leaks

There’s still a hooligan outside which is a damn sight better than one inside. At Tapselteerie one was the other but making different sounds. Outside it was all crashes and bangs and thumps, whumps and with a refusal to own up to any of them, whereas inside the whistles and toots, the rattles and shakes seemed quite happy to locate themselves. Many newspapers gave their lives for a gap filling, holes in the walls, gaps in the window panes, cavernous splits in outer doors, the underneath of which had never touched ground for decades. Rain found its way in, under, through and over. Even my children were damp of a morning, wondering, as they did, if they had wet the bed. Even I wondered that.

Nowadays, as the hooligan refuses to let go of it’s fury, my home is better protected, even though it is as old as Tapselteerie. Yes, there is the odd leak, and it isn’t wise to open a wind facing door to greet the exhausted postie unless I close it smartly behind me. The ferry didn’t run so. he had to wait for the possible next one, which wasn’t possible, thus demanding another two hour wait. Hey ho, island life. The disturbing of gravity is quite the thing up here. Lord knows what it must be like further north. Today I returned 8 wheelies to their upstandment, wheeched over and obviously nauseous judging from the mouthal eruptions littering the track. Interesting, nonetheless to see the food choices and waste of others. A load of plastic wrapped somethings, dog poo bags and a ton of wine bottles. Moving on.

Disturbing gravity, according to my ancient Thesaurus, refers to ‘being ridiculous’. I immediately jumped on that one as a brilliant interpretation. It thinks me, as I was talking just this lovely morning with a very dear friend about the importance of fun, of being, I suppose, ridiculous. We take too much seriously, especially ourselves when all we really want is to have fun. And it is entirely possible. In me it is natural. I can be in the most ‘serious’ situation, with everyone being ‘serious’ all I want to do is to play the fool because I can see the ridiculous. Not to hurt anyone, of course, but just to remind these wonderful doing-their-best humans that it is so much easier to let go of pretence and to be honest and thus, individual. I remember this in my younger days, but, like most, keen to be accepted as one-of-the Ones, I spent hours dressing myself up as someone who would fit. In short, it was not good enough to be who I was.

Now, over 70 I will be who I am and give diddly squat about trying to be someone else. However, I do acknowledge the young now, the ones still stiffing themselves into the wrong clothing, employing an almost alien language, a new shape, just to fit in. I. look, hopefully, towards the wise parents who probably suffered those restrictive chains themselves and who will now look carefully at the young of our future and get to understand them, to listen and to learn and to ask them the questions most of us have never been asked.

Who do you want to be?

What would you like your life to look like?

And then, and then, to sit and listen.

I got drips. No, sorry dad. I have drips, less than of old but drips nonetheless. I quite like hearing the plash of each one falling into the enamel jug placed in place. I had to poke a hole in the plaster above the window recess last year. Actually, I have to do that poking thing every year until the plaster sags like an old woman with little to define her younger contours. I pull it all down, revealing the hen stone, the beginning of this sturdy place, the stones that protect me and many before me and then I reach out to a plasterer and the whole thing begins again. However, there used to be buckets here some 19 years ago, and everywhere, in doorways, mostly in doorways where an old 3 foot wall argued with the efficacy of whatever modern attachment attached itself. Poorly, it seems. Windows allow ingress, depending on the wind direction and puddles appear on floors. I look up. Seems logical but nothing is logical around drips. Water will in, no matter how clever you are and in homesteads built circa 1830 you are battling with just too much and it is so much better to catch the plash rhythm and to dance with it.

I empty the jug once, twice daily depending on the wind direction. It slightly bugs me that the wind has all the say in the matter, but then there is always someone who has all the say in the matter and I know that place. The rest of us work around the sayer, to a degree. We are canny, nonetheless, finding a dance that works for us, that makes the situation less rigid. I look around the rest of my room, of my home. No leaks. Just this jug-gler one, controlled until the plaster comes down. Accepting what is, even recognising and then acknowledging it, is what works for me. I have, with builder help, found the source of many leaks. This one is challenging me. She, must be a ‘she’, is telling me something. Check the outside. Check the mortar. In the olden days, there was lime in the mortar. This building could have housed King George 1V, had he travelled to the islands. Lime was a marvellous thing back then, as all new things are marvellous until they’re so not.

As we move from the old to a new we really don’t want, there will be leaks. I leaked today, here, in the wind and rain and alone. There is nowhere for these tears to go. I drooped, I confess. We face, and we do ‘face’ an uncertain future. Our fears, our lime mortar is crumbling. Our resolution is to dance but we also need to dig deep into the truth of what life is, this new life. We can decorate the inside, jug up the leaks, play positive and all that is really important, just as long as we get what is happening and grab it by the throttle. This is how it is. This is Defiance. The knowledge of what is and the fight for freedom in spite of it.