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Island Blog – Feral Contours

That’s an oxymoron, by the way you academic goonies, but you know I like to play with words and to challenge boundaries. In my contoured life, I was as feral as possible, and deliberately. However, I’m talking about snow just now, not the blanket covering thing that you may know as snow, but the white stuff that drives in on the back of a blustering wind, only to whisper itself into corners and crevices, and then, to melt. I watch the hillsides on the other side of the tidal loch, as the waters barrel in and out, capped today with ruffles of white water, like a line of choir girls in a hurry. Gulls float backwards, the wee birds twink and startle above the feeders and even Madam Sparrowhawk missed today, her skirts flipping about white, feathers in somewhat of a disarray as she sulked atop my berberis. Although I know she needs to eat, I won’t make it easy for her, not with all these miles and miles wide open to her, for she is a she, the fastest bird of prey and horribly accurate. I have watched her close her wings at 80mph to get through a wire fence, then to fill out once again, to flip and level and to grab Jock. Jock is the name of all male blackbirds. I notice that the girls are far quicker to juke away. Much like women.

Back to the snow. It came suddenly and making a hoor of a noise. Actually, it was the wind, the shout and slam of it, suddenly elated with a thousand snowflakes on its back, and laughing at the slamming thing it achieved against all windows and doors. I am sure we were collectively startled, even though a cloudreader would have known what was about to come, the whole flinging aboot of wheelie bins, the tattering of bird feathers, the resigned bend of the big ass pines on the shore below me. I watch the way the snow has stayed. Over the sealoch is the cold place, little sun for months and a frozen promise when, over here, we melt. It isn’t resignation, but just a good choice of position. I can do Dark, but I need light, particularly natural light. I have gone from my home, all wet and leaking and light, to a friend for coffee across the water, and crunched my inappropriate shoes over solid ice. T’is bizarre. 

I look over by, as they say here, and see the snow has painted a new picture. It was just a few hills yesterday, with empty land after felling. Larches still stand, now ghost trees, elevations, dips, wrinkles, brown and more brown plus boulders which sometimes catch a wink from the low sun and rise into a glister of beauty for just a moment. But now there is snowvelt. There is a new land over there, the ridges crisp and with a curious turn this way and that. The forestry lines are ruler straight, pulling up into the bumpy clouds, all shades of grey and quite unsure, it seems, of what to do next or where to go. I see faces in the light touch of the snow painter, here an old man puffing out his last breath, there a child running out to sea, chasing a ball. In one place the snowland is thicker. Why? It wonders me, until I see the stand of evergreens. I think of who might have planted them and why. Stories abound when we are curious and I am always thus. 

We all have to live within contours, some of us more than others, when our sky is grey and our light lightweight. We can think sink or we can rise like a surprise. We can speak out, even as we are hoping our bladder won’t let us down. We can. We are naturally feral. It isn’t any easier for a so called privileged person to find a voice, to speak the truth, to point out the cutaway contours, to definate the self, to see the old man dying, the child chasing a ball out to sea. 

A new year lies ahead. Sounds good at first until the old stuff kicks in. Don’t let it, if it isn’t what you want. Be brave enough to see, to acknowledge and to act. Create new contours, feral, of course.

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Island Blog – Ouches

Ouches. I’m unsure there is a plural for an Ouch, but it can so feel like there is, or are, at times when one just doesn’t cut it. Well, it does ‘cut it’ but in multiple directions, like fissures. Too many esses in that word methinks. Backing to the point……

This morning he left, my big African son. He came to be with me after surgery and stayed just over two weeks of big son in doorways, that smile as wide as a continent, those big warm arms, that massive heart, that love in his eyes. We are so easy together. He worked with his coaching clients, stacked my load of wood, repaired a collapso chairo, went through the Spider Darkness of the dodgy understair cupboard, which, back in the yore of yore was a corridor, and they are always dodgy. I remember, as a little boots, on my tricycle, scooting a corridor in a big house/boy’s school and it was miles, and there were rats (yes, there were) and I was there pinging away on my bell and heading for Cook in the huge steamy kitchen with her buns and her smiles and her bosomy welcome. I pedalled like a dingblast. You never saw such footwork. It was darkling, old place, old lighting, possible rat attack, always a thingy. Parents were well into gins and fizz and nonsense and there was me, or I, on my tricycle. I was a brave one, even then, or was I just after Cook’s buns. They were spectacular, but you decide.

