hours

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Island Blog – Just a Belief Away

You know that thing, when some thing happens about which you feel you can do no thing? The ordinary path, walked each day, a surety underfoot, possibly a foolish surety, suddenly twists into a knot you can’t undo and you’re down there looking up at the frickin hooha of it, with only the sky as guidance and in the wrong boots for a tricky climb. It can appear as if the world has got herself into that now because this situation (a peelywally name for it) means I can’t see beyond the knot. It’s huge and a definite halt in the skinny path, a blocking out of light, an earthly gasp.

Then, as hours go slowly by, each day like a foot-dragging teenager who doesn’t want to return to school, each night a tumble of sheets, the unwelcome dreams flensing skin, infecting thoughts which, so they tell me, just want a rest from this whole thinking thing, a little hope pirouettes in. Then a little more. Never have hours felt so bloody minded. They trudge like prisoners in chains, exhausted. I watch the raindrops, listen to the soft wind, walk through it, bat away sluggish flies, see the windburn on our trees, smell Autumn and there’s a welcome in this place and a lift. Autumn is here, a bit early, yes, but here nonetheless. The swing between that knot and the open sky proffering a higher view uplifts me, even if I am well stuck on the ground of it all.

I know all the platitudes. In my opinion, the lot of them should be removed from every voice. When disaster slam-dunks a person, any platitude, bar none, is offensive, and why? because the one who delivers has not taken time to think before speaking. Just saying.

So, although we are in the thicktwist of the thing, there is always the power of choice, and choice is a power. to decide to focus on hope, on a positive outcome, to visualise it, every damn minute. All a choice. I have met too many sinking souls who decide to sink. No matter the matter, no old creed residing, no matter the odds, nor the ends, Hope, God bless her, is just a belief away. Always.

And she is mine.

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Island Blog – Means a Lot

Today was one to get through. It took hours, long hours, long as snakes. We all get them, I know, but in our western culture of not admitting to anything sad, most, if not everyone, says nothing, as if to admit to being completely human suggests a structure broken, damaged, faulty. I don’t buy into that. I will say when I feel (and here even I falter for wording) sad, angry, lost in the tsunami of what just happened. It is as if there is something wrong with admitting (wrong terminology) to a weakening. Even that is wrong, somehow. How odd that, with such a vibrant and expansive language within our grasp, the aeons of culture control stultifies. We are a people of denial. To seek the help of a counsellor is something whispered, reluctantly, to a best friend, if mentioned at all. I am happy to say that I have had counselling for most of my life, and thank goodness for the lot of them, for they have been my helpers along my always tricky path. When I did admit, way back to seeking such a wise helper, I do recall my body language showing shame, my eyes averted, my body somewhat cowed. What ridonculous nonsense! That’s what I think now. We all need help along our tricky way, at some point. It is so damn British to think we don’t.

Today I felt the death of my friend harsh as spikes in the soles of my feet. I felt it in the way I didn’t want breakfast, nor lunch, even as I ate both and tasted nothing. I felt it every time I rose from my chair, awkward, stiff, sore. I felt it when I made myself do the 100 pulls on my rowing machine, miscounting, lost in some cut between time and untime, an airy space of nothing, of no sound, no feeling, a nothing place. I felt it when I went upstairs to read in bed for an hour, barely following the story, my eyes ever looking out to the hills, the sky, the gullfloat into a scud of clouds. I felt it when I swept the floors, watered the orange tree, watched walkers walk by. Beneath it all, I have gone away. I function, but the ordinary makes no sense. It used to. It had depth, gravitas, a point. Not now. And, this is crazy because she has a husband who adores her still. I haven’t seen her face to face for years. I know very little about her daily life over decades. And, yet, this is how I feel. We met at 6. We share a birthday year.

And that means a lot.

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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.

