island

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Island Blog – The Tomorrowlands

This morning begins, for me, at a time that bothers me in its insistence. No! I almost shout but don’t, modifying my shout-ness, even though there is nobody else to hear, this is no longer acceptable, this 05.30 lark when even the larks are slumbering on. And, yet, my body clock ignores my remonstrations with the tenacity of a teenager. I give in and get up. The light is the right light, the morning light, and the day is dawning whether I like it or not. I do like it for I am an inveterate morning person. What does inveterate mean? I forget, but it fits because other people use it around such subjects as chips with vinegar, reading crime novels and gardening, to mention but three inveteration opportunities.

I digress. Risen and with coffee on the brew, I wander into the conservatory which is cold. The nights are cold, star-backed and sometimes frosty, a relief from the heat of the sun. I am not complaining. Sun and heat are rare gifts in this island life and nobody with a modicum of sense moans about the odd times we enjoy both of these together. Oh we know the sun is out there somewhere, behind a depth of cloud cover that could halt an entire Scottish regiment, a feat most opponents have historically failed to achieve, but the ability to get the old boy to push through has confounded us longtime. Wishing doesn’t cut it, nor do prayers. Weddings can, and have, capsized a whole bride. Nonetheless, we island on because the beauty of this lump of rock is second to none.

The day slows down as I feared it might. Some days are tortoises where they used to be hares, way back when a clamjamfrie of children, not all my own, plucked at my skirts for biscuits and pressed for attention, then disappearing alarmingly, returning just in time and in dire straits, when food was required every 30 minutes and when life had her hand in the small of my back. Move on, move quicker, MOVE! Now there are no such demands, no pressure from life, in fact she is now telling me, the skeerie minx, to slow down, to ca’ canny, to rest. But even as I dislike this sudden, for it feels sudden, lowering of my sails, it is here with me now and I must needs welcome it as I welcomed, and thanked, the spirited life in my limbs. I decide to shift the limb spirit into my mind. It seems to work. Instead of bemoaning a loss of spirit and strength, I welcome it into my thinking. It decides my thoughts which decide my feelings which decide my actions. I have learned this from life coaches, a few of whom, or is it which, are in my family, and I have imbibed the truth of it and taken it as ‘read’. Funny that word. Read sounds like ‘reed’ and we know what it means. Read sounds like ‘red’ and now we are much confused. Heaven knows how anyone can ever comprehend, pronounce or employ such tiddleypom when learning English, especially the old English, a language quite beautiful to me but if I were to launch into it in, say, a Glasgow pub, I might not get home at all.

I’m still digressing. What I wanted to communicate was and is that my day was slow. It took me half hour stretches of resistance to restlessness, holding, controlling my desire to lift, walk, move, and it thinked me of the sea, the waves on the beach, fretting at the sand as an old woman plucks at the bobbles on her old cardigan. I read a bit, walked a bit, went to the shore a bit, made a feta and spinach dip, a bit, sewed a bit and la la la. I know it is right and proper for my children to have their own lives. I celebrate that. I know that it is right that my old china is dead. I celebrate that too, because it was always going to happen and could have been so much more upsetting than it was. I know I am perfectly tickety-wotwot alone. And, I also know that there are so very many other people out there who know exactly how it all feels.

Slow days, they come, but the joy of living in this funny, clever, resourceful and dynamic community is something I treasure and will treasure again at 05.30 in the Tomorrowlands.

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Island Blog – It Is Enough

I am awake, early, before the sun is fully up, and I have slept enough. This day is my last in Africa and there is much to do. First off, I must needs park the panics, those fussy itchy thoughts as spikey as porcupines, the ones that demand an active hands-on riffle through and a smart shove into perspective. Will my hold luggage weigh too much? Should I find a tote bag for my hand luggage? How many underlayers should I have ready and about me for my arrival into a 30 degree temperature drop? What about liquids and such, which do I pack and which do I have ready for inspection in a clear plastic bag? And there are many more such flapdoodles to un-flap about, all easily sorted. I clear my mind of the swirling chaos, remind myself to inhabit the present moment and make coffee. I sit outside on the stoep and watch the sky, the rising of the sun, a warm pink backlight for a silhouette of trees. Birds call out, sounds I will not hear back on the island, African birds, coloured up like rainbows and speaking a language I don’t understand. A flash of electric blue, a wide span of ruby tail feathers, a butter yellow head, they cut the sky in two, these glorious creatures, an imprint on my memory.