He left in the beginning. Morning was pushing Night away with her flaming torch, the sky flipping fire. I was in ma goonie and with coffee to hand. I am fine with this, I can do this, I can let him go off and up into his own life, I said to myself and she, as usual, did this folded arms thing and smirked. And, the daylight was light enough for me. I cleared old clothes, tidied the Spider Darkness and found a few things I had thought swallowed up by the Mouthie past. That chattering reminder of all we failed at, didn’t say, did say, wish we had done, wish we hadn’t done.

But as light concedes to dark, day to night, I miss him, our sundowners, flicking on the twinkly winkly lights, the jacking up of the wood burner, the shared tunes, the dances. And we did it all. And I am so thankful. Although there are many ouches, there is a fricken wealth of memories and I have them all, right here beside me, inside my heart. I can go there any time I feel an ouch.

As I walked today, knowing I would return to the alone of my life, I looked up at the leaves still falling from the beech trees, the caper of their float down, like dancers, a capricious play with the breeze, and I thought, there is so much pain in our broken world, and so much beauty, in loss, in struggle, in play, in dance, in moments shared, even in the ouches. We grow from all of it, even the shit of of it. Have a wonderful weekend. I will. There will be ouches. There always are.

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Island Blog – The Rickle of Me

Well, well, well. Who’d have thought it? I wouldn’t, not never, the I who held each member of my family every time they faced something very scary, from first day of school, to delivering a first baby, through accident emergencies, breakdowns, woundings, emotional traumas and a close-knit dying. But I am here now, a rickle of things, as they were back then. Although I am not abandoned at all but beautifully supported by all whom I lifted up and encouraged down the years, I feel very alone. Distant support is not the same as holding hands with a real warm human being, one who cares, and a lot, one who will notice a daily change and respond, who will initiate and lead at times of complete flop, one who will just sit beside me, breathing, and I can hear that breathing as a reassurance. I don’t have that, nor could I in this time of my life, of their lives. I know the logic of it all, by rote, but it doesn’t address the emotional aspect. Maybe that sounds ungrateful, but, I assure you, I am very, very grateful for the support they bring. The shoring up of the walls against the storms, however, is my job, and I am so very tired and afraid.

I bought quorn mince. It’s ok. Rising, as usual, around 1 am, with, I confess, a big blue sigh, I made tea, lit my twinkly winkly lights and had a think. I had to rise, because the anxieties flood my mind on waking. There is no logic to any of the awful images, no history, no reality, but that doesn’t stem the flood of them. They are random, weird, unreal and poisonous. And, so, I rise, telling myself they are nothing to do with me, not mine, not helpful, not, not, a lot of nots going on as I pull on my warm dressing gown (ghastly thing, but cosy) and descend the winding staircase, rounding down into a pitch that might be the bowels of a mine. Well, it is mine, after all. There is one star and I look long at it, lovingly. I tell myself I am not mad, not that myself believes it, and that all will be well. A whole generation could birth, develop and die in the long hours before any light pushes up the dark, hefting it on shoulders strong and decisive. Off you go, Night. My turn now, and she, down there, can you see her in that ghastly, but cosy dressing gown, is in need of me.

At 0500 I prepare said mince. Loads of onion, garlic, tomatoes and quorn. I bring it to the boil, then simmer. For a very long time, until the colour turns towards purple, as if a whole bottle of port is in there sharing the simmering event, which it isn’t. I wonder if my neighbours can smell this at a time which will make no sense to them. I whizz up my Pond Juice, a concoction of spinach, celery, carrot, ginger and apple, divide it into Today and place Tomorrow in the fridge. It is still pitch out there and clouds have swallowed the star. I won’t let the fears in.

