July 28, 2014 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 140 Larks and Kate

Singing is a lark don’t you think?

I feel like singing a lot of the time and sometimes in the wrong places such as the dentist’s waiting room or in a queue at the airport. In my imagination I play out what would happen if I did sing. That old lady over there would probably smile. The kids would gawp and wonder if they had stepped into a movie and all the rest would study me from top to toe and think me bonkers. None of that would matter if I could guarantee sounding good, which is never a given. I would have to be travelling alone because being with someone else puts me in a situation of being One of Two, giving Two the right to an opinion and to take preventative action, neither of which boost conifdence. I can feel very sure about a spontaneous decision and very unsure indeed about that same decision in the flip of one second when I am One of Two. No, I need to be One of One if I plan to orchestrate my own flashmob without the mob. I suspect this leaves me ‘flash’ and all my minders will roll their eyes and nod their heads at that association.

What, I wonder, is so wrong about bursting into song all alone whilst completely sober just because other people are around? Other people are always around. I would have to wander a desert or fly to the moon to find no people around. It isn’t the same singing in the shower, or the car or when the house is empty and I don’t know why but it just isn’t. There’s a sudden joy that pre-empts a desire to sing which I just don’t feel in the shower or the car or when the house is empty. There is something about being out in the world, being among fellow humans, being alone among the crowds; a sort of devilment, a pixie sense of fun, a frisson of excitement at absolutely nothing. This is when I want to jump over the railings or tightrope walk a garden wall; when pavement squares threaten bears and, in their less dangerous moments, hopscotch. I like sitting on the pavement and I do if I feel tired of the concrete seeping into my legs but rarely, if ever, has anyone joined me. Why do we hate to stand out in a crowd when we so long to be individual and recognised as such? It’s about looking foolish isn’t it. (not a question)

The thing is this. We are a long time dead. A boarding school best friend, lost over the years and found again quite recently has just contracted a wasting disease and died within months. She was the same age as me. When we unwillingly schooled together, we recognised a fellow scallywag immediately. She didn’t want to knuckle down to ancient scratchy-knickered traditions any more than I did. We found many ways to make life fun, and to make fun of everyone else. She was wiry and fizzing with energy and always up for a lark. And now she’s gone. But I did know her and I am remembering her and that time we hooked up in London and shared lunch and memories. Our lives had been different and neither one a merry breeze but we were resilient, strong, feisty women who ‘sung’ our hearts out at every opportunity whether it sounded good or not. If I had Kate behind me as my foolish imagination began to propel me into a flashmob without the mob, she would have joined me, not having a clue what to do but looking all enthusiastic about it anyway. Perhaps we are born bonkers and perhaps this bonkerness is so deep within us that no man nor beast nor disaster nor catastrophe can even dent, never mind eradicate. Well YAHOOO! to that is what I say.

When we talked, Kate and I about the other girls there, we discovered she had kept up with them whereas I had not. She knew bits and pieces about each girl’s life and had met up with a few of them, even returning once to an old school reunion which I most definitely didn’t, not least because by that time I had 65 children and lived on the moon. I wonder about their lives lived – what they really dreamed of. We never talked that way at boarding school. We talked about netball and ghastly cheese pie and who had fallen out with who, and why. Most girls kept in line. The risk of being punished was way too great for any out-of-line-stepping. It was all about the ‘Team spirit gels!’ – a team spirit structured by Them for Us, regardless of allergies or differences of opinion on the ‘how and why’ of such a structure. Clomping to church in galoshes on a dry morning did little to encourage this team spirit and a whole lot for my inventive imagination. In fact, I think it may well be precisely because I was grown in Boot Camp and then, at my most difficult stage, packaged off to Corntonvale au Sud, that I learned singing at all. I don’t mean this literally, although I was a choir member and I did take my pianoforte exams, but more the sort of singing that comes from a deep place, one that won’t be stopped, one that doesn’t mind how it sounds when allowed to escape; that singing that lifts and separates better than any playtex living bra; when one of two is suddenly one in a million and forever fixed in 999999999 minds, with adjectives various affixed; that singing you meet in another’s eyes, the one that tells you it’s ok now. There are two scallywags in this convent.

