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Island Blog – Symphysis and Sine Qua Non

I am not friendly with the new Oxford Thesaurus. The original, assembled in 1800 and something, would have been filled with delicious words, now long stuffed in the attic. Words with musical flow, words which have depth, structure, timpani and texture. I don’t mourn their loss. I do mourn their loss, but I will still find them, even though I knew nothing of the 1800s beyond the authors and constraints of the day. Today I was thinking of conjoinder, of the word for life partner, of the push and pull of any relationship. Glancing back to my own past, I saw a scatterment of brilliance, of sunlight and of storm and of unclinch. I saw the giving and the taking, of the imbalance. In the words of my old Thesaurus, battered and losing yellowed pages given half a chance, I find so many words. I was satellitic. I know I was when I fell in love. I orbited without question until I did, and then came the tumbles. I think we all know what I am saying here. Falling is wonderful and euphoric and scampatious but it doesn’t last. Looking back, glancing, I can’t say I can point a finger at the timeline when something shifted, but it did.

Relationships are a bizarreness. We contain, maintain, restrain, align, define, rejink, rethink. It’s how life is and that’s not a gloomy thing, a shadow counterpart, a darkling sepulchre. Oh no. It’s a profferance, a chance to rise. When I realised that this orbiting thing just made me dizzy and distant, I cut off all my long and thick chestnut hair with pinking shears. I was in a temper, yes. He loved my hair. I hated it. The cutting was a ferocious hack, painful and very slow. I remember walking out looking like a waif in wellies and taking pack lunches to both himself on the silage cutter and Bruce on the Something Else. I went to Bruce first. Oh, he said, his smile a bit wonky. Good luck. I nodded, handing him up big sandwiches and a drink. That walk between both tractors saw me and Lunch full focus, could have been miles. I was so visible. My first No More Orbiting illuminated, every stumble step, every mental correction, every giveaway, every risk held in my body like fizz.

He took his lunch, his face rockface, turned away. I had hours till he was home, the weather good for cutting and bailing the precious winter food. I remember the skin on my back alight as I walked home, the relief on entering the farmhouse kitchen, then the fear, the judgement I knew would come. School collection and noisy kids were a good distract. Eventually, he came back, tired, wanting what he had left at breakfast, missing that. But I had landed, no more orbiting. I had no idea where I had landed, but I had, I could feel it, the roots growing from my feet, solid and symphasistic. I didn’t feel strong at all, and even though I was banished from the marital bed, I had begun a singular journey in a conjoined duo, and I could not go back, would not.

Sine Qua Non.

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Island Blog – You Did This

An ordinary day. I awoke to my range sputtered out and her sputtering was soot, all over soot. Thankfully, possibly politely and to save me, her spit didn’t go too far. Anyone who has dealt with soot will know how determinedly it holds to itself. Tiny balls of refusal, sitting there, all sizes,complete and resolute. Cleaning cloths are ruined in immediacy. However, I know this game. She, the Spitter, the Fed Up. Someone turned me down too below the hum beat of the home and she obvously struggled to breathe, eventually panting into something big and black and stuck to the wall, like a nothing much. When I arrived down about 6, I could see the story. Ok, I said, because she is very important to me and keeps my winters a warm hug and much reassurance I will call in the sweeps. Your throat is choked and you have done so well, because, if I am honest (confession here), I knew her flues were compromised and did nothing about it. I am not a woman who does nothing about an alert, but this time, I did. I swabbed her down, caught those balls of refusal into kitchen roll and binned them. She, my lovely warming range will have her skirts twirled and her breathing tubes whistle-cleaned and her privates rid of all amorphous carbons next week. A relief for sure.

The day dindled on with a this and a that, gentle and amorphous. I did things, swept floors, enjoyed watching the trickles of my life conjoin and connect. I watched the sky, the cloud bumps and the pull-aways, the almost parental cloudal wrap, as if the kids need corralling. I washed things which required washing. I fed the birds, watched them jink along the fence, saw the long unpainted fence, thought about that. I read awhile, and then something blasted in my phone, a voice saying my mobile is in danger, hacked, all information already absorbed. It was alarming at first, the voice cutting through the audio book I was listening to, I will not panic (I told myself). And it kept coming. Your private information, bank info, passwords, social connections all compromised, all hanging off the cliff. I still didn’t panic. I might be ostrich here. I did breathe a lot, out in out in, mostly out. I thought, child. I thought Stu. In the overtake of my screen, where the invader could not be swiped away, I could still connect with him. He talked me through it all, go here, swipe there, delete there. All done and deleted.