But, and let me admit it, they are constantly there. The internal fight is exhausting but I refuse to back down, to let them plant any flag on my ground. I am so very tired but, like a Jack-in-the-box, I keep bouncing up, even though my legs hurt, my costume hurts, my brain is mince (or quorn) and every choice faces a wall of Don’t Bother. I WILL bother. It wonders me. Is this what it was like, is like, for anyone facing any sort of war ‘against’ a force that threatens to overturn all that was normal, all that was, heretofore, taken for granted? I suspect so.

I leave the island on Wednesday 25th, for surgery on the 30th. I can feel the cancer now, as I never had before, as if it is rising up to meet my fingers. It isn’t a lump, more a small mass. Actually, that is an oxymoron, because it is either a mass (definition – a very big thing) or it isn’t. Let us go with mound. I like mounds. All across this beautiful West Coast land there are mounds, and a mound is about all I can manage these days #short term.

I might have a spot of bother with my right arm for a bit after surgery, but, as soon as I can, trust me, I will be diddling and a-fiddling about with words and dingles and thinks and rickles, and music and chuckles and and nonsense. However, I am not gone yet.

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Island Blog – Light will Always Out

You are my everything, these scared days, you who read my twaddle and who respond, or don’t, doesn’t matter which. I see the stats, just general, but I know how many of you wonderful two legged creatures read me up. I cannot tell how how, right now, that makes me feel supported and, well, interesting. You will be interesting too. Know this and hold it tight, as you traverse the sticky roads to work, school, through troubles and strife, through pain and upskittlements. I am a fighter. You too. Know this as well. Although it is true that, in our own very personal happenings, we all walk alone, there are many others who walk a similar path. We may not see them, nor ever meet them in this life, but it matters not. Just to know it is enough. And, when I am scared, I don’t want to be fixed. I don’t want to hear that it will be over soon, because who can promise that? I don’t want to hear stories of rising from the sinking I am currently in, the swamp of it, like Duchess, my beautiful brave strong and loyal heavy horse, who ended her days on a wild shore in a night of hail and storm. If you want to know more, buy my book, Island Wife. It was the very worst night of my life, to leave her there, up to her oxters in a sucking bog, knowing she couldn’t possibly survive, all one ton of her, all her grace and fealty slowly, oh so slowly, freezing unto death. However, I make no connection t’ween my current fear and her dreadful demise. It just came out onthe page and I will leave it there, for she deserves her name to be known beyond my own troubled heart that cannot make sense of it, nor able, it seems, to let it, or her, go.

I know that cancer comes to the best of us. We do not deserve it as punishment, there is no such thing. No God nor gods, no past crimes of commission, nor omission, bring down the hammer on our heads. Life is not about just deserts, but, more, the chance, no, chances, (for they are endlessly proffered) to do good, to make right, to stand for justice and against injustice. This I believe and, indeed, practice. I also believe that all people, all people, are intrinsically good souls and doing their best, thus disallowing blame in one fell swoop. What the hell does that mean? Moving on……I am scared. The waiting for surgery, the unknown is a longth of minutes and days. I wake early, happy to see another, almost morning, check the stars or the cloud. Even clouds cannot control light. It will always out.

And there, I rest.

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Island Blog – Fire and the Kitchen Mama

Well, today was an experience and a half! I had, previously, attempted to light the Esse oil-fired range, the mama of the kitchen, the heartbeat of my home. She has been resting for many months, but, I need to know that, for my friend who will be staying here and looking after little boots (small dog), and who knows how long, that the warm kitchen mother will be a comfort and a welcome when the days snap your feet off and challenge your attitude. So I did. Light her up. She coughed and spluttered and pushed out fumes and a very small attempt at the whole Light Up thingy. I shut her down and called the calmest man on the island, who happens to be a friend, first, and second, my chimney sweep. He came. And, that may sound like a small thing but it isn’t, not here, maybe not anywhere. Those with trade skills are so in demand that they are probably old before their time and so in demand that they begin to question why on earth they didn’t try for the bar.

