life

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Island Blog – The Dance in the Delight

So much to say, so many observations and thinks. Let us begin with the bump on my pointy finger. It isn’t painful, just there and it and I I do need the odd conversation. It’s possibly an olding thing. Anyways, this bump. I filed it down to a nothing much. Then I went to my laptop to sign in with finger recognition and was refused. I’ve been refused for days until the bump came back.

It thinks me.

Today at the Best Beach Cafe Ever, it was fun, as always, the bosses so flipping great with customers, an immediate welcome, even when we are 10 orders behind them, the chat dynamic and chuckly. Did I just make that word up…? We do all the dietary requirements here with spectacular cakes, quiches, scones and more. I love the twist and the dance of this cafe. I don’t think I have met it before. There is never a ‘No’ but instead a suggestion for a something else. I honestly think anyone who comes here feels immediately welcome, as if we were just waiting for them.

They come, the cyclists, the couples, the young families with wee ones, the folks with dogs, with troubles, with the exceedingly important need to escape to the glorious wild of this island. I met two really fun couples today. Now, here, I am clumsy with myself because I don’t know (old) the naming, labelling of pretty much anything nor anyone, nor do I care. Both couples were married men. I don’t give a bejabers about labels. I just loved interacting with them, their dog, their story. All beautiful people. We laughed in the sunshine. I watched their faces, saw their connection with each other, the familiar, and that is a beautiful thing. It lasts me.

I brought strawberries home, for ‘jammin’. My lovely bosses, who know about weighing and stuff, asked me to weigh (and stuff). I did, I did try, but got lost at 2934 kilograms. Not sure what that all means. The jam will be good, I know that. I have cooked for 40 years without weighing a damn thing. However I was nonsense at costing anything and there’s a story there. This new leadership is young and building and right on the whole lot of it all. I admire that.

It was a day of sunshine and random requests……americano, short with oat milk on the side, triple espresso, with mascarpone and lemon topped carrot cake; salted hot chocolate with a pecan brownie, a slice of lemon polenta, oh, and a fruit scone, warmed, yes, with jam and butter. An herbal tea, yes in a pot, is there lemon, can I have two plates, two forks to share that gorgeous coffee cake?

Yes, every time.

I love working with such authentic people. There’s definitely a dance in such a delight. And, a going on with what is there, just right there, without any botherment.

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1sland Blog – Breath

I hold it, my breath, at times, sudden times. Perhaps at a moment that confounds me, as if a rock has tripped me. It might be a word-spout from another’s mouth, of judgement, finite, challenging, and there’s a momentary confusion, like the after blast from an explosion, even though I have no idea what that feels like. The silence at first, then the thunder and roiling in my ears, the deafening to all else around me. We’ve all been there, and when I have, I always wished I had said something, stood up for someone, answered with confidence, not that the finite ever begs a question. I still wished. I also, to my womanly and well-trained second fiddler position shame, deferred to the height of the voice, the learned-ness, the confidence of delivery, the surety that no-one in this (now self-assumed as piddling and inferior) gathering would dream of cutting down this particular invasive species, of which he is a member. No matter his derisive comments, his freedom to dominate, take advantage, to touch, to control. Ok, that’s my stuff, my history, the deferment to men. I have no issues with men in general. I love men, in general. Let’s move on.

I hold my breath when a bird slams against my window. I hear the slam, the ouch of it and it sharps my lungs. They stop, as if they have seen and heard what I did. We go out into the garden, my lungs and I, to check. Mostly these birds slam wing first. They sit a bit, we talk a bit, I crouch on the steps. Little heads turn to me and away, always watching for the hawks, the predators. Not while I’m here with you, I soothe. Sometimes I can pick them up, the wing-slammers, and they clutch onto my fingers, settle in my palm. I can feel their heartbeat through my fingers, daring to, longing to live on. I can run a soft finger down their spine, from head to tail, encouraging blood flow, offering peace, renewal. They take their time, enjoying the connection perhaps, and then fly off. The head-butters don’t rise again, and again there’s a breath stop when I find them crashed on the concrete. Such beauty, so many colours, a pitch for life downed.

Music can hold my breath. I don’t know why. Who does? A superb lift of harmony, melody, a spectacular change of key, from major to minor and back again, the words clear to me in the agony, the joy, the wild, the wild of music. Could be classical, could be the music and lyrics I listened to through angsty teen years, could be songs of longing, of loss, of fury, of celebration panning decades. Something will suddenly touch me, even if I am caught up in a recipe or a to-do list and my breath will stop, just for a catch, just for a moment.

Could be something someone says, a compliment, a line of words that tell me a person has actually seen me, got me. Now that’s a rare breath catch, and no mistake.