It thinks me. There are a gazillion things I can, and will, sort myself. There are more which I cannot. I believe that the strength, the power in me is knowing that and then recognising it and then taking action. Tripling. I see the tripling gate. If I go through this, ask for help, I am weak, a failure, needy.

I say oh no. You are brave. You are real. You were the strong support once, and through decades of so-called ordinary days full of soot and cold and turnaways, for days, weeks, months, years.

Remember them and smile. You did this.

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Island Blog – An Olding with a Rainbow

For a wordsmith, words can fail me. It is tempting to think that this is a definite, the way it will always be. So melodramatic, but true, nonetheless. In the olding years there are many such quandaries, and much melodrama. We, who when younger faced down everyone else’s demons, including our own, with a get-up-and-go attitude, find ourselves something. Let me find the word…….old comes to mind, alone, lonely, less able, scared, less confident. Okay, none of those do the state justice. Let’s try this. Time. Yes, that works. We are inside a time we never thought would come, as nobody does. Once we were pivotal to the forward motion of our children, our husband or wife or partner. The other to another. In moments shared, in listening, hearing, encouraging, we were the ones who lifted, applauded, held gently back and let go when the fire was strong in a belief, a truth, watching, hoping, believing.

There’s a lonely in olding. Everyone has moved into their own futures, and rightly so, because the otherwise of that isn’t a healthy thing. No young should feel obliged to stay, in my opinion. However, what seems to be a defining lack here are the opportunities for oldies. Oh, I know about meditation and yoga for the over 65’s, the book clubs and the many other sedentary gatherings (excluding yoga), but that is not enough. What about learning to manage a chainsaw so we can cut our own wood, or tango classes, or teaching on how to make a bookcase from driftwood, to check oil levels, change a tyre, re-hang a door?

On the island, there are fine folk in the olding years, dynamic, ready for fun and we make it happen. We are fortunate here in a place where age means zip if you bring fun and laughter into the mix. But still there is something about widowhood that calls in isolation. Days can be long, the clock ticking a slow taunt. Thankfulness helps, walking helps but I can walk longtime and meet nobody. Aha, got it. It’s all about human contact and interaction, as me right now, the old y’un, the one who lives out there with that fabulous view, the one who smiles and makes great craic. Yes, her.

Even if classes for the ‘over 65’s’ was on offer and in the village, I doubt I would go, although Tango dancing might draw me. I am still lithe and bright and utterly surprised that I am 73 with arthritis and limitations. This isn’t about what is not on offer. This is about a defining timeline. I am old. Why do so many refuse to admit that? I find it a finery, as if I just pulled on expensive clothing. The fact that I got this far and after all that, through all that, is like taking on a rainbow, curving it around my shoulders and turning it and myself to the cameras.

For all these weeks when I couldn’t drive after cataract surgery, I have learned much about independence and the determination t’wards the redefining state of new freedom. I will drive again. I will work again at the Best Beach Cafe Ever and soon. People again, interactions, dynamic swivels between happy tables, a valued member of an exciting team, a purpose, a meaning, an importance, an olding with a rainbow.

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Island Blog – The Curve

You make a plan. I make a plan. That’s a straight line, or I planned it so, as if I am some powerful goddess, one who can just carve out this ‘here to there’ line and just know the delight of arrival in this very spot I had tagged on the map, bugles tooting, banners flying, the finish line right there. What a frickin eejit. And, yet, I still do this planning thing, as if, by planning, I supersede all intrusive attacks, as if I have autonomy, as if my marvellous and well constructed map will actually be noticed and included in the chaotic mappery of life.

I don’t know about you, but life is as tough as bark chewing in my experience. Just when you think things are ok (ish) something comes in, something you cannot ignore. It is as though someone, or something is out to get you. It isn’t and I can say that at my old age because I just know. Life is not a straight line. Life is a curve and not one you can predict. And that curve can go any which way and at any time. It is never personal.

What do we learn from this? I don’t think it’s good for mental health to spend every minute expecting curves, trip-ups and the like. But, to be aware of the vision of Life, the way she sees us, helps us rethink ourselves and adapt is a good thing. Those stories of unicorns and happy endings need to go because the seeding of them elevates little believers into the reality of a maelstrom with no clue.

It is tough out there. We need to teach our young more dynamic stuff. I don’t believe in stealing childhood. It’s such a short and precious time, memories fasted in hearts and minds. There are just too many lost boys, too many princesses out there.

Teach the curve, teach the techniques, teach the dynamic, teach.

