life

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Island Blog – Everything a Touchstone

Another damn gale. We have many damn gales up here in the pointy end of two countries joined together at Gretna Green. It’s all thanks to the fact that there is nothing but Altantic swell for a gazillion nautical miles, which, let’s be honest, makes for the best playground. However, I took notice of something. It wonders me. Wind, at any level is actually silent. It just blows. But, when it hits something, a building, a person, a mountain, a ship, anything held by gravity, it can shriek, whine, even sing. Think of the rustle of leaves, the melody that comes through cracks, the siren scream around the corners of buildings, the blatter of bamboo wind chimes, and so on. The thwump of a wheelie bin toppled: the sigh and crash of a falling tree.

Power on, power off, power on again. It is island life, life in the land of the Scots, and across other countries in the northern spheres. When I talk with others who don’t live here, they are amazed at our resourcefulness and we have that in spades. We have known saving cows in blizzards. We have known endless winters and even smile at those who are filling flowerbeds in April. Our winter has a greater hold on these beautiful, exposed and rocky lands. Was Englandshire formed by ice age or volcanic eruptive chaos? I don’t know, but we were. Collisions, cosmic fury, undersea upthrusts, the moon in a right stooshie. That’s us, and do you know what? We are tough as nails, but more, so much more. Nails are rigid. We are not. We learn to bend with the winds, we laugh at the rain. It’s just rain, after all. So, when ‘Disaster’ happens, let’s say on social media (and god, those disasters are endless) such as when something isn’t delivered, or the nail surgeon has ruined nails, or the dress isn’t really silk, or Deliveroo didn’t, or the whatever didn’t whatever, I do wonder if a winter on a remote island might be a grand idea. Not in an expensive rental with all accoutrements and a live-in maid, but in one of those wee bothys with the best view you will ever see in your life, the seabirds overhead and the selkie singing you ancient stories: where the ferry may well not run: where the mail arrives when it can: where the skinny roads may not be gritted; where outlying farms and homesteads are way more than a bycyle ride away even on a good day: where the path is not perfectly gravelled, the door sticks a bit and the fire takes a bit to get going and the kindling is damp.

Where, after dark there are a million stars and all of them silent, and where you can hear all those words the wind never got to say.

Everything is a touchstone, or it is lost as nothing.

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Island Blog – I Rest There

It rained all day today, heavy stuff, non stop. Actually, no, it wasn’t always heavy. Just looked like it through my windows. And there’s a coolth in rainy days, even as it isn’t as cold as yesterday which was all slippy ice and still as a still thing. It just feels that way, all that wet and slam against windows and the wind pushing against the glass like a bully. It thinks me. Perception. Always a good thinkster. Let’s dance with this……

I see a rain day as an internal rain day as a VERY BIG RAIN DAY. Others not so. You, jolly old you who don’t give a rip snort about weather, skipping out on your skateboard, or heading off for a sea swim, or just happy in your life, or a kid who never sees anything as a stopping of fun and opportunities. See? Hence my thinks. If I awaken as I usually do thinking a couple of things, such as I am so thankful I have woken up at all, and in this beautiful cozy island home, or Oh dammit, I can hear the mice in the loft and it’s only 4 am and dark as hell out there, I have to decide how I feel about how I feel before I set foot on the bedroom carpet. If I don’t, the negative overtakes me, the fear, the alone, the self pity. I am crap at self pity and also very good at it. I read that two contradictory thoughts can be held in the brain, but nowhere have I discovered how to deal with that. No amount of googling. So, with lofty mice and gratitude diddling with my brain, I downstairs myself and into the day. It’s still dark and the rain drowns out my audio book and my thinks, until I settle. That’s when I stop to listen to what is actually going on right now around me, and I re-jig myself. I am Alice, I know it. Curious, adventurous, a bit wild, a lot wild, trusting, too trusting, saying Goodness! a lot, eyes bright and without fear, even if the Red Queen is just around the corner.

