laugh

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Island Blog – Pants and a Laugh

There’s a thing about pants, and I’m noticing it. The thing. I’ve hung many of them on lines, on pulleys, on the side of doors, mirrors, radiators, and not just mine. I know the bottoms they contain, and I wonder. The yawl and spread of these do not comply with the computation in my mind. It’s as if another country has been added, thus compromising my understanding of a person’s geography. They have forgotten themselves. It leads me, inevitably, to a check on my own underpants. I can see, as I bend to eyeball the drawer of such personal items, that I am living in the past. I bought this pair, well, obviously, years ago, just look at the stretch that once kept me in, and which, now, spreads like a new planet no matter how much I fold and scroll. Have I thus spread? I have not. It is just that I don’t need more pants. Oh, really? Is, then, it so, that I don’t need a new bra either? No, I’m fine, same tits, well, a tit and a half to be honest now, but it works and who’s looking anyhoo? Hallo sisters, so not the point, and that laughs me now that I have one tit that is intent on the sky, thank you marvellous cancer surgeon.

Back to pants. I am home now after the most invigorating and uplifting time in Africa. Yes it is rainy, and so what to that, and there are potholes and there might not be adequate salt spread on the single track roads and there will be winds and so flipping what? Some people are fighting for their lives right now. Which is pants. My thing here is this. We can get all caught up in pants, literally. I know I do until I decide this pair has to go, I deserve new, even if gravity has altered my flesh, and a new bra, even if one tit is heading one way, the other, the other. They used to agree, but that was when they did and now it is different and I believe that those who survive, not the longest, but the happiest, are those who just buy new pants, new bra, each time life slams a dunk, whatever the hell that means. And then there are those who are so caught up in the loss of buttock control or whatever, that you just know they are not paying attention.

Hallo those who can laugh at all of this.

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Island Blog – Leave it Out

I notice, as I ding about the island, that folk tend to spread in the Summer, much like the shrubs, although shrubs tend to spread from a single point, whereas humans sprachle. You can look that up. Chaotically, as if in a wild abandonment, the controlled collation of tools, wellies, toys which could be the first landers on Mars, considering our winter storms, just sit out there, all confident and cocky. The weather is kind, or was once, and we still behave Summerly. I know, I know, that the cold winds have dampened our spirits somewhat, if not a lot of what, but we still jump to it whenever there is the chance of light and the length of days. Even beneath clouding, we grab our teeshirts and flowery whatevers, our sandals and flip-flops, our pretty bags and tags, our summerwear. We may love the seasonal changes, but we do, absolutely, need the seasons to remember themselves, instead of becoming a gloop of grey. We want to know where we are with the changes. We allow the endlessly slow shift of the Winter King, him with his frozen jaws and his refusal to release the earth from his grip, but not this long. The man needs therapy.

On the island, we don’t risk leaving much out, beyond cows or sheep, because, out here in the strut of the wild Atlantic, we know what we know. The weather can change in minutes, clouds gathering as if nobody has paid them attention for ages, the mountain and hills colluding, and we can hang washing out at 9 and regret that by 11 as our underpinnings head down the village. However, I do notice a leaving out thing going on, like a challenge. Folk still sport their summer colours, but underneath warm cardies and fleeces. T’is a weird old time. However, and this thinks me somewhat, are we, out here, living with cloud collapso, with cloud sneezes, with winds quite unsure of their origins, North colliding with West, East with South, and all in a dayo , more ready for this particularly weird Summer? Maybe.

And does that mean we are cocky? Oh no. We still want seasons to change in an orderly manner. We still want to sit out on a rock in a flowery frock (and fleece) to eat a seafood bun, or whatever and to watch the sun sink into the sea; to walk to the pub and join friends of an evening, to leave things out, and not just wellies, cows, sheep, toys and so on, but the verbal stuff that serves no purpose. Just to connect no matter what the weather, the politics, the troubles out there. To laugh, to share, to show strong no matter the changes in our world.

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Island Blog – The Sad

Today I wake with Sad. I do sometimes. It just happens. Sad comes in like a burglar, and nobody really wants such a bedmate, nor a daymate. Sad doesn’t take up half, or more, of the bed, nor does it bring me tea, plump my pillows, sit to tell me what fun we will have today. It is a mournful beast, so big that it fills the room, clouds me around and is unshakeable off. I can shower, whistle a merry tuneless tune, turn up the volume on Radio 2, light a candle, because. it waaaaay before dawn, all those things. But Sad stays true, true as an old friend, one I have totally gone off, and some time ago; one that takes no hint, obeys no command, one that can, if I am not very vigilant with my thinks, subsume me for the long hours of a whole day. I can swear at it, threaten appalling punishments, sing LA LA LA very loudly, but it won’t go and I know it, and there is only one way to bear its presence, and that is to turn, smile, and welcome it in. Okay, you are here again, bringing me bearings, not of gold, frankincense and myrrh (well, maybe myrrh) but of husband gone, children gone, Poppy gone, breast like a war zone.  You want me to wallow, I know your tactics. You want me to search about for a reason, the reason you are here and to dive into the muddy cold depths of that pain. It could be my parenting failures = millions; could be my bad choices=billions; might be poor decisions, awful choices, myriad regrets, endless falls from Grace, whoever she is, the snooty madam. 