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Island Blog – Lonely and a Yellow Fallen Thing.

Jeez, every time I type a word, an intriguing word that this isn’t recognised by the world of chiitterlings, I infuriate myself. I can actually feel the twist of a wild in me, until, that is, I remind myself of the days in which we now live. The cobwebby shadowland once called Grammar has been doorshut and locked for a long time, and to be honest, I am the first to squint words into their other possible selves, to re-weave consonants and vowels, to yip and encourage adverbs and adjectives to go home and shower, pick new clothing, make new impact, so I should probably shut the eff up. The word is Nemesism. It means turning aggression and gui

I know what this is. It’s the past of my past and the past of my dead dad, the eloquent deliverer of more grammar than most people could swallow in a lifetime. Oh, but he was marvellous, the way he held a room and it seemed effortless. He brought words into the dance of his story, words nobody understood. I knew that. I watched him, and them, fixts smiles, a little tipsy, clueless. But I got those words, looked them up and when I did I just knew I could never use them, not in the bus queue for work, not in a meet of friends intent on a friday vino collapso. And right there, right in the now of that, rises the Lonely. I have known this companion for ever, for decades and he/she arrived so early. I was about to dive down to the next paragraph, to take this away from me, to write about the Lonely I see, clearly, in my grandchildren. Then I returned, because I don’t want to dilute this. There is too much dilution on the webby world of now. Everything is fine, presentable, perfect, happy and completely not the whole picture.

Reduction. Lonely is everywhere. In all, in the chitterlings, the next linear up, the awkwardlings who suddenly become committed to one home. A collision. It’s like two boats going different ways in a collision and then an okay collusion, plus diffusion ending in confusion. We change. I remember my old dead husband, my beloved, my nightmare saying, all stuck out chest and strutting, that he has not, and never will, change. This informed me. He won’t, so I need too, and I would never have known the choice in that had it not been for his resolute. And that led me into a wonderland of thinks, jinks, augers, fears, sprites, opportunities, dances, shadowlands. Quite an adventure. And not just once. No. Many times over many years because this. You can be be with someone and still be lonely. You can be in a crowd and feel lonely. You can be meeting your trusted friends in a safe place and feel lonely. You can be in a long marriage and feel lonely.

I propped up the falling yellow thing. The whip wind and the rain drag is overwhelming. It came in. I saw the puddles. Cornflowers, sunflowers, many decked, There is Lonely everywhere.

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Island Blog – Alternates and a Finagle

You can wake up feeling the other side of marvellous. I do. All the guilts and swithers come in like vultures on the carcass of me, picking, resolute. At such advances, I turn over, relocate myself, bring my mind into the present which is probably, at such times, about 4 am. The duvet is swirled around my neck, a throttle, my feet cold, the upside of me definitely downside. There might be cramp and there will certainly be the untruth of me coming at me. This is not who I am. This alternate is not welcome. Ok, I need coffee to deal with that in a sentient and settled way, even if I am in a ghastly dressing gown and the only bird out there is a barn owl. At least I am the right way up which I am not in bed. In bed I am compromised, open to all demonic flapjacks.

Thinks me. And what I knowknow is that nothing stays stuck on the page as it did in school. The real of life is that everything shifts like opinions, clouds, affections, every damn thing. There is no statis. There is no finite, not with people, not with nature, not with life. I’m not even sure there is finite in science, not that I know a scooby about science. The key is to be dynamic, adaptable, open to change. Such a truth and an infuriation.

I for one am rather tired of uplifting stuff. It’s as if pronouncing good things makes them happen. Which it doesn’t. I am definitely a woman of positivity but not because I am told to be. I am she because I have lived through shit and storm and loss and fight and I emerge as me. This is not a new emergency thing. I do it often. I don’t want to cause trouble, of course not, but at 73 I do feel the ‘ncy’ of emerging, like a professorial nudge in the back as if I need permission for this emergent-ness. I am so much a child of my time.

But what I have is the skinny thinks of my generation. I could and can finagle my way out of everything. We were buttoned up in scratchy pants and strapped into bodices. Our legs were covered, our eyes controlled, our hands and fingers gloved. Nonetheless we found our escapes. Life will out and those who thought they could ever control the life of another lost so much. Life is a wilding. Life is wild. Who you are is who you are.