In this real life, I can see how damn tough it all is. We have made our families islands and there’s an understanding and a loss in that. We want control. We also want to make the change we want to see. I get it. Waaaay back we were the same. There’s no way there will be the restrictions on our kids, not yet even conceived, no way this patriarchal control will come into our plans, no way this, no way that. I’m smiling now, writing this. I’ve no idea if our plans worked, probably not, but I do know that, no matter the child, no matter the chaos he or she brings in, we just loved, floundered, got lost, spent nights without sleep, hoped, prayed, loved again, barely noticed if the broccoli was yellow, cooked something with gravy, baked bread, answered calls, washed clothes, hoped that school was ok and dreaded pick-up, barely noticed the day of the week, tidied bedrooms, thought thought thought of the best treat with the money and time available: on days of non stop rain, on days when the wind threatened to take out windows, days when I was late for pickup because the sheep got out and it was just me trying to negotiate with a dog who did not understand a thing of me, when the landrover broke down and I could do nothing about the damn thing with it’s huge tyres all fixed with a spanner thing that would defy a god strength. Or, when I am feeling so broken and don’t know why, and that’s why I just look blank at you as if I don’t know you at all, and there’s no treat and I’m sorry.

Basically we have no idea what we are doing, most of the time. The problem is we think we do, because admitting we don’t feels like a personal failure. It isn’t.

I rest there.

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Island Blog – Hoping So

I did Wordle today, got it in 3. Yesterday when Tuesday was actually Monday, in two. I tell you this because there’s a thing about olding, much of which, if not all, we who are indeed olding, know only too well. And here’s a thing. We wonder about ourselves. We do. Although we may be saggy, pouchy, floppy and wobbly at times, we still remember the dance, that one when we just dazzled, sliding effortlessly over acres of floor, so very confident. Many laughing mates gone, but that’s not the whole thing because there are the we of us who still have the fire. I do. Many do. And here’s the butt of a but. In this isolated life of this new life, new generation, the fire is there at times, yes, but not strong, or it seems so to me. So many work demands, the ownership of employees, the pressure of two working parents, the cost of childcare, the cost of everything. I have no idea how you all can. make this work in harmony. It must be super tough and you have my respect.

To be honest, I am glad I lived when I did. Oh yes, there was stricture and parental judgement and community blockings and school abusement and appalling selection processes and racial and class blindness but I didn’t know anything different. However, I did find myself at a red light at times, something not right here, I don’t like this, what is going on? But no voice as a girl, and absolutely no voice as a middle class girl. No power. When any of that shit happens now, I find the fire. I can’t change it for all, but I just might be able to say to one, Hey, hallo, I love your purple hair, your piercings really light you up, your smile at the bus stop just made my day, Thank you for the way you stopped and asked me about my coat, my smile, my short hair, my red boots. The way you showed me to my table and laughed with me when I said, Not there, maybe over there and the way you swished me lovely towards a window seat as if knowing me without knowing me at all.

This is new gro world. All of you living it. All of the constrictures we oldies knew are now yours. We were there, hippies, wars, Hendrix, Woodstock, Bob Marley, so much revolution and so much dance, so much fire, so much hope. I wonder, when I look at your lives, the protective, fear driven control to master it all and I wonder if anything has changed at all. I’m hoping so.

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Island Blog – Actually Tuesday

In deference to the olding of me, I get the flapdoodle assailment. I suspect it was always here but when I was dealing with immediate disasters, such as fire in the hold or a child dangling from a rope that fell three floors and yelling Mum in a screech beyond the beyond of sludgy sleep, his slippage a definite concern, my inner Dante could barely whisper. Ditto when there was disaster at lambing, or the horse was sinking in a freezing bog, or a guest was stuck in the bath in a locked bathroom requiring a deal of laddering and a lot of looking away. Nowadays with all of that a chuckle in my mind, when most survived, I have the silence of olding and widowing. I love a lot of it. It even funnies me at times, usually when someone I am talking to bursts into giggles. Life is ridiculous after all. No matter how we plan, how prudish, how strait-laced, how desperately we hang onto rules and restrictions for ourselves, our children, our husband, wife, partner, there comes a time when Life flips us like pankcakes without a safe landing. It always has and it always will. As we hold too tight, there is always slippage. The key is to teach that to our children, even as nobody does, holding on to the right of the times, the limitations, the fences and boundaries. I hope we learn one day. I really do. By the way the dangling son landed safe, the wee shite, after a deal of leaning over bannisters, proffering smoothing okays, being there to catch him.