I will love the change of things as I will remember the colours of Africa. Returning home to the island with its skinny roads and warm people almost happens without me. I step on a plane, three in fact, although not all at the same time, take my seat and up I go to cut other skies in two, many skies and one sky, crossing over continents and oceans, countries, deserts, mountains and rivers. A magical thought indeed. Someone might look up to watch the metal bird, heavy laden with precious cargo and, hopefully, my un-heavy hold luggage, as sunlight flashes off its belly, a pink contrail weaving a cloudline. As I doze or eat or read way up in the sky, life continues way down there, families together and apart, discussions on what to do or where to go. Dogs bark away the night or bark it back in again. Meals are prepared, lists are made, fights are fought, losses are grieved and new life is welcomed in. So much life everywhere, so much living to be lived.

For now, for today, I will take in every moment. I will pack, unpack and repack. This is irritating but a part of the procedure, a sort of resistance to change, to leaving what has become the familiar. However, I know of old that we people can quickly establish a new familiar in a surprisingly short time, so capable are we, so adaptable, despite all those hours of flapdoodle. Imagining the worst always first. Lord knows why we do this but I decide it is a perfectly natural amygdala thing, a sorting service provided by our big brains, processing fearful stimuli, a nudge to encourage intelligent preparation before entering a state of change. From there we decide whether or not the fear is real, such as a truck or a leopard coming at us fast. Needless to say, my fear is a bundle of nonsense – do I have the right clothes, yes, adequate sustenance, yes, the right footwear, mindset, passport etc. The way we can muddle ourselves with fear is daft but we all do it at times. I chuckle at myself. All is well you flappy old woman. Just prepare, calmly, and then set your sights on the moment ahead because you are playing a vital and important part in that moment, and the next, and the next and the next. All you have to do is show up. And I will do just that but not today. Today will be itself and I will be entirely and wholly present as the gift of living lights me up like sunshine. And it is enough.

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Island Blog – The House is Singing

The noise is spectacular! Five roofers gadding about, a mile high and as if the land beneath their feet was as flat as the tundra. They have performed this task before, methinks, so confidently do they work as a team. The first day there was a lot of hammering and poking through the thatch with long poles to establish contact with the beams. Building a structure a short way above the existing roof, a skeleton of struts to hold the Harvey tiles in place whilst still allowing for air flow so the thatch doesn’t sweat is something else to watch. The men work quickly but not quietly, chatting to each other in some African language no, shouting, even if they are just a couple of feet apart. They sound as if they are here in the room with us and yet they are balancing like monkeys, effortlessly and high overhead. To work with concentration down below is something that requires patience, concentration and the odd yell out of the window asking them to please talk quietly. This, it seems, is impossible. Their natural voices are loud, and it might take an operation to change that. I notice it’s the same among the black men and women wherever they are, shopping, working, shovelling, tidying litter or sharing an office space. These people are naturally ebullient, ready to smile, always polite, always ready to share a greeting, more than ready to laugh. A far cry, indeed, from the UK where all of us are strangers to each other, heads down, avoiding eye contact, barely able to disturb the air with a wave, let alone cut it with a sentence, and as for smiling, well, there aren’t many of them around on crowded streets or inside cars, a bus, a train. It’s as if life is happy here and unhappy back home. I don’t refer to the island folk, nor the Celts, nor a lot of other folk of whom I have little experience, but mainly in the cities and towns. It’s as if they, the ones with heads down, no smiles, empty of greetings, are living in a quiet desperation (not my words) and that makes me very sad. I digress.

