mind

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Island Blog – A Fellow Human Being

I profess to being absolutely disinterested in any written rants, particularly on social media, although in my day I would have said by letter. I am almost as disinterested when standing a few feet away from a verbal rant. Now why is this? I have many thinks, but the one that sticks up like a pole in the desert is that this ranty person wasn’t listened to in childhood and the subsequent frustrational decades have taken root, like a tumour. Only one person can heal that deep wound.

A rant is a speech, really, and it goes on until the end. The ranter is fixed in his or her opinion, no matter any reasoning voice traversing the few feet. There is no solution, no turning, but only escalation if rebutted or at the suggestion of any level of understanding. It’s basically Don’t Bother. However, being completely in love with all people, I cannot just redact nor dismiss what someone is obviously in a right stooshie about. Conversational tactics are learned, usually as a result of noticing, observing through a singular and silent thought process. As I wander around the world, sorry, Island, reading books, hearing real life stories and really hearing them, eventually returning to the gentle tick tick of my wood burner munching old trees and the bashing crash of yet another night of an angry wind, I carry the arias of questions like a swirl of songbirds in my mind. (Way too long a sentence). I do wonder about my mind because it never rests, not even at night. It never did, so chances are we are stuck with each other at this late stage. I can wake amidships of the darkness, tossed and turned in some bajonkers seacrowd of sky-wipeout waves with a thought, an Aha, as if something wonderful happened whilst I sort of slept and I must needs grab my goonie and spiral down the stairs into the glorious pitch dark only wild places enjoy, and write it down. When dawn finally manages to push up the night, the heavyweight that she is, I read what I wrote and laugh out loud. It makes no sense at all and here’s why. This mind of mine, this extraordinary muscle, if that is what it is, has already moved on to another sphere and that means I got left behind. I remember this feeling as a young girl. A very high IQ is not necessarily helpful in life because unless it is gentled and respected and very carefully cared for, some ambitious parent will start pushing. Moving on……

I did digress there, I know. Back to where I began. Understanding people with different views to my own, with opinions and agonies and childhood wounds when in the shape of an adult is never easy. We like, we don’t like. We love, we hate. We want to be with this one but would run miles to avoid that one. Division. Exclusion. Judgement. Don’t like any of those. Saying Hallo and being open without bias, without sussing someone out from the way they present, isn’t easy. Our culture nowadays is so invasively critical, so knowledgeable on body language, on verbal dynamics, on fear and suspicion, thus not honest with ourselves, that we come to any new meet dressed in Kevlar.

I know we are fortunate here, despite the endless gales, because life is real. Rural places all over the two countries know what I mean. We learn to live with each other, even though, yes, we may tattle and maybe rant a bit, but so does any living creature who resides in a collective. Sparrows are a great example. If we want the end of war, we need to live that way. We know it even as we expect not to have to pay it forward ourselves. It takes one, two, consistently refusing to unfriend, to be open, welcoming in the spite of rejection, over and over and over again, listening to the angry, the ranters, those who are pinned to the wall of pain, just sharing time, gifting it, not as a fixer but as a fellow faltering human.

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Island Blog – Fiddle Work

I was thinking about fiddling today. I was. We do fiddle about, do we not, with fingers, with ideas, with olding, with blockades, with the constant push against the barriers we meet on a daily basis. Should there be a question mark here? Honestly, the whole ‘how you do grammar’ thing was once my absolut. Don’t mess with me on that word. It doesn’t need an ‘e’. There are kids this day bothering about results on where the eff they place their ees, never mind their hyphens and dashes and please don’t bring up exclamation marks, which, btw, were just fine a few years ago, and which have now become a yawn. Turmoil at worst. Fiddling at best.