Talking to my children, adults now, they tell me thank you for the crazy life, the wildness of it, the way they learned to accept life/death/life at an early age; the way you did this mum, sorted that, the way dad made us safe. We never doubted that. Pretty good, eh? I have all of this and so very much more, the convoluted vortex of it, not pulling us all down, but containing us in a swirling collective. The olding years show just me centre stage, and I have to confess, despite my siblings sniggering at my ballet moves, I feel proud. I make mistakes. Today, for example, I got all ready to go to the Library Coffee meet. It’s Tuesday here half way along the sea-loch, but not there in the village hall, I discovered. It’s Monday there, the hall’s wooden mouth clamped shut. I laughed at myself and drove home. I walked up into the woods just to say hallo and tripped over a willow root, apologised and rose again. I lit the woodburner and went to close the doors, the door closing handle breaking right off. I walked into the beyond of marvellous at 3 and met the hind and her calf, about 5 feet away from me. She looked up. Hallo Lady, I said, gentle and low. She looked a minute more, then ducked right back down to graze.

The clouds are umber grey just now, a bit shouty, pushing at each other’s backs, against a dying blue. Their tips are burnt umber, gold, rose madder, the hills below a silhouette. The day is leaving. I’m hoping tomorrow is actually Tuesday.

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Island Blog – Moody and Beautiful

I love to watch the headlights moving around the backside of the sea-loch. Where have they been and where are they going to? I love the bitey catch of coriander when I open the pack to snip it over a green salad. I love the fall of the dark, when my twinkly winkly lights show themselves, a string of golden positivity. I love the disappearance of my whole garden, the emptiness of birds at the feeders, the slink-silhouette of a cat on the track and the way it suddenly looks up at me, the movement of me, the momentary connection.

I love my shower, the way it changes me from one day and into a solace. I love to sort and prepare something interesting to eat. I love the window dark of my rooms, the blindness of looking out. I love the pop of a cork and the glass of red wine, the way my speaker bigs up my playlist. I love that I got through today, that I walked into the wild, noticed, stomped, trudged, faltered, filled in time, did some admin, all of that. I love that I assembled a tapestry frame, after many attempts, that I changed my bed, laundered bedding, cared enough to respect the linen.

I look around my warm and comfortable sitting room, see the fire licking flame, feel the pushed out warmth, hear the tunes, and it thinks me of the other side of this I love thing. It isn’t an ‘I hate’ no, because I don’t believe in black and white as parentheses. I believe there are many greys in between. So, (don’t ever begin a sentence with that word) Sorry, dad, but I am doing just that beginning…….If there is, and there is, an whole nother to an I love beginning, how does it begin?

Perhaps it is honesty and doubled; perhaps we find it hard, if not impossible, to allow the truth to spill. Because why? Judgement, tick. Failure,tick. You are young, made mistakes. You are menopausal and angry most of the time. You are a young man who was told at a vulnerable age to pull yourself together, to stop snivelling, to man-up. You are a young woman who doesn’t want to do what her parents think is ‘best’ for her. You are sure you don’t identify with the sex you were born with. You are olding and furious about the tiny and daily losses of sight, of movement, of where you put that important receipt, or of who will help you stack a ton of wood, your fingers gnarled and weakened. The Lonely in all of these can be black as an island night.

Perhaps it’s because I am old and doing this looking for receipts, or trying to work out a way to see better in winter craft work, that I can see the love in the lack. Living so long gives a person a ‘so long’ on the angst of things whilst holding tight to a tryst with life. I am still trying to rein in the Lonely, a really feisty and bloody-minded colt, all spurs and twists and moody and beautiful.

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Island Blog – Perceived Failure

Ach, well today was a bit of a trudge. It didn’t wake thus, and nor did I, jumping (I did) out of bed as the very first schist of morning framed my blackout curtains. When I wake, I’m like Alice, excited, down the stairs and into the fart of the sparrow all exuberant and ready for strong coffee. I call Alexa into Radio two and bring in the tunes and, despite the dark which will stay resolute for at least another 2.5 hours, I am there to welcome in the light. To be honest, I would like to be one of those who stravaigle into a morning, yawning, turning over, sleeping again until the last noisy minute, such as the arrival of the council bottle bin collectors, all twinkly winkly lights and big noise, arrives at my door. But I am not, and there’s a twister. My mum attributed her ability to hit the pillow asleep until morning, the actual morning, not the hour, when light beckoned breakfast and the whole world visible, ducks on the pond, all that, as an easy conscience. I did squirm at that, I confess. I think she probably said that to my dad, he who didn’t sleep, who caught me wandering all awake and in the dark of the landing and who told me stories, cooled my feet, stayed with me until I did drift away. I wonder if he did.