It rains. I have never experienced this much rain in Africa and nor has anyone else. However much Africa needs rain, the roofers do not. Add to that the regular load shedding and there is a problem, Ma’am. No power. I see that, I reply, you will need to fire up your generator. He grins and shrugs and fires up his generator. In the times of a drowning deluge, the men run for cover but in gentle rain, the work continues and I watch in trepidation as they skid across the tiles, the sky a mackerel of clouds above them. A tile falls to the ground with a crash. These tiles are long, about 4 ft, and lined with something like aluminium making them heavy. I shudder as the guillotine hits the deck, thankful I had not just walked outside at that very moment. But no man falls, of course not. They have done this job for years and, besides, men don’t fall, or so they believe. Almost 3 days later, the roof is almost completed and having watched the craftsmanship of its creation and elevation, I am very impressed. Now we will have no leaks through the thatch. Now the house looks sharp and proud and the garden looks like a war zone. Offcuts of woods, bits of thatch, bits of tiles, power tools and no-power tools, all scattered across the grass, poor grass, and just as it was gaining new life thanks to all the rain.

Yesterday I sat here at the kitchen table working away on my laptop when a shower of thatch landed on my head. It was a shock and then it was funny. I walked carefully, like I was top of the deportment class, to the bathroom mirror and there it was, a neat round birds nest on top of my head. I do admit, as the holding poles stabbed through the thatch, to a frisson of fear at the thought of a beam collapsing down or a holding pole or a whole man crushing me to a splodge, and I did have to move around the house to avoid more birds nests, but all has gone smoothly. Beyond a lot of clearing up, sweeping and dusting and coughing and spitting, we have all survived the process. And, today, as the sun shines merrily and the generators gurgle and chunter with life giving power, it will be finished, completed and done. All the rubble, the offcuts, the tools and the men will be cleared away, allowing us to put the garden furniture back into place and to enjoy an evening, a braai perhaps, a shared sundowner, laughter and conversation beneath what promises to be a starry starry night. You hear that? I will say. The house, she’s singing. And she will be.

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Island Blog – Machines and People

So there I was, and still am, tiddling about with a replacement washing machine thingy. It has been in my head and at the end of my dialling digits and a rumble in my tumbly for two weeks. The whole online deal appears clear and simple but it is anything but. The baseline is this. My washing machine crossed her arms across her barrel chest and shut down like a judgmental matron and I have known a few of them in my time. She would receive water but would not slosh, nor allow her belly to rotate, nor would she spit out the water taken in. A couple of floor floods later plus a heap of sodden towels, I gave in and hunkered back on my heels. Right! I said. Damn You! I said. And then I mellowed, not least because hunkering on my hunkers was fun once but not so much these days. I could feel my big toes shrinking. Okay, I get it, you are gone. RIP my faithful friend of years. She loosened her arms and I could feel a mellow fill the little room. I rose into action.

My washing machine is insured with full and complete and absolute promise that, if an engineer cannot be found, or one is but he decides my machine a write-off, I will receive a free replacement. When I took this insurance out, I did inform the company that, a) I live on an island, b) there is no such engineer here and c) no washing machine company will deliver to the island, never mind recycle the old one. They, the company, assured me (from Bedford or Manchester, Dubai or India) that all of that isn’t true. I find it is. I order a free replacement and am promised installation and recycling of the old one, but I am canny so I call often to find out wotwot. Twice, my order was not acknowledged even thought I had confirmation delivery emails both times. Third time I asked deeper questions and discovered astonishment. I could hear in their helpful voices they had never encountered island shenanigans before. Quite an excitement for them I thought. I was not angry, nor challenging. All voices came from the throats of genuine warm people who just wanted to help.

Today, I hope, and after some time, I believe my replacement machine is on its way, due for delivery tomorrow. Ah, I thought, I doubt that, so I called and spoke to yet another delightful and puzzled person. She clocked (finally) that island delivery will never be straight from the original courier. So, my machine will not arrive tomorrow. I laughed with her, said I know this place and did she know the name of the courier? She did. Two in fact. I had never heard of either but she said one was Glasgow, one Inverness. I laughed out loud. Days away, I said. Oh, she said, really? hell yeah lady. She gave the number of one and that’s my work tomorrow. It, my machine, will be taken to another courier in Oban (I know them all) and then eventually, come to me. T’wont be here before I leave for Africa but I have neighbours with machines. All is well in this island world and in this exhausting process of calls and holds and so on and so fourth and fifth and sixth, and even though I absolutely know I won’t get installation nor recycling, I have met some lovely warm helpful people.

