life

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Island Blog – There you go

Spring is here. Let me feel it one my skin, beneath my bare feet. Let me hear it, the birdsong, the rustling inside the branches, the dart and dash of new life. Let me watch the creatures return, the gathering of nesting softness, and let me know the fear and the joy of finding a home, one in which to birth and protect the next generation. Let me take it all in, no dash and hurry, no missing any of it. I wander a track squelched by winter cold and rain, the mud ridges trying so hard to firm up and sinking me nonetheless. Last years leaves mulch beneath my boots, pushed ever down into the ground and it smiles me. We are born, we live, we die, but in that inevitable cycle we leave something of ourselves behind, something that can become the ground for a new beginning, one we will not experience. There is a song in that, harmonious, melodious, lilting-sad but a powerful legacy indeed. Our own song may be sung out, but we can bring a new baseline for another generation to stand on in their own times, times of feeling lost, times perhaps of fear or confusion, saying I am here, beneath your feet and you can do this because I did it too, feeling just like you feel now.

The sea-loch is quiet this morning, a late frost ghosting the grasses that run down to where land meets tide. The ancient rocks shine in morning sunshine and the old trees along the shoreline, still winter brown, will soon rise into green. Migrant birds return to sparkle my garden with their impossible colours, goldfinch, siskin, whilst those who stayed home line the fence awaiting breakfast. Birdmusic fills the air, lifting melodies into a soft blue sky, melodies no composer ever really captured. On days like these, hope comes calling. Everything is possible. On days like these, a morning like this, I remember waking to work with a smile, a gasp at the sudden beauty, one in which I played no part. And, yet, my part begins now, not just as witness to a morning like this, but in an active role. Guests at Tapselteerie need breakfast, children need winding out of bed sheets and into school clothing. Packed lunches need to be prepared, wrapped and delivered. A whale-watching trip lies ahead, the boat impatient and bobbing. Get me fired up, get me out there among the sea-birds, the dolphins, porpoise, otters, seals, whales, the wild wide ocean calls, can’t you hear her? Yes, we can hear and we are on our way, human time. There is, I tell the ocean, a process to a morning for our part. We need the right clothing, the breakfast in our bellies, a packed lunch in our knapsack, binoculars, waterproofs, boots for the island landing, our bird books, cetacean books, our cameras, water bottles, an extra jersey, hats, gloves………Good Lord what a ridiculous list, sighs the ocean, lapping faster against the stone jetty. She needs none of those add-ons after all.

It may be a boat trip, it may be a walk or drive to work. It may be a day in school, or there may be no plan at all. It matters not. What does matter is how we do whatever we need to do in a day, our attitude. Are we thankful for this day, this hour, this moment and do we say so? Do we notice every detail with humility and gratitude and say so? I know, having learned how life can be snuffed out in a single breath un-breathed, how important it is to be present in every living moment, to appreciate it and to say so. And, more, how that outspoken presence leaves a legacy for a new young life, as yet un-lived. We come, we go. What we do in between, who we are and how we do what we do is remembered, either as encouragement, nourishment, an example to follow, or not. None of us can change all our circumstances but we can, with grace and our eyes on each moment, each encounter, leave not just our own story, but a lot of invisible threads that conjoin with others, leave kisses on a stranger’s heart. And, the legacy of that is endless.

This day, we walked onto a wide white sandy beach to send ashes back to the sea. This place she loved, he loved, this curve of powdered shells over many many years, where the sea comes in and goes out twice a day and every day; where the sky goes on forever and where we stand looking out to sea, to the great beyond, thoughts lifting, memories, moments, pictures of a lifetime well and truly lived. Through heartache, troubles, joys and laughter, through birthdays, anniversaries, holidays and ordinary days, these two held the line. I hear their laughter as I watch the wavelets lap at the shore, claiming ground. I watch those times they flew above their troubles in the cant and tilt of a seagull, a raven. They walked here once, no, more than once. I see them still, on this beach, distant but there. As I walk back up to my car with my little dog, sand in my boots and shells in my pocket, I know I will not forget this sunshine day, the words spoken, the sight of ashes floating away, the flute melody, the poem, the song, the prayers, the being a part of it all.

Back among ice cream eaters and picnickers I look up. An eagle flies. I wave. There you are my lovelies. There you go.