In the echoes of Remembrance, of those who went to war, some many times, and all who came back changed. The echoes continue, even now. How on earth does a soldier return to ordinary life, the caption of it, the captive, the superficiality, the expectation to adapt overnight? It wasn’t recognised in my dad’s day, nor before, the fallout, the agony of it, the loss of one for one, the strong bonds formed under immediate fire. the fear, the desert dark, the cold, the all of it – the refusal to tell out. It is now, I hope, although I’m guessing there is a lot of fallout, too many echoes, too many triggers, too much seen and not spoken out.

I’m shy now, once I see I have written this. My fingers do their own thing pretty much. So, I felt a trudge today, did I? I can see the judge front of me, all male and whigged. I planned to do this and didn’t. But I did sweep the floor, no, that’s a lie. I did walk, truth, I did do 100 rows on my row machine, I did check the canoes on the shore, see they’re tied right. Truth. I did walk, a bit. I did lose my specs and still haven’t located them. I didn’t attend a meeting, giving my notgoingness. I did bake a potato for supper, prep a salad, light the fire.

There is no competition. I know that. But I still compare myself against others. There is a learning there, and, as I work through this, I feel a tad less furious at my perceived failure.

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Island Blog – The Shelterbelt

I feel weird today, sort of in the in between of stasis and movement. I wound tangles of wool pretty much all morning, realising, once I just had to stand up, that I hadn’t made my bed, nor turned off the lights no longer required. It felt strange. I don’t miss things like that as a rule, but, as I stravaigled the stairs, a tad shame-faced, flipping switches and sorting my duvet, I allowed myself to courie in to a place where nobody waits to judge me. The shelterbelt. The place wherein there is hot cocoa, a butty, a warm bosomy mama with wide open arms. We all want this, if we are honest, particularly those of us who never experienced her in real life.

The morning expanded as I kept untangling wool. You know…..there are times when untangling wool can play a very important part in a person’s future. I just don’t know the how or the what of it right now. My mind scurried back, like a nibbley mouse, searching in the scurry of what might have thrawn me, thrown me into this stasis. Ah……the funeral, the two funerals this week. One, okay-ish, a long-term friend, tired of life. The other too young, a bit older than my own eldest, also tired of life. I reckon that’s the shaker. Perhaps the sudden dive into complete emptiness for the family, for friends, for me, spirals a landslide from some invisible and magnitudinal force. It’s a gasp, a stopping. And, a day or two away from that ‘stopping’ I wonder why everything just continues on, as if there’s polyfilla on tap, to cover the ripped cracks in the landscape of so many.

Remembrance time now. In church we celebrated all those who gave their lives, those who went to war, or who stayed with ‘war’ once they met it headlong. The brave, the courageous, the loving, the curious, the inventive, the ones who, in private times, cried the cries of the seabirds, the oceans, the losses, the flipping wild of this bajonkers life. I drove home, wondering about a pub visit, but didn’t. And that wonders me. I could have found a shelterbelt just for a wee glass, could have told myself this is ok, to connect, to talk and said where I’d been, shared my deep sadness and my even deeper respect, the confusion of it. The twist of loss and lift, of the fall of rise, and the rise of falI…..I just came home with it.

I think we may be all the same, dinging like pong balls at such times. We can still ping, but we also need that shelterbelt. Or, I do, anyway.

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Island Blog – Explosical

I just made that word up by the way, but it fits. In that word is Ex, meaning gone. Plose, as in ‘Boom’ and Sical as the arse end of Musical. Well, if Latin/ Greek scholars can derivativise words into minute parts, then so can I. Much as I respect the past of historical learning and memories, even remembles, it is high time we caught, grasped onto, and learned from the way language has changed flipping ages ago. We all have many new neighbours, new work colleagues, new dialects on our streets, among our new-met friends, in all social gatherings. And it isn’t just the pronunciation of a word, the tilt and lift and shift of the musicality of a well-established word. I know this, I have been confounded, felt the hesitation and the embarrassment as I tried to understand what the person across from me just said. I got the drift, but not the fulcrum. Even in my long ago youth, I remember that sweaty awkwardness, the wishing I was anywhere but there, trapped in a chair, sweating anxiety. Not now. Now I will respectfully admit to my own lack of understanding.

