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Island Blog – Random, Fun, Chance,Respect

Thing is, we seem to forget these, as if they belong, belonged, in youth, something we have left behind with apologies. My ‘recalcitrant’ youth. My ‘misspent’ youth. And that wild and exciting persona is dumped in the past, trampled over in the obscene rush for success, ‘success’ because that word tastes different in a million mouths, in generational expectation, in the midden, and madden of thixotropic stultification. I know it, felt it. What is it you want? Well, who the hell ever asked that question (Im dithering between a question mark and an exclamation here). I do remember feeling lost in a swirl of long hair and crazy outfits and the need to be noticed, the danger in that, I remember. But, and more buts, how come it all gets chucked out with the garbage of what always comes next, the work, the deadlines, the trials of any union, particularly when a babe bursts into what was, heretofore, reasonably orderly?

What I see, out there, and not everywhere, is a dulling. Not here, not on this dynamic island where fun rises from the potholes and with the lift of wee new flight birds winkling right in your drive path to an appointment. They didn’t get the memo, obviously, because the winkle thing can take a while. But I hear of it, read it, in cities in confines of many sorts, the dulling. As if Fun is for someone else, but not me. I know shortage of earning is tricky. I know that there is almost no hope for an island home purchase. But, what I have learned over almost half a decade here, or, indeed on any island, and trust me, is that we need new blood, new ideas, we really do, to come, to engage with the recalcitrants, the pub, the local shop, those who will still hold tight to the place they value above all, bar their mother, and to ask, to befriend, to engage. And not to give up.

The islands are very happy as they are. But in the future, the economy will need any of you who bring random dance, fun, the chance to learn from you and you from us. I’m a passionate islander. I am brung (new word) up short as I watch a searing of a hillside in the creation of a new home, well, hopefully home. I see the changes, the invasion, as it might feel on first encounter, but I know we need those who want to live here to engage with the communities, to bring new hope but….. be cautious and respectful to a gazillion years of knowledge and a working understanding.

I just went to the pub. I laughed and shared and learned, and I would not live anywhere else out of choice.

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Island Blog – The Elbows of the New Moon

Back from work, I’m watching the tide ruffle, lift, push against the rocks, elbows out. There’s a moon in this, somewhere, I know it, and there is. A new one, yet another, and isn’t that a wonderful thing? I mean, well, the moon catapults many of us who recognise her influence, sending us into haphazardness – and many more who justify their bad temper and bizarre choices to something else, like work, or her, or him, or school, or envy, a hightened sense of failure, or of a choice made in faith, hope and love, as being a grave mistake. Hmmmm.

Because of the discomfort, a big tide brings in, it reminds me. Living all those years on Tapselteerie, we would, or I would, walk my way to a ‘spending beach.’ Such a beach, almost a wee cove, a cup of catch, like a hand grab at whatever might come in, a something of value which might be held and captured. Then, it would be plastic, the weariness of toil and spoils, ropes and hopes thrown overboard, en route to somewhere after fishing, playing, not-caring about the ocean and those within her depths, who, btw, don’t want any of that sh*t. It hasn’t changed, but worsened. We gathered, cleared, unleashed, yes we did, seal pups from rope strangulation, setting them back to the ocean, scarred, disorientated, already time-separated from their parent, their safety. However, the beauty of a tidal flow is like a photo to anyone who has no idea of what really goes on. I won’t lecture. But, having seen what we are stupidly doing, does, I confess, alter me. Plastic blows and goes up with any passing wind.

Back to the new moon. She’ll have some ridonculous name, for sure, as if she could be tamed like a terrier. I see what she can do, the lift and luff of her influence over a tidal flow, big, lush, swelling, feisty, sexual. Her voice quiet. And yet she moves, grows, with no care for a sheep stuck on a rock, no care for uninformed canoeists who set off in all the gear but without respect for her. She is wild as the wind, stronger, more powerful. In fact, I think she controls the wind, brings it on, shuts it the eff up when required.

For now, in this balmy soft, sunshine evening, on this beautiful, grumpy, shifty, awkwardly weather controlled outscape, this most westerly point, this wild and wonderful place where folk gather to celebrate anything and everything, I am just going to sit quiet and watch the elbows of the new moon widen and spread.