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Island Blog – After a Squinny

A sticky nob, on a cupboard (just for clarification) and suddenly I see. Actually, no, none of it was there before, it just appeared like measles do on a body. There was one, maybe two, and all you have to do is turn away for a moment and that body looks like a field of poppies in full bloom. This is what happened to, not just all the other nobs, but the whole cupboard, all the cupboards, 10 of them plus 6 drawers. After a bespectacled squinny, I gasped. I did. I had heretofore imagined a quick wipe over the damn nob and then had planned to move onto considerably more interesting pastimes, such as a dab or two of oils on my painting, around that shoreline, I thought, or to just wander out, barefoot to fill up the bird feeders which seem to empty within minutes, but no. Suddenly I could see that my entire kitchen unitry would cause apoplexy should an Health and Safety inspector appear on a spot check. Unlikely, yes, what with the ferries in confusive disarray and it’s after 4 pm anyway which, as we all know, is when any officials employed by any government or council drop everything. Well, not everything, but you know what I mean.

Back to the knobs. They were all sticky, brownish and scuddy. Disgusting, I snorted, looking at my fingers. Then I saw the runs of coffee, the splashes of bolognaise, the sunshine drip of egg yolk, the blobs of god knows what. How could I not have seen this before? The answer I have worked out. We see A) what we want to see; B) what we expect to see and C) what we absolutely know, because we are clean and tidy and mindful in our homes, isn’t there at all. What a collision! Needless to say I had to squirt a lot and rub a lot and gasp a lot as my smart eco bright turqouise cloth greyed up and my squirty stuff lowered its meniscus by quite a few centimetres. My white cupboards and white drawers and white nobs are now sparkling like newly fallen snow. But, oh, there’s a cobweb, up there, look at it. It? There is a halloween party going on above my head in this kitchen. I determinedly refuse, despite the massive temptation, to check other rooms. After all, I did well today. I changed and washed bedding; went to Library and came back with not one book; sorted out the roofers, walked, chatted with various others in all of those situations and shovelled up a huge dump of sheet poo from right in front of the church gate. I even prepped supper.

Thing is, as all this thinks me, is the importance of laughter, even alone among sticky nobs, cobwebs, etc. Also, if the so called negative of a situation can be shifted into an ok thing, ok with me that is, then I won’t cart about any uneccesary shame nor blame. And then, as the thinks think on, what about how we judge someone else for their ‘cover’? I know people who won’t ask friends to their place because they are embarrassed about their ‘cover’, their ‘lack’. How sad. When I visit someone’s home, I couldn’t care less about the surroundings, the spills, the stains, the anything. I visit to look into the eyes of a friend, a human with a heart, doing their best.

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Island Blog – Maybe an Acceptance

I know that, when I am feeling tired, things arise that don’t bother doing so when I am not. I have learned this over many decades, not to fix on any choices, opinions, nor decisions when feeling tired, angry or hurt. It’s as if a mind, so clear and engaged with daily life falls into super-tired and then goes deeply weird. Sometimes, most times, the whatever that finds a way into the within of an already compromised state takes on the efficiency and the focus of a drone, with no empathy, no emotive colour nor depth, no ability to connect beyond its own directive. I was going to write that it feels like finding myself in a small space with a whole nest of angry wasps, but, although there is something of that, it isn’t quite the truth. It’s more as if the whole terrain changes, one I trusted, was sure of, my footing securely supported, all my thoughts lining up like good wee scouts, my inner team.

With all of that gone, the troublemakers come in like missiles, like drones, laden with regrets and recriminations. The trigger can be something someone says that swipes a person right back to childhood; could be a moment in time, long long past; could be a choice made in a different time that still troubles up in a bad dream. For me, it’s listening to an audio book today, feeling tired. Although the book is fun and engaging and brilliantly written and spoken, one of the characters has a husband with dementia. She knows it, we who listen know it, even the husband knows it, but he floats in an out of reality. Because the writer has obviously experienced this situation, even distantly, the theatre is accurate enough to take me back to so much of the real situation.

However, I have read acres of books on dementia. They do sadden me, but only at a distance. I was there and for many years. The grief for a strong and heretofore upright, impossible, infuriating, figure of importance and value as they lose their grip, their hold on reality, their control of self, begins way before death. Way, way before. We know it, all the family knows it, all friends know it, neighbours, shopkeepers, anyone and everyone. However, and here’s the bit that got me in this audio book, the man, the gentle, bright, strong and loving man who caught this awful disease, also knows it and chooses to talk to his wife about his feelings of fear, of sadness, of loss.