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Island Blog – A Tundra Meet Without

Talking with an old friend today, I found my thinks coming into my mouth in words. It’s interesting how, when this happens, words can jumble like something as yet un-sorted through, like a crowd in disarray and in need of leadership and organisation, like kids in an unsupervised playground at break time. In both of these, the dominant factor is escape from a confined space. In the first, a big poly-bag, in the second the limitation of a desk, the well-breathed air of a morning’s lessons and the four walls that surround. It’s the same with the release of words after long hours of nobody to speak with beyond Myself (and she is always lurking) the dog, the geraniums and the disinterest of Radio 2.

My friend says something about her own loss and bereavement and there’s a tidal wave rising in my throat. I can feel it and I swallow down, mostly to no avail. I can blurt. The very best of us can blurt after all even as we may pretend we absolutely never do. It isn’t that I want to fix my friend, not at all. How can I ever know, no matter how much she tells me how life is for her, understand fully a sadness I cannot imagine? This applies to anyone I meet. We are all unique, in joys, in pain, in experience, in a zillion other ways. But the impulsive desire to connect on common ground is only human. If I care, I care, but my words need leadership. I am not a helmsman, nor helmswoman , nor helmsperson or whatever title is now socially acceptable. I am an excellent crew, Himself told me this oftentimes and he liked having an excellent crew for a wife. In fact, he liked it so much that I was never taught to helm at all. Funny, though, I do remember basking in the glory of being a First Mate as if the glass ceiling didn’t bother me one bit. I think differently now. I digress…….

I know I am more distant than my friend in terms of the death bit and by many months. I also know that I am planets away from her experience. But the grief we share, the common ground, is still tundra for us both and here we can meet. We fill in time, we tell each other. We do a little thing and then another little thing after the first little thing as we crawl our way through the days Without. And here we can help each other. We can laugh together about the extraordinary and astonishing things our friends say with good and loving intent. ‘Are you ‘there’ yet?’ ‘You should get out more, dress up, volunteer…’ All questions and suggestions are kindly meant, we who are crawling through the tundra, know this. But we can be lonely out there. We didn’t know we were going there at all but here we are, stumbling over the rocks of guilt and regret, passed the cacti of lost opportunities seen through the sharp looking eyes of hindsight. We trip over raised issues unresolved for ever. We shiver in the ice-winds of anger and burn in the sandstorms of confusion. We long for butterflies and an oasis of shade, the promise of an end to this timeless wandering only to find yet another mirage that shimmers and shivers into another day of the same.

And we laugh as we eat our lunch in the island sunshine. We sip our coffee and erupt into nonsense as our eyes connect and sparkle. We remind each other that, before this, we were girls, wild girls, brimming with hope and trust and now, now, in this swathe of tundra, we know we want to find that spirit once again. We take a wander around the island charity shop, laughing about what neither of us can wear again, but how we did once, oh we did once. And we part. I drive home left and she goes right. I know that both of us have been lifted this day. We found an oasis and it was no mirage. Although we both return to filling in the hours, we will remember each other and we will smile. We will both have learned a new something, a new way to look at an old thing and this, I believe is what life really offers each one of us. It is no easy ride for anyone. Not anyone, but the anyones who decide to be open, looking out, honest about how they feel and best of all, courageous enough to ask for help, well, they, we, have the best chance of moving onward. Not to forget, no. But, instead to learn to live on Without. There will always be a missing, no matter the relief initially felt (in my case) at the death. There will be months, years of just getting through each day, but one day, one day, waking up will feel good and the day ahead will be full of promise. I know it.

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Island Blog – Some Days and a Dragon

Some days lift without me doing a thing about said lift-ness. Rising with the early light, everything flows in perfect synergy with everything else and there is no chaos within or without. My body feels lithe and supple, the music, Satie’s Gymnopedies, swims through the dawn, my home and me. Birds flit between the feeders, goldfinch, siskin, blackbird, sparrow, woodpecker, dunnock, chaffinch. No neighbourly cat yet to explode them into the sky, no sparrowhawk to bring them down, just soft reverence to Life herself. I dress, make coffee and wonder how everyone else feels about this morning. Across the sea-loch, mist ghosts the hills below what might just be a blue sky. I haven’t seen one of those for weeks and it’s a welcome sight, one not to be taken for granted as we don’t get ‘spells’ of weather on this island. One day may be all we can ask for, one day of dry, a gift and not one to be ignored but instead to be celebrated actively, mindfully, each minute thoroughly lived because tomorrow, that day that never comes, may well open grey and wet, the sky closed once again.

