new year

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Island Blog – All About Light and Laughter

There’s a thing about the old year heading into our past, what with Christmas excess and access just a week or so away. It dillies us. Many are considering big things, big changes, altered thinking, all of those tiddleypoms. I don’t mean to minimise the intent behind them, not at all, but it does wonder me because in my long experience of a gazillion changes in a long marriage, long life and an absolute whammy of inventive children, nothing big happens overnight. Not sustainably so. It thinks me. Do we imagine we can transform as happens in lovely but completely unbelievable films? I think we might. Because we have this deep longing to be who we aren’t, with all our mistakes, even as we may happily allow them in others, proffering encouragement and even support to bring them up and out of those clutching chains. So what holds us in brackets, a definite halt in a sentence, one which might have developed on and on with the odd comma? It wonders me, even though I flipping know every graphic on this hoodlum nonsense. It’s not grammar that holds us in chains, but people, awkward relations, expectations, fixations, and not one of those bring light, nor laughter.

I stood on heights today, affixing twinkly winkly lights as the afternoon took hold of a bright morning and brought in a shroud of cloud, a darkling rain. I growled. I did. It’s as if the old year hasn’t peed for months. I look up as I go fo fill my bird feeders, the goldfinches, blackbirds, dunnocks, sparrow, tits all cheeping and swinging like gymnasts on wires and through skinny branches, and I say, quite loudly, Well Damn You! There is, as you might imagine, no immediate response. The birds still fly, even as the wind buffets them awkward. It lights me and I laugh. I know that they can live without getting their knickers in a knot, because they work with what meets them each morning. I want to live that way. I do live that way. I didn’t always, not with all the youngstress of kids and work and business and what-the-hell- is-happening thing.

But what I did know was that I was always going to be about light and laughter. It was a choice. I had seen too many others go into the dark. I knew about the dark, of course I did but when I met it or it met me, I pulled back eventually, recoiled. You are not for me. You have no power over me. My favourite people? Those who have found the light, through endless searches, looking for help, guiding lights, those who were broken and who decided to rebuild from, sometimes, nothing. I look at them and it definitely thinks me because I have everything, I have enough, I have it all, and there’s a new year coming after the gorgeous Christmas hooha, a new chance to be who I am with light and laughter, for anyone to be who they are with confidence and the right to write their own name across 2026 with a big fucking pen.

With light and laughter, of course.

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Island Blog – Twenty Twenty Thrive

And so, here we are, landed in a new year, onto an empty canvas, into a story yet to be written. What will you make of it, I wonder? Some of us feel ‘meh’ about the whole thing, some have made a plan of action, resolutions, even, although it is a truth that most of the latter are set too high and dissolve around February 1st. So how might we approach this new land, begin our own new story?

We have talked much on this, here beneath an African sun, and, although ideas are manifold as stars, each one is apposite to that person’s development and growth. To become more healthy is to initiate a plan of action, perhaps to walk each day, perhaps to run, a ghastly idea to me. I could run to save someone or to catch a bus, but all that bounce and jiggle is not a thing I would ever choose to undertake. However, I respect and admire those who do. But if this plan doesn’t get begun, it only serves to bring a person down so that they berate themselves enough to give up on what seemed like a wonderful idea. We are so good at self-flagellation.

Personal growth – now there’s a good one. It could mean noticing everything and everyone: could mean searching out the work of someone who has studied the subject, spoken on it, made it reachable. For me, one who is always hungry for learning, I listen to what others say, how they feel about what they say, and I ask questions. To keep a mind off moans and grumbles and selfies, it’s essential to feed that mind, no matter how old that mind might be.

Connectivity is another option, more of it and among those who uplift and encourage. There is enough gloom and doom out there already. What the world needs is more bright thinkers, those who, in spite of their circumstances, in spite of their fears, choose to see the world as a place of of hope, beauty and opportunity. When I hear moans, I can feel the irritation rise in me. When I hear ‘Well, what can anyone do?’ I want to say ‘A whole lot,’ because each one of us has that power, if we so choose. We can’t change everything, but we sure can change something, and that something is actually ‘someone.’ The self.