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Island Blog – A Bee, Curiosity and Instant Solutions

How do bees manage to fly sideways? In this African garden with its ebullience of fragrant blooms, I am of interest to the bees. One or two come over to me, perhaps beckoned by my floral perfume or perhaps I just look like a blooming shrub in my colourful frock. On the trajectory towards me, the bee flies straight, but once it arrives a few inches from my face, she swings from right to left, left to right, sussing me out, eyeball to eyeball. How does she do it? I google. It seems that a bee’s wings, both pairs of them, not only flap up and down but also can twist and rotate. How fantastic is that! It thinks me.

How flexible am I inside this life of mine? Do I flap up and down, moving either forward or back, or do I have the mental wings that can twist and rotate, thus allowing me to visit any situation or encounter using a lateral flow? I like to think I can laterally flow with the best of them, and I believe it to be a truth. I visit the sideways of things a lot, particularly when I am unsure-footed, continuing forward, but determined not to go back, because going back over old ground in any situation is not going to show me anything new, after all, now is it? However, there is often the temptation to replay the movie, to berate self for any trip ups back there, to wish I had done or said it differently, a thoroughly pointless exercise, a waste of mind energy, and fruitless, but we all do it now and again and some of us make a life of wishing the past was different.

Logic and emotion can be poor bed mates. I can know something, a fact, a truth, a way of behaving, but if I cannot feel the truth of it, know it in my heart, that ‘truth’ means little to me, much as the bee thought I was a blooming shrub. However, it’s deeply frustrating when that belief lasts only as long as it takes for something to trip me up, like a half-concealed boulder in my new path, the one I absolutely know to be the right one, logically speaking. The number of positive and upbeat wisdoms, particularly on social media, are beginning to irritate me, all those goodly truths serving only to tell me how often I fall short of their perfection. Learning how to accept that each ‘truth’ is something I need to experience personally as I keep moving along my path takes a degree of patience, not something any of us find easy. I want it now, this new understanding, not in ten years time for god’s sake! Other people get it straight away, so what is wrong with me? Your thinking, m’lady, that’s what is wrong, not you. Don’t think, but just keep buzzing along, use those wings to twist and rotate, work the muscles, fly sideways, checking out everything and everyone along the way. Be like a bee. And if a shrub turns out to be an old woman in a loud frock, so be it. Move on.

As I approach 70 years of age, an astonishment for me as I never thought I would pass 60, I take a look down the road from my past. 60, in my opinion, meant bad temper, lipstick smudged, hair, weekly permed into a helmet and sensible shoes and I wanted none of that. Nowadays, however, we are younger than our parents were, in thinking, in opportunities, in attitude and in engagement with younger generations. I don’t feel old at all and plan to remain not feeling old until I fall over for the last time. I have also found, eventually it seems, a confidence I did not have when younger. Although I cannot state with any lofty words that I know where I am going, because most of the time I do not, I am happy with that. If we stay curious, fly sideways as well as forwards, the occasional look back allowed but only to honour all we have gone through and survived, we birth ourselves again. We have inherited DNA, yes, but that doesn’t need to define our choices or actions today, right now. I am truly thankful for my ancestors, what they gifted me, the good and the ‘bad’. I am also deeply thankful that I am not a bee. My eyes are open, my limbs flexible, my curiosity a daily fascination as I can arrive in a strange place just like that, my mental wings ready to twist. I don’t wear lipstick nor do I have a permed head. I am not bad-tempered, nor do I own a pair of sensible shoes, running barefoot most of the time. I am prepared to face whatever the olding process sends my way. I will continue to read those uplifting truths because I never know which one will settle in for keeps, and, best of all, I no longer believe in instant solutions, because the only instant solution I can trust unequivocally, is me.

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Island Blog – Keeping Time with Time

I wake early and with the sunrise. Out here, in Africa, we are two hours ahead of the UK for a while yet, until the clocks go forward this month. Africa doesn’t bother about clock changing and it wonders me why anyone does. There must be a point to it. Perhaps there is only a limited amount of time in the world and it needs sharing. We lose an hour and another continent thousands of miles across the world finds it has gained one, over us, that is. What is achieved in that gained hour I wonder? Does somebody somewhere get a job done more thoroughly or is that hour just 60 minutes of boredom, time wasted, time not needed, time spent in waiting for something, anything to happen? And when we claim back that hour, around now, with Spring in our step, do we notice the gain of it, treasure it, make it really count, or is it just lost in sleep, a sleep cut short? This musing thinks me. I don’t need to know the facts around time gained, time lost, because this is not the way my mind works. I am more interested in the concept of time and what it means at the core of itself. Time gained? Who gains? Time lost? Who loses? All answers float in the stratosphere, high above factual explanations, beyond the reach of science or physics, free-flowing through the vast and unlimited space of an imagination. There is no such thing as time. Time is an illusion. We all have the same number of hours in a day. But what do we do with our no-such-thing, illusory and equally gifted gift of Time? Now that’s a question.

