appealed to me. I need acres spare around me, an ocean preferably. I went for an annual checkup and I was, I confess, a bit anxious. Last year sent me to Glasgow for checks. I would say I am not a ‘fearty’ but I was, a bit. Degeneration is not a fun thought, and nor are the possibilities of ageing and the maybe loss of independence. Eyes are pivotal, important, essential, all of those and more. However, I have a son and his warm family to warm me in, over that sluice of water, that stretch we have taken for granted as almost an easy ride for many years, and one which is now a right pain in the arse. Mostly, it is true, because of an Incomplete of adequate ferries. I refuse to join the bang-on about that.

I join my grown-up grandlings on the journey over and am collected by their dad and delivered. The appointment is welcoming, efficient, fun. I’m still sort of waiting for the demise chat, the ‘I’m sorry to say that…’ thing. It never came. My eyes are, she said, very healthy for my age. No, she didn’t say that, she just said the healthy word. She showed my my twin planets, red moons, a few striations in gold. I was impressed. They’re mine? She nodded. yep. So, downstairs I go to sort new specs, and frames. Two for reading, two for better clarity driving, one pair tinted grey. So exciting, and we had loads of laughs about ridonculous frames and how I looked and so on. I think I held my son up with all this hilarity. Result, no further nothings until next year. Oops, double negative……

Off we walked in the rain for toasties and soup passing dogs and cyclists and kids and puddles. The chats altered as we moved up or back in the skinny group and I learned much about more, here and there. Snatchtalk. Home now and so thankful for my eyesotropic balls.

Just saying.

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Island Blog – A Precious Island Life

The mist is definitely on a mission to smudge. I saw it first around 4 am, woken as I often am when the circus of the skies, the cosmos, opens for business. I know there are conversations going on up there, ones we need to hear and to understand, but, sadly, I only talk human, child and dog. I feel it nonetheless, and there is a freedom in that itch, that discomfort, because it connects me to more than me, to more than the solo and the loneliness, to more than ridondulous concerns about which wheelie to put out.

Work today was busy, wild at times, and tiring, until I approached my own tiring nonsense and sharpened it into a soft lead pencil. I can write my own next sentence. I always can. It felt a bit limpy, nothing for a while and then a big invasion of lovely customers, so smiley, wanting soup, quiche, cake, hot chocolate, iced latte, extra bread, focaccia sandwiches, and yet, do you know what all of them really wanted? A welcome, a recognition, a pull to forward, an invitation and a hallo and we are so happy you came, thing. Chances are, not one of them will get that, but I do, and so do the owners of this welcome cafe. They, the visitors, are spinning through life, escapees from huge pressure jobs and lives and here they are under the mist mission with a chance of blue. It must take time to process. Actually I hate that word as I have never consciously, nor knowledgeably, processed a damn thing in my 70 years. And then, these big and possibly powerful folk are gone back to the whatever of possibly powerful lives, leaving us with the mystery of mist mission, the lift of sky birds, the wild of spatter rain, the thrum of maybe thunder, the friendship in the pub, the people long here, grown wild from the nonsense and fun and hard work and deprivation of a precious island life.

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Island Blog – Thinkfull Traverse

It began gently. We worked on this and that in the almost empty cafe, tables waiting, our voices echoing in the space, rolling up and over and down again back to us behind the counter. We commented on the bajonkers of yesterday when folk arrived in bulk packages, and the difference this day. Someone, I won’t name her, said the jinxword ‘Quiet’. And that was that. In they rolled, those with children, those on a tour bus, those in couples, singles, triples and more. The sun shone on them until the clouds snatched that chance away and even the roof builders, noisy nail-gun-toting buildmen, with voices and shouts and good works and noise, had to demur, to capitulate as the heavenly water threatened to dilute their egos.

Meanwhile, down in the depths of cafe-ness, everything changed. Suddenly, and it was ‘suddenly’, we were serving lunches, quiches, soups, baby chinos, scones with or without cheese, cream, jam, foccacia sandwiches with beet, green stuff, hummus, quiches, fresh, intelligent, spontaneous, ice creams, cakes so soft and so spectacular, I do marvel. These bakers appear to bake without effort, all bonhomie smiles of welcome even if they are mid shift on a pastry or spongeal bonkers. When something runs out, they say, Ok and go back to make another fabulous.

I am dunk-sunk in the Washeroo, my choice, definitely my choice. I like it in this bubble, even when the temperature rises to silly high, all that steam from the dishwasher and the hot water required to make everyone safe from whatever they imagine is out there. I am good at my job, I know that, even as I remember the washing up thing back in my day when the process was often all about the visual and less about the temperature of the water, the cleanliness of the scrubber (not me, the thing that scrubbed). Different now. I also remember Health and Safety appearing, she in a suit (so very obvious) having driven up the long pothole track to sit alone at dinner, like a bird, her head pecking left and right, her judgement the next morning, clear. She knew there were 4 collies in the kitchen, 5 children dragging in brush and mud. and vibrant stories, a husband who never cleaned up for anyone and who, for sure, had a chainsaw to mentor with oil and spray and gloop in the cooking kitchen, or a lamb to deliver in the warm because the alternative was hypothermia and death. But she had her remit. I sat with her, I did, I could hear her stockings rasp as she sat, as she moved and I did feel for her feral self. I’m sure there was one, somewhere. inside.

Today did think me. My thumbs hurt, I stood a long time, it was humid pre rainfall. I did feel it all. But I felt all of this before my cafe work, all on my own over many widow years, and then at times the sore thumbs, the ones which have served me for over 7 decades, took on a magnitude, when other bollix, olding bollix, rose into the ‘it’ of a day, and on and on until I, even I grew sick of my winging as if this was how it would always be, and from now on, the olding crone whispering a downfall. So, instead, ignoring the olding crone, the sore thumbs, the souciant eruption of care for my thumbs, hips, old legs, slower arms of me, I rose. I did. I remember doing it and it recalled me, the doing of it many times before, although I was younger then.

It doesn’t change, that choice, that attitude. Nobody has to turn in, if they don’t want to. I’m going to turn up every day no matter the what, the which, the who, the when of anything. Feisty, Fairy, Failing, Freeing, Focussing, Free-ing up, Friendly, and, trust me, all the other F words chuckling me in this daily throw of the dice, and that also shuts me the f up on my sore bits. We dance together, work in a dance dynamic as we serve and serve, clear and clear, smile and smile. In short, we have found a home. I really think so.

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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?