And, for that I am very thankful. You can have such fun on the phone if you decide to get to know, a little, the warm human on the other end of the line just doing their job.

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Island Blog – Roots

The first time I set foot on this island and I knew I was home, not because of his story but because of my story, yet to reveal itself to me. How very far we can wander in this life, our roots keeping faithful track. We will not let you go, they say from deep deep down in the ancestral core. I had no reason to know any of this, not at first footfall. It was simply that something seemed to rise from the rocks and the muir through my feet, into my legs and on up into my heart, my soul, as if the roots had been waiting for me a very long time, longer by far than my own time. Although it took a while for me to find my place, although life was sometimes just too hard, nothing changed my knowing. I was home. I am home, among my own people, their stories, their lives, even as I knew nothing at all about any of it. The cold, the wet, the slap and fret, the endless winter, mould growth, frozen pipes, chilblains on chilblains, hot tears, wild fears, none of these made me doubt, made me hanker for somewhere else. Guests are coming, must be Spring despite the snow still falling. But I cannot. Fall.

No hardship born, imagined or played out could change my mind. I am home. Breathe it in, suck it up, breathe, wait inside the wildness, the raw bloody wildness, fickle weather, my damaged plans, my lunatic fantasies of escape that turned to dust as quickly as they formed, all melted away by a merry lick of fire, a babble of feral children, a few of them I don’t recognise as my own. In this place my heart beats along to the rhythm of the stones, the shush of the sea, the scream of the storms, the sight of swans overhead, a whisper of wings in the sky. I dance to it, sing along to its melody, an integral part of something old, something new, something ancient. I catch the stories of lives long done, the bones buried deep in the island’s heart, never to be forgotten, held safe. Where grows the heather old feet have walked. There is old laughter in the sky and old tears rushing the burns into spate. On it goes and on and I am proud to find my forbears lived and walked the islands, knew what I know now, made the wraparound Atlantic their protector, provider and sometimes their cradle unto death.

Even as I never knew way back then, I know something now. I didn’t find this place, this home. It found me.

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Island Blog – Candles, Perception and Stories

I love candles. In the dark times, and it is here, the dark. On this beautiful island, once you know the heartbeat of the rocks of it all, the shush and crash of Atlantic flow, the sog and bog and drench and feist of wild weather, you buy boots that will allow you in and over and through. You do, trust me. Not many folk will tolerate so much rain, such trixy winds, gales even, that rise just when you reckon peace will reign for another day, and we, who do, have watched them barrel in, tearing down trees, flattening grasses and relocating washing left on a line. And just as suddenly, they move on. I wonder, these days, where they might go. The perfect weather is a gift I would buy, but that gift is just a gift and not a given. There are weeks of rain and no rain for the odd day, pretty much.

Here, there is a load of dark and that has a lot to do with the rain. If I look at the weather for the next 4 weeks, it says Rain, Rain, Rain, all day long. Of course it never is. If you have a fox intuition, you just watch the clouds and grab your moment for a scoot oot, as I do. Funny that……I notice and hear from those I notice, that they don’t get how spontaneous they need to be up here. Some visitors leave. I watch them go, all angry and with faces set in judgement as if we islanders deliberately brought in the rain in a witchy sort of way, the sideways in-your-face blattering soak that challenges their choice of walking boot and melts their mascara as they wheech a puddle into a tsunami. Do they think I/we have control? We don’t, I assure you. It thinks me. Sunshine all of the time, I tell myself, would just be so ordinary and island life is anything but. Folk who live here and last here become as flexible as dancers in both mind and body. We learn, living in the wettest place on earth, to make something out of everything, even to smile at the rain. We call ourselves pluviophiles and proudly. We laugh at the days to come and let our words be snatched away in the gales. We light candles in the dark and say we are lucky, so lucky, to be living in a beautiful and safe place. Privately we roll our eyes at the whole thing, sigh and cuss but that is only done, as I said, privately.