So, the kitchen mama cold and quiet, he came. Shall we light her, even though the last time I did it, dancing like a demented fairy, holding the oil soaked lighting whatsit and flicking the match and thinking that this may be my last moment on this earth because, although I have done this so many times before, she puffed like a dragon and made smoke and then gave me the cold shoulder and I was alone in the home. However, I am now the dancing fairy, alone and fearful and it is high time I pulled on my boots and racked up. I should probably have a question mark there. But I have lost it. So, he came, the calmest man on the island and we lit her up and oh my godness ,the flames came from everywhere and not one of them in the right place. He asked for water, as I stood like a fool, and I obliged. He delivered said water. I profered fire blanket, extinguisher, even offers to call 999. He said, it’s ok. For now. I watched the flames. Even extinguished, they lifted again. Down inside the belly of the mama, through the light hole thingy, out on the floor of my kitchen. Terrifying. But only I was terrified. He wasnt. We flapped out the flames, turned off the oil, shut everything down.

Now I have to find a heating engineer, who will be ‘too busy’, who won’t respond, who might not come. But, in my world, he just might be right there for me, before winter snaps his jaws.

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Island Blog – Chiaroscuro

To be honest, all I think about is cancer, the lurk of it, the silent creep. At the back of my mind, of course. because the front is dead busy being marvellous and shiny and cheerful and wotwot. I still frock up, dye my old boots crazy colours, just because. I go here, go there, do this, do that, but the murmur of it is still there, murmuring. A conversation, in fact, and, I confess to no engagement at times. I want to say Go Away and be heard, and obeyed, as if I was the school marm in this classroom tangle. Which I am, obviously, not.

What are you doing, cancer, whilst I put together a jigsaw, drive to the shop, meet a friend for lunch, as I did today? I watch her face, her mouth as she speaks, the love in her eyes, and the murmur mumbles on. Another friend, all crazy and theatre and hugs, arrives and we share a few moments of chat. Her life is not a straight line. In fact it is so wonkychops right now that I want to be there for her, but this damn murmur holds me to my chair, a grounding, four legs, no, six, beneath me, support, I suppose, but I cannot move. I am bland. Words dont even stick in my throat. They don’t rise at all. The rain blatters the windows as soup arrives. A smiling deliverer explains the what of the soup, beautifully presented. I sit across from my old friend. She is not old and neither am I, but we have known each other for decades, so ‘old’ works. Hurricane Nigel is slam-dunking the island with his (her) stormy tantrum, punching muscled fist punches of wind that suddenly tips bins, (I cleared three wheelies off the road home), tree limbs, frail people. I love this time of year. Not because of the tipping thing but because of the thrill of it. The sky is as dark as the cancer growing within me and then, in a single moment, lifted into light, the chiaroscuro a perfect delight, is a gasp in my throat.

I notice the hold a retreating season has on it’s own, as the ‘invader’ nudges, or, in this case, bludgeons in fighting, gloves up, strong after a long rest. They’ve done this changeover thing for decades, for goodness sake, but still they hold on to their moment, their time of power, of confidence and, yes, control. I get it. If a life can be divided into seasons, birth, childhood, youth, parenthood, middle age, oldness, then I want oldness again, jaunty, a dancing old woman, upsetting nobody (mostly), happy to spend hours reading, battling 1000 piece jigsaws, god help me, wandering calmly through the woods, remembering fairies, little ones cavorting like loons, sudden capture moments, the light on raindrops, the dart of a butterfly, the hum of the bees, the wild of a storm, the ebony and ivory of my piano, the flicker light of my candles, the wave and warmth of my neighbours, my home, my dog, my view of tidal flow and my watch of migration, of arriving, of leaving, of it all. In truth, I want to hold on to the season when I thought I was well and free and well.

It lurks, the cancer. I see it as darkness inside the light of me. Chiaroscuro.