Let’s fiddle. Fiddling requires finger movement, dynamic finger movement, in the fingers, that is. Limited, yes, unless you have learned how to. In the mind, different. There’s a wildscape in that head which (not ‘that’,….never ‘that’.. #grammarqueen) can spiral the brightest mind. You might go low one day and all the old stuff rushes in as if a tide has suddenly turned on you. It stutters, physical momentum, there are stumbles, hesitations, pauses, a want for hiding. Other days, and for no particular reason, the fiddle mind plays a wonderfully dynamic tune, and your heart is light, your clothes feel right, your make-up worked, the path ahead clears like a walk into bright opportunities and surprising serendipities. What you expect, you will attract. I know this. It is a fact and proven. So what is the thing about days when your fingers tangle-damage your scarf, when, in irritation at said tangle-damage, you wheech off a precious gold chain, breaking it; when you forget your keys, can’t decide what to wear for an important something or someone or when your ego is way below knicker level, in fact it’s ankle deep and asleep? There’ll be days like these. Mama said.

I had one today. I know these days of old. They’re trying to be the seventh wave, and maybe they are. They do piss me off, nonetheless, because I never gave them permission to diffuse me into a spread I feel incapable of. I wanted focus, a strong light ahead, a clear path, and now you straggle me into a general illuminator. I don’t care who else can see. I just want light for myself. Ah! there it is, the conundrum. So I don’t appear to be the master of my own days. Instead there is a force I cannot see which confabulates my story, my plan, me.

When I arrived at work, I felt as if my outside, all uniformed up, didn’t belong to me. At the door, I pulled up, said some stern words to myself, got to it. But it didn’t shift. I listened to the laughter from my delicious co-workers, chatted, heard their news, cleared tables, engaged with customers, laughed with them, loved their dogs, filled water jugs, cleaned endless kitchen equipment (inventively), but I still felt I was limpish . I thought ‘tired.’ I thought ‘old.’ I watch my fingers type this out and I laugh. Tired, yes. Old yes.

Ach, wheesht! Fiddle on. Always fiddle on.

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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.

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Island Blog – Silence and She’s Green

I found my old mum’s mood ring today. My jewellery box is mostly full of stories and not worldly wealth. I like that. I am not interested in worldly wealth, nor ever I was and nor was himself. We were all about stories, learned from them, made our own, spun them out into other times, other lives, like frisbees. Catch if you want, if you can. I put on the ring, a little finger fit, and noticed the changes, from green to blue to black to purple to amber and that was just one morning. I thought some about what goes on inside my mind and heart, and paused to notice and reflect in the early morning light. To be honest I have eschewed any rings and for a very long time, even though I love rings, because, for me, they denoted a control over the self of me. They actually itched and had to go. I remember being on a ferry back to the island, yonks ago, and an elevatory conversation between me and himself on the aft deck, and I flipped. I yanked off my wedding ring and tossed it overboard. A moment. Will you replace it? he asked. No, I said. I know I am married. I don’t need to show that. I never wore one again, but did stay married and for decades thereafter.

There’s a gap in my noise thing. I listen to Radio 2 and mostly love it. As the afternoon shifts into a difference, birds flying out, flying home to roost; as the tidal shifts and swifts, bringing in new seaweed, new fish flow, a change of the sea-mind, I listen to silence. Visitors may drive by, but mostly everything stops on the cusp of dinner plans, everyone showering, dressing up, timing departure for the table booking. I watch it, distractedly, as I make a new salad dressing with a load of inventive stuff. I also sense the tense of it all. I wish I could say I remember it, a family with young ones, but I don’t. In the days of running Tapselteerie, we went nowhere much. Five kids and debt will do that for you.

However, I did learn and that learning has held me up ever since. I notice everything. Everything. In the absence of television, no wifi, no mobile phones (none existed) there comes a deep need to find something beyond self, beyond the washing of plates, the providing of experiences for others. The Self demands a voice. I took myself on walks in the wild and at crazy times, and suddenly. I thank my reckless and colourful self for pushing me on, in the wrong boots, ill-equipped for the slam-dunk of west coast weather, in the silence and the shout of blast weather, among wild and growly cows, over lichen-slip rocks, over shell beaches, squishing through bladderwrack, kelp, sugar kelp, dabberloks, all wonderful as I sink into their gush of salty tannin. No nowadays visitor is going to like this. I love the connection. They will just angst about stain. I’m watching this happen, the distancing from the real, even as I know there are those who will listen in the silence, who will research, who do care about the beyond of worldly hoo-ha, the strive for monetary wealth, the need for ownership. the hunger for dominion. I know it.