But I won’t go there, so if that is the conversation you plan, then try another tactic, because I will not go there. My lips, thin now, old, a skinny bow below my nose, will not allow any responses to escape. They are sealed. 

Sad is silent now, so I continue. 

I don’t need to define nor explain you, not any more. You’ve been around for most of my life and I engaged with you at my peril, because you took me down down down into complete darkness with no proffered candle, no guiding light, and you won’t take me there again, I promise you that. My mistake, I continue, as Sad is just sitting there saying nothing, was first, to banish you, I get that. You will visit so many people, so many homes, and banishment means nothing to you. You just dissipate and reappear again and again. Do you have a To-Do calendar, names written down, days to visit? Do you discover times of loss and grief and leap into action? I suspect you do, but I am moving on now, not up, but on. I know I cannot prevent you in my morning, the way you stay all day long, and I will be polite but I will not allow the seep of you to infiltrate my new self, my lonely self, the self who, despite the cold of sadness and loss and grief, is bloody determined to smile, to give out, to laugh and to dance.

And btw, you won’t be here tomorrow when I wake. I just know it.

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Island Blog – My Fabulous Friend

I fly round the switchbacks on my way to the harbour town. I do. Fly. Oneson suggested, only the once mind, that I might consider a more ‘sedate’ model of automobile. Only once. I snorted but it made me reconsider my nomorethan40 thing when traversing the skinny island roads, what with their potholes and that falling off edge, depth at least 7 inches at certain points, enough to take the belly out of a sassy mini cooper. I know how to drive. I taught my kids to DRIVE round corners, none of this hesitating and going into dipfh lock, or whatever it’s called. It’s just a hill, after all. You may see only sky for a few yards but there’s a beauty in that. Sun in your face? Enjoy it. Your biggest problem will be with the visitors who won’t let you pass, no matter the light flashing and the hooting and the almost landing inside their boot. I digress.

I used to think those 10 miles a real travail. A dull and necessary pain in the arse, but not now. Not now that I am free to go wherever I like, and whenever. I am meeting a dear friend for lunch, a strong woman, a fighter, with guts of steel and the light of a rainbow in her every move. We have history, naughty times, fun memories, shared pains and joys. We meet at the top of town, where, to which, I have flown, and take our seats in a huge conservatory overlooking the harbour. There are new owners now and the place has had a facelift and a half. Jazz and blues play from the speakers and the sun shines in like a beacon. This beautiful hoist of granite was a naval lookout base in the war years, when I very much doubt it looked as good as this. We immediately connect, my friend and I and are laughing within minutes. We are 25 again, the world our oyster, none of the ensuing troubles in our minds, none of the pain or sickness, none of the losses, no guilt, no olding fears. She became the voice for the island’s young people, the lost and abused. She did more for this island than can be imagined. We talked on this. I said ‘I could never have done what you did, what you do, don’t have the head for it.’ After 2 wonderful hours, we said farewell for now. We will meet up again, been too long, covid and dementia and death and la la la tiddleypom. All that olding shite. Her eyes are bright, her face as beautiful as it always was, her spirit strong and feisty.

Home again, I walk the fluffy dog who (or is it which?) will be a baldicoot tomorrow after a wash, cut and blow dry with Heather, and a load cooler and with that dark stripe down her spine as if she was a tiger, once. I wander beneath the louring trees, heavy now in a way I see as tired. We are tired of this heavy leaf cover summer thing. Look at the bracken all flopping and brown and can we go that way please? But, much as I am loving the surprise, the sun, the strange late weather, it is holding them in stasis, requiring more leafness and more standing up and wotwot. I remember, in Tapselteerie days, feeling just like that. I am so, so tired of holding up my leaves, husband, children, guests, visitors and even though I smelled autumn on the morning breeze, it’s as if summer is refusing to ungrip her grip. I tell the trees this, and they remember. I will have said the same thing to them all those years ago, and, bless them, they absorbed it and probably waved at me in recognition. We feel the same, they said.

Much like my fabulous olding friend today.

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Island Blog – This Day

People talk about, sing about, These Days, Those Days, and as I listen, I hear anew. These and Those indicate a collective, a while of days. But it isn’t the truth, not around Days. It can be, around children, or mountains but not around days. Days are themselves and particularly in troubled times, when they behave like picks in the road we knew as level, aggressing the flat ground, upsetting the flow of progress. They pucker up, cause us to founder and flounder, to twist off piste. Well Dammit. Damn those days.

