nature

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Island Blog – Looking for Parsnips

An ordinary day. Go to work, work hard, come home, iron things, manifold them because it is a right shite humping a wee iron across the surface of a set of overly decorated and bedazzled super-king duvet covers and then submissioning them into a shape any woman, and it is usually a woman, can manage without personal harmage. I know that ‘housekeeping’ requires this effortitude, but I do wonder how many recognise the work involved. I do not include my bosses because I did elect to take this (small you would think) pile of laundry to help my team at the Best Cafe Ever. A doddle, you might suggest, but not if you are me with my standards, Had you watched me with ‘my standards’ you might have seen my head shake. My recall? Tapselteerie Kitchen, everything dark, all asleep and me ironing bed linen, napkins, table cloths, I could not go to sleep until my standards for me were accomplished. Stacked and warmly loved, I did climb the stairs. It’s my thing and still is.

This ironing thing….a few duvet covers, but with lips and otherness I never had experienced before….. duvet covers were squared off or rectangled off and with no lips or other suchness. They just fitted the damn duvets. Nowadays they need their own voice. Also, they don’t have poppers or buttons. They have folds and inserts and what is happening to this world, because it sure sucks for the housekeeping crew. No question mark required. Is it an aspiration for elevation, as if we look better for all the faff and unnecessary folds and flaps and buttons? I pass on that one.

I like ordinary. There’s a connectional direct with whoever I meet. We are raw, scared, wishing we had done things differently, all that and we meet on a colding rainfold street, looking for parsnips or the daily paper or for a delivery from the island vet or just to connect. Or just to look for parsnips.

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Island Blog – The Cold

I have no issues with the cold. It comes every year, for goodness sake, and there is a wealth of expensive kit available for those who need it, or just want it. However, I do remember the arrival of it, overnight and me all unprepared with those skinny windows and the ensuing freeze of water pipes and the whole damn struggle to just get through the day without becoming the frosting on an island cake. It’s different now, when it comes. I have a cosy home and no sensible windows in such places are ever single-glazed. But I still remember, and not with regret at all, but more with questions. How the hec did we all survive it, those fifteen years, that first one, when everything froze including the inside loos, and every single morning for weeks? How did we break the frozen silage up with forks and swearing so the Galloways could feed? How did we break up water barrels for sheep more than thrice in a day? How did we make sure our children got some sleep? Well, we did, and they all survived.

Now, with inside heating and expensive fashionable snow gear (even to collect a child from primary school), it seems the cold is solved. But it isn’t. It is just ignored. Like so much in this captious life, the life that demands better street lighting, better this, better that, and which doesn’t want to know about where we are and what might be coming, there is a big denial.

When I, an ignorant town girl married an older man, wise in country functions and curious about life, I began to learn. Even then, in 1972, there was information out there. I remember that too, being told about a much bigger world than I knew, or had known. My world was all about the bubble within which I lived. It fascinated and alarmed me and we talked about that, his calming words. It didn’t throw me upwards onto the street, to buying snow kit for winter, although I did, even if it constituted yellow plastic over at least six warm layers. We audibly crackled on those winter feeding hilltops, our wellies lined with silver foil and our feet forgetting what they were until we reminded them before the aga, reviving them through the pain of a returning blood flow.

When I say the cold is being ignored, I probably mean a turning away from it. We don’t like it, it shivers us with its message of long, very long, dark months, and with the promise of an increase in its intensity. It creeps under doors and whistles through gaps and ill-fitting windows. It is almost sentient in intent and so we bulk up to go out and buy fleece and wool for sitting indoors. It is the same with the dark. Darkness is menacing, blinding, comes too soon and stops the dawn light as if it is the one with all the strength. But if we could, as our ancestors did, just accept the shift of seasons, particularly from autumn to winter and from day to night, we would be prepared and ready, even welcoming, instead of being somewhat astonished at the damn nerve of their annual arrival. We are so quick to reject both winter and the longer stretch of darkness that we can make it personal. We can decline, grow inwardly weaker. However, I have found that to teach myself to enjoy both, to watch them arrive, to really feel the exhilaration of cold wind on my skin, to love the warmth of a merry fire, to prepare winter food, nourishing and thick and to pull on whatever I need for a walk in between showers, brings me peace and acceptance. Candles burn as darkness takes over, throwing a soft flickering glow into the room. In this place of no traffic, the silence is almost deafening. There is no light pollution so that, on a clear night, the stars are in their millions. Owls call as they hunt. Stags roar their challenges from distant woods across the sea-loch. Nobody calls and it seems as though all is well with the world.