I watched a young Osprey today, being hassled but gulls, all full voice. I saw it dip and flip across the sea-loch, giving no aggressive response. It thought me. There are times we just need to accept that the hecklers win, and we move on in silence. I look down at my mood ring. She’s green.

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Island Blog – To Pace Myself

Not writing a blog feels like not breathing right. I’m all staccato and pixillation. It’s been busy – I’ve been busy with work, people, emotive tiddlypoms, opportunistic dynamics and sunshine. I complain about none of those but they do demand a new attention, one to which I had, heretofore, not thought about at all. Truth is, I forgot that I am now over the 70 hurdle and that does make an infuriating difference. I don’t ‘look’ my age, or so I am told, and when I see others bent over big midriffs, stick in both hands and with a list of ailments so long that, were I to ask about them, Wednesday would turn into Thursday.

It doesn’t seem to matter how actively I make my brain work, with scrabble, wordle, writing, reading, good conversations on interesting subjects, nor how much I walk, row, bend, strengthen core muscles, a body will demise. It’s a right p in the a, and no mistake, but that’s how it is. Three days work in a busy cafe takes me four days to recover from, even though I love it. The whole getting old thing, in my opinion, is of faulty design. Surely the whole person should age concommitantly, brain and body agreeing on a strategy and just getting the hec on with it. But, no. There are those whose body continues about a million miles beyond their brain, and vice versa. Who ever thought that was a fun idea?

So I doze a lot, catching snatch-sleeps randomly, but not on work days, obviously. I tell myself this is newish, that I will get used to it, and I hope I will because I don’t remember a time when I had this much fun. Buzzing as a team member, laughing, serving, joking, teasing, washing up, chatting, moving, helping……all so uplifting. I have more energy than ever raised within the past 4/5 years. I laugh more, and easily. I see the fun in pretty much everything. I matter. I am seen, valued, important, and what I think is this……..

There should be a shop (do I have to write ‘store’?) for oldies who find a new purpose and who are on the hunt for a new body, one that isn’t carrying all the sharps and damages of decades. I could flip through the items for sale, check out the general strength, the state of internal organs, the power in the arms, hands and fingers, the vertebrae, the hips, knees and more, the versatility of well-toned muscles and the ability to bend from a strong core. A bit like buying a wedding dress, but more long lasting. I would keep my face, heart, mind and beliefs, however, because it was all of those attributes that got me this far in my crazy bonkers life and I love my life.

Perhaps I need to learn to pace myself, whatever the hell that means.

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Island Blog – Hallo You

I’m watching high-flying gulls cant in the wind. The gusts are punching down here, pushing over open-mouthed wheelies or sending them into a scuttle down the track. Trees bow and bend, whipping around as if to protect themselves as they feint and duck as best they can. Unlike gulls, eagles, anybirds, they, like us, are somewhat pinned to the earth. It thinks me, as I look up at the majesty of soaring. Even the clouds look bonkers, scudding like ducks, splitting from cumulus into wisps of rejection, only to disappear into the white light. What thinks me is this. How strong we are. How tough, how resilient, and how we can rise from any threat to our lives. Even loss. Even bereavement. Even the darkest of times.

This is one of those times for those I know.

I know we aren’t birds, we can’t fly, we can’t lift nor dynamically rise as if not caring a jot, nor would that ever be a human thing. We are grounded, thus we care. We are rooted, thus we care. Enter confusion. Sorry….Confusion. Someone precious was just there, weren’t they? Wasn’t she? Well, hell yes, all loud and bubbling over with music and energy and fabulous clothes and a feisty mouth and the look of a pixie with mischief on her mind. And, now, she has lifted away. I doubt she is flying with gulls, although she may be, but she is definitely a flyer. Where might she be? Over forest, mountain cold, desert hot, or skimming down an ordinary street somewhere, juking, diving, canting, lifting? She leaves so much love down here, a rising warmth to lift her into the whatever. I don’t know what I believe about the next bit, but the big shut-off idea does nothing for me. I’m a hoper. And, as the sun pushes the damn wind away, for now, shining my windows into a murky embarrassment, I smile.

Hallo you, darling you.