When I was mostly tapselteerie, way back when children were children, when I was taller than any of them and when, if I said NO, then NO it was, I never thought much about time as a concept. It was something the clock told me, tick, tock, tick, a hand at my back, a hurry up, a panic, a flurry of hours that allowed for no sit-downs, merciless in the tick and the tock of itself, selfish. Selfish time, stop a little, slow a bit, let me catch up? No chance of that my dear, you just need to shape up and move faster. It is like this for all in the muddle-frenzy of young life, building children, building a business, clambering up corporate ladders, learning new ways to fit in, diluting self for the benefit of the team and so on. From where I sit now, watching all this flurrying about me, I am glad it is done for me, no longer diluting self, no longer at the mercy of time, of business, softer round the edges, watching, smiling, calm. I was never calm in the olden days, although I did know people who managed the calm thing and it really irritated me that I couldn’t, me constantly on the boil, my guts in a right fankle, my legs never still. These people seemed in control of their time, allowing it to pass them by, yet still able to fire on all systems when required. Something to do with my faulty wiring, I told myself, and there was a damnit in that thought. However, looking back now through the rosy lens of hindsight, I smile as I recall the fankle, the self-flagellation, the waste of those minutes, those hours spent wishing I could be who I was not. Time wasted, or was it?

Self-reflection is no bad thing, as long as it is not indulged in and developed into a standstill. In my long journey through wasteland and over capricious and sometimes spiteful expanses of ocean, I did, and still do, need to trim my sails, to learn from life herself, to change this or that, to find a new way to look at an old thing. Learning is a lifetime’s work and I am still learning, still a student, an understanding that can really up my fed at times, and delight me at others. I still have my mind, my health, my precious life, time. None of us know how much of that we have, myself included, and it seems to me that this doesn’t really matter much. It’s who we are in the time we do have that remembers people, makes a dent in others lives. Did I waste time in my life? I did. Was I completely marvellous at filling my time to capacity and at all times? I was not. Did I share my time, gift my time every time it was needed? I did not. Am I deeply thankful for all the time spent, shared, gifted, wasted? Those hours of shared chatter, laughter, tears and silent companionship, those highs and lows, those moments spent staring through windows and wishing life was different, that something would happen to change everything……….am I thankful for all of that time? I am.

And now, for however much time is left, no matter the loss and gain of hours, I will keep time with Time. I will sleep some away, waste some, share some, sit alone and gaze through windows but this time without wishing for transformation, without regrets, analysis, criticism of self, all of that time wasting nonsense. Even through the rumpelstiltskin hours of a tossing night, even when I wish she would hurry up, slow down, stop completely for a while, even then, for Time is my friend and she is gift. So many have no time left at all.

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Island Blog – All Queens

Facial needling. Heard of it? I certainly had not and required the process to be thoroughly explained before I ventured near. The clinic welcomes me with lovely and uplifting messages, discreetly placed, phrases that tell every woman she is beautiful, with which I whole-heartedly agree. Beyond the weatherings of skin and body, lies a woman with goodness and love in her heart. Just look into her eyes and you will find her no matter the harshness she has survived, no matter how strong her armour and her need to hide within it. Not one of us finds life perfect all of the time. Not one.