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Island Blog. – Present, Alone and Safe

Oh how I love my home, the warm, cozy, safe happiness of these four stone walls surrounding me and my wee dog. Since himself upped and died, I have not felt safe here, concerned about loneliness and boredom and the fact that those who needed me, every single minute of every day, every month, every year, no longer do. It has taken all this time to be comfortable with that. At first, it felt like abandonment, I was abandoned, and I was, abandoned. I remember thinking, as each child left home, that gut twisting ouch, like a punch, that one of my beloveds had chosen to leave me. It sounds mawdling, arrogant, even, but what loving mother feels it any other way? I dont know if himself felt it too, but I do know that he still had me and that was enough for him, but he wasn’t enough for me, and that’s my raw truth. When they left, I longed to go with them, even as I knew I never could, nor would. A young life must learn through living it out, and a mother in tow was never going to be me. I knew one of those, my mother-in-law, and much as I respected and needed her, I didn’t admire her hold on himself, not once he had a wife and family. However, reflecting, this was a two way need. I get that.

It rained today. No big deal. T’is the norm in this glorious place, the wettest in the whole of the country, and that is saying something. To be the Best Wet……. goodness, demands a medal, or, maybe several medals distributed among all of we islanders, not that you would ever see them beneath the layering of wools and waterproofs. The rain can be slanty or stick straight. The clouds must be exhausted, or perhaps not. Perhaps this place is the only one offering regular employment, and clouds are fantastic creatures, lifting, shifting, colouring, turning Colgate white, spreading out their arms to each other, conjoining, merging, changing, always changing. Clouds can teach us a thing or two, at the mercy of Nigel or whatever daft and ordinary name the weather folk have decided to give a force of nature that begs no name at all. It is just a gale, I want to tell them, just a wild creature of magnificence and power, and you want to what……turn it into a small thing, a something you can label and tidy away once it has moved on? It ridiculouses me.

I finished a jigsaw, started another one. No, that’s a big fat lie. I laid out the 1000 pieces, covering most of my big oak dining table, tiny pieces, god so bloody tiny and dark, darker than the bright picture on the box. I left them overnight, studied them this morning, these pellets of impossibility, and snorted. There is no way I will, would, want to, enjoy putting you together. In fact, you are a big fat chore and I don’t want one of those. I gathered all the pieces up and returned them to the box without a moment of guilt. I shall take this one to the library. And it thinks me.

As I move beyond the loneliness and the boredom, and the pointlessness of me, I find a strength, a new confidence. Had I been the old, bored, lonely and pointless me of just a few months ago, I might well have battled with that horrible jigsaw, out of a sense of duty and because it might, just might, have filled in an hour or two. But not now. Now I can feel the amazon (not the company, but the woman) awakening. I can, and will, choose what I will do and what I will not do. 50 years of not having much choice about anything much is becoming my past. I will put myself together in a new way, even if the pieces confound me at first, and it will be I who choose the picture. And my head is full of colour and light and clouds and skies and fairies and walks in the woods. I can feel the Atlantic swell in my heart, and she calls me, the minx that she is, and I find myself yearning for that wildness, the not knowing and not understanding, the turbulence, the storms, the sudden calms, the snow geese flight overhead, the swans coming in, the autumn bluster. It all chuckles me. I am woman. I am strong and, I am rising up to laugh at the days to come for I am made of cloud, woods, ocean, light and dark, and I am here, present, alone and safe.

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Island Blog – Machines and People

So there I was, and still am, tiddling about with a replacement washing machine thingy. It has been in my head and at the end of my dialling digits and a rumble in my tumbly for two weeks. The whole online deal appears clear and simple but it is anything but. The baseline is this. My washing machine crossed her arms across her barrel chest and shut down like a judgmental matron and I have known a few of them in my time. She would receive water but would not slosh, nor allow her belly to rotate, nor would she spit out the water taken in. A couple of floor floods later plus a heap of sodden towels, I gave in and hunkered back on my heels. Right! I said. Damn You! I said. And then I mellowed, not least because hunkering on my hunkers was fun once but not so much these days. I could feel my big toes shrinking. Okay, I get it, you are gone. RIP my faithful friend of years. She loosened her arms and I could feel a mellow fill the little room. I rose into action.

My washing machine is insured with full and complete and absolute promise that, if an engineer cannot be found, or one is but he decides my machine a write-off, I will receive a free replacement. When I took this insurance out, I did inform the company that, a) I live on an island, b) there is no such engineer here and c) no washing machine company will deliver to the island, never mind recycle the old one. They, the company, assured me (from Bedford or Manchester, Dubai or India) that all of that isn’t true. I find it is. I order a free replacement and am promised installation and recycling of the old one, but I am canny so I call often to find out wotwot. Twice, my order was not acknowledged even thought I had confirmation delivery emails both times. Third time I asked deeper questions and discovered astonishment. I could hear in their helpful voices they had never encountered island shenanigans before. Quite an excitement for them I thought. I was not angry, nor challenging. All voices came from the throats of genuine warm people who just wanted to help.