Singing is a lark. Kate was a lark. Therefore Kate was Singing.

December 19, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 117 Animals I have known

It’s cold here today. I’m looking out across the sealoch through a hail of white bullets. A huge white-tailed eagle has just flown past the window, pinching all the light. The trees are quite stripped of any whisper of autumn, thanks to the endless storm force winds that plunder the nights. Last night the roof tiles danced as if there was a load of Gene Kellys up there, singing in the rain. Sleep gave up on me around 4am and I woke to a lime green glow casting weird shadowy shapes around the room as the curtains fought to stay connected with their moorings. Oh hallo moon, I said. Full she was and quite chuffed with herself sitting there all alone in the sky, quite the big cheese. I checked my clock, though what for I can’t tell you. There was nothing to be learned whatever it said, with it’s luminous hands morse-coding the passage of time. I suppose if it had read 7 o’clock, it would have meant I could get up and make tea. But 4am is not the right time for anything other than going back to sleep, which I didn’t manage.

On summer mornings, when I wake early, I can bounce (quietly of course, although I bounce a bit more noisily these days) down the stairs, make tea and feel warm and excited about the day ahead, as I write. In the sleety wind-battered winter, the very thought of pushing back the duvet and stepping into the chilly room is enough to remain me beneath the goose down. So, I lie there thinking about things like sealing wax and kings and sundry other daft forays into the world of my imagination. One such journey showed me a mouse, made of velvet and the colour of chocolate which is very swish for a mouse by the way, and I bet you’ve never seen one.

Animals often appear in dreams and play large parts in whatever drama unfolds before my eyes. It has always been the way of things and not least, I imagine, because of all the hundreds of animals I have shared my life with. I remember the working horses in the flatlands, those gentle chestnut giants with slow gait and kindly eyes, with broad backs and feet like meat plates. I remember watching them pull a plough, bracing their wide chests against the harness and leaving, in their wake, deep straight lines across a field that reached to the horizon. After their work was done, we unclipped them and turned the huge collars around on their thick necks to give them some relief. The children, just toddlers, always wanted to ride them home to the stables and a welcome bucket of nuts. They looked like coloured dots, perched high above the rest of us, and clinging on tightly to the wiry manes, laughing with glee as they rocked and rolled their way down the track. We never had to lead the horses, for they were weary and only looking for food, water and rest. I remember someone making a hoo-ha about the danger we put our children in and it made us laugh out loud. They never fell off, couldn’t fall off, not with that width of back beneath their little bottoms, a back that could have hosted a small tea party quite safely.

Then we had collies, labradors, hens and cats, one, named Cosmic Creepers, whom we found with a rabbit snare embedded in it’s neck. It was wild and had a set of extremely sharp teeth that it enjoyed sinking into arms and fingers. Mum and I spent ages snipping the wire, bathing the wounds and minding our fingers. Cosmic Creepers became part of the family, as did Isobel the hen as you will know if you’ve read Island Wife. Isobel was also wild, but, thankfully, quite without sharp teeth. We had pet calves and lambs who always got daft names. Mint Sauce, for example, and Bovril, and Lamb Chop. Once we had a crow called Jim who lived in a cage in the barn and smelled dreadful. His wing was hurt, and after he was set free, he hopped around the garden as if he couldn’t quite remember what to do next.

Living with animals is never dull. They teach me. If I only think as a human I miss something, an extra dimension, for animals are quite honest and rather definite about their needs. They don’t fanny about wondering if it’s convenient for me to serve up dinner, they just whinny or moo or march into the kitchen, which is okay-ish if we are talking Hen. A working horse might have caused a bit of a stooshie, had she got indoors, but I caught her in time. She just followed me back from the stable and……well…..kept coming. I fed her a carrot and turned her smartly around. She did wander back, but not immediately, deciding to visit the farm veg shop on the way for a big mouthful of winter greens. I could see them hanging out of her mouth as she sashayed up the track, and wee Polly, who worked in the shop had to go home for a lie-down.

I always thought of myself as a wild horse. I said so, to the island husband one day. He snorted, which was a bit rude. No, he said, not a wild horse, oh no definitely not!