I digress. Soft pastels cover the walls and the welcome is warm and genuine. I am guided to a flat bed and asked to remove jewellery and upper clothing and to lie down beneath the coverlet. My clinician is young and, yes, beautiful, and she explains the process. I am no fearty around needles, not me with all my tattoos, my five babies wombed and delivered au naturelle, various minor ops and various minor accidents. Needle away, I say and she begins, having first cleansed my face and neck with her gentle fingers. It feels like a sharpish massage and I wince, once, only once, settling quickly into acceptance. I relax and close my eyes listening to the buzz of the instrument and mentally following it over my face, marking out the rise of nose and dip of chin, the soft plump of cheeks, the wood of my forehead. I feel the bones beneath, the way they are perfectly fashioned to fit my skin, the precious brain they protect and have protected for 70 years, or nearly. No sell-by date for bone structure, not if you’re blessed with a good dose of bloody-mindedness and a further dose of luck. She works on my worry line, that damn thing between my startlingly dyed eyebrows which appeared when I was about fifteen and is now like a dried up river bed, deep and permanent. Or so I thought. This will tighten up all the lines and wrinkles, she tells me with a smile which I can hear, but not see. Yeah, yeah, I think. I’ve read such drivel on the backs of endless potion bottles promising youth after a few applications, and bought not one.

Process completed, advice on not using abrasive face washes etc gifted, I return home feeling as though a million prickly things are trying to get out of my face. Not unpleasant, more tingly and exciting. I have no worry line now, although I do realise this is not a long term magical fix and that I, from this day forth, fifth and. sixth will need to not worry, not invite the return of dried up river bed. I must keep my eyes wide, remain curious, laugh a lot, particularly at my worries and remind myself that I am beautiful, I am a queen. It thinks me about playing cards. What does each queen represent? I google and find that, although each one holds specific values, all four are really one queen. The queen of hearts brings love, fertility and creativity. She also tells of upheaval and change, understandably because love is heart-breaking at times, fertility never a given and creativity can be stifled by herself, by others, by the demands laid upon her. The queen of clubs gifts new beginnings, transition and opportunities. We all know all about those, even if the last has felt as far away as Pluto. Diamonds, well, she’s sharp that one. The queen of swords, intellectual, quick-witted, able to think on her feet, change, evolution. The Joan d’Arc within each one of us. HRH spades brings female intelligence, judgement that is practical, logical and intuitive.

So my thinking is that we all host all four queens, finding at the right time, whatever skills we need to make our lives the best they can be in any set of circumstances. Easily said. There’s no mention of all that sobbing in the dark, the longings for escape whilst trapped, nor the sacrifice of our dreams in order to play a bit part in someone else’s life. We all know those times. However if we can hold on, albeit with exhausted fingers, to the knowledge that we are all queens minus thrones, that tiny flicker of flame kept alive can take us through things we never asked for but which came our way regardless. What did we. expect, after all? A happy ever after, a magical and perfect life? There is no such thing and that is the harshest of truths to accept. But if we can accept it, without rancour or bitterness, we become the queens simply because we, in the silence of our hearts, beneath the armour, inside that beloved brain, believe it, even if it is never acknowledged.

At fifteen, when the worry line began to make itself known, I wrote down my dream. I want to marry a man of adventure, have lots of children and to live in a wild place. And that is exactly what came about. The queen bit had to come from within, yes, there was no encouragement on that score, but it didn’t stop me. I have no throne, no wish to queen myself over others, no interest in that. All I will ever do is encourage other women to find their own majesty and to clothe her in dignity and grace, to learn all queenly skills and to never let the world or anyone in it bring her down.

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Island Blog – A Warthog, Clouds, Shapes and Colour

I am quickly getting friendly with the heat. It bizarres me that I can go from 6 degrees to 36 and not only love both but able to adapt almost immediately. Walking off the last week plane (Orville from The Rescuers) into dazzling sunshine and a load of hot people, I felt my spirits lift. Of course there was relief in there, somewhere, after gruelling airport and plane-ness, but to feel the slam of heat in my favourite place is more than warming. There is air-con in this lovely thatched African home, cool tiled floors and plenty shade on the outside of In, not to mention a swimming pool from which I just rescued (hopefully) a huge centipede critter with a name like Chingaloolie, with a million legs and a body about 10 inches long, as thick as my dad’s middle finger. I paddled in, scooped it up in a sieve and laid it on the deck. I’m hopeful as I definitely saw its feelers wiggle. This life-saving thingy reminds me of swimming in a Corfusian sea past endless (it seemed) honey bees paddling like dingbats and with no hope of survival. I scooped them up on the back of one hand, holding it aloft as I turned for shore with a lopsided breast stroke. I managed about 8 one day and felt super delighted with myself as if I, alone, had saved all bees. Finding a rock I encouraged the enfeebled to move off my hand. No thanks, they all said with a little tail waggle. Lord knows what they were saying to each other as I became a little nervous of upsetting them into a stinging frenzy. They wouldn’t, I said, not after I saved them from Davy Jones’ locker, and they didn’t.