Today, I hope, and after some time, I believe my replacement machine is on its way, due for delivery tomorrow. Ah, I thought, I doubt that, so I called and spoke to yet another delightful and puzzled person. She clocked (finally) that island delivery will never be straight from the original courier. So, my machine will not arrive tomorrow. I laughed with her, said I know this place and did she know the name of the courier? She did. Two in fact. I had never heard of either but she said one was Glasgow, one Inverness. I laughed out loud. Days away, I said. Oh, she said, really? hell yeah lady. She gave the number of one and that’s my work tomorrow. It, my machine, will be taken to another courier in Oban (I know them all) and then eventually, come to me. T’wont be here before I leave for Africa but I have neighbours with machines. All is well in this island world and in this exhausting process of calls and holds and so on and so fourth and fifth and sixth, and even though I absolutely know I won’t get installation nor recycling, I have met some lovely warm helpful people.

And, for that I am very thankful. You can have such fun on the phone if you decide to get to know, a little, the warm human on the other end of the line just doing their job.

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Island Blog – Catch the Magic

This day, not an almost day, I walked the runbone of this place, at times ferocious and wild, at times soft-mothering and with arms wide in welcome. Scrunch leaves fell, some held on, many upped their noses at any thought of this falling thing. Not yet, they whispered, not yet, not me. And I smile at their defiance because it echoes my own. The sun shines warm and the cold wind has gone elsewhere and that makes me wonder about all the troubles Elsewhere has to deal with, for it seems that a load of things go there whilst we turn away from them in happy dismissal, back to the life that was just fine before. Maybe there are people living in Elsewhere? Ok, I won’t develop that just now.

To be honest, the flat sky was blanket thick for most of the morning, but warm, and warm is something we could not depend on for a whole summer. I watched a spider swing from one tree to another, the web shining bright in a catch of sun. I saw an otter fish in the sea-loch, oblivious of my presence, silent I was and upwind. I noticed the brave new flowers pushing through crunch-space, the track (doomed) a drystone wall, the gravel on my drive. I said hallo to them all. I never underestimate the need for acknowledgment, not in the human world, the animal kingdom (why isn’t it a human kingdom? Human arrogance?)not in the plant world. Everyone, all ones, have a voice that longs to be heard. Another digression.

Later I get to see my son when his boat docks in the town. I find myself zipping through like a teen in my sassy mini, thrilled even to share a cup of tea with him on deck before his guests return. I see his wonderful children, those lives I have watched from birth and now see at secondary school. I have to reach on tippytoe for a hug. Where did time go? Although hours drag, years are fleet as foxes. Bizarre.

Home and the sun is still warm. I sit on my bench in the sunshine with a glass of red. A spider works the beautifully crafted rail that once enabled my husband access to the garden. As it spins and shifts, a rainbow, a tiny rainbow is reflected in each silk of the web. I hunker down, lift up as light shifts and splits and I catch the magic on this day.

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Island Blog – This Journey

I will agree that these lockdowns have given us time to reflect. It has also given us fear and a stuttering of easy movement. Any journey holds both. Even going to the local shop on a little island. Imaginary demons lurk on every door handle and in every breathy encounter. Even from behind a mask we are cautious of guffaws so we try not to be funny, even if being funny is our absolute thing. For those of us who love to cheer others no matter what, our vocal chords are compromised if not fettered, our lungs on hold. We turn our faces away from other faces we know so well, pushing out a gentle Good Morning with as little puff as we can, for we must not forget the responsibility we carry. Touching anything is risky. Touching each other, forbidden, even if touching is our absolute thing. It is stultifying at times and we must not give in to imaginary fears. We must keep journeying for we cannot hold back the days any more than we can hold back the virus. Both are invisible.

Other invisible things also keep coming, rolling beneath our feet like thunder. These things can confound. Not now, we say, Not Now! But they do come anyway, bringing birds into bellies, all a-flutter and a-twist. Some of us must go to another place, a hospital, perhaps, for a check up or an essential operation. We must ride the road, traverse the water, open doors, breathe in air that may or may not be healthy and fresh. I think of these folk, compromised, fearful. I hope they have good family support. I wish them the very best outcome and enough courage to push away the fear. These journeys, in ordinary times, were bad enough. Now it must feel like a walk into Dante’s Inferno. I know of some who are back home now and healing well, who have journeyed through the Inferno and are cool again and safe. This is how it can be and this is what to focus on, never mind the flutter and twist of belly birds. It is natural to be afraid at such times. We feel thus as we face the unknown.

