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Island Blog – Explosical

I just made that word up by the way, but it fits. In that word is Ex, meaning gone. Plose, as in ‘Boom’ and Sical as the arse end of Musical. Well, if Latin/ Greek scholars can derivativise words into minute parts, then so can I. Much as I respect the past of historical learning and memories, even remembles, it is high time we caught, grasped onto, and learned from the way language has changed flipping ages ago. We all have many new neighbours, new work colleagues, new dialects on our streets, among our new-met friends, in all social gatherings. And it isn’t just the pronunciation of a word, the tilt and lift and shift of the musicality of a well-established word. I know this, I have been confounded, felt the hesitation and the embarrassment as I tried to understand what the person across from me just said. I got the drift, but not the fulcrum. Even in my long ago youth, I remember that sweaty awkwardness, the wishing I was anywhere but there, trapped in a chair, sweating anxiety. Not now. Now I will respectfully admit to my own lack of understanding.

There is musicality in all languages, in the way they emerge from the iodine of whatever the familiar is to us, the old tunes, the stuck of it. It seems to me that the English, the British, are more stuck than they might want to be, perhaps with the legacy of owning half the world thick in aging throats, perhaps. But to lift into a welcome …..How about that? I am my father’s daughter and thus fixillated in entrenched wordage, but, and I do believe this, if he was still with me, and could still pontificate enough for me to bring him down to a whisky and a courie-in, he would get that, no matter the dictionary, which, by the way I have added to twice. Language is explosive and musical, and if we want to dance with it, well, we need to get out there and do just that.

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Island Blog – Herstory

I have two new geraniums. I have lived with, and looked after, for decades, the salmon pink geraniums beloved and nurtured by my mother-in-law, for almost fifty years. Who knew a plant could survive that long! Anyway, I inherited them, loads of them in pots, and all healthy as fitballs. My word. I didn’t, I promise, try, not never, to let them die, even though their presence overwhelmed me at times, many times. They just grew strong and green, producing flowers the whole damn summer and beyond. Even after her death, my mother-in-law I mean, in 2002, I still had five, no six, no seven, in her conservatory. Back then this conservatory (such a clumsy word) had no warmth in the winter months, so she brought them in and cared for them somewhere in this little stone-built home, still caring, still checking they would survive. I admire that. Her story with her geraniums, her green fingers. She knew everything about plants and gardens. This, btw, is not about her, even if it might look that way. I just went off on the geranium/mother-in-law thing. Moving on.

The two new ones. They are not salmon pink. To be honest, I am very tired of salmon pink. I want red. The ladies arrived, a bit discombobulated with all that dark travel, the shucking of delivery people who don’t know what’s in there. I let them sit in my open-mouthed garage for a day or two before replanting. From the width and strength of the stalks I clocked no newbie, no flop. These girls know themselves. I may have got them wrong. I put them in bigger pots, brought them in because out there on this island of bonkers weather, ‘in’ is safe. They rebelled. Their older leaves grew spots and stayed spotty, talking to other newer leaves, so that they spotted up too. I watch them.

Today they asked me for more space. Ah! I get it. I had placed one beside a well-established orange tree, and the other perhaps too close to an equally established ficus tree. Domination. I missed that. I moved them, as they asked me to. No plants want to be close to another. I see it often on my walks through Tapselteerie. The fight for light, for space, the ultimate diminish of one. And I say, I do, out loud, I see you. Do what you can, do your very best. You are beautiful even where you are.

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Island Blog – From Gimcrack to Newbuild

Arriving back in Scotland was a right shock. From 34 degrees to minus 8, and overnight. Doesn’t seem possible. All those sleepless hours inside a huge metal bird, squashed and fighting for leg room and elbow room as we all hurtled through time and space, over countries we may never set foot in, delude us. We left in shorts, well, I didn’t, still buzzing with holiday flutter and fast departing tans, breathing in many other breaths and emissions, only to land in a cold, dark, very early, winter morning, wishing we’d chosen thermal longs instead of cotton shorts.