Dynamic living is not something that comes naturally for us all. It is more of an inner choice, a decision to celebrate whatever life sends our way and in the very place we make our home. Sadness comes, of course it does, but that is the same for every single human soul, the wishing for something different is universal, no matter the weather, location, a person’s material wealth or lack of it. I learn these things daily, remind myself to be thankful for whatever I have and to ignore the doubts and fears, all imagined anyway. The most wonderful people I have ever met are those who have endured and survived situations, people and events that I cannot even imagine surviving and it is all due to a strong spirit, that invisible power that refuses to give up or give in. I aspire to such strength as my life has been tame by comparison. That doesn’t negate the impact of inner darkness, inner rain or an inner punching gale inside my own head and heart, but it does help to know that ‘this, too, shall pass’ as it always does and the key is perception. How I see something, anything, decides my response to it.

I walk among the sodden trees, the crushed coppery bracken, negotiating the fat puddles, the lift and squelch of rain soaked mud and I know, again, that I am free to just let life be, the dark, the rain, the wind and then that sudden bright day, the sky open, the burns gurgling in spate as sunshine sparkles the bubbles. Clean, clear mountain water rushing down, carving yet deeper into the rocks releasing stories long buried. I hear them flutter around me like birds, lifting into the sky, higher and higher until they turn back into rain, falling once more so that we who still live will not forget how life goes on, and on and on. We are here but fleetingly. Let us leave our own story behind when we go, the story of a life lived to the full no matter the weather, the darkness, the burning sunshine, the rain, because there will be a future someone who will need to hear it, someone who needs our light for their dark. How do I live with what I live with? There’s a story there, just waiting to be told.

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Island Blog – Tumbleweeds

You know those times when you venture into something new, something that has your belly all of a quibble in the morning, the doubts like angry Koi (carp) banging against the confines of a plastic pond about 100 miles and even more decisions short of freedom? I know you do, as do I. Off I go into the nowhere of something with my clothes on, my pencil and pad, my car fuelled up, my timing considered, my small dog sorted. Breakfast at five am, just in case I am late for the 10 am clock in. Good flipping lord to that! Nonetheless I wake and rise, bleary and wondering if I am completely bonkers to be doing this, this whatever, stepping without the right boots (what are the right boots?) into a new environ. When I write environ, it happies me, a French word, kind of distancing me from the right here island soaking wet long drive thingy. And, in French, it means ‘About’ and I am so about, wishing the sun would flipping rise so at least my dog will get this early breakfast tiddleypom.

So off I pop, eventually, having secured all things dangerous that never were such before this leaving. I spend a while reassuring the dog that I am gone for the day, alarming her in the process because I keep telling her I’ll be back soon, which I won’t and she kind of gets that with all this overdose of repetition. I check my car for oil, fuel, windscreen fluid, the tyres. I’m going 23 miles for goodness sake, still on the island, and for only 6 hours. My friend is walking said, and now thoroughly bothered, small dog mid-day. What is WRONG with me?

Answer……Nothing at all. Rising from Covid – all of us. Long Term Caring and Bereavement – some of us. Difficult childhood trouble – many of us, rackshattles a soul, diminishes a person, confounds, contracts and confuses her or him. All known parameters swing out and dissolve like sherbert. The boundaries fly off into space, known and trusted familial or friendlial supports bend and some break. The tide of time, this time, arrives not as a sudden tsunami, no. It is like smoke under the door, or a whisper on social media, a moment in the school playground, a cruel word that peers hear, a comment as you leave the shop in some sort of shame, card declined, child in meltdown, a sudden need to get out, get out, get out. Been there each time, this legacy of ripples creating a wave that finds you on the other side of your life as a drowning. I know it.

And then a new thing comes in. The invitation to step into the desert of what if. It comes, trust me, it comes. It infuriates, I resist, I say no and yet the yes in me rises like a koi to the lights, even in the trap of a plastic pond. I think I want the freedom to demand a lake, a mountain tarn, a river, but no, not yet. For now, as I learn to rise again, what I need is a plastic pond with lights. I learn new things, I engage with splendid women, we laugh about how to make a good sandwich, what all this learning affects us, we hug and offer a lift home. We are not Koi in a plastic pond under lights to amuse. We are tumbleweeds in a new desert but with the wind in our favour. We are brave. So are you.

