January 10, 2024 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – Ice and Curtains

I asked a young friend, well, a friend of my sons, who lives nearby, to come help me, on a rainy morning, to help me hang some curtains. He came back immediately with a Yes. Bless his comeuppance #therightmeaningofthe word. I thought it would be the morra, the rainy morning. It generally is. But these are rain and wind free days, icy clear and freezing, the child of the Winter King learning how to hold the earth concreate, perhaps. She is still holding, and I love her, the slip and slide of her icy stretch along paths that could, but, as yet, have not skidded my old arse into flat. An ice tumble. I wonder about minus 24, when I meet minus 3. Paltry by comparison, I guess, but this country, this beautiful country, one that has seen control, wars, feeble governments and a complete lack of respect for everyone who lives on this land, suddenly feels a whole lot of cold.

If I did pay attention to the news, the buffed up stories of what is happening out there, I could forget my inner laugh. So, I won’t go there. I will, instead, focus on not falling on my arse on the ice, I will lift and swift with the birds who stay close, albeit nervously, as I fill the feeders of a morning, whilst cocking a snook at the Sparrowhawk, up there, somewhere in the ancient pines. Each side of the track looks frozen, is frozen in stasis and beautiful, shapes held by tiny iceflakes, stopped dead like a photograph but in 3D. I stoop to study the way the ice has caught in groove lines, each shape outlined in pure white. The Star moss is a perfect forest, albeit in miniature. Enlarged it wouldn’t be out of place in a Lord of the Rings movie, thick and impenetrable. On warmer days, I could walk by without a second glance, caught up in my own thoughts, but now it takes my breath away, breath that puffs out of my mouth as if I was a kettle coming to the boil. I watch the steam dissipate and think of those crazy mountaineers with icicles on their moustaches, not that I have one of those myself. I squat down to snap a shot on my mobile. I never used to take this thing on my walks, but now I do, what with the flat-on-my-arse possibility, no matter how cautious I am about holding my body directly above each step.

Walking in nature has been much written about, the healing, uplifting power gained from just getting up and out, regardless of weather. And, I find it is the truth. If I am feeling a tad weary in my alone life, bored, perhaps, my brain scratchy and unitchable, unable to find much joy in the prospect of domestic engagement, I make myself boot up and out. Every single time it works. I tell my scratchy brain to shut the ef up and to notice, notice, notice everything. A sudden bird flip across my path, the moss, the lichen on tree bark, the twisted limbs of the hookah trees, skinny now, bare, ghostly, waiting for Spring. The track is either a straggle of mud or solid as rock beneath my yellow boots. I might meet another walker, perhaps with a dog, always a delight. We might chat for a few minutes, share a laugh, as the dog pushes against my legs for attention. Or, I may be quite alone, just me and the sky and the ghost trees. A young hind watches me walk by, her ears twitching forward as I say a soft hallo and reasurre her that I mean no harm. It must be a lean time for deer now, no grass yet and everything frozen hard as stone.

I return home refreshed and lively to my cosy island home. I build up the fire, make tea and sit to watch the garden birds, the spread of ice on the tidal loch, the darkling hills beyond. Smoke from faraway chimneys lifts into the blue, spirals of warmth rising straight up as there is no wind to snatch them away. The tea is hot and nourishing and I might just get out the hoover now, now that my mind is cleansed of sludge. The task is still a dull one, but that connection with the out there of my life has soothed my itchy brain into calm. Thankful for such a wonderful life, I rise into action, whilst my curtains watch me from inside a plastic bag. You will hang one day, I tell them, and then wonder if I might put that another way.

November 29, 2021 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – Turmish

My word. I love to make new words. I remember writing an article for BBC Wildlife magazine years ago. Lordy, the editor was a tough nut and a half. She picked and poked and corrected until I was back before the headmistress who expelled me mid A levels. My embers were stoked and, eventually, I burst into fire, my tether at its end. The loch, I wrote, describing a far north body of water in which, apparently, a minke whale was ‘trapped’, poppled with balls of ice. It, the whale, was no more trapped than I inside my polar suit whilst fighting to remain vaguely upright in a slanty gale on a freezing, sleet-blasted hillside, and in February. I had personally watched the whale slide easy as an eel through the narrows as the tide began to ebb, returning for a feast of trapped fish at the next flood. Not once, but four times. Nobody was listening. The fish farmer freaked out about his cages being damaged. I wanted to shake him, tell him we had observed and studied these whales for decades and any one of them would have considered any such bumping or damaging as plain foolish. Big brains, remember and way bigger than the ones we lug about inside our own small and limited confines. There was talk of ‘herding’ a single whale (hallo?) out with a flotilla of boats. There was talk of explosives. We sighed a lot during that week, I can tell you. But when you are up against fear and small community thinking, you are blowing against the wind, expecting it to say, Oh Sorry, I’ll just go the other way, shall I?

