lady

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Island Blog – Fly Now and Thank you

Just before the possibility of a power outage, I will write of today, the funeral of my very first friend here on the island, she who seemed always calm, always positive, mischief in her eyes, her welcome absolute. It’s very wild here, very wild, with sideslash rain and a torment in the air, all clouds blown into a flat grey nothing. The gusts are blowovers, unless, like me you have a lot of attitude.

I set off early, unsure what to wear. On ordinary funeral days, it’s not so hard. Something waterproof, yes, always that, but beneath something clean, jeans or warm leggings because nobody politely dies in Summer, the rest never sees the light of day anyway, a scarf perhaps. But this one was a challenge because this beautiful lady, and I use the word knowing its full meaning, lived her life on a flipping hilltop high and on the determined jut of land which sticks, full upper thrust, into the wild Atlantic. I chose layers, tried to do the matching thing that she and I so often laughed about, and managed a few greens. I remember so many meetings together, when she lived in the castle and then when she moved to her own place/s, when we would talk in a more honest way than I had ever known before. If you had looked at us, you would have been right to see her as the queen and I as the court jester. We made a grand pair. Where she was gracious, hardly swore, I met her with a load of swearing and attitude and rebellion and, I can see her face light up, her eyes sparkle, her smile wide as honesty when we met as true life companions. I loved who she was and she loved who I was. Her husband, Phillipe talked about how she loved rebels, was one in her own heart, but chose to show herself as not-one, even though, having heard of her feminist passions and activities over her years, I do wonder how she managed to keep that control. However, having listened to the poignant words from her children, her grandchildren, I believe that she did reveal her wild heart to them, and. that is a powerful legacy which they all acknowledged.

We left the castle with her coffin affixed to a sheep trailer pulled by a quad. The pipers, already drenched stood in place. We walked into the battering rain, following, followers of her. Umbrellas blew inside out, walking was threatened and. the puddle I had parked in an hour before had become a lake, the mud. slidey and defo collapso. I didn’t go to see her put in the ground. I don’t need that. I didn’t stay for the wake, the stories and the drinks. I just wanted to be alone with my rememberings of the most beautiful of women, the strongest, the survivor, the one who came from privelege and who stood strong against any challenge; the one who chose this island and loved it and all its people with all her heart, who welcomed everyone, no matter who, who paused before issues, thought a bit and then presented opportunity and the invite for conversation; the one who gave someone a chance, who suggested something new, who just made things happen, dealt with the consequences as if she knew they were coming, even if she didn’t; the one who would say ‘It will be fine. It always is.’

Rest now Janet Nelson Rigal. Trust me, you did a bloody good job. You taught your young and they will teach theirs and so it goes on, and not just them but me too. Remember that book you gave me, the ways you saw me, the rebel, as someone of value? I won’t ever forget those gifts, the times we laughed over coffee, wine, lunch, so so many times. Your beautiful. face, even at 80 something, stuck in my head. Fly now with the wild. And, thank you.

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Island Blog – The Mary Thing

I’m home and back into a precious silence, just the birds, the gulls screeching like a mother who is way past tolerance, urgent, a call that cuts like glass. I’m watching the shift-light, the white skinny, almost saying something. Blue sits fat and patchy, here and there, confident in its canopy control. I am always here, but playing hide and seek and damn good at it. I’ve been hours away this day, caught and captured into a gathering. That’s what we call it here. A gathering can occur on a hillside, within the walls of a completely unprepared cottage in the middle of nowhere, a sudden thing. But, this one was ready for itself. We all knew it was coming, the date set.

I was unsure about what to wear as all of my clothing fits a rainbow and this was a sad gathering, no matter the celebration of life thing. A very long life lived, a load of children, a big team of grandkids and a football stadium of great grandlings. 97 or so years of twinkling and working like not many women would these days. I knew her, a bit, but in talking with one of her grandsons (so handsome, as they all are) about body language and the words we say without saying a single word, I felt I suddenly knew her better. She was a generation above me, ahead of me, but she was so approachable, so welcoming, so naughty, perhaps not all by herself, but there was that sparkle in her eyes that told me she was up for anything. A very gracious lady, and I mean Lady.