I never had that. That’s not a poor me thing, nor written with blame in my keyboard tapping, but I can feel, like a punch in my heart, how wonderful it could have been to cry together, to talk, to hold, to share. Perhaps, and I would say this to another who told me just this, it was just the way it was for you and him. There’s hurt in there, an unintended rejection, and maybe an acceptance.

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Island Blog – The Hello Thing

I get them all the time. Caught up in my own diary, agenda, timing, thoughts, projectory, that Hello Thing whips in like a tendril. I don’t feel trapped, nor asphyxiated, but there’s an alert there, something I cannot see, hear, nor negotiate with, an announcement inside my car, my kitchen, at work as I turn to lift clean plates onto a stack, or as I turn a corner a bit wild because the track is clear and there’s a big fun in the swing because the sun is stacked bighigh and just around the next corner, and all I can hear are swallows and geese speaking languages I would love to understand. The Hello Thing arrives like a majesty and right in my head. I have done a load of thoughting about the Hello Thing, over years, over many of those long lasting buggers and there is no denying they are random spirits, nothing to do with the upright correctness of my life, anyone’s life. Hence the random element. It does wonder me, as I remember, fractionally, my teenage years, and those years are most definitely the ones least listened to. A big mistake, right there.

The alerts, the Hello Things I dissed in those teenage years and way beyond, when I was married because the others in the room apparently never got them, and were, obviously, threatened by such, are my friends now. I believe there is a wisdom out there, way beyond me and there to guide, advise, caution. I have learned to listen, to be aware. Thing is, it doesn’t matter a bloodline, siblings, a past fashioned, all of us have the ears to listen to the Hello Thing. I believe it is a beautiful connection to the beyond of us. I have never heard anything destructive in any of my Hellos.

I met one or two today, as I pulled out from my work at the Best Cafe Ever. Yes, we all get weary, as a trickle of coffees and easy cakes erupts into a diasma of soups, quiches, warmed this, decaf that, herbal teas and ‘we’re in a hurry”. I could hear the uprise of voices, all upbeat, all choosing, all laughing, all on holiday, from my hidey-hole in the wash-up area with two deep sinks. The Hello Thing shoved me out, by my skinny butt. Don’t play the old card. , Get out there. I heard it, I love it.

You know what? Getting old does not mean a folding. Does not mean stop. Does not mean I Can’t. I don’t say this lightly. There is always fight. There is always the Hello Thing. Always. It’s a twist in thinking, a sudden realisation, the arrow shoot of a truth, the flip of a treaty, the crumble of a known road, the words of a person once respected. The determination to be whoever you are.

All I will say, is listen, and pay attention.

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Island Blog – Two Sparrows

I love my work. I’ve said this before, I know, I know, but I am happy to say it again. The energy required, the energy generated, both are like two sides of a something that has two sides, which, pretty much defines all of us. Our bright talents can go dark, but that is all about personal management, a noticing, the ability to uprise road blocks should one be careening, and our inherent goodness, because we all have that. It is slightly off-pissing that we need to keep a hold on the wonky planks of our personal attics, to ensure that the ‘cobwebs’ don’t become thixotropic, dense. cauterising. Oh, we who are honest, know that place, and there’s a choice thing there. Actually, it’s mostly an ‘oh bugger’ because what we inherently know, regardless of parental influence, is that we don’t want to harm, that we are listening, noticing, learning.

No idea why I went there. Perhaps it is because on my journey to work I meet eejits who are, very possibly wonderful people but who don’t feel the need to wave a thank you as I skid off into the briars and sludge in order that they, in pristine big-ass vehicles with one wife and possibly one dog, slide by. I’m happy with the slide, and I always wave first, but when another living, breathing, vulnerable human makes no eye contact, proffers no acknowledgement of my skid into the briars, I confess I do ‘miff’. Momentarily. It wonders me. Is this how life is for them in wherever they come from? What I do know is that it isn’t a warm community, like a remote island, wherein we all recognise the need for each other. And that is sad.

Today, as the cafe filled with soup orders, dogs, children, bikers, walkers, holiday folk with a hunger for delicious scones and fantabulous cakes, coffees, herbal teas and a welcome that seems to bring everyone together, there was just me, behind pots and bowls and a sort of lull. I heard a sparrow cheep, insistent, and recognised it immediately (the benefit of a mostly silent island life) as a young one shouting at dad. It’s usually dad. Mum has had enough. She is not there for the endless ‘feed-me’ demandings. I emerged from the pots, nobody else there and followed the sound. As I passed by the tables, conversation flowed, nobody else caught this, to discover two sparrows inside the door, on the stairs, baby shouting, dad (I imagined, exhausted, with a ‘what now?’ in his voice}. I slowly rose the stairs, the door behind them, the birds, thankfully open. I gentled ‘ off you go, you guys’ as if they could understand me. Eventually they did.