I am learning to laugh at a lot of things these days. No, this day. No promises for tomorrow. I meet those puckers, and not because I have done anything different on this Tuesday, that Thursday, no, not at all. It is all the same now here in this alone state. I might have written ‘widowhood’ there, but I won’t and because there are many states of aloneness. Some chosen, some welcomed, most accepted and accommodated, albeit unwillingly. We need each other but the each and other of whoever we know or encounter can send us running for the dunes. It is confusing.

So, for this day (no tomorrow promises) I rise thankful and smiling. I walk, cook, listen to music, create some sewing nonsense, talk to family, laugh, visit a local library and connect with friends. As I sit now as the rain comes in (a given up here) I won’t say, These Days any more. Because I know, as I never did when I said those words without thinking, that there are not These Days. There is only This Day.

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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 – Langtangle and Shoe Laces

As life moves on, moves me on to my 70th year, I have time to ponder, reflect and consider. I have the mind for it too, because it seems to me that now I am looking in a different direction, one I have never known before. When young and full of family life, its accompanying chaotic joys and disasters, my eyeballs swivelled every which way, conscious of what was about to happen, what had just happened and what the hell I could do to stop it happening again. Nowadays the happening thing is mostly my own choice. Setting aside responsive reaction, say to a burst pipe or a postal delivery, I am the Happener, inhabiting endless space and time, able and sometimes unwilling, to ponder, reflect and consider. My thoughts wander over old mountains, some conquered, some the conquerors, over wild moor and vast expanses of desert sand. Some pondering lead me to old crimes, my old crimes and I squinge with discomfort as the memory builds into a certain prison sentence. I retreat quickly because I know well how false a memory can be, constructed over time, bridges built to connect two sets of circumstance that never came together at the time. It chuckles me as I banish the imaginary ghoul of mismemory. Away with you! I say. You were never thus.

This morning my thoughts, floating like tumbleweeds over tundra, billowed by a backwind, turn to what we leave behind and the list is long. Physical and metaphysical knowledge, recipes, familial data, skin flakes, nursery rhymes, stories of this and that, music, poetry, habits, opinions, demands, mistakes, gifts, DNA, clothing preferences, reactions, attitudes, diaries, kindnesses and so much more, our legacy. Such an unattractive word I think for such a potentially wonderful thing. So what do I want to leave behind when I am no longer here? A cloud of gas or a flight of light and beauty, peppered with humour and fairies? I know my answer to that and if I want to achieve such levity I must needs make certain of it because it is my choice and nobody else’s. How I choose to enter this part of my wonderfully ridiculously rambunctious life is a daily consideration. Not for me a decline into the grumps, nor the moans, nor the fatalism I had witnessed in my own now dead forbears who, bless their loving hearts, probably didn’t think they had any choice at all. My full of nonsense mother once said, and firmly, to me “There was no such thing as positive thinking in my day.” And she really believed that. However, these days we know different, that attitude is everything, regardless of circumstance, blight, long winters, loneliness, loss and no sourdough bread left in the village shop. We may not be able to ice skate upright, open jars of jam or lift a sack of potatoes but we can always laugh at ourselves, accepting that it is not our time for such shows of prowetic strength and besides we can always ask for help. Perhaps this time of quietening down is fulsome and maybe necessary for our young. In this age of Granny or Grandad, we can observe, soothe, stravaigle, consider and encourage, even if we barely understand what it must be like for young folk in this fast-paced, sometimes dangerous technological time. But we can teach observation, ask gentle questions, read together, wander over ancient ground, speak of the land, the sky, the sea, the winds with stories on their backs. We can show the mysteries of life, teach rhymes and songs, gift our time, time and more time because we have time now and they do not, not yet, not whilst life is a dash and a hurry, a fight, a competition, a langtangle of skids and slips, of leaps and crashes, of information invasion.

It was the same for us, many many years ago, and we remember the turmoil of growing up. Now we are growing down and I knew it yesterday as my eldest son walked into the church to watch the children’s nativity play. I used to be a foot taller, I thought, as he loomed over me grinning. I am shrinking. Good. That is fine with me and it means I can hide under a table with the children, with the giggles and the shushes and the chance to tie the adults shoe laces together.

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Island Blog – Here and That is How it Is

So here is how it is. Ten days of a visiting son with his kids, this morning, gone, the air sucked out of my lungs as his car disappears around the corner. Nothing has changed. The sea-loch still rises and falls to the whimsy of a Sturgeon moon, the birds still flit and flut between feeders, the house still stands strong, broad shouldered stone, protecting me from a load of outsidery things. The shop still opens at nine, the builders head off to work chugging iron bru at 6.30, my neighbour heads off to his fishing boat for another day of net tangles and swear words. And yet everything has changed.