Back to ‘poppling’. There’s no such word, she said, the headmistress/editor said. By now I was busy hoping she got absolutely nothing off her Christmas list, ready to fire, to yell, to tell her many rampageous things, but instead I went quiet, deadly quiet, like the eye of a storm. Leave it in. I said, surprised at how commanding I sounded. She said nothing for a beat, then conceded, reluctantly with a lot of tuts and mouth blowing. Today, I find that very word in the dictionary, so ha, ha, ha.

I digress. Today was super wet, wet like a complete soak just going out to feed the birds. I did not walk the dog who is still puzzling up at me as if I have finally lost the plot. Instead, I lit candles, the fire, and watched a movie. Now this is a rare thing for me, to watch tv during an afternoon. In fact, it is rare for me to settle comfortably in the evening to watch a movie. Watching tv is a sharing thing. My African son said that to me this very day as he watched the same movie and he is right. Perhaps this is why I, to date, have not been able to settle by the fire to enjoy a damn good story, beautifully presented, to get lost in someone else’s world just for an hour or two. When the movie is over and I flick the room into silence, there is nobody there to talk to about the experience. What do you think? What did you feel about this bit, or that; him or her; that happening, that twist? Since the bodach is gone, even though, latterly, he was engaged with some soap series whilst I watched a movie, there was no silence when the light of the moving pictures were turned off. There was some sort of conversation, even at the very end when barely a sentence came from his mouth. I had plenty to say, of course and now I say nothing and to nobody. It is a strange time indeed. A time of turmish.

January 25, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 18 – Words on a Feather

This morning I heard a woodpecker in the trees nearby. I have seen his vibrant colours before now, his looping flight drawing semi-circles in the morning sky, but not until today have I heard the sound of him seeking grubs from the bark of a dead tree. Poor bugs I thought at first, all cosy inside the winter bark. A rude awakening for sure – that sudden battering against the walls of sleep like someone firing an Uzi in the bedroom. But the woodpecker must feed and if you happen to be prey for a predator, then this is part of your life, and your death.

The garden birds are both hungry and thirsty within our frozen landscape and they need our help. This weekend is the official Bird Count and I hope everyone will take part, for our garden birds are under threat. It shocked me to discover that many of the ordinary visitors to the garden are now marked as amber or red on the RSPB web site, indicating their demise, and it may not be something that will get better, not without human interest and support. Sparrows in huge and chattering groups make a thinner sound in our hedgerows. Why is that? Because we have taken the hedgerows down clearing land and clearing land again for new houses, offices, big settlements with concrete pathways and fat houses for the hungry home-dweller market.

Birds, like us, are creatures of habit. Swallows, swifts and house martins, wintering in Africa, fly over thousands of miles to nest in the same place they nested the year before, in barns and empty buildings, that can be razed to the ground in a day, leaving them lost and wondering. Owls have no place to rear their young, unless some wise man has fixed up a nest box in safe, quiet woodland. Is there any safe quiet woodland left I wonder? Thrushes are dwindling and even the blackbird and the robin, so very common in our thoughts, are less in number country wide.

But, this is not about doom and gloom, for we can all do our bit. We can’t stop progress, nor should we, for this is the turning wheel of life and we must turn with it. We have no choice. But, we can do our own small bit to help.

In winter, birds need water, and not just to drink. They must be able to wash and clean their feathers on a regular basis. A shallow bird table, freshened through the week will not only bring more birds to our gardens for their own good, but for ours as well, for birds are enchanting to watch as they go about their normal lives. Fat balls and good quality bird seed on a table will save them from wasting precious winter energy flying miles in search of something to eat. Food scraps, and tired old fruit are a good food source too. Check the RSPB web site for more information.

The ground is like iron just now, so the earthworms are safe for a while, but not the birds that depend of them for food.

Let us pay attention and not turn away from this because of our busy lifestyles. We can all do something, and that is what excites me about this crazy life. We may think this doesn’t really matter to us, but without birds a lot of our wild flowers and trees would never seed in the first place. I don’t go with those who say the world is on an inevitable downward spiral into the black hole of time, but I do know that if we all do a little bit, form a new habit, we, you and me in our ordinary lives, in ordinary streets and houses, can really make an extraordinary difference.