Achievements, personal achievements are listable for all of us. They don’t have to be huge. Why do we plant seeds in Spring? Because we can, because we love beauty and that blaze of colour. Why do we smile at each other in passing? Do we, smile at each in passing, or is that ‘self’ so caught up in minutiae, that we just don’t bother? To decide to smile at everyone. A good plan. To pick up litter instead of judging whoever dropped it. Another good plan. To allow someone else the parking space we were heading for. Excellent. A real achievement. And there are many more ways to make a difference whilst moving towards our goal of independent choice, of control over self.

Jimmy Hendrix said ‘ When the power of love is greater than the love of power, our world will find peace.’ I may have misquoted him, but you get the gist. And it begins with one person, one with a resolution that is free to us all. We can all thrive this year, by setting goals or plans or resolutions which connect us to each other, which take our self-centred thoughts up into the sky, to blow away in the winds.

Let’s do this. And a very happy new year to you all.

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Island Blog – Fiddlesticks

On this, the first day of a whole new year, I awaken to snow. Not thick as in other thick snow places, but the ground it white and I very nearly fell on my aspidistra when walking out barefoot to feed the birds. That’s good enough for me and the world seems magical. Well, it is magical most of the time and in between those times I usually need to tell myself to get over myself. I was probably thinking too much on imaginary fears and the concerns of agism, such as falling downstairs or running out of firelighters or of driving into a moose in the darkness. In other words, nonsense. And I like that word, most of the time, but didn’t love it all when I had just told the longest story to my mother, all excitement, bright eyed, my arms flapping descriptively. Nonsense! She said. I might miss her but I don’t miss her astonishing aptitude for turning a firework display into a popped balloon. My husband had the same talent. Some girls can’t half pick ’em. I digress.

I spent a merry morning dancing to Abba singing Happy New Year, avoiding my to-do list, the dusting, the hoovering and the photocopying of my last will and testament, although there’s nothing ‘testament’ about such a document. It says nowt about how wonderfully I have lived my bonkers life, nor of my achievements, nor (and this is ok with me) of my crimes and failings. So, Abba and I danced on, sang beautifully, or they did, and then, as the afternoon wandered in slow and icy and full-bellied with sunshine, Me and the Poppydog went a-walking. I startled and stopped at each spectacular view. The sun low through 180 year old Scots Pines, the shimmy of ice melt on bare branches, the trunnels of sunlight, pathing away into the woods, the brazen lime-light of moss, steady still despite the winter death all around. Tall grasses and reeds stand in stasis, held, held in the Ice Queen’s grasp and for some time to come until, that is, the next hooligan barrels in to lift my wheelies into the road and my frocks skirts flying out like flags most inappropriately.

Walking through the Fiddle trees, I watched them and for some moments, so absolutely still, so calm, so guiding. Thank you, I say, and Happy New Year, I say, out loud because this is not the Kings Road in London and therefore I am (currently) saved from being lifted. The ground is white in places, slippery as a threaten and beautiful, the ice forms like puddle art. In other places footprints and bike tracks muddy the track into lifts of rich brown, the rounds and slides of constant change. See here? Someone slipped a bit. There a size 10 I think, a man from the depth of the print, and here, oh look! A silent flow of deer tracks, one behind the other, followers of a good strong leader. We could do with one of them in parliament. Another digress.