Outside the terminal, folk with fast departing tans, shivered, puffing steam like the Hogwarts Express and stamping. I didn’t risk the stamping thing, having only light plimsoles on my feet, one of which threatens a hole. I just stood in awe, watching the excited departees, smiling at the caved in faces of others like me who wanted nothing more than to run back to the plane demanding a return ticket. It’s winter, for goodness sake, I hissed to myself, teeth chattering something I couldn’t catch. Get over yourself. You’ve made it back, after all, no damage done.

Met, as I was, by my daughter and granddaughter and hugged warmly, my shivers abated. The car pulsed heat, the snow was stunning, I was safe. As we drove in lines of traffic, all going somewhere, I presumed, I felt many twinges of sadness at my leaving Africa, the son, the sun, the heat, the music, the warm sea, the ease with which anyone can live in a place that never gets cold at all. Of course, to live there would be a very different thing. Perhaps the heat, sometimes rising into the late 40s, might cause problems with working conditions, with comfortable sleep, with mental alertness. I didn’t have to be alert at all, had a fan blowing me almost out of bed each night, didn’t have to work. that’s not real life, however, that’s a holiday, an adventure every day with company, laughter, games, walks, moments that lifted us almost off our feet and nothing mattered, not even the threatening hole in my shoe.

Slowly I acclimatised, very slowly, and particularly so as I had managed to land with extra baggage – a novovirus bug, always a risk when travelling, when inhaling other breaths and emissions, no matter how clean the recycled air professes to be. The virus is brutal. Don’t catch it. Then I gave it to my daughter who missed her 50th birthday as a result. So unkind of me, but what control do any of us have over the invisible? I am happy to report that, it seems, nobody else in the family caught the devil, and today I begin my journey back to the island in sunshine. It’s still going to be winter for a long while, I know that, but I feel as if I have moved from gimcrack to newbuild. Plans for self-improvement, for more fun, for more adventures, all just waiting for me to press ‘play,’ and I am ready.

Whatever we go through, whatever befalls us, cannot break us if we refuse to break. We may lose confidence, bodily parts, outward beauty and all control over flesh gravity, but this olding generation is a tough cookie. And, all we have to do is to keep getting up, keep looking out like excited children, who just know they will catch a falling star. One day.

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Island Blog – A Let Go

There’s been a whole lot of that Let Go thingy lately, well, for a while, to be honest. I used to could (thanks Vicky) do so many things that fight against me now. I could do anything yesterday in my thinking. I could lift heavy potato sacks, furniture, road blocks. But, and this is in the forgetment of aging, I can’t now, and that bothers me because it seems to come as a new thing, every time. I don’t want to give in, give up or is it give over? No matter, a struggle so it is, and that fight for who I was rises like a crazy old loon every time I meet such a finite. Is it finite? Probably, but I don’t like it one bit. Anything that concludes itself makes me fire up in challenge. However, this one might win and I do not go down easy. It thinks me.

My thoughts are not so easy to collate. I might forget what I said just then and say it again, maybe a few times until I notice the eyeroll from my beloveds, patient though they are. Nights collude with the thought chaos, old memories tangled and switched into confused sentences, not as I remembered, my perceived rememberings. I know what I know, but that knowing shifts and the whole dynamic of life is not one I can understand. I can get bits of it, but as I don’t live comfortably in the wholeness of what this generation has learned from pre-school, I can only watch from the sidelines, and cheer.

Many young families have moved to the island. T’is a wonderful thing. Children filling schools for a start, new lives growing in this completely safe place with the chance to experience all the wilding of an extraordinary island, but more than that, much more. The parents of these little ones have found work here, good work, and what I notice and love is that the mothers of these children have too. Actually, that sentence pisses me off big time, as if being a mother isn’t work. Jeez.

I met and have met before, outside my gate with the huge sky loud and my sunroom taking it all in, the sunrise, the sundown, the in-between, young women with children and a smile connects us. She looks up, me in my big goldfish bowl, and I lift and step out, barefoot, to connect. She has moved here, a choice, she has children, she has connect, she is a professional. And, talking to her about sunshine, about hope, about this and that, it hits me, the letting go thing.