It is too hot to walk the dog except for early doors but not too early because Lady Leopard might not have managed her night kill and still be hungry, not that scraggy me would fill her belly. Even the big dog, although more her style, wouldn’t be enough. I’ve seen the size of her dinners half way up a tall tree, where she dragged it away from a hyena scavenge, impala legs sticking out like bicycle spokes, its glazed over eyes no longer with sight, whilst her Ladyship lounged on another branch, yawning. It’s too hot today to make foray over the decking which burns like fire under naked feets. The good news is that, once I got the hang of the mechanical options, the washing will dry in about 30 minutes, unlike back home where clouds (obviously watching for the chance of mischief) gather and merge to dump their load just after I’ve gone back indoors. I watch the dragonflies, rainbow coloured, dart and dive through the garden. Electric blues, vibrant reds, butter yellows, like the birds that sing and whoop, screech and chitter through the acacia. So much colour so much life. I read and watch, startle at a bark. Baboon? They come, you know, without any idea of boundaries, leaping and bouncing through gardens, over high walls or to swing down from trees in search of food. The abundant Grenadilla hangs heavy with fruit and they love it. But, no, it isn’t baboon, this time, but a neighbouring dog with a talent for impersonation. I relax back, for now. I remember the last time I was in Africa, inside a wildlife reserve and working on my laptop on the stoep. I heard the bark of the head male, a massive creature with big yellow teeth and scarpered inside just in time to hear the roof drumming with baboon. Mothers with babies a-clung, exuberant teenagers and himself, the patriarch. I ran to lock the windows and doors. They pull doors open. In no time they were gone leaving my ears ringing with their screeches and thumps, my heart beating so fast I had to hide in the loo to calm down. It took me some time to ginger back out.

Yesterday we did walk through the reserve and enjoyed a stand off with a mother warthog. Her piglets squealed around her and we were careful, very careful, not to get in between her and her young. Those tusks are big and she will charge in a flash. She wouldn’t budge off the track. We inched forward as everything in me screamed TURN AROUND! My African son held my hand tight and slowly we moved onwards. She watched us pass, through those piggy eyes, as if we were no big deal but for the rest of the walk I was on tenterhooks. I had always considered warthogs to be hideous creatures but this far-too-close- encounter. showed me how stunning they are with that red-dust colouring and those fine lines. Nonetheless I would rather see them ways off from now on. Driving into town I see a male giraffe, his head way higher than the trees, whilst overhead huge vultures wheel and loop through the blue. Nothing compares to such sightings, so close, so free to roam, so endangered. Much of what I will see, have seen, will be nothing more than a picture in a school book in the not too distant future, a sad thought indeed, albeit an inevitable one. At least I have seen, with my own eyes, the real deal, watched it lope, run, pounce, climb, swing, charge. I know the Go Away signs, the body language, what not to do in the event of trouble and these come with feelings and memories not many future generations will ever experience.

A scoot into town for a coffee and I am thrilled to be remembered. The welcome from Cosmos at the Rock Fig was warm and smiley and the coffee as I remember, hot, strong and delicious. Thence to the material shop because I plan to sew a story using soft linens, threads and wools. Sewing without a scooby as to what will reveal itself, just working on instinct and with colours and shapes already seen, the insects, birds, animals and people, is deliciously freeing, the result oftentimes a complete surprise. It thinks me. A life is painted this way, starting at the beginning, being curious, trusting instincts, with courageous application of every small step. Looking back on my own life I can see the patterns and shapes I never saw at the time, not believing that these apparently insignificant choices and decisions I made could ever become a whole painting, become just that. We need the bland hues, the times we thought nothing much was happening, would ever happen, for the vibrant lifts of rich colour to really show. Life is a lot about waiting for something to present itself, a new path, a new relationship, a new opportunity and those times demand and require a patience we find lumpish and pale, like yesterday’s porridge. But Life has her plans. All we need to do is to show up and to keep showing up; to fake courage and a can-do attitude no matter how grey our sky, how full of colluding clouds; to keep taking another step and, most of all, to be curious like Alice, however old we might be in years. It is easy to falter, to fall and we all do it but there will be someone nearby who is upstanding. Reach out a hand and hold on tight, eyes wide with the looking and something or someone will appear to colour up the bland, to inspire, to startle our canvas into electric life. A new way to work with the old things is like sunshine on a rainy day, an eyelet through which we can see for miles. They were always there, the miles. We just needed a wee rest for a while.