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Island Blog – Ripples, Dementia and New Land

Two and a half years after ten as a dementia carer, the ripples continue, spreading out as if no land is there to stop them. Where is the land, the beginning, the stop point and also the start? Who knows when, after all those years of confusion, of accommodating the one with dementia, of twisting into knots in order to make things as okay as possible, landfall is an option? And, what land will be there? A strange new one, one that will require the carer to find her or himself? Yes a strange land because this carer is forever changed. Just untangling the knots will take years and then it is not so much a finding of who I was before, but more of building a new me, one I don’t know at all, not yet.

I have just listened to ‘Travellers to Unimaginable Lands’ by Dasha Kiper on Radio 4, a series on dementia and caring and so intelligently put together as to explain the dichotomies, confusion, anger, demands and lack of understanding as to affirm exactly what I and other carers go through. The one with dementia becomes more of what he or she always was. Correct. People ask ‘How is he, or she?’ until we, the carer, grow weary of answering whilst feeling even more lonely and isolated than before. Rarely, oh rarely, does anyone ask ‘How are you?’ Why is this? Because, I believe, there is far too much still unknown about dementia and the devastating and long term damage to the carer; because a long term sickness is something to be compartmentalised, understood and run away from. It is messy and uncomfortable and what we want to see is a bright, capable, carer who doesn’t complain or fall apart. We want to hear about the good moments, hold onto them and even, in our kindly ignorance, encourage the falling apart carer to focus on those times. We don’t want to know about the details, the nightly horrors, the extreme lack of sleep, the anger, frustration and fear. We cannot process it, we just cannot. Please, their eyes tell me, keep this light. I’m just here to bring honey, flowers, a card perhaps have a quick coffee but I must get back to my own life. And there you have it, there I had it, there all carers have it. And somehow we cannot let our feelings out for fear of seeming weak and failing. So, we don’t.

The series, however, investigates and illuminates the feelings a carer will feel. Sometimes, the longing for it to end, swiftly followed by a tsunami of guilt. Sometimes the desire to hurt, to punish, to argue and shout. Sometimes the wonderful warmth that appears as randomly as the accusations, of an old companionship, a shared long-term agreement on what music we like, what stories, what memories we share. A glimpse of what was, the longing for it to stay a while, fingers clutching as it recedes or snaps shut like teeth, gone, forgotten, denied. The ensuing sadness, the rise from a chair I only just sat down in, my smile eager, say more, say a bit more, yes we did do that, share that, enjoy that together, then a lonely wander into another room as he clamped on his headphones and goes back to Casualty, something he would have mocked when he was the man I knew.

I am thankful for this series because although it was tough in parts to re-live those long years, its existence means that carers, unpaid or paid, just might find the support they need. Dementia is cruel and endless, or so it seems. As the person with dementia moves into unimaginable lands, they don’t go in a linear way, one we can understand and process. There are no uniform stages, nothing we can expect nor prepare for. As the sufferer’s unreality settles as reality in a damaged brain, there is no conversational flow, no logic, nothing to grasp onto. A carer lives reactively and that is upsetting, confusing and exhausting. Nothing agreed ten minutes ago is a truth, because a new ‘truth’ may appear, changing everything. And so the carer must accept this or fall apart. There is no opportunity for discussion, no way to remind a damaged brain of what was agreed, a trip to the shop, a cafe, a doctor’s appointment, because in his mind, that decision is my delusion, something I made up and never communicated to him. You always were flighty, fey, in another world!, making things up. A derisive snort, a turn away, and I must accept this without recourse to my own frustration, without expelling a fruitless vomit that would only make a mess, one I would have to clear up. To disagree is to bring on a 8 part series of accusations, rejections, sulks and criticisms, and all carefully, or so it seems, targeting my most vulnerable inner weaknesses, and poking at them all. He doesn’t mean to hurt, I tell myself, whilst I try to calm the feelings of rejection and the sting of dismissal, whilst I recall he could often behave this way as a healthy man. And, as he lights up like a Christmas tree when someone he is fond of comes to chat with him, the loneliness is crippling.