Inside the busy, the curriculum of any work, the random, the sparrow, will fly in and will think you. Some will notice and respond. Many will not. I want to notice everything, everyone, all of this life, the random, the awkward, whilst learning the ability to accommodate, even to whisper a freedom. For me, there is nothing else.

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Island Blog – Village Life

There is something about a small community that isn’t a bit small at all. Although the wee street is short, the homes hunkers, mostly, against the winter gales, people open doors, emerge onto the skinny tarmac with dogs, kids, bikes, empty shopping bags over shoulders, and all of them wave. If it works, I slow on my way to work, wind down a window, share a laugh, find something out, check on the wellbeing of those whom I value, whom I love, whom I would sorely miss. Mostly, it’s cheeky chat, fly comments, something like a nourishing extra breakfast or lunch, a lift to my soul. There’s almost no parking because all the parking is already done, and the line goes all the way up to where the road divides, a cusp, a problem sometimes because I have to be in first gear to overscape the cusp thing and in the ice times, even first gear, even in my snorty wee mini, is no enough. Needless to say, there is a lot of reversing, pulling back, moving forward a bit, sneaking into skinny gaps and just to get to the end of this wee street. It’s not a street, no. It’s a track, or, perhaps on days when ‘the boys’ have moved in with pot-hole fillings and tarmac hot enough to take the belly off even the highrise big-ass four wheel drives, should they risk a too early move, a road.

The thing here is community, a kindness and a helping, a reversing, a lot of that, a waving, a smiling. I came, we came as incomers 46 odd years ago, and there are many more now. I meet them because they involve, they want to. They come to help, to volunteer, to bring their skills to any situation. I watch them. I see their smiles, their body language, their openness to a complete life change. Coming from cities, from stressful jobs, from awkward familial situations, from judgement and marginalisation, towards the dream that life can be a Can Be. And it can. And I would wish for so many folk that the belief in just that would give them the courage to shift, to lift, to gift a better life to themselves.

When we had to leave the island, a load of whiles ago, and rented a flat in Glasgow Southside, I felt ripped from community. I seek community, love people, talk to anyone and everyone, and all the time. I know I need people, but I am not needy. Oh no. Very independent. Our flat was 3 floors up. It was a fine flat. But I had to find friendship. I knocked on doors, noted when this new lass came back from work, she was unsure about new flooring, her new job, what did I think? I met folk on the cold concrete stairs, said hallo. I met warmth. It thought me. Everyone is lonely. Floor below lived a very old brother and sister, really wonderful Glasgow folk, the best. She baked. He swore and laughed a lot. When she had baked scones, she whacked a broom handle on her ceiling. Come, collect. Even though I could not wait to escape the city, to get back to my island home, I remember those two who gave me village life in a very lonely place.

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Island Blog – You Young Things

Jeez, it took me a while to find any grace today, as I battled with all the shenanigans of re-pointing the walls of a longtime blog, as if, all of a sudden, the mortar upon which I had depended and for many years, had suddenly mortified, which it hadn’t, of course. This is all about money even if it is proffered on my doorstep like a bouquet of fragrant flowers held by a business owner with cash problems. Hey and ho. Anyways up, what my blog site doesn’t know, and probably doesn’t care, is that I have to dash from this room to that for a signal should, (and there’s always a ‘should’) I require an MSM something that used to just be a text message, the about-to-die blue rectangle app, and one I can only receive if I stand on the stool next to where the sun sets, and for flipping ages, by which time my timing is cut and I must needs go again and again. I did the again and again thing, trying, all the time to cut the thrust of my sabre, to control my spit, to mind my teeth, to monitor my swearing. I pretty much failed. However, I do this calm yourself through doorways thing. It works a treat for me, but it does require an open mind, one which doesn’t want to get lost in the rant. I like that word. There’s a place and a space for it. I like a rant. I like punching the air, shouting at my very understanding geraniums, and there’s a laugh in the process because someone always walks by, and then the laugh becomes a tippsicato, lifting into the sky, the perfect dissolution.