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Island Blog – RIP Old Friend

I knew it was coming but not when. Meantime, not knowing the ‘when’ part, my days continued ordinary and soft, although the sadness lifted my ruffles from time to time making me shiver. Those around his bed would know more, I knew that, just as we had known as we watched our own ‘him’ move invisibly towards that other place whence no-one ever returns. He was ill, he was dying and yet the hold on life seems to me to defy even intense pain and the desire for it all to end, for a life to end. Life is a strong force indeed, no matter how careless we may be around the years we live it. We hold on and hold on and why, when it is clear to everyone, to ourselves, that death is in the room patiently waiting for our fingers to let go.

I picture an image of those children, now with children of their own, of my friend, his wife, around his last bed. I know the taste of exhaustion, the longing for it to be over, the fear of just that. I know the smell of dying, the sound of it in raspy and hesitant breaths, the lift of gallows humour among the watchers, laughter flying around the room, small fry defence against the enormity of what lies before them all. A whole long life almost gone but not quite, no, another breath, the rise of it a sinking inside the room. Let him go. Let. Him. Go. But he defies the wish and breathes on and on and on and the night watchers watch and there is tea and coffee for staying awake and stories to fill the room. Remember This? Remember when he, when we, that time on the beach, on the farm, during the thunder storm, when the dog died, that party, my wedding, my wedding, my wedding?

And his wife of over 50 years will be numb. What do you do after over 50 years as a man’s wife, as mother to his children? Does anybody know the answer to that? You were a young beauty back then, full of hope and sparkles and dreams, a real catch, they said, lucky him, they said, and he was. To be a farmer’s wife is no easy task. Nobody takes shifts, you just both shift and often at the drop of a hat, or a piglet or a calf. You rise from slumber because you have to. There is nobody else will take this job, not at this hour when night is still heavy black and dawn is miles away enjoying herself. You take it all on. So what happens to your dreams and hopes and sparkles? Ah…….good question, and here comes strength and spirit and the life force within and she has plenty of that, this new widow, my old friend.

I know what it is like to be a widow and I also know it has taken me over two years to even like myself in my solo role, one I yearned for so many times but had no clue about until he breathed his last. It was a relief, at first. Nobody wants to watch suffering after all, but that doesn’t last. I know that she will be busy and organised at first, dealing with admin and people and responding to sympathy cards et lala , but about two months in, it hits like a demolition ball, wheeching the feet out from under and with just cold ground on which to land. I wish I could wish this away for her but I cannot. I know the impact of this explosion will be huge for his children but not in the same way. She is now alone in her lovely cottage and no amount of warmth from the range and the fires will un-chill her, because, and I am only observing here, her marriage, like my own, was a traditional one (although she is a lot feistier that I) and he will have taken care of things she never had to learn.

And so, it is. It makes no difference at all that he was of a ‘good age’ as if that makes it acceptable. The death of a life is never that. A whole person is gone, all of the irritations, all of the expectations, frustrations, criticisms, encouragements, smiles, rejections, affection and direction has hit the final buffers. We are now arriving at Death Station where this train will terminate. Just like that. Just today. He is gone. RIP old friend.

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Island Blog – If you Choose, then Dig.

Today the hooligan is blindways with a sideway slant of rain and wind. It’s from the South West which makes it okay enough, in that it won’t cut the legs off me when I walk out, nor skin the lips off my mouth, nor turn my eyeballs to ice. It’s irritating nonetheless. I slew right into the punch of it and hear the skitter upset of sparrows inside the rhododendron infiltratus, their safe house. There are many of them in there, all a-chatter, all talking at once. It wonders me that anything finds resolution in the sparrow world. There seems to be no leader, calling order, order, order. I move on watching puddles ripple as the wind skids across their surface, the sink holes, those birthed from the recent frosts, deep as ditches overnight. Cautious you drivers, gaw canny over this track. In my boots I have time and unfrozen eyeballs enough to avoid a sink, even though I do look, I do peer down, wondering if the old track I used to know way back is fighting its way back up to reveal itself, to have a voice in this cover-everything-over world.