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Island Blog – Euphoria,Petrichor,Mull Rally, Choices

They all came together today, in bits and bobs, at different times, but now when I look back over the day, they all merge into a lovely flow, the punctuation being the full stops and unwanted commas, the question marks and semi colons. I remember telling my English teacher once that I hated full stops because, well, they were stops. It’s all about breathing, she said with a kindly smile, but to be honest I had plenty breath left for at least four more points which required making, with all appropriate adjectives and adverbs and spins-off into some tributary of the main river of it all. She taught me well.

It began with a lovely morning walk with two men of whom I am inordinately fond, with their two girl labradors. As we walked around Tapselteerie, the sun dappling the soggy track, the dogs weaving, the conversation flowing easy as syrup, the connection so refreshing between us, we shared our takes on life, our knowledge, the questions flying overhead and pulled down the answers. We walked over coppered beach leaves, through puddles, the petrichor strong, the chiaroscuro momentary in the cloudal shift and twist. Rain coming. There is always rain coming, but look, look now, see that quicklight, that sudden brilliance, as if the sky is looking at us……Look! And we did.

It is the annual Mull Car Rally. I give it capitals because it deserves it. I know, I know, that this weekend there is a huge invasion of car enthusiasts, boy racers in souped up noisy small vehicles that will irritate and infuriate the peaceful balance of this beautiful island. I also know that the above don’t give a hooha about the beautiful island. They are here for the race. And I get it. I was young once and I can remember the euphoria of this weekend, when my own children were in that race, over a whole weekend. I remember trying to find somewhere for folks to stay when every single place was already booked. I remember the buzz. Something wild and completely crazy is happening here, this weekend, right now, and even from a distance, I am feeling an integral part of it.

I know, and already see that the roads are challenged, loads of off-road skids, mud everywhere, the crazy lifting into wild. On Monday it will be done, someone the winner and, please no disasters. These roads are skinny and curvaceous and cliff-topped and it’s all done, or most of it, in the dark. I hear the grumpy on all this, and then I look at them, the grumpies, and get it. There’s a choice to be made. I want to ask, Do you remember being young and alive and euphoric? But I don’t. When olding sets in, and it does, it can begin around 60. There’s a time when curtains get closed early, when light is too much, when someone who won’t pull over to let you pass, or who won’t back down on a scoopytwist of a hillback and you have to reverse like a dervish into a muddy passing place, causes a tsunami of olding.

Dont’ go there. Keep ahold of the Euphoria, smell the Petrichor, hold on to the Chiaroscuro of who you were and still are. And choose to stay there.

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Island Blog – Tearaway

We start with a plan. I did as a young mum with a tumble of kids. In my plan, in our plan, we were excellent parents, mother, father, we were. We weren’t. In the melee ensuing of business development, of invasive strangers, of things collapsing, falling in, stopping, as in water flow, of freezing pipes, of bat invasions, mice, cold, we did falter, our dream did sink somewhat. It felt boggish. But we were not going to go there because, even though we dreamed and thought deeply, we were above ground people. If you are a person of the land, the field, the marsh, the emptinessof soil and space, who know the fear of drought, of flood, of loss and gain, the singularity of joy, the sharing of it, then you will recognise something. Possibly more than something, because everyone knows what it feels like to sink, what it feels like to choose ‘above ground.’

I employ the above ground as an adjunct. Today was remarkable at the Best Cafe Ever. No, it was overwhelming. There must have been hundreds of customers, in line and for 5 hours. I did feel like sinking. I didn’t check with the others in the Servery because to be honest, we barely met beyond a pull back or let go in a narrow space as we served and cleared and tried to make the soup last. I did turn into the Washeroo thinking, I can’t do this. That lasted not even 5 seconds. I have great inner talk. Don’t be ridonculous, ya eejit, rise, RISE. It works.

I like to tearaway from, well most things if I’m honest, but on this one, from inner giving up. Too many do this, too many times I have been tempted. and then the Tearaway comes in, like thunder, like a smile from Joe the new postie, from a word of recognition, a smile from eyes really connecting with my own, and a tune with lyrics which stop me, the tune that takes me to my piano, makes me pay attention.

Tearaway. From old confines, from old controls, from old myths and mistakes. Tearaway.