To be honest, it is a punch, but I knew it, knew it and for ages. Although I have let go so many times before, all those times that my children left, when I still was ‘it’, when they chose partners, when I was not ‘it’, when my husband began to leave, when , when, when, but this one this realisation has brought me home to letting go. There are young families here, striving as we did once, to raise a life, a family, to make it beautiful and warm and friendly and safe.

I let go happily. It isn’t my time. It’s theirs.

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Island Blog – Add New

That’s what it says when I click on ‘Posts’ on this blog. It thinks me in many ways. As I shower and dress up to join young friends for dinner inside the wildlife estate, I notice things, such as this:- One eyebrow has disappeared completely. Momentarily, I am somewhat scunnered, even as I know it is probably still there somewhere, well, not somewhere, but in the place it has always inhabited for many decades. I tip my mirror to MAGNIFIED and search again. There is the jist of it but now the other one, looking strong-ish and ‘there’, tipples my face lopsided. I attempt to colour it in, guessing the arch of it and check again. Now I look like an old woman without a map. I scrub off the colour, shrug my shoulders, and say What the Heck, or words to that effect. As I shrug my shoulders, the dewlaps beneath my arms activate. If I hold my arms almost above my head, they disappear, the dewlaps that is, but I cannot possibly sustain an entire evening thus. The young will think me bonkers and I won’t be able to eat a thing without taking the eyes out of my neighbour with a fork. I consider the dewlaps. If I was rounder, they wouldn’t be dewlapping at all, but I am not rounder and here goes another What the Heck. The rest of my make up routine is a right palaver, all guesswork and don’t look too closely as I apply eyeliner, mostly in the right place and mascara to patchy eyelashes. Spiders, I think, and chuckle. What, I wonder, do the young see with their 20/20 vision? Too bloody much is the answer, but wait. If I go wherever I go with enough twinkle winkle in my eyes, dewlaps, one eyebrow and all the rest, will it matter in the long run, the run of an evening, a load of 40 years olds with Granny? Probably not. So, methinks, tap chin, this is pretty much down to me and my attitude about me. As I move through the dewlap, one eyebrow and spiders sticking out of my eyeballs thing with the confidence of age, the history of losing things like body parts whilst acquiring others, am I not, all by myself, reversing their thoughts on ‘growing old’? How many young people, me included when I was actually young, have said they never want to grow old because look what happened to Granny or Uncle Mike or Aunty Bea? Well, maybe it wasn’t all sunshine for them and, for that, I am sorry. But if I can be just one old gal who just gets on with the process, then it’s worth stepping out there.

Today I received, as I often do, pictures of my 12 grandchildren doing things effortlessly, such as bending in half mid-air, or winning at hockey or cantering along a beach, no hands, or dressed in lycra with not a dewlap in sight. I see my own children strong, fit, altogether and jumping fences, leaping off boats, making big decisions that require effort and strength, determination and a clear mind. I had all of those, once, and that is something to celebrate. I had all of those, once. Now I don’t, not as I did. Now I falter at times, lose things like eyebrows and the next sentence, might find it harder to construct a shape to the next day. I forget a story I’m reading and have to retrace my steps. I see a crowd of people and feel lost. I struggle to chop wood. All perfectly ok if that is how I see it, because, because, I have done all of these things, with strength and confidence, no problem unsolvable, not when I was in the lead. And the dewlaps, scars, slight weakness of limbs, of mind, all are just as they should be. Will I whinge and whine about losing stuff? No, I will not. In the quiet of my mind, I will know what I know. I have seen what I have seen, lived to the absolute full and for a whole lifetime. A slowness and a thoughtfulness replaces the buzz to move move move, and that peaceables me.

So off I go into an African night, missing an eyebrow, yes, but not much else. If I Add New to my thinking, I am always beginning again, in whatever state. Now, where was I…..?

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Island Blog – Heart lift

Soft, loving compost is heaped on my garden. I made it myself and it is thunderous with worms, not that any of them will survive this new exposure to light. They are worms of the dark, of the fetid warmth and gentle darkness of a dialek bin, creatures of a season and doomed to face change, one they won’t like much. Robin, blackbird and thrush gather as if they know there is a feast for an early arriver. Within minutes these compostian beings will have dug themselves deep, dug for death.

