life

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Island Blog – Looking for Corners

Thank you Franz.

I’m watching a lour of grey clouds, rain fingers pointing down, loaded with rain. The sea-loch is doing her thing, at the mercy of the bothersome moon, which, to my astonishment can morph from a frickin upsetting orb, beautiful, yes, interrupting a million sleeps, that too, into a finger slice, almost overnight. I would like to know how she does that. The full tide is still in Springs. Neaps will come tomorrow. You can Google that.

These louring rain-soaked clouds with pointy fingers are travelling. I see them move across the wide sky. I see the fingers, I do, and it thinks me of those who face tricky situations, as if life is pointing at them. You. Oh, that can be a good thing. You might have won an award, been chosen, but that’s fleeting. It can be a tougher thing. I know those in that tougher thing thing. They are suddenly way north of familiar, and unsure of footing, no knowledge of the landscape, searching for corners, because corners proffer a quick turn, and in a different direction.

However, life isn’t a box, nor a bloody duvet cover. It’s linear. We think we’re moving on quite the thing, and something happens. It spirals us. We never saw it coming. We were just doing our thing, watering gardens, shopping, choosing dinner, sorting diaries, planning, and BOOM! The fallout is well named. It is a fall and an ‘out’ because after the shock has turned into clouds and rain, the last thing we need is anyone with their head on one side being lovely and spouting platitudes because they haven’t learned to think beyond them.

I’m going south of the familiar for them. And you never know what you might discover in corners.

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Island Blog – Look like Ballet

Another busy week in the Best Cafe Ever, and it isn’t just me who says this. In between the days, family stuff, although ‘stuff’ is the wrong word come to think of it. In other’s lives, there are happenings, not great ones, in fact not great at all, but wait. See that ‘wait’ word? Always bugged me. What is immediate and all consuming spirals a mind, every time. The encouragement to wait is, from my experience, very Buddha, and I like it, just don’t always know how to buy into it. The urge to run, to travel, to support, is strong, very strong. But……wait. It thinks me. As I’m faffing about with thinks, all blind in the clouds of it all, I do get it. There is a time to go and a time to not go, although not going sits like a burr under my arse. Ah, bless the olding times. We seem to get better at knee jerk, even if we can knee jerk like the best when required. So I feed the birds, tend the plants, scoot off to to the Washeroo and work, notice my thinks, notice how my team mates are dealing with their own lives, retain a strong hold on the present whilst sending prayers and great visuals to those who can do with them, big time.

I am open, wide open, and I know it. It has taken many decades to arrive at this point. I believe in equality, in inclusivity, in compassion, kindness, friendship, in action. And the last is important to me. It is wonderful to spout the prior beliefs, but without action, they’re just pointless words. Would I stand against injustice, my voice clear? Would I move forward, or against, something or someone who didn’t? Do I remember old Sally’s needs as she pines for her long dead husband, her dog, her cat, her rabbit? Am I so busy with my own agenda that it’s as if these ‘poor’ people are as of nothing? Or have I trained my mind to be aware, way beyond my own thixotropic ‘stuff’? As I notice something that bothers me, in any situation, do I shake my head and continue my dash for last minute food and the bus, or the train, or the whatever that consumes my thinking? Do I?

Back home from work and a pecan coriander pesto to make. A shower to be had. A list for tomorrow to be made. A twisty cloud sky to watch. From full moon, the half moon is sudden. In the full, there is turbulence, big winds, huge tides, a load of show-off in my opinion, not to mention all those who get no sleep while this showing off is going on. Talking to my African son, suddenly, and jerkily, a red deer hind and her very young calf walked by my window, all unsure, alert, their skins healthy and their legs long and strong. They looked at me, I looked at them. Go safe you beauties. Go safe. You look like ballet.