The tram wires shimmy and shake overhead. A blackbird lands and I watch the way he, for it is an he, works his body into balance, his tail canting, a rudder in the wild of this wind. The rain, I watch it across the sea-loch as it rages right, right out to the west yearning, as water always will, to rejoin Mother Sea. I will be blown easy on the first leg of my walk and the return will be a fight. I align my frocks accordingly. I have no fear of rough weather, and great respect. Out here on the almost most westerly place before a collision with the US, I know what I am dealing with and it delights me. I can hear the stories, but not the words. I can feel the feelings of those who lived and knew this place even as I have no idea at all. My childhood, safe and not here at all, did not give me the roots I now know belong here, on the islands. It was as it was and it was a wonderful grounding, for a while, but the wild in me is home here in these capricious winds, even with climate change because it really isn’t so very different from how it always was. It was no big deal to walk down to a ceilidh and arrive soaked to the skin; no big deal to be marooned on the wrong side of the water when a gale arose like a nightmare from nowhere. We learned to adapt and I, as a Blow-In, or White Settler or whatever label was pulled forward at the time, found my home. I know, now, through research that my maternal forebears were island fold, sea-going folk, west coast folk and it thrills me for I am home. I am home.

Many of us wonder, if we do wonder, why it is we feel out of kilter, un-heard and lost. It might take a lifetime to find roots but if I was to suggest anything, I would say Go Seek. Roots run deep and deep can mean nobody digs. So, if you choose, then Dig.

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Island Blog – A Finagle, Life, Death and Beauty

I have spent many days finagling with my bird feeders. Initially I moved them, a no brainer, from the middle of the tiny front garden because my neighbour let her cats out. They are beautiful creatures, tortoiseshell and long limbed with amber eyes, a bit like the Scottish Wildcat. The male, Hamish, is particularly friendly so that I just could not squirt him with a water pistol after he leaped onto the bird table and made himself comfortable, awaiting breakfast or lunch. The female, a fast hunter was more wily. She found that to hide beneath a Pieris Japonica gave her just the chance she needed to pounce-and-claw a bird too many times. I wheeched out the bird table and cut all the lower branches of the PJ, thus un-hiding her. I still couldn’t bring myself to squirt. I am not, by nature, a squirter, preferring as I do to befriend all animals including human ones. Then there was the sparrow hawk, her dive of certain death, for she rarely misses. He, her mate, prettier by far with his red and indigo colouring is smaller, slower and more likely to be on my Christmas list, much as I respect his missus. I walked out once and it must have caught her mid dive, mid dive at 80mph from the ancient pines back of house for I felt her lift my hair, the touch of her claw on my head before she lifted up and away, no doubt in relief. The bird table, mid grass, made successful hunting all too easy and although I know sparrow hawks mun eat too, I didn’t want to feel that I was holding out a plateful of sparrows, finches, blackbirds and robins like a waitress in a restaurant.

I moved all my beautifully honed bespoke iron feeder posts, some swirls, some twists, some straight up and down to just beside the fence. I eyed the line from ancient pines to bird swipe and saw that any dive could be a disaster. My mini, parked close by and the wheelie bins in line would certainly threaten a headache at the very least. Satisfied, I watched the daily arrival of my feathered friends. A sudden throng of sparrows, maybe 20 at a time, fluttering in as a group to feed; a nervousness of goldfinch, individual robins and a bicker of blackbirds, all friendly as I walk out, staying nearby, chirping at me. I am a friend, unfeathered, slow-moving, soft spoken. There is no squirter in me, no fast diver of death and with no desire to eat any of them, and they know it. But wait. The ground feeder birds, blackbirds and robin redbreast, do not have the feets to cling as tits and goldfinch do. They need some flat base upon which to land. I eye my bird table now resting in the garage and shake my head. It’s big enough for a cat, remember? So I order online what looks like a flour sieve with a hooky thing for attachment, to what I couldn’t work out but I’m resourceful enough, so I tell myself. It arrives and I wander out barefoot in the snow (you should try it, so so so exhilarating) on a quest to find something to attach the hooky thing to. A post, yes, perfect. I find a slim post and embed it into a raised bed near to my beautifully honed bespoke iron feeder posts and wait. The first to come is the coal tit, the bravest alongside a wren and the most curious. Others follow and I am all smiles and delight, until. Like a bolt of lightning, a female sparrow hawk dives, grabs mid-air and lifts away with a sparrow. I hear its cry of alarm and pain and they are gone. Furious at myself I stomp back out to remove what, in effect, was my waitress in a restaurant offering plate. I study the line from pine to pain once again, and what I need to do is to sort of hide the tray of seed behind something, but what something? Here it is, my wrought iron sweet pea cone with nobbles and sticking up bits, all ready to stand like a solid bodyguard between life and death. So far it’s working. When the sparrow hawk comes I no longer feel outrage and fury for they must eat and their flight and accuracy is a marvel to watch, but, like a mother, I will do whatever it takes to protect those within my power to protect. If I invite birds in, I take responsibility for their safety, as best I can.