In the faff and the loss of my identity, my blog site downed like a rabbit beneath a buzzard. It felt like that. My world, I know. The running between rooms, the wanting to shout about mobile reception on an island, or on an island in a storm, or on an island when said island has turned hunch against the onslaught of trixology, internet control and more, had me quite tapselteerie. I know, I flipping know, that this is how it is, and there is much good in the how it is thing. But, I write this with relief in my fingers because I am reconnected with my blog when I wasn’t for about 20 texts and a huge amount of room changing, I and my fellow confusciousees, do have a bit of a battle on our hands. I am one of the blessed. I have children who are right beside me. I know this isn’t a given. And, I am so thankful. Even so, I am still alone in the living-in-the-no-reception-place. I am alone in the confusion with the new world, the quick-sharp sorting of everything, including other worlds, restaurant bookings in another country, the immediacy of everything.

I remember having to wait, and wait, and wait, for everything, for anything, and for weeks.

You young things might ask some questions about that, about how it was, once. If you don’t, you will never know how much and how far your granny or grandpa have come, what they did, where they began, how damn hard it was.

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Island Blog – Not Just a Woman

I never can find the source of my newly thinks, they just come. Chances are someone says something that stops me in my tracks, or I notice something, a chance glimpse of an encounter without words but with smoke rising above the both of them. Could be the times that tourists haven’t acknowledged that I have snaked my way back in a very competent reverse around at least four corners whilst they, in a big four wheel drive thing as big as a starship, sit and look at me, and, then, when the driver, the man, stares straight ahead as he zooms past and never thanks nor smiles, I. know that’s when the think rose in me. I know you, I thought. I never want you again in my life, not that I did, not in my marriage, but all around us lived out these men and, it seems, still they do and in freedom.

I am not just a woman. I am more than an excellent cook, a skill I honed and refined over years, not just because I wanted to please, because I did, but more, because, when I gave up my dreams, being the centre of the need, the giver and lover, the supplier of nourishment, the one to bring smiles and full bellies and gentle sleep, my skills meant everything.

As children grew, as a community dynamic shifts, I got it. I moved with the viable, with the awkward, the times when my man hid away. I got my role. Never signed up for it, had no clue, but there I was, all young body, long hair, still with a dream whispy in my head. It dies. No, it doesn’t. I still have it, still believe in my dream.

A man. My choice. However, and in my experience, there were only about 3 who ever asked me, and listened, about what I wanted in life. I told them. I am a fiery, terrified, strong, weak, beautiful, ugly, competent, useless, woman. I am not my body, and I am my body. I am gentle and very strong. I am wild, spontaneous, awkward, bloody-minded, but not fixed in any of those. I am rainbow coloured and I am soft shell beach colours. I am the storm, the sunrise, the set, the pull of a tide, the stop of boats, the lift of cloud, the sunshift, the turning of the world. I am the moon as she wakes, loud in a starry sky, pulsing power. I am unsleep, I am warm cuddles, I am immediate, I am distant.

I am not just a woman.

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Island Blog – Somebody Somewhere

Back from work and I love to work, particularly there, in the cafe above a big ass, wide sandy beach, white grains, old shells caravanned through endless crashing waves, longtime empty of their inhabitants, and, very possibly, centuries old. Landed here, the bits of sparkly life, ground down, still sparkling, all laid flat like a platitude, for careless feet to scutch up, for kiddies to rebuild into passing castles, for yet another tide to grab with oceanic multifingers, careless, tossing any grab into any wild weather, a constant swirl, no chance to find a home.

It thinks me. Up here, and away from the centuries old thing, there are humans. Weird ones, funny ones, lying ones, avoiding ones, shy ones, shouty ones; those who burst into a room, with a smile like Santa, those who hide behind a load of fitkit , those couples who can’t decide without each other. I notice body language – a closeness to the counter, a big voice, assertive – a pull back, shy, begging a welcome, an invite. I see young parents come in, tentative, with a wee one who just might kick-off. I so feel for them. I see indecision. Where shall we sit, in or out, here or maybe over there? there’s a deal of head snapping on that one, a whole dynafusion of questions. What is my place here? Should I take charge? Did I just take charge? Is that okay? Oh, dear…….The space before the welcoming counter is a whole flipping world of learnation.

I pull back, after having a gazillion chuckles with the frontal guests, fixing their orders and charging them 400 quid for a scone. Ach, it did have extra cheese and a delicious locally brewed seaweed chutney, but, nonetheless, a bit too much. I will work this pingy pay thingy eventually. However, the fun connection created when an eejit like me who never ever said she was ok with such scary equipment, erupts into a body relax across the counter, I know I am in the right place. I am seen, happily playing the fool, and they, I can see it, gentle. Instead of us (the workers) and you, the welcome customers, and this frickingly loaded counter of spectacular cakes and lunch options and just a few of us being very dynamic btw, and rules and that charging thingy, it’s just us humans, people, picked up and moved, tossed every which way by endless life-changing winds.

We are all somebodies, all of us somewhere, all of us trying to breathe.