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Island Blog – Travelling in Light

Last full day, today, under an African sun, and, although I am (always) sad to leave this beautiful country, I am ready to fly back through space and time, to land in my own country, my own life. Visits to Africa heal me, help me move forward in renewed hope, and also allow me, by some magic, to let go of whatever gave me ants in my pants during the year before. This time, I had some tough shit to go through, the legacy of which rippled on through my body and affected my mind in ways that surprised me. I was, I thought, quite in order with myself. Then, when I fell very ill, and cancer was discovered, I still felt in order with myself. I am strong, a warrior, I can overcome this, or so I thought, and, to a high degree and with the assistance of an excellent surgeon and tremendous medical support and expertise, I did, or we did. But the body holds the score, as we all know, so that, even when a mind is made up to survive and thence to thrive, the body lags behind. In turn, this lagging thing affects a mind, so that, although I had moved on, I was constantly reminded of a new frailty. And a new strength. It was confusing, as if a fight was on between body and mind. No matter how clear I was on my decision to move on after such a trauma, I was often reminded that a new compromise was required.

This visit, around family, under sun, inside adventures and conversations, I rise. Not by mental force alone, but with a gentling of body and mind, as if they now move together and as one. I said I knew myself before, but was still aware of anxieties and hesitations around my new limits. Now, I work with those limitations as if they aren’t limitations at all, but just who I am now. And I have learned from this change, this rather strange pretence that I can force a collusion between mind and body, regardless of trauma, as if it was nothing much and blow it away on the winds. That doesn’t work, I know it now, even if that determination has held me up and bright in 2024. What I needed was time to heal and the patience to accept that truth, to walk with it, open and humble, until all of me finally got together again.

We have had many wonderful adventures, all the while sharing ideas and jokes, plans and observations. We have watched the wild Atlantic and swum in the warm Indian Ocean. We have seen humpbacks breach, dolphins burst the waves wide open, colourful birds flying overhead; we have dined and wined and picnicked and walked through Fynbos, Fleis, and across miles of white sand ,peppered with an array of spectacular shells I never see back home. We have seen the sun set the ocean on fire, stayed with friends who live between mountains so high as to disappear into cloud. We have wandered among shops in Capetown, laughed at the terrible driving whenever it rains, and stood in awed silence beneath the upside down stars. And all the while, I could feel the gentle hand of a natural healing.

I know I fly back into winter, but there will always be a winter. I know I don’t have enough warm clothing. I know I will have to drive back to the ferry through tricky weather and that the ferry may not sail through gale force winds. I also know my wee home awaits me, the wood burner, the candles, my friends, my community. I return as me, but renewed, re-jigged, at peace with my life, because I have travelled in light, one that is strong and sustainable, one that tells me who I am, and who I am is just fine with me.

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Island Blog – Itchy Knickers, Mary, There is Life

I send my mind out into the world, and pull it back quickquick. The thinks, the sheer expanse before my mindal eyes, the troubles I can’t even spell, rise into a swirling fog. Maybe a good thing. I know about the corruption in governments and want to smack all of the leaders. Did your mummy not teach you anything? In the pull back, I focus on the immediate, on where I am, on who I am, on this very minute. Oh, that’s easy. Let me think. Ah, instead of sinking into my current bog, let me find another someone who might love to hear what I I think of them. Avoid superlatives, an early lesson from my English teacher. It hesitates me. Superlatives are basically lazy speke. Amazing. Wonderful. Excellent. The Best. And so many more. They’re like uncontrolled dribble to one who considers how much spit goes into intelligent consideration. A little at a time, that’s how. And those superlatives can apply to a packet of crisps. Just saying. Hallo, I begin, You are just short of amazing. Let me find the word (that is just short of amazing). Doesn’t work.

I think that navigating a world where language and street rules change so fast has never been easy for me. I’m the girl, now woman, in the wrong kit. I remember arriving to a poetry challenge at school, all elecuted up, strong voiced and in itchy knickers (uniform), wondering, as I did, how the hell all those other ‘gels’ managed to look part of the landscape. I saw many smirks and although it irked me, I longed for whatever bonding they had with a) their itchy knickers and b) their ability to be an easy dot in the pattern. I could see the connection. And then, there was me, all tumbelshift and awkward. Or that is how I felt. The fact that I was chosen for the poetry rendition, that I came away with the silver poetry cup, meant zip, at the time.