My way is to look at the other side of things, the flip side, the arrival and not the departure. When a journey is inevitable, no matter how badly we might wish it away, there is a choice. Look at the fear and feed it, or don’t. Instead look at the smile on your face when it is all behind you, when this journey that looms is already a fading memory. Look at what you can learn as the journey flows beneath you. Notice and reflect and store these observations away for a future think. Precious are these observations, the shared chuckles, the muffle of masked conversation. Look out and up at Nature as she flies by the car window. See how the clouds part and conjoin, how the sun takes a quick peek at you, enough to dazzle. See how quiet are the roads, how the rain spits up from the car ahead, how crimson are the tail lights. Listen to the music coming from the speaker. In other words create a distraction, create many of them. What you allow into your mind is what your mind will develop. It is such a powerful lesson to learn. No matter the journey, no matter the timing, we have a chance to learn something we never imagined was there at all.

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Island Blog – Alone with Poppy

Me and Poppy watch the sky, she, in Popz’s marvellous chair that electrically lifts a human to standing point, and I in mine, that doesn’t. Mine is an ancient Orkney chair, all oak seat and rush backed, sturdy as a woman in a storm. I am fond of this chair. it wisnae mine, not really. My mother-in-law sat in it, her rightful place, although it dwarfed her, the wee round midget that she was with enough authority to clear a car park of hoodlums in seconds. I am not she, but I did learn from her and, from her, inherited my current seating.

Like her, I am now alone in this 1830 stone built home. Like her, although she never said, I feel the expanse of walls around me. I see the fields of carpet, the stretch of old floorboards. Like her I hear the hum of ancient plumbing in the night, random, unexpected, like burps. Like her, I study my old gnarled fingers and feel the tweaks as I try to sew and, like her, I say damn you old age! I will not give in easily.

We watch, me and Poppy, the cormorants on the rocks, their curved necks so telling. They preen and prink, black silhouettes from where we stand. Further along the track we find long tailed tits. I hear them and stop. When I stop, Poppy does too, alert. But she looks ahead, along the track whereas my eyes scan the trees. They are here, somewhere. And then I find them, picking off the new shoots from the birch and hazel. Of course they are. No tit could tackle a hazel nut. It would have to be this, the young shoots, the ones that bravely come out even knowing the next frost will kill them dead. The birds are on such an error of choice. They flit, dance, and are gone.

Last night we heard the darkling migration of swans. It woke us both, Poppy barking, me shushing her. Although we could not see a thing, we both moved to the window. She jumped up on the sill and my eyes scanned the black dark, knowing it was a fruitless attempt. We stopped. We looked. We heard them pass. Who knows how many but it took some minutes.

Well, I said, shall I make tea? Her huge eyes watched my face. Neither of us was going to settle immediately. In silence we descended the stairs. I know I am alone, but I am not lonely. I also know that this dog, this Poppy, is a helpmeet even if she has no clue what I am looking at, nor why. She just responds because she is tuned to me as I am to her. And, for all the time I have her, I am thankful.

Being lonely and being alone are not the same thing. I have been more lonely in a crowd, in a gathering, in a family, in my marriage than I ever am now. And, yet, it is new ground. This is it. This is for real.

I am glad I have Poppy.

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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 – A Chance to Bloom

As I walked yesterday along an empty track, empty of people, I mean, life is springing into beauty. Nesting tits dart in and out of the gaps in the drystone walls, primroses leap like sunlight from beneath the old pines, bumble bees scurry into their mossy burrows and the sparkles on the sealoch popple diamonds, as if a thousand fireflies fly low across the surface. The air is crisp and blue and, above the sky, we are healing. Who would have thought it, thought this? That, just by not driving everywhere, flying, catching a train or a bus, we could, in one week of lockdown see a noticeable repair job going on the in ozone layer. How utterly remarkable and what a surprise. We can mend our world, if we take serious note and if we all decide we will not go back to how we were.

Going back to normal is something I have never got my head around. It is actually impossible to go back to anything at all, never mind ‘normal’. Although things may well resume in a way similar to that which we once knew as normal, we ourselves have changed. The process we have encountered, gone through and learned from has made new neural pathways inside our brains. These pathways are opportunities for change and new growth, for a new bloom to flash revealing light in our eyes. Understandably, those who need us to ‘go back to normal’ will be pushing for our business once this is over and done, but we are not sheep. We are big brained humans with a collective and deep need to protect our world.