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Island Blog – Just Flying On

I did my own housework today. It’s so damn boring, my own housework, whereas I am like a woman on fire when it comes to someone else’s. I am can-do, let’s do this, even if the job appears magnifluent with horribleness. What is that all about? I ask myself this as I lug stuff for washing to the washing thing. No answer comes beyond the flip dash of swallows madly encouraging their second brood to fly, ffs. I feel for them, not that I ever knew resistance from my kids, as they almost went without a lookback. I pulled myself back to myself, as they say in SA, and grabbed a hoover, then a bucket and mop and sorted things that needed sorting. I like my home to be clean even if nobody ever sees most of it. This is about me and how I care about me, my personal standards.

Bring that back, roll it right back to the core. I have standards, yes, but just for myself. I feel no judgement when I meet others who don’t share what I choose to be my level pegs. It doesn’t annoy me. I cock my head at this. Really? Well, yes, probably, but I contain it. I have five grown children with five grown partners. I have met walls and fences. I have learned. What haveI learned? Acceptance, obviously. Was that easy? No. So How did it become the normal in those relationships? Did you remember yourself in these new dynamics? Not always, no, although once I got to know the partners, I found myself loving them and that was me being me. How did you do that? Asking questions without agenda, just interested in their life, their own thoughts, the she or he of she or he. And, I interrupt my questioner, of continuing that through the years. Instead of the easy homey conversations with primal children, elevation is required, I have found. To show interest and to ask about the partner of my beloved, the one, let’s be honest, who took that beloved out of the maternal/paternal sphere and into a new ellipsis.

I made chappit tatties just now. It’s a Scottish thing you might need to google. I also made a salad and all of the before was delivered on Friday, fresh island produce. I can smell the island on the lettuce, salty, safe, wholesome. I love the ground of this life, the wild, the silence and darkness at night, the safety, the community, the song and strength of it, the way we move to help each other, the way we can step in or fly out when it’s an urgence. The way we understand that the earth breathes, the sea breathes, the world is changing. We don’t know what to do next beyond the fact that we don’t have a clue.

In the now of now, we are flying on.

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Island Blog – Emerging and Engagement

We are in a seasonal change. The mornings are cool, the light less light, less strong, the mornings darker. I love such changes, all of them because it involves me and my attitude. It also reminds me of my mother’s big ottoman on the landing, wherein she would carefully fold all summer clothes, bringing out the scratchy woolen jumpers, the thicker trousers, the warmer underpinnings. Not sure we can do that anymore, even if we do own a landing big enough for an ottoman. Nonetheless, the temperature does lower as Summer gathers up her swishy skirts and dances off to Africa. Seasons don’t stop being themselves. They just move on to do their thing on the other side of the world. I love that too and it thinks me.

I hear, oh god we all hear, the moans at the loss of Summer as if nothing will ever be right ever again, as if cool mornings heralds the end of everything. Such nonsense. We have all lived some years knowing that nothing at all lasts, that everything changes and never stops doing that change thing. I suspect that too much talk of ‘loss’ can, and probably does infect a community, a workspace, a family situation, There is nothing like a single voice of misery to bring down the most dynamic team. But this subject is on no more than a change in seasonal flow. I do understand a sense of loss, nonetheless. Those heady days of frocks and bare arms, of walking for hours beneath glorious sunshine, of taking warmth for granted, leaving doors open and not shouting about it; of dry dogs after long walks, of mud solidified enough to be just dust on boots; of standing for a conversation, of sitting on a balcony with a glass of chilled something-or-other and of trusting all of the above. I get it.

The thing I have learned is that attitude makes any change shift into opportunity. As those of us who are getting old get older, it is our essential choice. As joints stiffen and shout, as it gets harder to gauge the level of bumpy land, as the cold sneaks in knife-like, as self-doubts grow mighty and decisions flounder, we cannot help but remember how vibrantly we once swashbuckled through our complex lives. A seasonal loss? Yes, definitely yes. A different seasonal change, one of a life long lived. When we began it was Winter. Then we met someone and Spring began to flower up, cautious, yes, but little blooms pushed through the cold. Then came Summer, the crazy warm long hours of sunshine, the swing of it, the fragrance of hope filling the air, the dance of it, the wild long hours of daylight, of hope, of dreams. Then Autumn, golden, still warm, the light like a chiaroscuro, elevating what was already there, sharpening its edges, pulling the distant closer, reflections brighter, calls stronger out there in the otherness. Then Winter again, but a different one from before, before the commitment to the one, to children, to family, to decades of hard work and laughter and sharing and agony and loss and gain and goodbyes and hellos.

