humor

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Island Blog – All About Light and Laughter

There’s a thing about the old year heading into our past, what with Christmas excess and access just a week or so away. It dillies us. Many are considering big things, big changes, altered thinking, all of those tiddleypoms. I don’t mean to minimise the intent behind them, not at all, but it does wonder me because in my long experience of a gazillion changes in a long marriage, long life and an absolute whammy of inventive children, nothing big happens overnight. Not sustainably so. It thinks me. Do we imagine we can transform as happens in lovely but completely unbelievable films? I think we might. Because we have this deep longing to be who we aren’t, with all our mistakes, even as we may happily allow them in others, proffering encouragement and even support to bring them up and out of those clutching chains. So what holds us in brackets, a definite halt in a sentence, one which might have developed on and on with the odd comma? It wonders me, even though I flipping know every graphic on this hoodlum nonsense. It’s not grammar that holds us in chains, but people, awkward relations, expectations, fixations, and not one of those bring light, nor laughter.

I stood on heights today, affixing twinkly winkly lights as the afternoon took hold of a bright morning and brought in a shroud of cloud, a darkling rain. I growled. I did. It’s as if the old year hasn’t peed for months. I look up as I go fo fill my bird feeders, the goldfinches, blackbirds, dunnocks, sparrow, tits all cheeping and swinging like gymnasts on wires and through skinny branches, and I say, quite loudly, Well Damn You! There is, as you might imagine, no immediate response. The birds still fly, even as the wind buffets them awkward. It lights me and I laugh. I know that they can live without getting their knickers in a knot, because they work with what meets them each morning. I want to live that way. I do live that way. I didn’t always, not with all the youngstress of kids and work and business and what-the-hell- is-happening thing.

But what I did know was that I was always going to be about light and laughter. It was a choice. I had seen too many others go into the dark. I knew about the dark, of course I did but when I met it or it met me, I pulled back eventually, recoiled. You are not for me. You have no power over me. My favourite people? Those who have found the light, through endless searches, looking for help, guiding lights, those who were broken and who decided to rebuild from, sometimes, nothing. I look at them and it definitely thinks me because I have everything, I have enough, I have it all, and there’s a new year coming after the gorgeous Christmas hooha, a new chance to be who I am with light and laughter, for anyone to be who they are with confidence and the right to write their own name across 2026 with a big fucking pen.

With light and laughter, of course.

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Island Blog – You lifted me Sister

I’m watching the last blooms of my beautiful roses bounce and jounce in the wind, spattered with soft rain, the kind we get here, the familiar, the soft touch of it on windows, the joy of it on my face. We do get the torrential, we do, that cloudal punch which drowns little skinny rivulets, turmoiling them into spate and even into threat. Roads flood, bridges laughing, saying, Well, you get on with it in your big cars and even bigger attitudes! We islanders have lived with this rise and fall of the rain in our lives for centuries. Not me. I am not a borner, not a real Muilleach, but I have learned and loved the ways of survival for over four decades, and I want to live nowhere else. There is an extraordinary to this life, the way humour lifts any circumstance into laughter and a conjoining, usually into music and the pub. I consider this. How many millions of disasters were diluted with laughter and whisky and warmth and comradeship, and a march out to sort the out out? A sunken beast in a bog, a lost dog, sheep, heifer? And all in the twist of a dark and spiralling wind, the Atlantic rising like a frickin menace, spitting, turmoiling, interrupting a meal, an arrest in the shape of the day, the child out there somewhere, where is she? the goats in a twist, the hens freaking out, the milk cow needing a bring in. The whole thing of the thing. Familiar, yes, but there’s this. It might not come. It always does. We know this even as we hope it won’t.

I was there today. Not as the above, although I could wish that back, that need of me to be there, to help with a sunken beast, or goats in a twist, or even hens freaking out, or children who were somewhere. I was. The lonely got me. And here’s a thing about this lonely, and, i guess about me too. I present every single day as ready, prepared. That’s because it matters to me, for me. I plan my day, I mindfully plot my walk through the hours. I make choices. I nourish myself. I walk in the wild, on Tapselteerie, hoping I might meet visitors with whom I will connect, asking them this and that, only because I want them to ask about me. Some do. Most don’t.