I like the way I feel, the way I act. I love being curious. I also am happy to be aware of how nature works, how life becomes death in a flash, how species need to hunt in order to survive. Garden birds are pretty, beautiful to watch, but now I can watch death without thinking it cruel. It’s normal. It is how it is. And soon, I am off to Africa for 2 months. Let us see how accepting I am of the predators out there, the leopard, lion, hyena, hunting dogs, cheetah and many more as they bring down impala, zebra, giraffe or buffalo (only I don’t recommend that one, the most ferocious of bovines). I hope not to see it happen but I might. Beautiful predators, beautiful prey. It’s a tough one for us to accept. Perhaps that is what makes us compassionate human beings. I like that. I’ll stick with that.

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Island Blog – Dreams

We all have them, dreams, the night ones, disconnected to morning sensibilities, the ones in which we fly with Pan or save a child or fall off a cliff or battle with rats. I have had them all. Then there are the dreams we deem realistic. What I want to do, to achieve, to move away from or towards; the impossible ones given present circumstances, the ones folk say we can never achieve considering our history, financial situation, lack of experience, or of our hare lip, our stumble foot, our size, our faces our lack of voice, confidence, location.

In our night dreams nothing and everything keeps us from our goal. We are omnipotent, invincible, or we are weak and warbling as we cascade the cliff. It might seem as if we have no choice over our night revels in a dream state, but I would countenance that with the face of what our life feels like to us right now. There is so so so much talk on how it is up to us to alter state, of mind and of body, so much, as if we are students in school and all we have to do is to learn the lesson taught. A night dream is an overflow, if you like, of the feelings of the day, the week, the life we lead. Yes, in the perfection of theory, if we have the courage, the means, the help to change our life, the one we don’t like and possibly haven’t for years, we have the power. But what is power faced with decades of supposed weakness, compliance and acceptance? It is a flimsy thing, a spent balloon, a scribble on a wall.

To rise like Joan of Arc is not for most of us, besides which, armour is hard to find in a shopping centre and horses are for those who can afford them, not to mention gathering an army. I might be hard pressed to gather men together for a bowls game, never mind an army of crack marksmen. I realise I say men. For now, allow me. Men are physically stronger after all. But I am not really talking about a woman leading men, more a person leading themselves. I know that just to lead myself is a frickin pain in the ass a whole load of days, and not least because of the conflict between my dreams and my ‘supposed’ realities. Back then I could not see one inch outside of my confinements. Had I challenged with my Joan of Arcness these confinements, well who knows? But I didn’t, not like her. And now, in my thinking years, the quieter days of soft reflection and occasional muddlement, of guilt assuaged and more soft landings than I ever knew before, I consider my dreams. The night ones come, and go, but I still have the daytime ones, full of ideas, aspirations and wide open thinking. However I am no fool. My time is less, my mobility less, my brain a little slower to catch up and I am okay with all of that. So I retune my myself as I might a guitar and know that I can still play a tune.

As a younger and foolisher woman, I aspired to the stars, to impossibilities given my situation. I ached to fly, to run, to be myself in a world of my choosing. Now, I am glad I failed myself on that one. Dreams are wonderful things, the daytime ones, and powerful too, but they need reigning in, cautioning with a big fat reality check. If you are going to be Joan of Arc, plan every single step and be very prepared for the ghastly. Dreaming into a dream is where the lost children are, those whose lives are just beginning, those who thought it was enough just to dream.

It isn’t, but then again, it is.

‘Saddle your dreams before you ride ’em’. Mary Webb. 1881-1927

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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.