During these widow days I have known many mornings, many hours of self-doubt and fear, of loneliness and sometimes, despair. Although I know that I must, absolutely must, animate my inner poltroon, start believing and continue to believe that I am more than able to live not only a solo life but one which can still really live even with a missing part. It will always be thus because 50 years of marriage is a very big chunk of any life and to be left behind inside that life now empty of all that was familiar is discombobulating at best. It is almost 2 years now, no, more, because dementia eats a person up little by little and ten years of watching that monster nibble away changed us both. But still, the familiar remained. I knew him and he knew me and no matter the ancient battles fought, neither of us ever won. Now I am just me and sometimes I feel very small indeed. I can spend all night awake freaking out about absolutely nothing real, such as what I will do when my oil tank leaks gallons of oil into the garden, or a huge pine crashes through my roof opening me to the sky in the midst of a hooligan gale when it’s snowing and my neighbours are away in Tenerife? Now, however, a bit further along the road un-travelled I find myself wandering through interspace, a sort of misty corridor of in-between. I am moving, learning how to create a new familiar. Ignoring the clamjamfrie of panics, I sit with myself and we chat. What can you do within this situation, she asks. I close my eyes and let said situation settle into some sort of shape. Nothing about the being alone thing, I begin. She nods. Nothing about the gale. Ah, but I can ask a tree man to check the pines and I can call the oil tank man to check that. Good, she says. Get on with it.

There is nobody in this world, no matter how rich, how well-organised, how balanced who can avoid the big things. Things like gales, oil leaks, death. Nobody. So that means that all of us can learn new ways, a new familiar, but only having gone through the dark times, the rain days, the storms both inside and out. Courage in the face of ‘disaster’ has legs, a brain, strength and power. Fears flit like birds all the time but I can explode them into the sky if I think ‘cat.’ Imagining disaster is normal but not liveable with for long. This state demands action, not helpless panic. To ask, What can I do about any of this? is the question, followed by action and fuelled with courage, even if it feels as though courage seems to have gone off to India to find itself. The human spirit is unbreakable unless that human turns his or her face to the wall and I am not doing that, no matter what.

I was reading about Koi the other day, those beautiful Japanese fish (originally from China) we might see in lakes and ponds far far away from this place. Koi represent courage, the overcoming of difficulties, challenges, big horrible threatening life-changing things. It is said that Koi can swim upstream against any current. It can fight its way to the top of a waterfall and when it arrives at the top, will transform into a powerful dragon, not a destructive one but one re-shaped by all that life has thrown at it, all that it has learned on its journey. I like the idea of that. The thought lifts me, encourages me to face my challenges, make friends with my loneliness, and more, to keep on keeping on whilst engaging completely with it all, even the fearty times. I might become that dragon one day. What larks, Pip!

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Island Blog – I’m Watching

The sky louds as it darks, suddenly. Of course it is no sudden thing to the sky but only to us, captured in the time change thingy. I look away to make a mug of tea and there it is, the dark, closing in and rushing me to gather wood for the fire, as if I was an auld fool who had forgot the hours. Awkward and for a while. I remember it inside my young motherhood, remember rolling my eyes just knowing that babies and other young things work on body clock, not clock clock. Crows still rise at dawn to damage lambs and babies yell for mama when the same mama has only just laid herself down, after the grate clearing and ironing of napkins and table cloths for the breakfasts. The dark came suddenly, still does, with a swoop and yet I am loving the light in the mornings. For a bit I have felt I was the only one awake as Orion showed off in the Eastern sky but now, as if in defeat, he fades as I sip my coffee and I find myself glad of that.

In the now of my my now, I feel at peace, mostly. Obviously, there are sirilous moments (make up word) when I founder; when I walk from room to room looking for, looking for. That sort of crazy. But I like crazy. It fits. I am grounding inside my home that was his home that was our home (ish). I move barefoot always. Learned that connection from my beautiful sister, my brother’s wife and I still do this, no matter how cold. Barefoot. Do we ever do that thing? It isn’t weird. It’s real connection to our earth, our world, ourselves.