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Island Wife – Be Brave

I remember being told that my book, Island Wife, would resonate with older women. I sat there, across a table with my publisher and my agent thinking, older? Yes, I was 59, but sassy. I was still in complete charge of my accoutrements, faculties and agendas. I could move like a dancer, arriving in some sort of wild costume and just off the Oban train, complete with a jaunty herringbone cap. Older for me was my mum heading for 80 and, although still feisty, a bit cautious over rocks – still game, though. I get it now. I started early, in love at 18, married at 19, mother at 20. Nobody does that, not in the lasting game, as mine was. I suppose that I just could not relate to the ‘older women’ thing. The ones I had experienced were tired, downtrod, got their make-up wrong and spent a huge amount of time pretending they were ‘fine’ even though that word meant something so different to me. Fine was about spectacular art. Fine was the way a butcher cut a fillet just right. Fine was how someone arrived looking magical into a gathering; a spectacular arrangement of flowers; a perfect sorbet. Now it has become a dismissal, a middling beige nothing.

I do remember the train journey to almost home, the stunning landscape, the chacha of the train along winding tracks, around lochs, through endless scapes of empty deliciousness, past the Hogwarts Express bridge, the winding of endless drover tracks, the moody mountains, the clouding, the spritzer of light. My thoughts carolled me to the ferry port. ‘Older’? I got that even as it thinks me. I realise I was being a mayfly on the surface of real life, aka, the truth. I believe that as I walked onto the ferry for home that I sunk a bit, got it, and it freed me. Of course my story will resonate with others who have experienced such a life.

There is so much vanilla out there, so much beige. On the out-there forums, everything is ‘fine’. It isn’t. Where is truth? Where are the young writers going through rebellion? Facebook and more are all about memories and wonderful moments. I do love to see that but it is not the truth, not real. If I said anything in my story, it was raw truth, still is.

Be brave.

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Island Blog – Im Patient, Com Promise

I’ve just reversed out from under my desk. Not my desk. A desk inherited with uneven legs and good drawers and with a fallen sharp thing hidden in the down below. Much like me. I had, I noticed, flipped my Winnie the Pooh calendar to September which, even for twitchy, fast-running me, is an overdash and so I set to correct, losing the lot down into the spider depths, hence the reversing thing. This, as you may guess, is a complete irrelevance.

I am (searching for an adverb) fed up with not being able to do whatever I suddenly, and twitchily have done without any thought and for years. I cannot bend down lower than my waist. Well, that laughs me. Waists are, from my own observation, all over the place. However, I know where mine is, and I do not bend below. This constricts, obviously. I am required to curtsey before the saucepan cupboard, before the washing machine, the freezer, before the cupboard under the stairs, before the picking up of any fallen objects anywhere. I can hear my white goods, my doorways laughing at me.

When releasing my washing from the cylindrical drum, I am required to kneel. I was never good at that. I pull out the sheets, towels, tees and jeans and turn towards the skids. Still on knees because I can’t lift anything heavier than a pregnant hamster (they don’t say that), I work my way to the pulley. I rise, good core muscles, and take each piece by itself. It thinks me. I never did that before, just wheeching the whole damn lot onto the struts without noticing a thing. I notice things now. My olding pants require either new elastic or a trip to the bin. Perhaps this is what I learn from this limiting limitation, my eyes so very important, so momentarily com- promised.

Without my work in the Best Cafe Ever, I am remote, stumped, awkward with myself. That’s one truth. Another is the wealth of help offers for lifts, deliveries, friendship. This glorious community. I know I am an im patient. I remember being compromised in Tapselteerie days, so sick I was falling over, but there wasn’t the time nor the opportunity. I was the It and there really was nobody else who could fill my role. I am so rarely decked and thank the bejabers for that because I am twitchy and need to move on. Although I would love for arms around me, for someone to bring me fresh food, light the fire, the candle, gentle the evening, I am alone, strong at times, weak at others. Hearing swans overhead, rushing out to see their traverse, watching still tide, seeing the lushgrow across the sealoch, catching the firelight, hearing the music.

A com promise.

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Island Blog – The Wild

I remember the shout. Reef in the mainsail, now! I didn’t hesitate because with him at the helm, there was only me and that me was down below hooking a Moses basket onto a gimballed hook with a baby nestled within. I was fast, no hesitation. As I scooted up the steps onto the deck, I could see why this reefing mainsail thing was not something to be considered, nor questioned. There was a black cloud threat and building. Grabbing and affixing my safety harness and with rain already slicing the wind in two, I got to work. He risked a tilt into the quiet space between the was-wind and the now-wind, two very different creatures for sure and the huge mainsail flapped and crackled, bucked and heaved. I had never felt so alive, so valued, so very the It of the situation. Skidding, sliding, grabbing, holding, I used all my strength to crank the crank thing, bringing the huge mainsail down to the boom. I remember watching the sky appear above each reef. I remember my arms aching, my fingers flexing, turning, holding and that moment when all was safe, that massive sail contained and that sky glowering at me like she just lost at checkmate. I slid on my butt back to him, grin wide, eyes full of rain, and unclipped.