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Island Blog – A Swan’s Dilemma

I walk down a track of orange, gold, yellow and blood red. The leaves left to rest beneath the trees to left of me and right remain un-crunched by dogged boots. They lift a little in the breeze as if to acknowledge my passing, landing back down again without a single sound, not even a whisper. On the track I recognise, through the mud and squelch and slidden bootprints, oak, ash, sycamore, beech, chestnut, lime, alder and hornbeam, but only just. The weight of all these walkers have pushed the embrowned leaf fall down, down, down towards the earth’s core or chewed them up as I might chew spinach leaves into a pulp. Standwater is everywhere. I see the still standing grasses and woodland plants I cannot name showing only their heads as they fight to rise above the massive rainfalls of late. This, I tell them, is how it will be from now on, so next year, grow taller. They waggle at me as a light puff of what was a full blown gale yesterday ripples the water. Peering down I see the almost astonishment of what lies at the bottom, rocks, stones, grass still green, for now, waving, and drowning.

Long tail tits piccolo around me although I can rarely see them, so tiny are they, but I know their voices so still whisper a greeting. A robin follows me, or does it lead me? I ask this because at the point when I might well take the short route, it bobs on a branch or two beyond the cut-down and eyes me, black, pitch, a challenge. Ok, I say, I know, I say, I should, I say, and I will. Sunlight dapples the track lifting colour to my eyes, a shine on the rocks like a rainbow, as on the surface of stand water, oily and still as something that isn’t alive at all. Any stillness here is a surprise and a thrill because the weather is a………a what? A bully? Sometimes. A mover and shaker? For sure it is aye that. A music maker? Yes, that’s it. The sound of island weather, the way it alters colour faster than I ever could on a canvas, melding, blending, fracturing, defining, the sound of a lead violin in a wild space, the orchestra in full battle mode. You need a conductor I shout above the storm, yanking open the door and holding tight so I don’t head off, like Dorothy, to Oz. Not that I would mind that much. It sounds like an awfully big adventure.

At the funny bone of the elbow shaped track I no longer have to duck in order to see the skerry. White water, even on a calm day, lifts like white curls around the rock, the surface of which is almost invisible to boats but don’t be fooled as one fishing boat was all those years ago, for it is wide as a mountain and just as high, or is it low? Grounded at the earth’s core, or so I imagine, solid, silent, no flag-flying attention-seeking Halloooo! No. Only the white baby curls and a good navigation system will avoid you disaster and just offshore. So why no ducking? Because the flipping hooligan we ‘enjoyed’ recently, that discordant orchestral mayhem that sucked in and blew out windows, split ancient pines and stripped my roses, also turned even the most determined leaves into tiny flying saucers. Wrenched from the mother ship and without independent flight control, they probably lie now beneath my slidey boots, muddied and rendered mulch well before they were ready. And that is life up here, out here, here on the sticking out end of a big rock combination, granite and basalt, unlikely mates, a marriage of opposites, apposite, no escape and for centuries. The thought rolls my eyes and huffs my breath. Well Done, I mutter. Rather you than me on that one.

A pair of hooper swans are still here. When around 80 of them floated in with a gentle piping honk (or 80 gentle piping honks) a while ago and then left I had thought them gone. I wished them well on. their way, congratulated them on their journey from Iceland and yet this pair remain yet. Weather, again. Where we once knew the bite of a cornet, dis-cornet, at this time of year, encouraging all of those with any sense, those untethered to this land such as cows, horses, sheep and humans, to elevate in search of warmer climes, we have introduced confusion. It is mild here, wet, yes, windy, yes, but mild.

I understand a swan’s dilemma.