I consider my occasional woodenness as I move through a whole grandeur of wood. It’s okay for you, I tell them, to be wooden but it isn’t okay for me to be wooden? How is that alright? But I know the answer, even as they say nothing back. You’re grinning, I tell one Lady Beech as I whack her midriff with my staff. In this life, the one we all have, this is what I believe. We need to think fiddlestrings, fiddlesticks a whole lot more than we do. Not as dismissive to any other person, never that, but to our burn thoughts, the ones out to pop our balloon. However, in saying this, I am very aware of how vigilant a soul needs to be. Many live in very de-embracing situations, dayfeels of unloved, unlistened to, uncared for, unnoticed, un, un, un. I know it. To believe in self when nobody else does minds me of the tale of the Ugly Duckling. Impossibly ugly until just one other says something. That’s it. So tell someone something that hears them they matter, they have a voice, a presence, an importance. Then go work on yourself. Eish…….that’s flipping hard, I know. Kicking my imaginatively embellished list of self punishments is like launching my small foot at a medicine ball and expecting it to fly like Tink. But there is always hope and she, Hope, is what makes us real, we non androids, we intelligent, beautiful, important changers, developers, powerful creatures, loving, soft, dangerous, wounded, broken, alert and learning.

I collect the fiddlesticks as the sun louers. Dry, brittle kindlers for tomorrow, the second day of the new year. Second fiddle, I think, and chuckle. I’ve been one of those for most of my life and it was fun. I never need to be first although that’s a lie. I will always be first to lift up another soul. Will you?

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Island Blog – New Year and Thought Control

Many, perhaps most of us feel less than intrepid as we move towards a new year. How will we live from now on through financial lack, winter’s toothy bite, without a someone who lived and breathed once and does so no more, through war that threatens our own safety, security and identity, governments and public bodies that can’t agree on what to have for lunch, let alone run a whole country wisely? This, however, is how it is for all of us. So how do we turn to bravely face whatever fears and doubts gather behind us, pulling open the back door of our hearts in an attempt to subdue even an heretofore indomitable spirit?

Laughter, that’s how. If we can laugh at the days to come we are making a strong statement. We are saying You Will Not Beat Us Down, not Us. Of course we do need to plan, to communicate within a home, to agree to make changes and to accept the initial discomfort of such changes. Naturally we must say farewell to some of our previous comforts but it is critical to the human spirit that we also pull in new ways to enjoy our lives. I am crap at not enjoying my life. It’s like walking in shoes full of holes and with a flapping sole. My soul refuses to flap even if I do feel cold and lonely at times. I tell myself, again, that a thought creates a feeling which puts me firmly in the driving seat because, although I cannot control my feelings, I can control my thoughts. This morning I awoke with decidedly negative thoughts. Soon my family will leave me here on the island and if I thought I was alone before, I was much mistaken. But, says Mrs Smartarse Sensible, You are strong, always have been and just think, What if something wonderful awaits you on the other side of this mass migration? I snort but she is persistent and, dammit, she could well be right. Consciously I change my thinking, sweeping out the gloomy self-pitying ones, those with big voices and absolutely no substance, like thin porridge, and equally as unsustaining. If I select my thoughts at all times of woe is me, it may feel like hard work but it does work. I refuse to let my thoughts think me because I am in the driver seat, not they. And, if I stand true to my brilliant imagination, I can host a wonderfully happy party inside my head, one that sends warming messages to my heart and body. I feel strong again. Nothing has changed. I will still be home alone in a few days but if I decide not to let those tosser dossers in, they can have no power over me, no hold, no control.

In the short term, I will take it all in, the vast load of laughing grandchildren, my own beloved children, their voices, faces, stories shared, moments collected in the air between us and I will tuck them into my heart. I will reflect on their youth, the wild and crazy fun we had, the adventures they, and I, are yet to experience, all of those year books inside my head and I will pull on my shoes and walk my walk. I have never walked alone before. How exciting! For you, wherever you are, whatever you find tough or thin or overwhelming, I say this. Keep walking, eyes forward, hope in your heart and love on your lips because there will be something that needs saying or doing no matter your path and every new path can feel scary until it is walked. And think not of loss but of the, as yet, unseen gains that will spring up like flowers along the banks of a simpler life.

Happy New Year to you all.