We laid her to rest this day in the old graveyard, her beloveds, spanning generations, lowering her into the ground beside the love of her life, gone some years before, above the bay, with cloud dip, slight rain (very polite and thank you) and a lot of old, young, very young, all there for her. She leaves with them, her inspiration, her encouragement and acceptance and a lot of tears and laughter. And Billy, who brought her home was as he has always been, respectful, working with whatever a family chooses, so compassionate, so professional.

What a legacy Mary. You leave that with them, with me, with all of us who remember you now, and who will talk about you for frickin ages.

Thank you.

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Island Blog – Huge Grey Knickers and Moving On

Today I had frock trouble. Admittedly it was 3 am when the ditherment began, dark as jet outside and moonless. It was also 3 am, an hour when all the doubts and wrinkles come blasting in. I think it’s the noise of them that wakes me, the chaos of voices all saying something different but all in the same unsettling tone. Critical. All that I didn’t do, should have done, did do and shouldn’t have done rise like goblins from the dark ground of the night woods. It was the wrong time to have a frock issue, I know that, but it seemed like a good focus at the time. My wardrobe is dark inside, frocks hanging like a line of empty women, all colours, styles, shapes and drops. choosing aright is important on any day because my frock combo creates me a story for the day ahead. Do I feel like a Spanish dancer today or a bag lady? Am I needing colour or is there colour already in me? Do I want midi or something just below the knee, reds or blues or do I want frock chaos? The latter wins today. I might as well continue the theme after all. I swat away the bluebottle buzz internal and focus on the external response. I select a pink straight down dress with a sauncy little frill I wheeched off an extraordinary summer top from China, the rest I used to stuff a soft toy. I add a bright lemon yellow slightly shorter dress for layering and complete the whole hysterical combo with a butter yellow cardigan. I check the mirror. Triple ghastly. I’ll do.

Coffee and music and no cake-baking today. I’m enjoying the quiet of the nothing of these nobody hours, waiting for dawn to yawn awake. No sun this morning, not visible anyway through the flat grey that reminds me of my school knickers, thick, huge and woven tight enough to blank out all light. I smile at a dorm dressing memory when one of my friends, tiny and slimpicked, demonstrated how she could get a pillow down hers without any stretch of the elastic. My mother says I’ll grow into them, she laughed. I met her decades later and just know she never did. In those school days when frocks, loathsome frocks, measured, controlled, no waistband, long sleeved, high collared, no buttons, were our only escape from the sternly tailored skirts, I confess we did feel an almost kittenish sense of freedom between prep and prayers. We could actually move without creaking, lift our arms without the snap of angry starch, breathe without the throttle of a tie, wiggle toes freed from the brace of stout lace-ups. I can feel that freedom now.

I think, no I really believe, that the more experiences we have in situations of constraint as youngsters give us a real opportunity to learn compassion. To know what it is like to feel in any way imprisoned, whether inside light blocking huge grey knickers or in a relationship, or a job, or even in a whole life, teaches us something that gifts great power, if we can rise from blame. I find an instant compassion when anyone shows me, no matter their age, old or young, that they feel starched shut. It matters not that I have experience their circumstance. I know the feeling and, if we are honest, feelings are everything to an individual. Everything. If someone comes with angst and anger, we can just sit and shut up. Just listen. Just be there. I remember the ones who were there for me just like that. They, without realising it, gave me the courage to move on. And I thank them.

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Island Blog – Ebb and Flow, Days of Minutes

This life without himself can feel like a loss even thought he was (often) a pain in the ass. As, I imagine, was I. The days are minutes to be filled, and I am advised thus:- to write my list of things I want to do in this new life when nobody ever asked that question in the old one. Not never. It begs the question. What do I want? Well, I don’t know. Can someone tell me please because I know that place, a place of ‘no I don’t agree’, of ‘seriously….what?’ of ‘okay then, if I have to.’ This is my comfort zone which btw has abandoned me. The peripheries of my world are blown like a bubble burst and the world beyond is one scary zero. I turn back. I oftentimes (love that word) do. But what I turn back to is a day of minutes and there are many, oh so very many. So, I don’t like this minute thing. I don’t like this nothing, nowhere, nobody thing. So what? Hmmmmm. So what.