This night I see Orion. I follow the line of his belt to Venus. I think. I have tried to upload a star gazer app, being one who really loves stars, only to find daft music and a load of fiddle-di-dee that shuck my head.

I watch everything. People, stars, skies, moments, all of it.

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Island Blog – The Wild

I walk this day through copper gold and spandangles of sunshine. The track, wet, muddy from all the rain, dapples into light, peckled with mosaic, the light glinting off the water spots, the puddles, and lighting up the prints of yesterday walkers. I watch the down, erstwhile forgetting the up until it calls me to me in blue and gold. Me and the Poppy dog keep the beat, or I do, for she scoots and slows, sniffs at pretty much everything, oftentimes right before my feet and it thinks me of tripping. Old folk do think of tripping. I never considered making such a foolish error before, but now I do. How odd that tripping, a simple fall that comes with an answering bounce back into the upright, now holds menace. I could be here for hours, days, should I allow this tripping thing. Then I wheesht myself, saying, out loud, Nonsense, and loudly enough to startle a quiet other walker with his terrier who rounds the bend in a way that wonders me. Is he a ghost, so quiet is he? No, I have seen him before with the same little terrier, politely held on an unstrained leash. Hallo, I say, unable to quell the launch and startle of the Poppy dog, the gap between me and her ears being too great to prevent a situation. I say Hallo in my quietest tone, in A major, I think, and muted, so as to calm things.

He is unfazed. We talk. He suggests unleashing his dog and I nod in agreement. Dogs are always better off without the strangle-throat of a leash. Always. At best, they will sort themselves out in moments. At worst, the one who knows they are about to be dishevelled, right here on this peaceful track, can get away. Humans always cock things up, these sorts of things, their fear, their ignorance of the animal kingdom. It rolls my eyes and often. Just let them spar, just let go, just let. But not everyone gets that ‘let’ thing. I suspect my life as a farmer’s wife has loosened my desire to control something way more powerful than I. The animal instinct is definitely a ‘let go’ thing for me. And, I have a lot of opinions around the rules of controlling wild animals, even dogs or cats, but I keep it all to myself. Anthropomorphism is a big deal in the human world, and practised to our detriment, but try explaining that to someone who thinks their pet is their pet.

We humans forget our wild too. It is a big mistake and one we can rethink. During lockdown a lot of folk bought puppies and kittens for their own pleasure, to entertain and to fill a lockdown hole. I am really hoping that most realised they had taken on a wild creature, no matter how domesticated they may have been over many decades. The wild is strong, it never goes. It can be battered into compliance by fear but the worm will turn (whatever that means).

I can see a happy and respected dog or cat immediately. Any cowering, any slink back when a hand is raised, speaks me volumes. A canine or feline who is loved and understood will walk straight-backed, will wag a tail, will merry a look, be curious and open, like the terrier and his man I met today in the dapples and around a quiet corner. A good man, a happy dog, a merry, and a bit shouty, encounter. I thank him. He knows the wild.

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Island Blog – Flapping at Clouds

Yesterday was a day of long hours, the end game of a week during which I wasted much energy flapping at the clouds with a tea towel and expecting them to move on, metaphorically speaking. I don’t know why such times come, nor when they will, but I know everyone has days like these. I used to scrabble about for reasons why, most of which required me to beat myself into scars with a bendy switch. I don’t bother now. Now I am well aware that there are forces at large who are invisible, all knowing and with the big picture in mind, unlike me down here inside my little life. I let them play with my mood and my mind and just wait for them to go, which they always do in the end. But oh my, it’s uncomfortable. My body feels like I swallowed a hippo and my brain is a peat bog after heavy rains. I have to make myself do the ordinary tasks and cannot settle to anything creative. I stare out at nothing and wish the hours away. There is no reason for this; nothing has drastically changed; it is, as if, punishment is due for some heinous crime, one I have no recollection committing, or, worse, that I am sick. Long experience of this scoffs that nonsense away. It is just as it is.