I meander through the morning telling myself not to focus on the gone thing. I tell myself to get busy as if all is as ordinary as it was 11 days ago but as the hours slouch by I know this gone thing will catch up with me, with the hours, with my thoughts. I feel old, stiff, annoyed with both. I never thought I would get here to this old feeling. I used to laugh at such nonsense from my ma, my scary mother in law when they looked as I might look now if I allowed anyone to see me looking thus, which I don’t. Feeling old, I told them, is one thing. A thing you cannot avoid. Presenting it is a choice. Don’t make that choice. I hear again my wise words, spoken through a young set of lips still plump, words begat by the father of ignorance. Who can know the feel of old until it arrives one morning with enough luggage-intention to stay long term? Nobody. What we do, when this guest arrives is to choose our pretence. It’s a bit like a journey on a false passport. This is me, not me, me from choice. I may not be this person but I am determined you will acknowledge this ‘me’ because if you don’t then I am grounded with the old feelings, the fear feelings, the lack of swing and chortle feelings and I refuse, point blank (whatever that means) to accept that.

I walk as I always walk, noticing the grasses husk and ochre. I touch their still yet softness as I pass. I see bracken spot and curl, the carpet of fallen leaves, already brown and crisped into tiny coracles on the track. I see hazel nuts overhead, rowan berries blood red against a blue sky, beech leaves goldening high above me. The ground is soft and mud blown, cut and spun into soup by yesterday’s sudden thunderstorm, here and then gone in a matter of one short hour but nonetheless a herald of Autumn’s closing fist. We may have more sunshine days, who knows, but the word is out among the seasons and the Your Turn thing is shifting. I pass by the shore and look down but cannot go. For ten days it was crazy down there, endless loud girls crab fishing, the growl of a quad, the squeals of delight, the absolute takeover of a small thrust of rocks, the learning, the delight, the falls, the fire lit to cook noodles or sausages, the glorious family fun of it all. I continue around the track, remembering. In my mind I see them all, bright eyed, ready for nonsense, scaring me with their bravery, no, not that. It is their confident youth. The way they skitter like lizards over all terrain, the way they sparkle at cake or chocolate or fruit pastilles. The welcome they give me. The whites of their eyes, their teeth, the shine of their wilding hair, the flash of their feet as they dash past.

They are gone and it is a heavy thing. I know, I know (please don’t fix feelings through logic) they will come again. Others will come again to inhabit this glorious place, to redefine it, to render it their own for a short time. They will sing into the clouds, the blood red sunsets, yell at the moon, cry at the falling in, laugh at the cake, fish for the abundance, argue, storm off, come back for a warming hug. I know this. But this day I feel their loss deeply. And that is how it is.

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Island Blog – To Self

I used to think I was myself. I thought ‘self’ rhymed with elf and that worked for me because I felt easy around elfish thought and elfish being. But I was wrong. Whom I thought I was didn’t fit with city life around a mum who wanted to fit in and I did not. Oh, I am not saying I didn’t enjoy the cityness of city, I did at times but there was always a longing for what, for something I did not yet know, nor understand. I watched my friends happy (it seemed) in their environs, around the lifestyle their parents had forged and fought for and I turned green at their easy joy. Like an elf.

Moving on, because this is not about me at all. My baby sister is famous for her internal bubble and fizz. She is still just herself as she always was, but I do admit my watching her was through binoculars as she turned from girl to woman. Nonetheless, she was herself. You might, had you been there as we grew and flew, observed that, as the youngest of five and as a very feisty pint sized girl, she retained her identity, when others of us higher up the line might have bent and bowed in order to avoid parental judgements, admonitions and flying hands. I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t there. I was firmly married and dealing with all the upsydowns of such conjugality. She was not afraid to speak her self out, stand her ground but always gently, not like me. I doubt she ever slammed a door or tantrummed out or performed any other such taradiddle. Maybe she did but it isn’t in her eyes, not when I look. And those eyes are still brightly focussed and merry, ready for a twitch or a lift or a dance or a spontaneous hug.

Over time and troubles we have learned each other as grown women. Although we shared parents, her memories are not mine. I remember one evening when the three ‘Little Ones’ remembered something. I knew nothing of what or whom they spoke, their happy voices and smiles lifting like birds or butterflies into the room. I had gone by then, moved away from self and it thought me, thinks me now on my peregrination to self and it is as wavering and wandering as the word because if you have bent and bowed for most of your life, how can you easily find your own self? It also laughs me and fill me with chuckles because I know Self is out there somewhere and she will find me too, one day.

I digress. Sorry Birthday Girl. Thank you for being there for me. Thank you for being so beautifully wild and strong. You little pipsqueak, you tiny powerful woman, you know your self. And I think I always loved that in you.

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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.