In this time, the autumn of my life, I kind of get it, mainly because if I don’t get it now, what hope do I have of ever understanding the point of me? A rhetorical question. Looking back to that super lost, itchy-knickered girl, I smile. I have found my people, here, on the island, for sure, and that has settled me, given me place and point, to a degree. Perhaps, as my lovely wise sister-in-law told me, it isn’t wrong to feel out of kilter, as she may have done. Rest in peace Mary.

Sometimes I scrabble for purchase, when I see others step out in confidence and the furies rise in judgement against me. Their eyes are wild and bright, their confidence evident and overwhelming, but I’m a daughter of the moon and the tide, I (whine) tell them. I continue, itchy knickers and all, I feel everything, sense so much, notice every tiny shift in this breaking world. I don’t know how to explain anything, have no shape nor map to guide me, but I feel it, see it, hear it, all of it.

I remember Mary saying to me, once, way back when she was vibrantly alive and wise as Merlin, that I would have been in danger when any girl or woman who sensed moon change, tidal shifts, changes in nature around them, people becoming irritable, a slip slide into anger, a rise in the river, was doomed if she spoke out, or was noticed noticing. I am thankful that, nowadays, writers write about those who can see the beyond, and anyone can btw. We just have too much noise and too little belief in our skills.

On the cusp of a flight to Africa, I watch the skies, the moontide, the chat in the clouds, the copper comment, the wild shapes. I see the raindrops held on branches, like showing off as the sinksun sequins and sparkles. I see the straggle of shrubs, climbers browning, the flood in my garage. I feel the rainwater, the hill rain under my bare feet, the chill of concrete. I feed the woodburner. There is life and I feel every moment.

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Island Blog – A Fallow Dear

All creatives have times when they just cannot be arsed to create. These times are extremely uncomfortable to say the least, or I find it so. All those words, in my case, or all those lonely tubes of paint and mediums, brushes upright and dry as my father’s wit, or that piece of craft work, so compelling, so exciting and for so long, now barely touched or looked at. It is as if something inside has died, and sometimes, that is exactly what has occurred. Something has, indeed, died, or someone, and that someone took all the colours and the buzz with them when they did. It could be bad news, or a health scare or even the builders in making noise and causing a long disruption and a load of mess. It could also be nothing much more than boredom, the realisation that life has turned grey and heavy and dull, and the result will be a new birthing, I know this, new ideas, new hope, new horizons.

I know, of course, that everything changes, this too shall pass, and all other platitudinal infuriations, but that doesn’t help in the discomfort of apathy and disconnection and sludge. Even a body feels too big for its boots, heavy and ungainly, and a mind slows to snail pace. It can be a dangerous time of self-examination, of criticism, doubts and other unhelpful bollix, but even striving to not-think requires just too much effort. Just rest, they say, take time out, be kind to yourself. My eyes roll. I don’t want to do any of those things. I want to wake exuberant and planning mischief, longing to set-to with whatever project I was working merrily on, not a few weeks ago. However, having gone through this fallow slump a gazillion times before in my long life, I know it will, eventually, pass. I also know that, although my conscious mind is cold porridge, my unconscious mind is still ticking away, garnering ideas, planning a resurgence, focussed and functional. I am just tired is all, bored is all, fed up and fed down. This period of drag has a purpose and, oh yes, I will understand just what that purpose is once the lights come on again, when all will be illuminated, revealed and understood. Or so I tell myself.

So what to do in the meantime, whilst I wait, miserably, to relocate my natural energy? In order to rest I need to feel good about myself, this self who is currently a pain in the backside. I wash the bathroom floor. Oh well done, what an achievement, not. I make soup that tastes like pond sludge, wash some clothes, even hand wash a jersey for goodness sake. Is there no end to my resilience and fortitude and determination? What a star I am! But, in fallow times, I don’t actually feel those words, no matter how much I speak them out, hear them spoken by another, and if I don’t ‘feel’ them they mean nothing. I am still failing. It thinks me.