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Island Blog – So Last Year

I notice that, since the first lockdown, little buds of hopefulness are emerging. Enterprising folk have taken on study and are now elevating the robots of Facebook and Twitter, and us. Although it can occasionally be quite marvellous to know what someone is cooking for supper, it does become a little dull over time. I have been a little dull over time myself, I must confess, taking a photo of a plateful of colour and texture in the sure knowledge that this will bring me likes and comments and schmooze. There are daily postings of children playing, of old granny’s birthday cake alight and looking dangerous when I find myself hoping that the old girl has enough puff residing in her lungs to avoid conflagration, and of colourful and textured dinners. Many update their profile picture and if I know them, I can see the effort and time they took to look particularly wonderful or hilarious or warm and smiling.

Enterprising people are finding things positive to spread hope among us, folk who, previously, might have worked at something quite different but who have realised that posting positive on a daily basis requires effort, demands regular tasking and stands alone in the fight against gloom and disbelief. I gloom and disbelieve too. Writing down my resolutions makes me snort at times. Who am I to think I can actually achieve this busy page of A4, and for a whole year? Each resolution requires breaking down into particles and I am not overly fond of particles being a woman who likes the finished work of art, the job done overnight. But there is a chasm, nay, a continent, in between me writing down my determinations and them inhabiting my mind, body and soul. When it thinks me, I can see that what I want is instant conversion to this new faith in myself, in life, in the world. I don’t want to do the work at all, even knowing that I must.

Becoming who I aspire to become is going to take me into the fog of inner change. I cannot see who I will be, nor where I should go. I cannot see anything at all and the fog is cold and damp and is making my eyeballs soggy. I cannot even see the path ahead. Who wants this? It would be so much easier to turn around and to head for home again, back to what I was but didn’t like much, to where the simple routine was both simple and lonely, where I can check my mobile for tweets and posts on other people’s dinners, children and fired-up grannies. But if I want to change, as I do, if I want to elevate myself from the ditherment and loneliness, that lack of hope and faith, of self-belief, then I must not turn around. Instead I must look at that flipping sheet of A4 and deconstruct each aspiration into those irritating particles. Although it seems a bit unfair that the year has to begin with a January when a May would be so much more pleasant, it might mean that it is I, myself, who needs to add the colour and texture so lacking in Nature. Thinking thus, I find I can respond to bright happy pictures that others post with a smile. I can see how they are also inside this January, have their own aspirations and change lists, are also walking through the soggy fog and yet still manage to find colour and texture to share. I can read the positive words scribed by those enterprising folk who used to do something quite different. From mechanic to coach. From HR to author. Well, why not? We need these people who have lifted themselves for our benefit and whose commitment to positivity and the promotion thereof gifts us a daily sprinkle of magic dust. Sometimes I mutter a Go Away with all your positive stuff. I am weak and weary, isolated, lonely and can see no end to any of it. But, I sneak back later for a peek and find that the daily attention I pay to my fog trek does lift me a little. On a regular basis, this ‘little’ can develop and grow. The fog can clear just enough for me to see my feet, feet I had forgotten were there, and it smiles me. That smile sends a message to my brain; my brain sends it on to my body and I straighten a bit; my body goes wild with it, pulsing it through my blood and all that messy stuff inside me and before I know what’s happening, a little song rolls into my mouth. I sing it into the fog.

On days when the fog is too much, I don’t, any longer, berate myself. I don’t say ‘See…..I knew you couldn’t keep this up, you big loser!’ I just stay home and cosy. The fog will wait for me, after all and if I really want to become who I can become then this trek is going to be worth the effort, an effort that oft feels pointless. Even on stay home and cosy days I hold on to the colour and texture, the positive and the elevating, and I silence the cynic for she is no longer relevant to me, to anyone, and particularly now when the whole world is in disarray and turmoil. Who I was, that woman afraid of everything and quite without the belief that she is worth any level of preservation, never mind development, is so last year.

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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.