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Island Blog – Lucky

What is Luck, beyond being a word oft wrongly understood? In my ancient thesaurus, the word has many and diverse meanings. These days I meet those who consider ‘luck’ to be a chance happenstance, a random beneficence and they have reason to fix on that belief. However, in my study of words and wordage, I discover more. ‘Luck’ can mean opportunity, a new chance to shift something, to make it anew. Well, not anew, because there’s nought new in this world apparently, although I disagree with that too. What the writer meant was that all humans are humans, after all and after all, as if we are all either robots or born from the same womb.

So, when I say I feel lucky, I can just hear the triproad of rocks in my path with all this analytical tiddleypom, all rising into mountains only they can see. My through road is clear. I feel lucky. I can see. I can freely walk around a rip-tidal Atlantic coastline any time I want. I can smell the sea, watch her stories rush in, pull out, rush in again, and I catch some of them. I can see a hover of gulls, hear their screeching, watch the lift and luff of their agile wings. I can taste the clean rain on my tongue, feel its healing on my skin. I can walk. I have wonderful caring friends. None of my children died, nor theirs. I can buy the food I want to buy. I can travel. I live in my own home with a view (I will never say ‘to die for’) that others envy. I live in a warm encompassing community. I belong. I have shoes and boots, warm clothing, a comfortable home. I am not belittled, marginalised, racially attacked, afraid of any walk on the streets. I have not lost my voice.

So many right now have none of this. It disgusts me.

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Island Blog – The Longtime

The rain is so loud I can’t hear Mark Knopfler. I have to turn him up and it takes me out of my chair, my finger pointy. I want to hear the lyrics. The rain challenges me. It thinks me. Well, actually it doesn’t. I’ve had a lifetime on the island meeting those two. The weather and me. The dynamic I know so well. Nature, storms, heavy rains, wild days and nights, so very many, the irritations, at first, then the fears. My husband heading out into the thing I want to silence and deaden, my boys too. Now, with a husband gone and my boys wise, seasoned and knowlegeable seamen, never sure about any sea nor ocean, and so far, securious, I can find some peace, althought a mother never does that well.

Everything is waggling, the overgrowth at this time of year, and I watch it. The louring sky is dank, empty, wondering what to do next. Sky white paused me coming back from a busy work day at the best cafe ever. So many lunches, bit voices, gentle askings, queues building, the Washeroo going like a dingbat, whatever that is. I was behind a learner driver coming home, wipers on speed. I clocked this and held back. I thought about the learner, and on these roads and at this time of year when most (it seems to me) tourists don’t reverse for whatever reasons. Here, just let me say, most single tracks follow the sheep tracks, and that’s flipping obvious. There are rocks and troubled grounds, bog and spill off. So, we, the islanders know this. Visitors don’t, and how would they? It can still piss me off, not that I’m proud of that. You head for a corner, one of 4, and you just know it’s clearthrough on island days. Not now. The reverse manoeuvre feels like a snake recoiling, and in this rain, unclear. I do it a few times as an oncoming vehicle stops dead and flicks on emergency lights. Oh dear.

I do care, I really do.

I also welcome winter. And that thinks me again (god help my thinks) Because and what Because? The time to rest, the pause of voices, requests, little roads with everyone pulling in because we know, the settle, the unwind, the emptiness, the wildness wide open, the longtime.

I love the longtime. I hate the longtime. T’is how it is.

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Island Blog – Just a Belief Away

You know that thing, when some thing happens about which you feel you can do no thing? The ordinary path, walked each day, a surety underfoot, possibly a foolish surety, suddenly twists into a knot you can’t undo and you’re down there looking up at the frickin hooha of it, with only the sky as guidance and in the wrong boots for a tricky climb. It can appear as if the world has got herself into that now because this situation (a peelywally name for it) means I can’t see beyond the knot. It’s huge and a definite halt in the skinny path, a blocking out of light, an earthly gasp.