The wildlife abounds, the waters are cleaner, effluent free and offering safe habitat for all species. Including us. Although I am one of the most fortunate women on earth, to have this wild place to wander through daily, I still know we all really want things not to go back to normal. Not to go back at all. How we turn this desire into action is way beyond my thinking. I found it hard enough to do that with five kids pulling on my apron strings, never mind a whole flipping world of apron string pullers. But I do know that it takes one, then two, then a street, then a village, then a town, a city, a country to make an impact on the whole. There is always a point in making personal change and it never fails to affect someone else. They say that if you want to receive love you first need to give it. And, much as it has irritated me in the past, I believe it to be the truth.

We have been gifted a reprieve, new steps to dance, a chance to bloom.

Shall we?

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Island Blog – Moss and Otherness.

Underneath a humungous fallen pine, some years down, is a dazzling carpet of moss. There is Fingerley moss fronding through the cracked bark, delicate falls of emerald stems, each lifting softly in response to the heckling rain. It isn’t heavy, not soaking me or the little dog, just pinging wet drops at us all for the fun of it. The puddley dyke is drying up so anything damp is going to help revive the frogspawn I noticed a few days ago, although it’s too little too late, methinks. Old leaves mulch down, retreating back into the earth as food for the next thrust of life. It’s coming, at last.

Star moss grows down in the peaty bit, stunning bunches of delicate stalks with a star on top, facing up. Big rocks, upon which this giant landed, are coated in Afro moss, so tightly affixed they could fool you into seeing a soft landing. To throw myself onto one would end me up with broken ribs and embarrassment rising, so I don’t. Then there’s Moss moss that covers anything it fancies covering. They all look fabulous and green and very much alive. The otherness beneath the lonesome pine, which, in its dying grabbed a larch tree on the way, poor love, and has pinned her to the ground ever since, includes little yellow things that tell me they are dandelions but are obviously lying, Monbretia which doesn’t bloom till after lockdown and other coloured things I don’t have names for. None of them seem to mind that at all.

The sky is milk with a whisper through of grey. It is also shut if you don’t count the spits of rain. Sometimes if I look hard enough at a shut sky, I can find a smile of light, enough to believe in, but not today. Today it is just a flat white. Walking under the sky always marvels me. It stays up and I stay down. Such a synergistic friendship, and long may it remain that way or we’ll have Chicken Licken getting into another flapdoodle. A raven floats overhead, that sharp-eyed carnivore with a taste for lambs, parping like the horn on Noddy’s car. His mate follows. There is something both regal and scary about ravens. All that black and so much of it and so intelligent. Way back in the days of Tapselteerie we tried to get rid of a pair of ravens. It probably wasn’t legal but they took too many little woolly jumpers at lambing time. They nested on a cliff face which made it extremely difficult to get anywhere near them and they would have known our intention from the very moment we donned our balaclavas. Needless to say, we didn’t succeed and I imagine they live still as they have no predators save man.

Across the sea-loch I see a holiday cottage. Empty, of course, as they all are now. Elevated standards count for nothing in these times. You could have Moss moss on the inside of your windows as we always did or an immaculate palace of a moss-less place and still nobody would come. It’s all rather levelling. This virus is catalytic and no mistake. I look ahead a month or two, seeing the same road winding on into the distance, every walker keeping 2 metres away from any encounter, touching nothing, holding breath. Then I look around my home at the books, the things, the bibelots that gather dust now that my lovely cleaners are holed up in their own burrow. The news is just numbers where it once managed a few words in between the latest statistical revelation. Drink is bad, drink is good, children are important until they drive you bonkers whence that importance retreats into the latest Pixar movie with enough popcorn to rot the collective teeth of a whole country within 45 minutes. Meditation is calming unless you get they giggles as I do and exercise is an excellent plan as long as you do it alone and in the wilderness or at midnight.

And we knit on, we tough, inventive humanoids, or sew, or paint, cook and sort out drawers and cupboards, and we dust the bibelots. We are learning to move more slowly through each project, taking time, perhaps as a first, to consider the minutiae, maybe even to read the rules. And this will do us no harm at all. Watching moss, any moss, takes considerable self control. My legs are all a-jiggle. Stand still, I tell them and they huff. But it is good re-training. It is good to sit and read, even in the mornings, to call a friend, to FaceTime, to start a jigsaw (that’s as far as I ever got with a jigsaw), tend the garden, watch the moss.

Mother Nature has called a halt. She wants her finery back, her intelligent order and we, who have turned her world into a veritable tatterdemalion must listen and we must learn.