So, I say, Hallelujah to this new understanding of how a carer feels. Hallelujah to the freedom that understanding and exposure brings. To shine a light on we who care or cared just might nurture us as we work through the chaos and the years, because it would mean we no longer need to pretend everything is marvellous when in truth our whole world is crumbling. It also might mean that we can find new land once the story comes to an end knowing we gave our very best, our falls from grace understandable, our sacrifice a gift, not only to the sufferer, but to ourselves. And, when we are no longer all at sea, we can swim with the ripples until a new land makes them stop. We can climb out, ragged and torn whilst knowing who we just might be able to become, curious, broken and beautifully lost. I got through it, I did, and, both despite and because of the memories, I am proud of that.

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Island Blog – Draggle Days, Twist Ice, Real Life

Ah Winter! Although we know he will come, we turn away at his approach, our longing eyes t’wards Spring as if this season means only draggle days and we try to imagine ourselves out of ourwinterselves, into frocks and shorts and easy light. But Winter is here, these ice twisted streets, the wind like a bully with too many teeth, powerful, pushing us down, slapping our faces with a cruel hand, all but just Winter. We can cow down, submit, falter and become less powerful. We all do this at times, in the dark, in the longing for Spring. Just heading for work is a fight and a soak or a slip. It can make us crabby, shift our saliva into spit, our feet into loud pounding away. Winter can feel like Culloden to me, the oppressor being Winter himself which, if I think about it, is ridiculous. Winter is winter and I am a piddling mortal. So what to do about the darkling ice twist draggle day thinking?

Well, music for me and inside work and more. I get out there with a challenge. I am me Big Winter, and you have no idea how good I am at being me. I pick my sky and I know I am lucky to see the whole of it from my island home, and then I just go, quick, fast, right now because I can see the grey cloudskid laden with hail and more about 20 minutes off. I walk the track, looking up and out at the bone trees the cold stones, the brilliant moss, impervious it seems to any winter bite. I watch a bird flight, hear the geese honk about, catch the flash of low sunlight through a spider web ‘cross dead grasses, see the sky in puddles, crunch last ice and smile at the amoebic snow melts aside the track. All is passing. All always will. Winter included.

I would, in my younger days, begin a Winter Love thingy. I would encourage poetry, song and music, twist ice walks and evenings beside an ebony fire, a gasp of talent only visible in the clarity of winter. Northern lights are wild and not just behind my home but in every one of us. We just got lost in cities and wages and other stuff that has nothing to do with real life.

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Island Blog – Fiddlesticks

On this, the first day of a whole new year, I awaken to snow. Not thick as in other thick snow places, but the ground it white and I very nearly fell on my aspidistra when walking out barefoot to feed the birds. That’s good enough for me and the world seems magical. Well, it is magical most of the time and in between those times I usually need to tell myself to get over myself. I was probably thinking too much on imaginary fears and the concerns of agism, such as falling downstairs or running out of firelighters or of driving into a moose in the darkness. In other words, nonsense. And I like that word, most of the time, but didn’t love it all when I had just told the longest story to my mother, all excitement, bright eyed, my arms flapping descriptively. Nonsense! She said. I might miss her but I don’t miss her astonishing aptitude for turning a firework display into a popped balloon. My husband had the same talent. Some girls can’t half pick ’em. I digress.

I spent a merry morning dancing to Abba singing Happy New Year, avoiding my to-do list, the dusting, the hoovering and the photocopying of my last will and testament, although there’s nothing ‘testament’ about such a document. It says nowt about how wonderfully I have lived my bonkers life, nor of my achievements, nor (and this is ok with me) of my crimes and failings. So, Abba and I danced on, sang beautifully, or they did, and then, as the afternoon wandered in slow and icy and full-bellied with sunshine, Me and the Poppydog went a-walking. I startled and stopped at each spectacular view. The sun low through 180 year old Scots Pines, the shimmy of ice melt on bare branches, the trunnels of sunlight, pathing away into the woods, the brazen lime-light of moss, steady still despite the winter death all around. Tall grasses and reeds stand in stasis, held, held in the Ice Queen’s grasp and for some time to come until, that is, the next hooligan barrels in to lift my wheelies into the road and my frocks skirts flying out like flags most inappropriately.