Then, as hours go slowly by, each day like a foot-dragging teenager who doesn’t want to return to school, each night a tumble of sheets, the unwelcome dreams flensing skin, infecting thoughts which, so they tell me, just want a rest from this whole thinking thing, a little hope pirouettes in. Then a little more. Never have hours felt so bloody minded. They trudge like prisoners in chains, exhausted. I watch the raindrops, listen to the soft wind, walk through it, bat away sluggish flies, see the windburn on our trees, smell Autumn and there’s a welcome in this place and a lift. Autumn is here, a bit early, yes, but here nonetheless. The swing between that knot and the open sky proffering a higher view uplifts me, even if I am well stuck on the ground of it all.

I know all the platitudes. In my opinion, the lot of them should be removed from every voice. When disaster slam-dunks a person, any platitude, bar none, is offensive, and why? because the one who delivers has not taken time to think before speaking. Just saying.

So, although we are in the thicktwist of the thing, there is always the power of choice, and choice is a power. to decide to focus on hope, on a positive outcome, to visualise it, every damn minute. All a choice. I have met too many sinking souls who decide to sink. No matter the matter, no old creed residing, no matter the odds, nor the ends, Hope, God bless her, is just a belief away. Always.

And she is mine.

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Island Blog – When a Big Thing and the Oldish

Happens, in a family, suddenly, all are thrown into outer space. For a bit. It’s a few days in, now. And all of us are coming back down, thanking the whoevers for parachutes…..and they were there. It all suddened me, although I was on the outside of it all, as in not right there, but the shock waves on, way on, and not just throwing me into a right spin, but all of us, many of us, and we are many.

Once we land back down into the ordinary of our own lives, all we can do is think, wonder, pray, hope, and keep getting up, getting dressed, emptying the bins, cooking something for supper, make soup, walk the dog, clean the bathroom, that sort of ordinary, as we imagine, pushing unhelpful thoughts away.

In the trying to sort out some sort of regulation in our thoughts, which, by the way, still haven’t landed, we can founder on the rocks of the thing. It is a strange time. I know that I come back downstairs and then realise I am unclothed, not that it matters here in this wild place, but nonetheless, t’is an oops. I have to think before driving out in my wee mini, bless her fearless and loyal heart, who now, since the bump, is showing more signs of trouble. It thinks me.

An initial shock, a crash, a bump, a stopping, will not just be itself, or, at least, its first self. The future of the first smack has a voice. In the immediacy of our culture these days, I’m not sure this is fully understood, nor allowed. I know about the throwaway now. But I also know of the oldish, the way they could sit back after a massive crisis, eventually and obviously, and let go. We have done what we can, what we ever could, and now, we have no control. I like that way of being, of thinking.

Thank you, Oldish.

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Island Blog -Dishwasher and Changial

As I load the wee feisty dishwasher for the nth time today, it thinks me. For a few days, this wee and faithful soul has made herself a feature, not because she performed to standard and without complaint, but the reverse. Coffee cups came out still coffee-ed, cutlery not up to scratch. She is saying something. We listened, we scoured and scrubbed, took her vital innards apart, and I felt we stood her tall then. She is diminuitive by the way, down there, a wee fat square of genius with a big mouth. Our care and concern (I watched us doing this caring and concerned thing, talking, suggesting, idea-ing) guided us and we came to ‘fro’, as one of my forbears said, although I forget whom. I think he meant a. together thing, an agreement, a forward action put in place. Anyways up, she, the moothie darling, now washes everything into spectacular. We laugh about this and it thinks me, a lot.

Around humans who are a gazillion nautical miles more away from machine-land, we may presume too much, as we did with the dishwasher, that the way it was, they were, last week, last sometime, still stands. It doesn’t. It really doesn’t. I have heard too many say things like ‘I thought she was fine, he loved his work, they enjoyed their evening class in Belligerent Living Tactics, had fun with Granny, were really committed to classical piano lessons, wanted to stay living with me, and so on’. Unless we check our collective self, almost daily but without intent, agenda and without too many questions, just observing, we can still presume too much. After all, we want the status quo. T’is comfortable, an easy grab each morning as we dash, all dyspepsia and inner angst, into our own selfworld, and, if we are honest, that is our world, no matter how much we try to persuade ourselves and others that our thoughts are always on them, him, her, they, I, me, and more.