Okay……….thanks for that……….what then, if not a wild horse?

A hen, he said and thought it was terribly funny, for quite some time.

March 11, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 37 – New Road

Things are hotting up for the launch of my book, Island Wife, to be published by Two Roads on March 28^th. The Hodder team, of which Two Roads is an imprint, are working hard on press releases, magazine reviews, media opportunities and book signings.

As my penultimate son would have said when the excitement in him rose like a wave….’I can hardly bear my seating!’

People, friends, ask me ‘what does it feel like?’

Like champagne in my veins.

Like a moon flash on the sea loch as the storm clouds part.

Like the smell of sunshine after rain, or the first cuckoo in Spring.

And so much more.

Far more.

That’s my new name. Honest, no kidding.

‘Farmor’ means Father’s mother in Swedish and it is the name my new little Viking grand-daughter will probably call me on her Swedish days.

I digress somewhat.

Over the next few weeks, my story will be heavying down the post-people and the carriers as the copies wing their way around the country. E books will ding through space and time to settle into Kindles and Ipads and people in dentist waiting rooms will forget the tropical fish for as long as it takes to read some review on me and my book.

I will find my book in shop windows, or held in hands on a train, or a bus. Will I say anything? Will I bounce up all full of beans and introduce myself, offer to sign the copy and leave just knowing they will spend days buzzing with the excitement or will I slide past with a flicker of a look and hope I am not recognised?

Honestly, I just don’t know, for who is born for this, for a sudden chance at some level of fame, be it good fame or not so good fame? Who knows, when stepping into new shoes (haven’t bought them yet) or onto a new path, what to do or what to say? I won’t know my surroundings and we are always better when we know our surroundings. And people will look at me differently once they have read the bones of me. I wonder what that will feel like. After all, for most of the year, I hide myself happily away on the island, sometimes seeing not one person all day long. Now it seems I must walk this baby into the world, which is what I always wanted, always dreamed of. Not the publicity, although I am sure I will enjoy it all, but to touch on another’s life, to make a connection through my story, with theirs, with yours, perhaps, and to tell you without telling you at all, that you can do it too, whatever it may be for you.

I might meet you on this new road.

New Road. Two Roads.

January 24, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 17 – Moon Talk

What I like to do around this time is step outside with a glass of red wine; any time of the year, makes no odds to me, for what I am wanting to join in with is the evolving of day into night, when bustling daylight gives way to the gloaming (Scottish word) and everything around me begins to settle. The only bird not already in bed is the blackbird, and sometimes, a late robin. Even if I can’t see them I know their song, and their song changes at dusk (explanation of Scottish word).

Actually, their song changes at other times, like in early Spring when they are rivaling for a mate. But that’s another blog, another time.

If it is raining hard, I may only manage stepping into the garage, with its open maw, but, in the main, I can stand for a little, watch the sky and let myself both absorb, and be absorbed, by the coming night. Tonight the moon is wonky, not that she feels in the least wonky, but she looks that way to me, for her fullness is coming, but not just yet, making her an oval in the black heavens. Full moons mean something when you live by the sea, and I don’t mean beside it, but ‘by’ it. When your next move must shift to accommodate the powerful pull of the moon and she, the moon, is always guaranteed to make a big statement. The tides are very high and very low at ebb and flood, and if you work with a boat, you have to know this, or you land in trouble. Big winds, grumpy weather leading to grumpy seas, high winds and sudden squalls all work together at full moon, to unsettle mankind and remind him he is not in control at all, however much he may think he is. And women change at full moon. Have you ever worked that out? I know that, when I did, it made me laugh and that knowledge settled inside me like a loving hug (for me) and a warning to my man. Now he knows, and so do I. I am a creature of the moon mother and now that we accept this inevitability, we can both be sensible, most of the time. In real life, that is, the life where we accept, even if we don’t understand, the balance between our physical and metaphysical selves, we can move easily within that life, without trying to fix or alter it, but, instead, to love it and claim our part in it, for it is wonderful indeed and, by the way, our only chance to shine like the moon in someone’s sky.