Heretofore I had always shovelled, laborious shovelfuls into a big bucket, then lugged said laborious shovelfuls down the back steps and into the front garden. Then came muscle man. He just wheeched the whole dialek off the ground and shook him a bit to release the dark, wormy soft heap of live-giving goodness from his interior. I was impressed. Now he can do the lugging and he did, hence my thoroughly over excited flower beds. They are giggling. I can hear them even through the regular hail shower attacks. I see an eggshell, a bit of cauliflower stalk, garden cuttings and they smile me. Go to work my lovelies, I tell them and together, we wait, even though they know more than I about what is happening beneath their butts. It is such a quiet thing, this growing, this birthing of new life and the mystery of survival no matter what frollocks happens above ground.

Primroses are showing sunshine faces along the drystone walls. No larch buds yet but I can hear them whispering as I pass. We are coming, they say. Keep watching. And I will. I do. As I walk, I remember. This time last year I shut down, locked out the world, kept vigil for any invaders. How strange to still be thinking the same way and, yet, not quite in the same way. It isn’t that I mind locking down in principle. It isn’t that I am afraid. It isn’t that I no longer have anyone to protect other than myself. It is simply strange, as if I, like the compostian worms, have become accustomed to a darkness, one that has proffered an unexpected sense of security, and now I am not sure who I will be. All through this past year my lack of desire to go out, to meet anyone, to entertain visitors confirmed me as a student hermit. None of the lockdown, bar the initial fear of an invisible and extremely powerful enemy, phased me.

But I have had enough now. Rising, unlike the worms but very like the new shoots, the daffydowndillies, the tulips, the snowdrops and with new leaves twinkling at me under the weight of thawing hailstones, I want to keep rising and that means forward into life. My fed is suddenly up. I want freedom of choice once again. My choice to go here or there, to this person or that should be my own now. How clearly I see the way a revolutionary spirit rises within us. Living under any regime is everything inhuman and that’s what this feels like now. Enough Covid! with all your tentacles and your new names and strains, your machination against the human race, the one I belong to, by the way, the one I seriously care about! I want to yell. Actually I did yesterday and it felt good.

However, there is little we can do than behave ourselves a bit longer and keep watching for Spring. She will go a long way in saving us, for now. However it doesn’t stop the fury at continuous imprisonment. I think of the ones who have died and those who couldn’t be there at the end of a loved life. I think of the painful separations, the people who will suffer deeply from this enforced isolation, those living lives of deprivation and of constant pain. Who will lift them into Spring, I wonder? Here am I frapping about renewing my passport and then there are they, stuck, trapped, broken, sick, dead. It is humbling.

Best I can do is write. Best I can do is keep living. Best I can do is to watch for Spring. Sometimes others walk with me. Not weirdo dead people, although occasionally they do, but those I think about, the ones I don’t know and will never meet, the ones who have found this past year a deal more than merely inconvenient. Hey, I say, come with me. I can take you to the fairy woods, show you the elvish trees, now a bit stripped of moss for the deer are starving here. I can walk you through where wild garlic will flower, take you to eider nests, show you oystercatcher eggs among salty basalt, lift your eyes to a skylark, watch your face soaked in salt spray and old stories, and watch you catch them, the stories ,and even if you don’t understand the language, your eyes will tell me you have those stories in your heart. A heart lift. A change for the ever-ness of life.

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Island Blog – Step Out of the Ordinary

Well, here we are……it all begins again…..or does it? To me this sounds like we are in Groundhog Year. But, but, but, no year is the same as the one past, not least because we move into it with more wrinkles, or less, more confidence, or less, more enthusiasm, or less. Whichever what way we approach a new year, a new chance for change, we are not the same people who left the old one. We have lost something, someone, or gained something and someone. We have moved house, changed jobs, learned something new, as I have. I have learned that this pair of spectacles work best in the kitchen for my mobile phone, whereas these ones with stronger lenses, resting in their red case in the sitting room, work best for my laptop and for lighting candles.