I was once alone, for about five minutes having been expelled from school(s) and college and my first job. Sacked. I was, so they told me, a muttering disturbance, a rebel in the corridors of whispers. Had I been not me, I probably might have led a revolution but I was never that courageous and I laud the ones who did, who will do in times to come. I was taught to be a lady. Not to upheaval, not to upset, but nobody taught me the wisdom of being such a creature. It isn’t about being a doormat. No. Being one of those lady women is to be wise living with attitude. within structures, confines and male domination without aggression, without fight, without loss of self, but clever enough to get what this lady wants. I wish I had learned it from my mother’s milk but she had not the skills to help me there. I am learning them now.

So, I walk, run, dance, play within the minutes of days. No, it is more than that. I am loving the journey. Yes there are times I wring my ankle on memories, on moments, but I am still a dancer. I watch my bone-awkward fingers as I work my keyboard. I say, hallo, swollen joints, well done you. Just see what you have done, achieved over the minutes of days in your life. My toes, bent and bony, my body skinny and scarred. Hallo you all. Well flipping done.

And then, suddenly, as though my thinking has been heard and taken to heart, in comes the painter to redecorate the upstairs rooms, ridding them of short term history, the falls, the clutches at cupboard doors pre a fall, the rust, the grease smears, the smoke of an old pipe. All opened up in brilliant white, fresh, the promise of a new future, a new strength of days. Then comes the gardener, to cut my grass. I kept my grass long, my dandelions fierce for the bees and butterflies till now and he gets that. Now the bees and the butterflies are sucking from the bluebells so it doesn’t feel so bad to cut the heads off my favourite butter yellow sun-followers.

This is the flow. People come in. Someone leaves the table. Nobody else can take that seat, but the loving hands that reach out can somehow help the day of minutes into something else, something that has new life, that can move on into more days, more minutes and can, with their investment, change everything.

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Island Blog 98 The Weight of Words

It’s getting colder they say, and they are right.  It is.  But, if I were to unmorph myself from the Island and re-morph down south, right now, I would be shucking off my semmet and my woollies and be ‘foofing’ about the heat.

I know, whenever I leave the Island to go somewhere south of it, I stand over my heap of clothes and after considering frock requirements and, oh, shoes to go with said frock, I consider temperature.  Apart from the fact that I can manage about 30 minutes inside any mainland shop before melting into an unsavoury puddle, I must think about the street heat and then, oh worst of all, the level to which the central heating is set, which is almost always way up to high – so high I can hardly breathe without seizing up and turning into sandpaper.  Windows are usually closed, against pollution, flies, neighbours and, of course, weather.

We have a woodburner and no central heating, but that baby does all the work here, warming upstairs, downstairs and the lady’s chamber, although not too much up there because:

a.  its not healthy and

b.  The window is slightly shy of the available orifice thus allowing all four winds many opportunities for a knife-sharp entry.

Of course, not all four winds come through at the same time, even if they can on the odd day, as the Island wind changes her mind as frequently as a woman in the make-up department of Fraser’s department store.

The north wind is ‘hard’ black, the south ‘bright’ silver, the east is purple and the west, amber – everyone knows that, especially light-house keepers, as I have learned from the wonderful book Stargazing by Peter Hill.

Lighthouse-keepers………they don’t exist anymore.  Now the lights that save our ships from dashing their brains out on sharp-toothed rocks, are worked by someone miles away, electronically, someone who doesn’t need to feel the wind, taste the salt, watch the other lights as dusk falls, become a part of a new adventure every night for weeks on end – someone who would never need the right clothes for such an adventure.

But, back to packing.  The things I need to make room for in my travel bag are mostly words, and those receivers of words, such as my little laptop and my notebooks.  These are heavy, compared to any bodily flim-flam, but when I weigh my luggage, in my hand, I know that, were I to remove something, it would be in the flim-flam department, and never at the expense of the words I have chosen to keep.

These words can be, and often are, half-inched from wiser mouths than my own.  I have absolutely no problem with that.  I don’t consider it stealing, more the recognition of another’s starry brilliance.  I learn from them, use them in part, or in the whole, as a part of something I want to put into either my own mouth, or the mouth of a character in a story.  They are more precious to me than gold, than frocks, than the right apparel for any given occasion.

So, if I arrive in the wrong shoes but with the right words in my mouth/suitcase/head, then who will notice?

Oh yeah……..my mum.the weight of words