The Lonely is a powerful thing. Actually, I don’t think it’s a thing. A thing is a thing, like a jewellry box or a piece of furniture, and the Lonely is more like a living creature, with face, voice, presence.

You called me today, Lu. You lifted me, you laughed me, Thank you wee sister.

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Island Blog – We Just Are

Thing is, if I don’t write, I begin to feel uncomfortable, as if my knickers are back to front. It’s been a few days, not the knickers though. Enough on knickers.

My thinks are nonstop, even when thinks should be fast asleep in their beds. Some of us are like that, born as ‘troublesome’ souls, too many thinks. I, and many like me, have been, and. still are, accused of overthinking. Accused? My point, precisely. I’m not going to say the us of we ever asked for all this tiddleypom in our brilliant brains which, inevitably result in a brouhaha the world finds ‘troublesome’ because it breaks the silence of complicity. And can be messy. I, for example, can see a wardrobe anywhere, in a shop, a garage, an anywhere and immediately think Narnia, my mind heading into another world, way beyond the rigid limitations of living in this one. If I see a track lifting up and away in a wild place, and disappearing around a corner, I want to follow. There be opportunities out there, although maybe not dragons, unfortunately, and my thinks lead me on.

However, life is here, and my imaginatory thinks, the possibilities out there, need to be turned into a module (that’s me) acceptable to the where of my life. So I walk among trees. I stand beneath their astonishing height and strength, think how brave they are. And I thank them, talk to them, tell them, every one, how wonderful they are. They found their way within a chaotic dynamic, seeds earthing, sprouting, lifting into a density of an already canopy. Light is a fight for them, for us too. I stand awhile, although my ‘awhile’ is about fifteen seconds and that’s because of the thinks. I have watched people stand for ages, yoga, mediation, all those things I can’t do because I am my thinks. I must be moving, shaping, changing, learning. I am a seeker and knowing that is oftentimes a pain in the ass. I have tried, am still trying to corral my thinks, but they are wild and free and the goodling about them is that I get to see what many do not. In a wild sea, I can see the depth, feel the anger, sense the history; In the woods I can hear the trees groan; in ground that was once free and is now a clickfit home, I can hear the rumble of all that is now trapped. None of it is loud, but I sense it as I walk by, even as I like the friendly people waving from their new home.

Hallo to anyone else out there who knows what I’m talking about. We are. That’s it. We just are.

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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.

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Island Blog – Tanglewood and Scuttlebutt

I know both. So do you. So does everyone. The tangle wood clutches, trips, confounds, all of that tiddleypom. That’s on the outside of us. It’s in the running, the hiding, the defending, the fear, the confinements. Wherever we walk, we are wary of potential fetters. Those of us concomitant with endless tangle woods may well be ready for the twist and fist and the damn roots that grow sideways and strong as a boxer’s biceps, but even we can be felled. The thing is to learn how to fall. I have learned this, in my mind, anyway. Don’t fall flat, if possible. Don’t reach out arms to defend a fall. Roll. Learn to roll. I have experimented with this, in my mind. I watch how rolling fallers roll and thought wow. Pretty much. That twist away from a frontal stramash, impressive. Takes courage. Are there classes?

So, this damn tangle wood. I thought I knew it, but it denses itself in my not-looking days, growing thixotropic, unwilling to deconstruct, even for me, a long serving member. So rude. And, faced with that regrowth whilst I was busy not growing at all, scoots me to scuttlebutt thinking. I should, I could, I ought to have, I might have. Old voices, judgmental. I reside with Well, I didn’t. Not great. It feels me like the runt puppy or the also ran at a race meet. Or, better, the second son, the second daughter in those days when second really meant invisible and unimportant. It bemuses me that such complete and absolute nonsense yet infects some. It does, including me. This is Scuttlebutt.

Scuttlebutt. Inner talk, gossip. Outer gossip. Nothing positive about it. There are too many shoulds and coulds and didn’ts, too many chances to tangle a human doing the best they can, no matter circumstance, no matter judgement, no matter history. Keep going, that’s I tell myself. At least the tangle wood has no malicious intent.

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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.