Walking through the Fiddle trees, I watched them and for some moments, so absolutely still, so calm, so guiding. Thank you, I say, and Happy New Year, I say, out loud because this is not the Kings Road in London and therefore I am (currently) saved from being lifted. The ground is white in places, slippery as a threaten and beautiful, the ice forms like puddle art. In other places footprints and bike tracks muddy the track into lifts of rich brown, the rounds and slides of constant change. See here? Someone slipped a bit. There a size 10 I think, a man from the depth of the print, and here, oh look! A silent flow of deer tracks, one behind the other, followers of a good strong leader. We could do with one of them in parliament. Another digress.

I consider my occasional woodenness as I move through a whole grandeur of wood. It’s okay for you, I tell them, to be wooden but it isn’t okay for me to be wooden? How is that alright? But I know the answer, even as they say nothing back. You’re grinning, I tell one Lady Beech as I whack her midriff with my staff. In this life, the one we all have, this is what I believe. We need to think fiddlestrings, fiddlesticks a whole lot more than we do. Not as dismissive to any other person, never that, but to our burn thoughts, the ones out to pop our balloon. However, in saying this, I am very aware of how vigilant a soul needs to be. Many live in very de-embracing situations, dayfeels of unloved, unlistened to, uncared for, unnoticed, un, un, un. I know it. To believe in self when nobody else does minds me of the tale of the Ugly Duckling. Impossibly ugly until just one other says something. That’s it. So tell someone something that hears them they matter, they have a voice, a presence, an importance. Then go work on yourself. Eish…….that’s flipping hard, I know. Kicking my imaginatively embellished list of self punishments is like launching my small foot at a medicine ball and expecting it to fly like Tink. But there is always hope and she, Hope, is what makes us real, we non androids, we intelligent, beautiful, important changers, developers, powerful creatures, loving, soft, dangerous, wounded, broken, alert and learning.

I collect the fiddlesticks as the sun louers. Dry, brittle kindlers for tomorrow, the second day of the new year. Second fiddle, I think, and chuckle. I’ve been one of those for most of my life and it was fun. I never need to be first although that’s a lie. I will always be first to lift up another soul. Will you?

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Island Blog – Still a Light

I watch the days and the nights. The sharp twist of frost overnight, the sun big as a baron in his barony, wide smiled and warm as a beacon. A light to guide. Jack Frost holds on as long as he can, but even he is no match for that burning fire star. Beaten, for a few hours, Jack slinks back to Winterland for a chilly snooze, biding his time. The switchback road is icy or it looks like it despite the gritter of last night, for it is still zero degrees. The sky is cerulean with whisper clouds, the ground flat and brown and decorated with frosted grasses. Sunlight catches the icy spider webs, diamonds in the bog willow and heather. I meet no cars at all. Ah, the perfection of island life in winter!

I am driving, not Miss Daisy, god bless her and RIP. By now she may appear recycled as a sardine tin and I sigh at the thought. So not how she would ever have seen herself. She may have had rusty underpinnings and found it a bit hard to fire into life of a chilly morning, but she was a strong spirited old girl and kept going till a very definite end. Out, as they say, like a light, which she was. It thinks me, about my own life, the light of it for me and, hopefully, for others. To remain in memories long after your drive belt, or shaft, or whatever has broken is a very uplifting thought. As we grow old, with rusty underpinnings and the struggle to fire up, we have a choice. We are sentient beings, spirited and intelligent and we can make that choice, no matter how crap we might feel, no matter our anxieties, aches, botherments and tiddleypoms. And they are, for the lucky ones, very tiddley indeed. As we readers and curiositors know very well, there is always a choice on how we present ourselves. I know of those, as you do, who have faced, are facing very dire internal horribles, whose lives are actively under threat and yet who still decide to be cheerful. I have nonesuch troubles but I like the ethic and choose it for myself. Ideally, I would like to live a good long life and to have my drive belt snap politely in a beautiful place with eagles soaring overhead and close to home, inside it, ideally. Miss Daisy almost managed the latter, but not quite. Her life ended just as we turned down the hill to home, thus allowing me the relief of knowing that we could freewheel all the way into the village. It could have happened on an upward bend, in snow, with the gritter coming at me like a huge yellow monster, but it didn’t.