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Island Blog – A 3 Frock Day

The wind is up and my wheelies are dancing. Only yesterday I freed them from their storm restraint, a rope affixed around their bellies and secured to my fence with chandler’s hook thingies that would normally keep boats from taking off to Holland. I forget their names. I was certain the gales had stopped and it laughs me as I watch the newly freed and recently emptied bins having a blast out there. My fence is smirking at me, I know that look. As a new gust, circa 40 knots, barrels up the loch, one bin, then the next open and shut their mouths. I can’t hear what they say but they are definitely talking. Or laughing.

It’s a three frock day for me, as I cannot risk going out there with anything light and floaty. Light and floaty could bring on an exposure I would rather not experience and nor would anyone else who happened to be nearby. And yet walking in high winds is exhilarating so I will still go out to watch the skinny trees bend towards each other, towards me, creaking and groaning like old women at a WRI meeting. There’s always lots of chat on gale days. The mail might not arrive and the ferry may not run. We are used to this even if it is an infuriation to the best laid plans. Deciding to pop over to the mainland for a shopping spree can lose its shine if a person is still over there 3 days later without a spare pair of knickers and a dog shut up at home. We live dramatically on the island. Nothing is ever a given and I think that’s what makes us so enterprising and so ready to help each other out.

There was no indication yesterday afternoon that a gale was filling its lungs in preparation for a dawning onslaught. The barometer read ‘Set Fair’, and this morning it shouts ‘Hooligan’. I don’t mind so much if I have warning, the time to batten down flapping things, but coming all of a sudden is just plain rude. Birds are flying backwards or in scoops and dives and the bird seed is half way out to sea by now. The feeders swing like ships lanterns in a force 10 and any bird that dares to catch on must feel bilious. I do, just watching them and am very thankful that I can eat a poached egg from a dependably calm and static plate.

The sea-loch is a rise of spume and irritable wavelets, wind blasting over the incoming tide, a conflict of interest. Geese honk over the house and I have no idea how they manage to stay the right way up. If I was up there I would be spinning like a top. It’s hard enough to remain the right way up with two feet on the ground and 3 frocks for ballast. But the weather up here is what keeps me balanced which may sound bizarre until you understand that the capricious sudden-ness of it has become the norm. When visitors rapture on about a beautiful sunshine day of calm and tweeting, they don’t see the truth. Make the most of today, I smile at them. Tomorrow could lose someone their garden shed. They eye me as they might a crazy woman. Sometimes they decide to move up here based on the untruth and then they meet the winter which begins in November and might possibly depart mid May. Endless rain, persistent gales to excite the wheelie bins and power cuts are all a given but we who know this are usually prepared. We have nourishing soup on the hob, loads of frocks and a great attitude. Or we don’t live here at all.

I could live nowhere else.

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Island Blog – From Four Stone Walls to Wild Places

I have been too scared to go anywhere beyond the safe confines of the little village. Most days I spend right here within my four stone walls (best song ever, in my opinion, by Capercaillie) or out there in the out there-ness of a wild place. I can walk a whole walk and meet nobody. Well, nobody with two legs and coated in either lycra, weather permitting, or waterproofs. I meet plenty of other-legged creatures of course. Spiders spinning, deer bolting, rabbits wiggling noses, an otter or two and plenty seabirds. I chat with the trees, imagine their long strong roots and know they help keep each other up, much as we humans could do if we just understood the power of it, instead of jousting at windmills.

I am mostly content with my life, the island wife without a husband. Mostly. Some days are black as the soot in my flue, some days bright as a lighthouse and I never know what will be which. It doesn’t matter what I do or do not do the day before the soot day, it dogs me like the shadow of a giant and no matter how fast I move, I am always in the dark of it. I have spent over a year searching for an answer to this upsy-downsy nonsense and find no answer at all and this is why. It is not a question with one answer at the other end of it. ‘Why’ is never a good question. ‘Why’ is a journey within, a quiet and solo traipse across a mind, not one to be voiced because any answer will fall short of the mark. The voiced question invites opinions. The one who receives this Why question can never respond with a solution. Not never. No other person in the whole wide world, across a zillion continents across all those wild oceans tossing stories and songs into the air, through the air that blows around the globe, can ever know the answer for someone else, because each one of us, like snowflakes and zebra stripes, is unique and therefore alone. So don’t bother with a ‘Why.’