Over the years I have met what I saw as cynicism about things like birthdays, Christmas and the new year. We don’t acknowledge them, I heard say and I thought how very sad that is. For me, any chance of celebration is a chance to bring magic into a sad old world that might just say, as a new year approaches, Oh here we go again, in a maudlin sort of voice. I cannot, will not do this, not ever. If life is not about celebration then what the heck is it all about? We spend endless days inside the Januarys and Februarys of Ordinary. Surely we can rise and sparkle a few times a year? Or is it that we don’t have any sparkle left? Well, I have something to say about that. Sparkle, people, comes from inside us, from our child heart. Expecting it to come from outside of ourselves may well be the problem. If you want sparkle, then sparkle.

I wish you all the happiest and most marvellous 2021. I wish that you find your sparkle, even feeling foolish in doing so, regardless of being laughed at or mocked or rejected. Sparkle, people. This world needs the sparklers. We all have a part to play in this new year. What part will you play? Same old cynic or someone, however old, who can find the magic and bring it to the grey streets? We, who know what I am saying are precious. Be foolish, be fun, be spontaneous.

And very happy new year to you all.

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Island Blog – Repeat Daily

The way I see things when I am tired, stressed or fed up is never how they really are. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. In certain moods or when pressure feels heavy as a truck on my head, I slip into a weird world, one full of victims with me being the biggest. I am at the mercy of whatever comes my way; my seeing becomes slanted, ditto my hearing and my poor underused brain turns into an untethered disco ball. Instead of being inside this body, I am all over the place, running here and there like a headless hen.

And then the next day comes, the next songbird dawn, the new light, and what happened yesterday seems small and insignificant, solvable in a few simple steps. Why I couldn’t see it that way yesterday beyonds me. Yes, I was tired of repeating things, gently; yes I was upset about the rain getting into my post box; yes I was lonely and wondering when life would begin and yes I was pitching for a fight. I guess the nice lady from the Council, just doing her job, is fortunate I didn’t get to speak to her. I have no idea what she called about, beyond a vague and fluffy explanation (and even that word is too long to describe what I did learn). Are we still shielding? Are we allowed to see anyone and would that be from Now or from July 31st, and are we still getting the food deliveries? I know the answer to the last question having just learned it from a friend, but the rest, himself nodding and saying No and Yes and then No again could mean he has signed us up for a pilot mission to Mars. I guess I will find out eventually, if a space suit arrives by carrier.

My point is that, in my strong and right mind, I can see all the mild irritations and the intense enfuryments as just things colliding with my just thoughts and just feelings. I can step back, breathe, observe and quantify, deconstruct and take appropriate action. When in a compromised state of being, it looks and feels as if I am under attack from a mysterious, invisible band of mercenaries, with me in their sights. Of course, it would be impossible, being an ordinary extraordinary human woman, to sustain such a peaceful equilibrium at all times and in all sets of circumstance. life isn’t like that for any of us. Tsunamis will rise and threaten to destroy; rain will seep into post boxes, mushing paper and packaging, days will feel trudgemonkey and food will go off in the humid heat, just before I go to re-heat it for dinner. Life is not plain sailing and we all know that. But, if I can set up an inner programme of self-encouragement, write down uplifting affirmations to stick on walls, seek conversation with friends and read good guide books – if I eat well, exercise, laugh a lot, show kindness, share love and think more often of others that of myself, I will have prepared myself for anything that might come my way on any given day.

Which is what I am doing this day. One day at a time.

Repeat daily.

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Island Blog – Daynight

The clouds are pink. So are the hills, the trunks of the hazels, the rocks and the sea-loch. It is 4.45 am and everything is pink. I am also pink, according to the mirror reflection and my face needs ironing. This is due to the crumpulation of pillow, duvet and face, conjoined in a less than harmonious trio. We obviously fell out at some point during the night, fought each other until we ran out of oomph, and then collapsed, like all menage a trois do in the end.

The house creaks. The floorboards creak. My knees creak. We are all coming to life, beginning to breathe in a new morning, taking in the pink, leaving the night behind, letting it go. Sometimes I am delighted to let go, sometimes I wonder if being awake most of the night makes it day and not night. Perhaps there is an in-between, like a no mans land, a wild place that has no name, as yet unlabelled. I can give it plenty names, however and not all of them polite, but in deference to social rectitude I shall name it Daynight.

