gravity

There’s still a hooligan outside which is a damn sight better than one inside. At Tapselteerie one was the other but making different sounds. Outside it was all crashes and bangs and thumps, whumps and with a refusal to own up to any of them, whereas inside the whistles and toots, the rattles and shakes seemed quite happy to locate themselves. Many newspapers gave their lives for a gap filling, holes in the walls, gaps in the window panes, cavernous splits in outer doors, the underneath of which had never touched ground for decades. Rain found its way in, under, through and over. Even my children were damp of a morning, wondering, as they did, if they had wet the bed. Even I wondered that.

Nowadays, as the hooligan refuses to let go of it’s fury, my home is better protected, even though it is as old as Tapselteerie. Yes, there is the odd leak, and it isn’t wise to open a wind facing door to greet the exhausted postie unless I close it smartly behind me. The ferry didn’t run so. he had to wait for the possible next one, which wasn’t possible, thus demanding another two hour wait. Hey ho, island life. The disturbing of gravity is quite the thing up here. Lord knows what it must be like further north. Today I returned 8 wheelies to their upstandment, wheeched over and obviously nauseous judging from the mouthal eruptions littering the track. Interesting, nonetheless to see the food choices and waste of others. A load of plastic wrapped somethings, dog poo bags and a ton of wine bottles. Moving on.

Disturbing gravity, according to my ancient Thesaurus, refers to ‘being ridiculous’. I immediately jumped on that one as a brilliant interpretation. It thinks me, as I was talking just this lovely morning with a very dear friend about the importance of fun, of being, I suppose, ridiculous. We take too much seriously, especially ourselves when all we really want is to have fun. And it is entirely possible. In me it is natural. I can be in the most ‘serious’ situation, with everyone being ‘serious’ all I want to do is to play the fool because I can see the ridiculous. Not to hurt anyone, of course, but just to remind these wonderful doing-their-best humans that it is so much easier to let go of pretence and to be honest and thus, individual. I remember this in my younger days, but, like most, keen to be accepted as one-of-the Ones, I spent hours dressing myself up as someone who would fit. In short, it was not good enough to be who I was.

Now, over 70 I will be who I am and give diddly squat about trying to be someone else. However, I do acknowledge the young now, the ones still stiffing themselves into the wrong clothing, employing an almost alien language, a new shape, just to fit in. I. look, hopefully, towards the wise parents who probably suffered those restrictive chains themselves and who will now look carefully at the young of our future and get to understand them, to listen and to learn and to ask them the questions most of us have never been asked.

Who do you want to be?

What would you like your life to look like?

And then, and then, to sit and listen.

When I was a student, I learned how to write good English, to enunciate clearly and to employ slang or swearwords only in the playground or in whispery corridors. Now, still a student, still learning, I play with my words. Words are like music, they sound soft or harsh, harmonious or discordant, resonant of the very thing they describe. Onomatopoeiac. My dad would have a fit at some of my words. I think he considered loose language to be a sign of laziness, an unwillingness to search for and then to produce a word most fitting. He had a zillion words in his mouth and was never short of just the right one, bringing in a goodly measure of humour and exaggeration, just like a pro. Once, with his head inside the drinks fridge, he announced that ‘we are perilously low on lemonade’. He could spoof it anytime he chose. I think I get my passion for word invention from him, from Roald Dahl and from other great storytellers who lifted words up for scrutiny, oft times laying them down again, all tapsalteerie, just for effect.

To play with word assemblage is to dance with fairy feet over the rules of engagement. Words have double flipped over the generations. Some have been lost, new ones found and elevated to dictionary standing. Playing scrabble with me is never going to please a dictionary pedant. In fact, no dictionary pedant would even consider it. There is only one person I can play scrabble with and that’s my youngest son who has more crumjumbling words in his head than anyone else I know. The game invariably dissolves into hysterical laughter as one or other of us attempts to explain the meaning of whatever word we have just laid down on the board.

We are taught not to exaggerate, not to overstate with words and yet where’s the fun in rules like that? Sounds very beige to me and I love colour and lift, nonsense and musicality. Life is tough enough already. We do well to remember that having fun is good for our health. And, in that, I take courage and inspiration. Could be the lyrics of a song, a line snatched from Twitter, Facebook or Instagram; could be a flow of words from a passerby #therearelessofthosefornow; could be a crash landing in my own head whilst buttering a salmon steak. Could come from anywhere but if there is music in it, then it grabs my attention and I take a good look see.

This morning, around 5, the sun cast red across the sea-loch. A fingermist hovered over the still waters, tree reflections shimmying like dancers. The goddess of the breeze obviously thought it was her turn. Tickling the surface with her fingers, she lifted the runnels and rivulets into bubble swirls and sent them all on a trajectory for the wide open maw of the Atlantic Ocean. Gulls dipped, oystercatchers twillopped overhead in a cacophony of oystercatcher-ness, and one lone young whitetail soared like a big showoff almost level with Cirrus, although, of course, he was nowhere near those ice clouds. It just looked like it from down here, from stuck down me, gravitously cemented to Mother Earth with my neck a paperclip as I watch and watch till, with barely a wing beat, he slides 10 miles to the other side of my looking. A lift of light and the starlings arrive like a football crowd to the bird table. There have to be 15 of them, babies open-beaked and squeaking, parents madly gathering seed, feeding, gathering seed, feeding and on and on till Lady Night finally says Enough! Sleep!

I remember it well. And I am glad I do. I have known the times of overwhelming, my times of flight, high as Cirrus but not quite, my lifts, my joys, my swollen ankles, my sleepless nights, my troubled days, my moments of supreme peace, my ages of gloom. All of these colours, all of these states of being, these words are me, are you too. It is how and who we are. It bothers me (for about 3 seconds) that the greatest requirement in this life is to keep showing up, first, to keep learning, second, and to keep applying said showing up and said learning, ad infinitum for all eternity, forever and then some.

Easy Peasy.