We all have fallow times, all of us and it is important to recognise, acknowledge and allow such times, because to enter the swamp of inner judgement is always destructive. Besides, those judgements roll off the tongues of past critics, often from childhood or early youth. I can hear them now. J has too vivid an imagination, is moody, unpredictable, irresponsible, wears too much eye-liner, is a terrible show-off and so on. Although these judgements don’t affect me now, the negative theme stands strong, its accusing forefinger wagging right under my nose. If you hadn’t done that, or chosen this, or gone there, or allowed that to happen, you wouldn’t feel like this. It is your punishment for past sins, in fact not so very far in the past. I silence those voices as soon as they speak. They are not helpful. This is just a fallow time is all, not a punishment, not forever, not here to bring me down and keep me there. In fact, it is a dear thing, a helpmeet, because my body and mind are both damn tired and bored and fed up and grey. Next time, when I feel it coming, this shutdown beyond my control, I will take a long holiday in the sunshine.

Africa sounds like a plan.

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Island Blog – Cacoethes Scribendi

I believe many of us have this condition. It’s not like cancer or a chronic disease and doesn’t hurt the body much, but mostly, the brain, and we all have one of those. However, the urge to write can play havoc with every other part of a living soul, itchy fingers, running feet, sweats, chills and a strong desire to escape from a perfectly ordinary confabulatory experience because you just have to get this down; what she said, what his body language told you, how the atmosphere shifted from a warm fuzzy into an arctic abandonment. And, if you don’t get gone, or cannot, or if the whole being gone thing would turn everyone else there into statues, you will lose capture. I’ve been in that oh damnit to hell place many times before, but even if I followed my own advice and had a wee notebook concealed somewhere about my person, I doubt I would have pulled it out, because the invasion of an interrupta femina (allow me, latin scholars) pulling out her quill and slate would, I am sure, have had the same upsetting effect. This situation is rather constipating.

So, to be able to remember and to retain the lift and twist, the moments before and just after the ‘noticing’ is a giant skill. Not only do I want to remember the words, the way they swirled and ebbed, lapsed and spiked, but I also want to remember how the whole whatsit made me feel, and that is the part which slides away like mist, because there will have been a resolution, or a stop, or a happening, and all of those are as round as a full stop. How fickle is my mind, how easily does it move on to the next moment and the next? I believe distractions are my problem. Someone says something unrelevant to the time I just left, with all its vitally connected feelings and emotions, and it is as if I have let them all go, some forever.

I find the same with memories. I can vividly recall the events, according, I know, to my perception. I know who said what and to whom. I know how I felt about it, the rachet resulting from that human encounter, the lift, the slump, the delight, the fear, but the depth of these feelings have become splat over time, levelled like sand on a beach, flat, a straight line. It isn’t the truth at all because, back then, I was purple with rage, set to take somebody’s head off, my feet ready to run, to save, to murder. Well, maybe not that, but nearly. So, to relocate the feelings around a memory, even if that memory is minutes back or decades, is, as I have said, a giant skill. I could make it up, guessing here and there, and sound quite plausible, although I have an issue with those two words conjoining. You are either plausible or you’re not. There is no ‘quite’ about it. I find the same with pretty amazing, or slightly curious, or vaguely interested. Such placid nonsense. You are, or you aren’t. I digress.

As I write a bigger piece of work, I am going back into memories. I scribble over many of them, my pen helping me to dilute my astute; to cave in, untrusting of self, reminding myself that my brain may well have added, subtracted, divided and multiplied; that others will not (I absolutely know that) have seen this and that through my eyes, my experience, and here’s a thing for anyone who has the guts to write their story. Nobody knows how you felt when you saw what you saw. Nobody knows how you felt, and for so long, about your life. The thought of speaking that out, of owning it, of sharing it, is very scary. However, and nonetheless (can’t resist lovely words) if you don’t tell, if you don’t risk judgement or rejection, if you don’t step out into the unknown, how will anyone ever know how life has been for you? And, in this stiff upper lip bollix that thrives in this country, a country, I might remind you, which once owned half the world and is now feeling rather skinny and alone, we need brave voices to speak out, better, to write.

If you want to write, never think nobody cares, or wants to know. We need you to speak out. Begin.