I digress.

I am fearful, yes we got that. I am mostly content, yes, yes. Where is this leading? Ah, thank you. It leads to a phone call from one of my marvellous sons, one of the skippers, the skipper who skippers right here. Would you come on a cruise mama, a loch cruise for four nights on board? We have had a cancellation. My heart takes off but I catch it before it makes a hole in the conservatory roof. I hesitate, visualising massive waves, those ones I remember in a small bouncy thing of a boat crossing to Coll in a hooligan, the ones that, when they rose up like my swimming teacher in a furious mood with her eyes on me, blocked out the light. Then the fall, the slow slip down the other side in the sure knowledge that we would just keep on going down all the way to Atlantis. Or Hell. I breathe. Yes, I say. Yes. And then I twist to look at myself in horror.

I have days to organise things. How many things, I ask myself, noticing my endless pacing and the 2 pages of A4 lists. Well, not much in truth. Just some loving person to look after Poppy dog and my four stone walls. At short notice. A text to friends, a link, a number and she is found. Yes she can come, yes no worries, yes yes and yes. Committed now and planning my approaches, my frockstock, my beanie, socks (never wear socks) my underpinnings, enough for 4 nights. I wait for the fear to giant-shadow me. Nothing. I wait for indigestion, doubt, sheer terror, nights dense with 40ft waves and not a mermaid in sight. Nothing. Momentarily I wonder if I am finally going the way of the senile, that time I remember with Himself when nothing really mattered beyond his clear traverse up to bed. No, I am not there yet. But this is odd, this is strange, strange and rather wonderful.

On the day, Susie arrives, Sunshine Susie and she beams just like the sun which is a timely reminder that there is one at all, a sun I mean. I had quite forgot inside all these days of endless rain and cloud cover. I depart and manage the ferry thing just fine, staying outside the minute I board and arriving on familiar concrete, knowing my way. I keep my new mask firmly affixed to my face but find I am struggling to breathe, so efficient is it in keeping out all breaths, coughs and sneezes including my own. I walk around the harbour, among the visitors, along to the North Pier where the boats will meet and greet us. There are two boats ready for us this wet afternoon. The company is Hebrides Cruises and I recommend an online check. We, the guests, gather atop the pontoon and begin to introduce ourselves to each other. Some have travelled the length of the country for this cruise and me? Oh, me. Well I live over there, I tell them, waving my arm towards the island. I can tell they are amused, interested and disappointed all at the same time. I notice this and turn the conversation back to them, their tales of train changes, delays and clogs on the motorway. I just stepped on and off the ferry after all, did I not? They, on the other hand have much to say and much to share and I listen in pleasure because other peoples’ stories are always a fascination to me. They live a life I just don’t remember, one of limitations, of traffic, of timelines, of restrictions and rules whereas I am always free. Leaning against some metal thing that appears to have no reason to be there, I listen and watch and wonder. These lives, a glimpse. Just a glimpse. Faces, eyes, body language, baggage, all of it a wonderment to me.

Then the metal walkway rattles and we all turn. The skippers are rising like gods from the pontoon, together with the guides and the squeaky baggage trolleys that nobody ever bothers to oil. Relieved of our cases, we walk down the narrow ramps, back in our own thoughts, moving ever closer to the shining bellies of the boats that will be our home for the next 4 nights. They gleam, the superstructure white and all aglow. Our confidence rises yet again although it did already once we met the skippers. This one for you, that one for me. We separate on the floating pontoon and turn to the steps that will lead us all in to an adventure. I don’t know who is scared, who is dealing with something sad, who is hoping that this time will teach them something new, open a new window, show an escape. But as I wave goodbye to those on the other ship and move into the arms and the safety of my son, I know I made the right decision. To go or not to go? Always, always go.

Welcomed with pink champagne, cake and introductions, we heave-ho as the skipper turns the snout of the ship seawards. Into a pink cloudlight, into a blueing sky we move smooth as melting chocolate. Everyone is on the fly deck, binoculars at the ready, looking, searching, hoping for the wonderful.

And so it begins.