I like the word Emerging, not that I thought for one minute I would be still doing it, not at this age, but I am and my attitude is absolutely IT on this. I don’t like being alone. I don’t like being old. I don’t know anyone who does. Ok, so that’s the bottom line. Let’s think up. I do. I wake every morning and say thankyou to my bed. I won’t say I plan my day because, unless I have work in the Best Cafe Ever, I don’t. I just wake up and that’s damn good. I wash, dress, make-up my face, eat breakfast, clean up, look out. And whatever is going on out there, I choose to go with it, up the warmth if required, call for help if I need a big gas cylinder attached, download an audio book, hoover (boring), wave to walkers, plan supper, make hummus or something like that. I have the urge to emerge.

I can’t change the loss of me, but I can rise above everything if I choose to engage with change.

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Island Blog – Liminal Dilemma

We all have them, the dither on the cusp of a new thing. Summer and Autumn obviously feel the same. Autumn comes in with a bag of chillswag in the morning, clouding windows, cold to the touch and bringing shivers into the house, the snatch and pull of a warm cardigan around a human body. I can hear her chuckle as I do this very thing. And, as the day moves on, the temperature rises until I am here at almost 5pm barely frocked and with the sun almost burning. It thinks me.

I have dithered many, oh many times, on that cusp. Trusting that whatever I did or didn’t do would breach the void, move some situation on. I have stood there, often, skidding on the rocks of slippery, hesitant, wondering, doubting and very much alone. But there is something about being there in the first place. What brought me here? a question requiring an answer and, from what was around me at the time, nobody else was in answering mode. Is that what it comes to……..nobody but me to step across the void, to acknowledge there is no-one there at all? Perhaps. It’s lonely though.

On the obverse side of this I can see that it isn’t just me who make decisive choices plus impact and, possibly, initiating chaos. Even as a young mother, I did face all of that. I was the one who found myself, discovered myself, on the slippery rocks, and who stepped on. Looking back to my then situation, there was nobody else who would have even got there, nor wanted to, the whole maintenance of equilibrium, the status quo, being an absolute. For so many years I doubted myself, this crazy skidder on rocks, the one who yelled Enough! and worked on the change. Maybe it’s a generation thing. My peers conformed after all. I was born different. All through school I disagreed, and was silenced or expelled. Now I live with that self and can see her as before her time, the rebel, the one who actually did make a difference in so many ways, in business decisions, in the lives of my children, in the community, in my own life.

So, I recognise Autumn, the proud mother that she is, and welcome her. I also feel a great affection for Summer as she, unwillingly diminishes. I have loved her light and her warmth, but she needs her rest now. However, the combination sisterhood of these two proud seasons does bring the most glorious of surprise light. I think I love the cusp, the liminal dilemma.

Perhaps I see myself in this.

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Island Blog – Ebb, Flow, On and On.

There are diamonds on the water, an incoming tide speckled with sunlight where the luff of water rises like hope. I watch a carder bee on the cornflowers, not many left now, as birds flip and flutter through the sweet peas, mostly pods now but still lifting blooms to the sky. Tangled clouds overhead, a conversation up there. The grey ones push along, but the white wins through, holding place, giving way a bit, but just a bit. They hold the sky and I admire their flexibility. They’re like good friends. Okay, I will allow you to be grey today, but not for long. I watch them, the white, flex around the grey, even as they hold the ground, or sky in their case. Sun beams in between all these cloudal shenanigans, the ultimate smile. I feel its warmth on my skin and it smiles me. A young robin jinks on the fence, the result of a second sitting, singing pure and strong. Go to the fatballs, I tell him/her. The bird twists at my voice, eyes me from the shoulder of my garden bench as if I am a right twit not speaking ‘robin’. I don’t put out seed in the summer months, much as I am tempted to, only fat balls and mealworms and I am out of the latter for now. I hear, just now the screech of angry gulls and ditto crows and just know there is a sea-eagle out and about. Then I hear the yip and see him and her lift into the now flat sky, a grey and white collusion. They soar as if it’s nothing. There is only sky for them, no wind to tilter, no other bird that high for now. The gulls splinter off, bored, the crows too and here comes the rain. I catch a white tail as they redesign the sky. They are at home up there, rain a notbother, hecklers left way behind, for now. The vista mists, the hills beyond smokey and indistinct. I love this place, this place of seasonal change, of sudden disruptions and community strength; of good people with pockets full of smiles and who are always there with a hug when the grey comes in. I see the definition of the far hills now, the shower albegone, the sky still holding shut but that could change in a heartbeat much like tunes on a playlist, shuffled.