My thinks are thus, or this if you prefer. Thus is a tad ‘older generation’, even as I believe thus means more than this. It has depth and mystery to it. Just saying. In any situation, what is anyone looking for? That’s a bit broad, I give you that, but let us settle on the dishwasher for now. We need her, big time, we need her, the moothie one. We discuss, disemminate. The doors open in 20. We do what we do, and as we do, we share, we laugh, we idea, we watch, we are curious, we observe, we learn and the end game is a caring synergy. Synergy equals mutual growth.

Amongst humans it’s not so different and it is so very different, of course it is. As we come together on an ordinary morning, it isn’t necessarily one for one of us. The mood shifts, the dynamic changes, the unpredicted has joined us. We might need to support. We might not want to. We might find our flow from here to there compromised because of a perceived threat, we might stand back and snort at this whole circus, thus refusing to learn, to change, to alter within a changial. My word. However, I believe we have presumed too much and for too long. I do raise a glass to the very few institutions which actively embrace the irrefutable change in our societies, but their action implementation is too behind the behind of it and that shuckles my head and my heart. We heard the siren song decades ago. Just saying.

I might end there.

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Island Blog – And in they come

Flipsake, And it is a flip. There was one family until there wasn’t. Can I supply a mattress, space for a mum, what’s in the fridge, shall I bring milk? This is, and always has been, my family. We led this, me and their dad. We loved spontaneous even though it thoroughly irritated us at times. It was the mover, the wild blood in our veins. They say you find your own people, if you’re looking, and both of us obviously were. I wonder about the effect on our kids, not kids anymore, but parents. However, the spontaneous grasp on moments, probably learned from us, moments which could become slicedice and not always throwing a six – up here, out here in the wild west, even as they always brought a new something. New somethings were our thing. I never knew what would happen next as the mama of this loony troupe, nor even before they all arrived, thankfully not altogether. I had a bit of time to rest in the in-between.

The days spiral. I just watch. The big quad scoots by, way too many small kids aboard, laughter lifting into the wind, spinning out. Walkers pause to look at the colouring of crazy fun and smile. The boats push into the tidal flow, all aboard hooting mid sea-loch, spinning the bow into the stern, throwing the wee dog into a paws up. He knows the crazy and holds tight. I remember this, had forgot in the ordinary of my family gone, widowhood days. There is no moan here, only wistful. Was I there enough, working as I was? They ran free, my children, over miles of safety and wild. Their childhood was feral, inventive, but was it ok for them? Ach, I’ll never know.

I’ve watched them out there with their daughters, challenging tides, heading out into the Atlantic, bringing home a catch, salty, soaked, grinning, lifting, so happy. They, the last of the blast, leave tomorrow early. They will leave an energy in their wake, a reminder. Of what? Of what we begun, me and their dad, their grandad, the what we never knew would work.

But still they come.

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Island Blog – Escape, Inscape.

Today was a Wednesday of exception. Actually, we were run off our feet, trays flying, clearing, washing on a hot and constant roll, and for a big load of time. Soups, two, quiches, two focaccia sandwiches, 3 flavours like roast veg, goat’s cheese, salad, Mull Cheddar with a musical dressing, I forget. It was diaphanous. There was a lot of eye rolling in the Washeroo, which, btw had three busty thrusts of plates, cups, glasses, little pots of little potness, small pants hot chocolates, dough bowls, teapots offering every sort of herbal tea. Balancing is a thing here. Not just the trays for the wishdosher, but for us all. We keep checking. You ok? you ok? Bosses do the same. They are the best to work for, so intuitive, so watching, and I know that place. Nice, nonetheless to see it in the young uns.