This day I drive Miss Pixty, a sassy mini cooper who is a bit of a speed freak if I’m honest. I need to rein her in quite often, but she is great at turning on a sixpence, parking in tiny spaces and responding immediately to whatever I need her to respond to. She will outlive me, this teenager, and we have become fast friends. She is going for her full service, which means, I tell her, that handsome mechanics will be checking her personals. She blushes. It’s okay, I say. They are good lads and it will only take an hour or so. I meet an old friend for coffee. Neither she nor I admit to ‘old’ for we know that there are doddery old 90 year olds about, but because we have known each other for over 45 years. We laugh about getting older, learning acceptance, wisdom and humour at the various small demises we both encounter such as forgetments, bent fingers, slower walking and the strong likelihood of us walking through the town with our frocks tucked into our knickers. Together we can laugh. Alone we blush with embarrassment. We agree that connectivity at such a time is reassuring, uplifting, allowing us to feel we are not the only one going through this process none of us prepared for, one that came so quick, like a thief in the night.

I wander to various shops run by those I knew as children, not five minutes ago, those who now have teenage children of their own. It wonders me. Time, though an illusion, has such power to confuse a mind. She, Time, can scoot the years whilst also managed to dawdle an hour until I am screaming for the clock to hurry up and arrive at the end of itself. The smiles of welcome are heart warming. I wonder what they see as I fankle with the door handle, burst in, laugh at my fankle bursting thing. I surreptitiously check my frock is not tucked in anywhere and straighten, re-aligning the arrangement of island made soaps and candles and creams that almost toppled at my inburst. All well. We chat, I purchase and move on. More chat, more purchase. The island shops are wonderful, offering not Scottish Tat, thank the holy grail, but island-made, inventive and inspirational and I am proud to be an islander in a world that seems to have swapped quality for plastic.

Mis Pixty awaits me and she visibly relaxes as I say hallo and take my seat. How was it? I ask her, flicking on the engine. She growls a bit, then a sassy note comes into her voice. I know that sound. Although she has suffered various underskirt poking and proddings, she has also had her throat cleared and she is raring to go. Steady, I say, Gently, I say and then Let’s Go! And we do, driving round corners, hugging the road and meeting absolutely no-one. As we pass the graveyard, where Miss Daisy died quietly I look across at where Himself lies. The sun catches the stonewords, all of them, not just his. You all lived good lives, I say. Some hard, sometimes hard, some easy, sometimes easy. You had days of dire and days of ire and days of fire and sunlight when a child’s laughter, a moment of intimate love, a glass raised at Hogmanay lifted you above and out of yourself for just a little while. You read a book that smiled you, spent an hour in the pub with a friend chewing over old time, old memories when you were someone else, younger stronger, vibrant and fluid. Then came Time to fickle you. You didn’t invite her in, nobody ever does, but she came anyway and dulled your wits, challenged your dignity, unalughed your laugh. I hope, I continue, that you chose to present the great untruth when someone asked How Are You Today? Or, more unfortunately, and please take this one very seriously, How Are We Today? Eish, never ever ask that one. And, the great untruth is a wonderful light to give out because it lightens everyone you speak to. The bumbling, faltering slide into old age is no news to we bumblers and falterers. We know it, it wakens us in the night, it reminds us of itself all through the day but my questions are these:

How do you want to be thought of right now?

How do you want to be remembered?

What do you want to say about growing old?

This last is important. Young people say they don’t want to grow old, as did I. Now I am here. And I am still a light.