There is musicality in all languages, in the way they emerge from the iodine of whatever the familiar is to us, the old tunes, the stuck of it. It seems to me that the English, the British, are more stuck than they might want to be, perhaps with the legacy of owning half the world thick in aging throats, perhaps. But to lift into a welcome …..How about that? I am my father’s daughter and thus fixillated in entrenched wordage, but, and I do believe this, if he was still with me, and could still pontificate enough for me to bring him down to a whisky and a courie-in, he would get that, no matter the dictionary, which, by the way I have added to twice. Language is explosive and musical, and if we want to dance with it, well, we need to get out there and do just that.

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Island Blog – Tapselteerie and Widdershins

I’m watching my money tree. I’m not sure it’s mine, actually. I have no recollection of growing the thing. It just arrived, not as a gift, I’m certain of that, but, more likely, a cast-off from someone leaving. It would have arrived in some young person’s arms, all apology and hope, because what were they going to do with this damn thing fighting for life, in a pot of earthy mess?

Anyways up,….she’s here, and for many years now, a veritable bonsai beauty. She arrived as a spindly twinkle of life, all floppy, over-watered or, more likely the reverse and required a mother touch. I gave that. I always do. Now she holds proud right in my sight, in the window above my writings. She thinks me.

We live in a following. We do. We follow signs, orders, expectations, protocol, regimes. We go with the flow. And I am all about going with the flow, until, and that word is one of my favourites, one or some of us pause, feeling that we don’t want to continue on. And that’s a tricky one. I thought much about it today as I walked into the fairy woods, now considerably less wooded after the last storm-fell. (new word…..soon to be stormfell). How would I turn on this ‘follow’ thing? How would I find the courage to go widdershins against the clock of ticking inevitability?

Methinks this as I wander on my walk today, as I feel connection with the lift, of life, of sinking death, of all around me, that there is much I can do. I can take in a money tree and give her life. I can challenge this and that and make something happen. I can push through the desire to hide and chide and then go to the pub to meet friends. I can commit to this, take that on, because both this and that in my tapselteerie thinking means I am widdershins. And I love both words.

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Island Blog – Make it So

Blimey, it’s been a while since I tapped these keys. Life loughed in and I was busy being mindful and also going to the mainland which is mindfulness enough for any sentient and emotionally aware individual by the way because we never know when we will get off, nor home again and at what time and in what state. Anyway, all is well for now, until the next venture into a Neverland we islanders believed was something to do with Peter Pan.

Tapping away, I recall learning a qwerty keyboard. I remember it well the Pitman rise of keys, the required strength to punch the Q or the P, the Z or the Y or any other damn consonant rarely used and under the watchful glare of eyes, pin-striped, narrowed, judgemental (judge…..mental, now there’s a thought or two) of the Ma’ams who ran the show. One, wide-arsed and slow moving, her nylons sounding like frenetic waves on a shore as she marched between our desks, and the other prinky pink, sharp as a cut, glasses peaking aloft, holding tight to her edges, a bustier, a confiner, controlling knickers, something like that I was sure. She could barely breathe. I wondered about their love lives, but only for two embarrassed seconds, to be honest. They were old and I was recalcitrant 16 and knew it all. However, I was bright and surprisingly keen to get out of this place but with honours. I didn’t manage those, as others did. I watched the others who did. They were alight with the joys of being a secretary. check that word out. A secret-ary. You get it. I was absolutely not. Lasted a week in my first job. Second job, my ‘boss’ decided my pert arse was his landscape. I kept no secrets after that.

I digress. What I wanted to write about was fairy lights.

Because I don’t go shopping, don’t go to the mainland unless I have to, I trust the google search on Warm Fairy Lights. It doesn’t always work, in fact it often doesn’t work. So I hesitate to risk purchase. I’m not interested in battery powered lights which are gold for as long as it takes to sigh and smile and turn away,and die very slowly and whitely and flickery. I have seen golden plug-in lights in family homes, other homes, I seek them like a drug, asking where did you find these and they all say, with a floppy hand wave…..Oh, I don’t remember. I want to pin them to the ground right then and to choke the answer out of them, but I won’t and I don’t, much like, on the back of the trust and hope and belief of my Secret – Arys, I really did see golden, the chance to be somebody, noticed, respected, a part of something growing and wonderful. I’m not saying it can’t happen, chance is always a thing, and I am still hoping for that chance, for plug-in warm, golden fairy lights that don’t lie about their lack and for secretaries to make it so.