As I arrived for work this morning, I parked below a willow. Love her, We have great chats. Ahead of me, t’other side of the car park, stood a camper van, a big one, doors open. Too early for a cafe opening, but they were waiting. I walked by, we smiled, said hi. Nothing happened.

And then, it did. I wash steamed up, eyeliner gone, washing and washing and a man came in, saying he had backed his camper into my mini. He could, so easily, have driven off. He didn’t. So many good people in this broken world. We talked, smiled, tried to fix things. Nobody died. We agreed on that, and the damage did not stop me driving home from work. We exchanged insurance tiddleypom, and all that it fine and dancey. However, it thinks me.

scape,inscape,love,happy,There I was, finding this Wednesday as a loud haler, shouting, you are too old for this stuff. I did. I spoke it out, my body bending, my arms, thumbs, whatevers drooping like a load of nonsense. This is not me. I love my work. I love this cafe, my co-workers, my canny bosses. Today, the mini crunch, the family connect, the random of it. Driving home with Ellie, such a dude, btw, we laughed about the beeps on my onboard computer which has no idea at all about the relevance nor location of itself, thus requiring a shut the eff up with your beeps, and watching her, Ellie, walk up to her home, I thought a think. We escaped today, the insaneness of today. We’ll go there again, oh yes we will. The inscape of it all is many more thinks, no, perhaps observations and reflections in the gentle quiet of an island evening.

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Island Blog – Faith

I wake into a ‘meh’. Most unlike me, but I can feel it trail my feet, sludge my steps, halt me in my walk to the bathroom. Actually, no, stop, it bothered my sleep too, waking me with anxious nonsense. Anxiety is always nonsense, I know this, because the images are those of fear, of what hasn’t, and probably will never, happen. I do remember, inside one of those nonsense moments, actively rising in the very dark, and walking around my bed like some circling eejit in the hope that I would lose the damn thing. I didn’t. These things are sticky. I also remember lying there, staring up at nothing, seeing nothing and wondering why it isn’t possible to take off a head, mine, lay it on a chair, preferably in another room and behind closed doors, maybe even locked, and then sleep headless, just body resting without the interminable nonsense of a rollocking mind. I don’t know about you, nor your mind, but mine is a terrorist, or can be, a rebel with no specific cause, a vandal, a schemer, a troublemaker. I do not recall requesting this as a child. Is it a punishment? And yet, the other side of this grubby coin is a brilliant thinker and I am she. It seems, she sighs inwardly, that the light requires a similar dosage of darkness.

And so, and so, I am living still as one who must (never should, never ought) work with the palaver of my mind because this damn thing is of use to me in a million ways. I can write. I can speak. I can influence. I can encourage, facilitate, lead. I am fearless on behalf of others. I can stop to sit on pavements without embarrassment, to talk with someone else held in that place. I do not bother about comments, will not judge, will sing in a toy shop if a song comes to mind, even dance with an ambulance driver out for a smoke when someone begins a fiddle tune. My mind is my friend, and my not friend. I remember ‘not friends’, at school, at work (although I only lasted a few weeks in that job) and I took myself off. I did. But when my ‘not friend’ is my own mind, without heading (sorry) into the impossible, I am stuck with her.

We moved through the day, me distracting with music, an audio book, a load of looking out, even more ‘noticing’ until we were all exhausted with the whole thing, me, my mind, my body. There are three of us in this thing. We shopped, snoozed ready for the four day work shift ahead, listened to a story, moved a few cobwebs aside, cautiously, checking for the mama house spiders (I won’t hurt) and felt alternately shit and okay. But I think my bonus ball is that I have faith. That tomorrow will show me a difference, that my eejit mind is exhausted and will shut the eff up tonight, that the roses still bloom, that day will dawn, that the sun will rise and dip, that my children will continue to fly.

T’is more than many can say.