I know these discomforts have come to learn me something; that I will, after the air settles back around me like a soft blanket, understand something that wasn’t on my radar before. It’s a shake up, a wake up, a take a look up thingy. Oft times it is easy to keep on going on without noticing the whole. Sometimes ‘noticing’ the whole, through the eyes of my own limited vision, is merely me circling through the same precepts, the same thoughts, opinions and ‘absolute truths’ until the goodly wise decide on action to stop me eating my own tail. I’m glad of it, once the discomfort has passed, because even if it takes me a while to learn the new learning, the new way to do an old thing, or, even, to relegate said old thing to the compost heap and to reach for a new thing, I am curious by nature and well aware that stuckness is death in life. Lack of motion and the refusal to allow new ways to infiltrate my old ways would kill me off inside a month. Maybe that’s just me. I know that some of my ancients were very happy to be stuck in old ways. We is all different and some more different than most. I know this too, but being stuck is not my nature, even if I can become so without any trouble at all. I always have my eyes on a better me. However, I cannot do this alone. How could I? I am the one who folds into little life without a second thought, scrabbling on through the tall grasses with the odd tea-towel flap at clouds, should they irritate me. I need those goodly spirits with vision, the high flyers, the ones who already know me better than I will ever know myself; who understand and who are kindly-meant. I need to lean into the storm in order to feel the vital force of it.

This morning I don’t need my tea-towel. This morning I know they have moved on. I can tell because my belly is not kicking up a storm and my heart is more Beethoven’s Pastorale, less Def Lepard. I also know that something will dawn on me soon enough and I will add that to my very long list of Aha’s, taking whatever I learn into myself so that I can inch a little further forward in this journey of life. I am certain all of us know these times. We are human, after all, grounded and unaware of so very much. Oh, we read the news, know the science, understand the proven truths, but we have no explanation for the Mystery. We can try. We can argue points, choose different names, fix on gods or God or no gods at all, but we cannot fully explain any of it. And there is something wonderful about that.

All I know is this. As I quest through this amazing life, grounded among the tall grasses of this beautiful and broken world, my mind is free to roam and, in being vulnerable, I know I am fully alive.

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Island Blog 143 Own Hair and Teeth

 

old woman

 

Just in case you are wondering if I’m still at sea, like half-way to Norway by now, let me tell you it’s not true.  I have just been busy with lifey things for a while and somewhat strapped for words, but as I tootled back north the other day after a lively visit to my old ma, I heard them all (the words, that is) stomping back into my brain like old and welcome rellies.  Now there’s a thing!   I captured a lot of them on paper, laying them down word by word and I swear I heard them all sigh with relief.  When your words take off like that, it may not have been entirely their fault.  If anyone, or anything feels neglected and unloved, then I don’t blame them for pulling on their stout boots in search of alternative warmth and friendship.

The down south bit was fun.  I was reminded of delays, of queues and of road rage, of warm locals filled with locals, a merry fire blazing in the grate and good hoppy beer on tap. I became re-aquainted with the red and green man who tells me when I can cross the road, saw babies in catwalk clothing being propelled along in buggies the size of small cars, of business women in heels and pencil skirts, with strident voices and sassy black ear pieces, talking to themselves, not an anorak nor a dither among them.  I wandered through supermarkets sporting foreign sounding pulses, sauces and I marvelled anew at the down south size of parsnips, pidgeons and farm machinery.  Even the brambles are huge which is why they’re called blackberries.  Down south, brambles are those sharp things that tear your stockings when you take short cuts home.

I made friends on the trains.  I say ‘trains’ because to get to Norfolk is not for the faint-hearted, not on public transport. Four trains to get down and four to get back and by the time it was over I was well-practised in minding the gap and in avoiding those delightful old darlings who hump their suitcases onto the platform and then stop dead to pull on gloves or to re-arrange their scarves, causing a massive pile up and not a little tutting.