I remember the wild. The buzz of being so essential, so needed, so valued. He smiled me in. Well done, lass, he said and those words meant everything. The hanging baby slept on. The storm was nothing of the sort, just a teenage tantrum. The sky cleared, the night began and stars came out. Ha. I said, as I looked up at the wide expanse of a gazillion constellations. I got there before you all, and I did. It remembers me and I don’t say that lightly because even when we forget the feeling of such wild times, our body remembers. Water has a memory and we might do well to accept this as we, those of us whose wild times might seem beige and back then and of no import and no longer possible in the shape of what is. I have to challenge this, in myself for starters. If there is wild, was there once, it does not die. We will eventually die but the wild is like a fire within, a sparkle, a crackle, an opportunity, a magic. I don’t like to see it allowed to fade in someone’s eyes once health limits barrage in. However I also get it and it is so easy to believe that the wild was then and now I am compromised and afraid and kind of stuck with a stick and all I have are the memories of me doing crazy things I couldn’t do now.

Where’s that wild? Where’s that dancer, the one who was spontaneous when others dithered and who danced me till I was dizzy and on fire? Where’s the one who said yes we can do this, who made the fire on the beach, the one who said ‘ just lie here and see the stars’, the one who sang, who told stories, who always made something happen, no matter where nor what, nor when, nor who(m)? The wilders who always caught the magic, grabbed it, reefed it in at times and then let it fly. They still do and you don’t have to be young to grab the ties of that kite. T’is only fear that makes us pedants.

The wild is in you. Keep her fired up.

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Island Blog – Rebel, Conformist, Fear

When you have the rebel pusling through your veins, following rules feels like being really good at dodging bullets, those fired from the gun of ‘authority’. Whenever I am required to conform, I get this itch, everywhere. As a youth I didn’t always employ sense. I am altogether great with sensibility but going only with that has led me up some very dark alleys, and so I have grown up, sort of, although the call to irrationality is strong. For decades I thought there was something wrong with my wiring, that I was, and I was, a rebel without a cause. I like the word Rebel and for sure there are many times in life when a rebel is a very good thing to have within a pack of conformist ditherers, all drunk on fear. They say this so we should comply, even if we don’t agree nor understand and even if it feels horribly wrong. We will settle. I remember, once, visiting a very proper house with everything in place, dust free, with everything either beige or polished and being taken into the ‘front room’ which had obviously only been used at wakes or on Sundays. Take a seat on the settle, she said, pointing to one, an arthritic looking straight-backed L-shaped thing, and as rigid as a born again, and deciding I wouldn’t. I walked to a chair instead and parked my butt. I could tell from the snort that I would not be invited again, but I just couldn’t do what she asked. The very word riled the rebel in my red-blood heart and that rebel took over.

So, when I come back from eye surgery with a loooong list of ‘don’ts’ I manage my own snort. I know it is important to comply in this instance because I want clarity, but there is so much about fear in just about every ruling and I won’t play with fear. I know that I make choices others avoid, but here’s the thing. I have common sense now, although there is nothing common about it, and I thank my parents and my granny for gifting it to me. For all they complied, they were rebels, not overtly, but subtley. It was in the twinkle, the suggestion of mischief, the stepping out of line as the line dozed off in boredom and compliance. They had a voice and they used it. It’s nothing to do with birth, nor wealth, nor privilege, nor the desire to be better/louder/cleverer than the next person. It’s a blood rush, a have-to and it is all about bringing mischief back, bringing fun back.

In the Premier Inn, Braehead, I met many ordinary folks over two days of consultation and surgery and I noticed, as I always do, that everyone feels alone, that everyone welcomes a smile, a chat, a craic, everyone. Conforming is doing a grand job of turning us into robots, lonely, silent robots. I watch someone heading for work, worried about something or someone, light up and twinkle me back. A fireworker, a builder, a nurse, a medical supply driver. We have nothing in common and yet we do. We have a few moments of conversation. I could have said nothing but I said something and from that we connected. Each time we both left thinking of each other. They probably left with a chuckle, this old woman outside a hotel watching the diggers dig the life out of a spread of green to make room for yet another building, but that’s ok with me because I saw the twinkle, the fun behind their eyes, and I heard them, I saw them.

We need more rebels.