I light the fire. I like the flames, safe inside the wood burner doors. Change again. The day is slipping away, the night-push stilling the roses, the flowers, the trees. Not yet though, but for me, the change is coming. I wake early, go to bed as others head out for dinner. It suits my situation. I like to hear the walk and chat of those walking by my closed curtains as I read, coming back from the pub or a walk. They are like night flowers, life living itself on and on, soaring, claiming space, lifting. Laughter rises like hope, just below my window, sparkling diamonds on an incoming tide. And the tide will continue thus. Ebb, flow, on and on and on.

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Island Blog – What we Give

I walked today, a bit wobbly, a bit sore, a bit doubtful. After a stupid fall, a small one ,the capital of which can make all subsequent letters lower case. It was a bump, just that, but the old of me denies a quick revival, as it might not a ten year old. I walked today, a small one and decided I would notice everything along the way. I had to get out and the sun was warm and the sky kind and my thoughts were doing me no service at all.

I started out on the Tapselteerie track, unsure, just me. Well, it is always just me so that’s not unusual. I turned at the fork and headed up the track, the original for the grand guests back in the day, and stopped to watch Painted Lady butterflies on the wild Scabious. I stood awhile, unmoving, just watching as they sipped the nectar. It thinks me. Oh I know it is instinct but go with me here.

We teach out children. Most of us think it through. Most of us us want them to learn the stuff which will help them even though we know that their generation is a somewhere we will never have the language for. Did I know that in the 70s/80s when I was mum to five? No. Even though I had the taste of the 60s, I went blind into motherhood, as if nothing would change. How incredibly stupid.

I look, now and then, at photos of me as a young mother. I don’t recognise her. I was so so young. And yet, this very day, one of my kids recognised his childhood and how we taught him. He had been through a challenging time and was so thankful for what we had taught about survival, about a can-do positive attitude, even in fear, especially in fear.

And I remembered myself, that young mother in a wild place and thought this. We don’t know what we give.

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Island Blog – That Cafe and Today

I see gulls flip over the ebbing tide, the copper seaweed in brazen exposure, the sea-loch quietly grey and slightly wind-skiffed. I see the sweet pea pods waggle, the old rose holding tight in its last pink shout to a greyling sky, cloudbacked. I see the grass peppered heavily with clover leaves. Perhaps the blooms will come, perhaps it’s too late now for Autumn is definitely here. I know it because the fire has been on all day and I am fast running out of wood. this running out thing comes so quick. It seems that one day it’s…. what light stuff to wear and the next there’s a shiver and an opening of sweater drawers, much to the surprise and subsequent skitter of spiders. They’ve been safe for months now after all. I pause to let them go safe. It doesn’t bother me, the change of a season. In fact I welcome it. If we never accept and adapt to change, we just get some resistance issue like bad temper or a skin condition.

The Best Cafe Ever was gey busy last week. A gazillion lunches, endless coffees and cake, teas and allergies, dogs and wee ones, rain and shine. We welcome them all. In fact, someone said to me today, someone who isn’t afraid to speak their feelings, ‘That Cafe has just got it so right.’ And it’s true. There is something about hearing laughter all around, folk feeling welcome and well fed, served with smiles and can-do, which speaks volumes about any place of hospitality. And I love being part of the small team, as do my co-workers. It tells me that, although this place is only two seasons old, the idea of it, the walking it out, the risk involved has got it ‘just right’. We are small but dynamic. We are ready for whatever comes no matter the bizarre thunderstorms, no matter the craziness of the world, no matter the rainshift, the snaggle-toothed roads, the ferry issues, the lack of parking because there just isn’t enough rock to park on. No matter any of it. Still the gulls wheel and shriek under a louring cloud bank; still there is a humbacked whale just out there; still there are hills brocaded with a turning green; still there are wild birds lifting and hovering, floating on updrafts. Still the tides ebb and flow, still the night comes and there is no pollutive light.

A dot on the map, yes, but a dot worth a visit.