Annie and Damien were (and probably still are) a delightful young couple on their way to a relative’s wedding plus a few family visits.  I knew Annie was going to be fun when she said, as she reached up to the luggage rack, and her flat, firm midriff was revealed, that her granny used to warn her that her kidneys would fall out.  I told her that’s exactly what I was going to say and we were firm mates for 3 hours from that first chuckle.  Of course I gave her the lowdown on island Wife and of course she said she would Google me.  Ten years ago that would have sounded insulting.  Now it’s something to be proud of, the fact that you are Google material at all.  I was sad when we said goodbye in Peterborough.

My next new friend was on the journey north, two fine young men (everyone’s young to me) en route for a presentation in Stirling.  At first, they sat opposite each other, squashing me and a very charismatic pastor against the window, until we established between us that they were going to have to keep whizzing the laptop round in order to complete their work, which would drive me and the charismatic pastor nuts long before Ely.  I swapped seats and then started chatting, which wasn’t all that kind or sensitive, as they had work to do, but they were gracious enough to indulge me as we swapped life histories, zip folder sized.  One of them South African John was most intrigued about the Island Wife bit and instructed his wife, via text or whatsapp or something, to Google me too and then to buy the book.  I hope their presentation went well.  I was rather sad to see them go too, even if it did allow me and the charismatic pastor to spread out a bit.

Growing older is not always fun.  My old ma is pretty tired of waking up every day to the same number of hours alone.  Most of her friends have sailed heavenwards already and those that haven’t might do any day, even if they do still drive and play scrabble like champions right up to the cocktail hour.  However mum still jokes with the postman, milkman, paper boy, delivery man, etc and they all adore her.  There she is, this silver fox, with a ready chuckle in her mouth and smart as you like when off to see a movie (only she calls them films of course).

What I love about the little train from Glasgow to Oban is that I know all the guards and trolley dollies.  I also find most endearing (and seek it) the station announcements that are always a station out.  As we pull into Crianlarich (where this train divides) the nice woman tells us we are now arriving at Gairlochhead, astounding anew the visitors who look around a lot and stare hard at the station sign just to be sure.  She, the nice woman, has been getting it wrong for months now and nobody official seems to mind or notice.  The trolley runs out of sandwiches in the summer, ever single summer, long before 2pm and those who lingered over a glass of French red regret it for miles.  Those of us in the know purchase our baguette or our meal deal in the station and some of the older ones (including me) get up early to make our own. What I don’t like about our little train is the state of the WC (I refuse to call it a toilet, having rebelled against the word somewhere in my teens as it sounded way too grownup and proper), although WC is pretty ridiculous if you think about it.  Water Closets date back to Victoria Regina and she’s long gone.  On trains down south some eager official sorts out the loo at regular intervals, but this is obviously deemed unimportant or ‘not my job’ on the west highland line.  On a friday evening, it is actually dangerous to need a pee beyond Taynuilt, going either way.

Going back to the growing older thing, I find I rather like it, even if I do have to remind myself when leaving this train, with all my belongings, not to stop as soon as my feet hit the platform.  People are getting heavier these days and a collision might land me in A& E – or them, but either way, it would, or could, be messy.  When someone hears my age, they always tell me how young I look, and I don’t want to hear that.  I know I am an OHAT woman (own hair and teeth) for now, but I am proud of all those years at the back of me and if everything is about looking young, then does this mean I am more seriously OTH (over the hill) than I already thought?  Is being older a bad thing?  I hear so many folk say they don’t want to grow old, but they are saying this through pert lips and still with the ability to run for cover, whereas many of us need to bring our own because the chances of finding it (cover) let alone being able to run for it, is way in our past.

In Sainsburys, that massive animal with every conceivable foodstuff couched in its belly, I bought, without specs, a seed mix.  When I sprinkled it on my morning muesli and poured on the half fat milk it turned brown.  On further investigation (specs on) I discovered the seeds had been roasted in soy sauce.  I laughed and laughed and ate it all.  This is the fun of growing older.  Let not this cup be taken from me as it has so many others, for I will cause mayhem for as long as I possibly can, whether I intend it, or not.