Although it may sound terribly awful spending a deal of the dark hours awake, I am well used to it and find myself able to recover quick quick during the hours of light. Just a 30 minute catchup snooze can lift me right back into a Tigger bounce. It thinks me. Have I devised a splendid plan of action, a modus operandi, one that will always lead me into what may sound like a child’s story, or am I a natural bouncer? Did I learn myself this attitude or was I born with it? Ho, I say and Hum. I don’t have an answer but, for the record, I am very happy with my bounce, even if my knees do creak nowadays. And, even if I did come up with an answer, what would it matter and who would care?

I watch the pink clouds. There is Robin Hood with a huge snake in his grip. Here is the Rockbiter and over there, oh look, it’s Noddy’s car, complete with horn. If I called you over, it would be too late to see what I see. Clouds are like that. Shape shifters, game players, always moving on like night, like day, like everything. Even if I grabbed my camera, it would be over, the cloud show and they would just look like pink clouds. It seemed important, back then, back when I didn’t understand that the whole point of anything is that it changes every minute; people, time, clouds, weather, happenings, all change. The key is to just look, to watch, to stand quite still and let the eyes have it. And with every look, watch, stand still thingy we change because we have experienced something new, something that will never come again, not in this way. A kindness given, a word of support, a smile, a wave; the way rain falls on a window, the swing of a feather falling, a catch of rainbow light, the scoot of a rabbit, distant laughter. A pink sunrise may come every morning, but it will never be the same twice, like zebra stripes and snow flakes, every one unique.

Like you and like me.

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Island Blog – Lock Down Light

Well you can’t do that. Lock down light. Light will seep under a doorway as you sit in the dark, catch you in a flash of lightning, astonish you as you meet it in someone’s eyes. Light will out. And we love it. The thrill of light can turn a dark moment/person/situation/problem into a new possibility and, even if we can’t explain ourselves at that time, or after that encounter, our sub conscious minds will surely find a way. The only way to lock down light is by putting it into a dark and sealed box. Then it is no longer light, but darkness, and so it seems to me that we are the ones who decide on the existence of light.

We use the word ‘light’ in so many ways. Things are illuminated by something, or someone, else. We throw light on something…..in the light of this new understanding, this reflection, this memory…. We choose to stand in the light; we find light in a dark time; we share our light with another who keeps crashing into things; we accept light as a gift when we ourselves are fumbling about looking for a metaphorical candle. Light is us and we are light.

In this lockdown time, light is being shone on all aspects of our individual lives, those of others, and on the whole world. Although the problems #the dark of our lives were always there, we could ignore them, to a degree. We could move over them, overcome ourselves as we acknowledged they were here to stay. In short, we fabric-ed them into our normality, accepting them with varying levels of grace and grit. But not now. Now, it’s if someone with a Big Pen is highlighting those things and we are being forced to look at them, all yellow and luminous in a sea of black text.

This is a good thing. This chance to change is on offer, free of charge. Only in a crisis do we humans stop to pay attention. All those years of accepting this, or doing that the way I did is up for questioning, and we cannot avoid it. Nor must we. There are small businesses going down, people losing homes, work, lives, family. This is a light throw on our whole existence and however uncomfortable it is, however painful, it will show us a new way and will keep us safe in the end. Those who, right now, think the world is ending will discover it has no intention of abdicating the throne. New opportunities will arise for all those goodly folk who feel they are permanently broken. As long as they remember the light, and, when they forget, someone will bring it to them.

I am not one of those unfortunate people and my heart aches for them all. It must be terrifying. But, having lived as long as I have, I know the feeling well and it passes. It passes because we humans are strong, resilient, resourceful creatures with marvellous brains. We are Light. We can think. We can reason. We can flip our whole life if we decide to. Many have. Many have changed everything and, in doing so, become light for the rest of us.

The light of the lockdown will not be contained inside a box and turned into darkness. It is showing, instead, how much we want to give, how enterprising we are, how strongly linked we are to the muscle of survival, and not just with plans to survive, but to thrive once more, shining out new light into a new order.