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Island Blog – Go Mahousive

Ok, a new word, yes, but my family are right there on inventiveness. We always were. I do remember the odd altercational exchange with t.t.t.tteachers who stood resolute against any such inventive nonsense, stuck as they stood, like plastic, and holding out the Oxford Dictionary, which, even then was definitely well beyond its shelf life. So we, in that crazy Tapselteerie kitchen did invent. We did. Stories, chances, lifts and lufts, beyonds and togethers, all made a right frickin mess among pots and pans and plans and dance dynamics, not enough bread, squashed strawberries, an important delivery that didn’t arrive. And I am proud of that, The fact that in the face of endless structural collapses, we made our guests believe that everything was mahousive. And it was. To be honest, should I notice an unavoidable slimjink, I would move into the guest mist, performing, always performing, my eyes alight, bright with a tomorrow promise and an absolutely firm delivery of an amazeball pudding, with cream and liqueur and more wood on the fire.

It worked. It does now, I watch the do it now thing in the Best Cafe Ever. What might be a lack turns into an opportunity. In order to make everyone welcome, we, on the business side of the counter, behind the cakes, the swivel and twist, the real mahousive, the inner workings of a brilliant cafe are bright like the sun. Welcome, we say. How can I help? And there are so many incomings, I watch them. from behind my Washeroo. Hallo you, I think. Each customer is served alert and kindly, orders change, others in the group, the family, shift and change choosing this, no, that, no maybe two, no, one.

And on it goes. I did spend a while today standing and thinking. There are only two words in the Oxford Dictionary beginning with mah. One is mahogany, brown and well, brown. The second is mahout. Elephant friend, those who, back in the day, cared for those poor creatures who were forced to carry queens and other eejits with delusions of grandeur through streets, into wars, way way out of their natural and familial environments.

So I officially add Mahousive. It means bigger than anything. I’ve done this adding thing before, by the way. I wrote a piece for BBC Wildlife, a gazillion years ago, about a whale, so called stranded in a sea-loch, Isle of Lewis. It was a nonsense. The whale was fine. It was February, so damn cold even that word wasn’t enough. I, and Janine timed the breathing of the whale as it took on the loch and the captive fish, I watched the surface lift in response to the hailstones. The loch ‘poppled’ . It did. However that word did not exist, I challenged that. I find it now in the dictionary.

Go Mahousive.

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Island Blog – Proud I am

Back from work, a busy day in the best cafe ever, above white sands, above history, the place from where many families were cleared, uplifted, circa 1870’s, homes burned, and then wheeched across oceans , without a change of knickers and with no sanwiches, because, and get this, the landownders thought sheep would be more profitable (and less of a pain in the baxxy). than humans. Folk are drawn here. Yes, there are excellent coffees, soups, bakes, welcomes, but there is a ‘more than’ thing going on here. I can see it in their eyes. They have clocked something, but have no clue what it is. Bus tours arrive, all a-flutter, all unsure about whether to go for banana loaf or lemon polenta cake, or maybe a cheese scone with extra Mull cheese and Mull Seaweed Chutney, or soft sponge with strawberry jam or carrot cake with philly icing, or flapjacks, brownies, focaccia bread…… and there is so much more to invite you in and to make happy you as our guests.

When I move out from the hidey-hole, it is, it is my hidey-hole. I confess, I admit. It is where the non-stop washing up-ness goes on, and my safe place. However I hear voices. There’s a nudge in me. I clock two other servers, but I can tell I need to let go of my comfortable scrubber persona. We are a team, we are few but we are each important, and of value. My listening tells me that a whole tribe has arrived. I pull out from the hiding of this work, and I see a big few, a big queue. I hear ‘Can I help you?’ and a backdrop chatter from those not first in the queue. There is a lifting ahead, a wild scamper, a dynamic. The wee team rises into, not a clearing of humans, but, yes, a clearing of humans. Quick fire, one order, two, three, four, five. We have run out of hooks for the paper choices. No matter. We talk, murmur. This, needs this, that needs that, is there extra cheese, cream, jam? I watch us flow through the small space, moving like dancers, pulling back, moving forward, asking for help, two trays for table 8, is the quiche ready, is there more salad….all of that. Two soups with focaccia, two different soups; two quiches; one warmed cheese scone with extra cheese, two fruit scones with local jam and cream, one elderberry tea, two flat whites, one with oatmeal milk, one salted hot chocolate with marshmallows and cream, one with none of those. We work to make sure that they are served on loads of trays, everything hot, everything timed to work with the dynamic of their group. We fill the water bowl for their dogs. We ask about their little ones, engage with Granny, make sure we make sure that every guest feels like the One.

I am proud to work with the young and intuitive owners, and with the funny, beautiful, crazy, sometimes weary, girls with whom I work. I am granny to them. They lift me, remind me of the feisty woman I am, was, am.

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Island Blog – Adventurers

When an adventurer decides she, or he, is fed up of unadventuring, there’s a thing, a stop, a catch a fear, a big kick-ass scary one. Can I do this? Who am I to think I can? What if I fail. let down, feel stupid, fail, fail, fail? The ‘thing’ brings restless nights and all clothing feels too tight, too awkward in all places where shift and motion was, heretofore, simple. It is as if a new dynamic has infiltrated my boring, and bored self, a sort of dancer, a fluidity promised but without a manual for the new moves. I sort of rush in, awkward, over keen, in the wrong shoes, my body still on its way to here, the here which is now my absolute here. I want to be altogether with myself, to be completely present, even though I know that not just my body but my mind are still both on their way along that winding strip of single-track.

Well dammit!. I had a strong conversation with them on departing the mother ship. Ready? I asked. Steady? Shall we? It doesn’t seem to work that way and not just because this old adventurer is arriving in the right tee-shirt and on time. None of us here really know how we will work together. We have never been squished into a cannon of lunch blast, folk arriving hungry, asking for vegan, asking about allergies, about takeaways. Asking for 6 soups with sourdough, for quiche with bits, for two cheese scones with extra cheese, for fruit scones with jam and cream and for many more combinations. I watch the new owners work with kindness and can-do. I watch my co-workers welcome old and young, dogs and babies, serving with smiles and spectacular baking. I am proud to be one of the team. Very proud.

Back to the adventurer. She, me, has been very spiralled, very tired. This is not my point. Of course she is. She is old and has sat on her skinny butt for, what, almost four years since the only himself she will ever want, decided to die. I talked to his photo today. I do often. He believed in me. You can do anything, he said, and more than once, and I could and I did, I did, I did. Still am, mate.

Right now I have strawberry jam a-boiling for the Calgary Cafe – so worth a visit, and a mushroom risotto. I’m also prepping a Pasta Puttanesca. I love the story in that dish. All those women, the adventurers, who chose to work on the streets, had to, to feed the ones they loved, and then, in the rejection and cold of the night streets, the kindness and respect they found.

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Island Blog – Did You?

Love someone to the bitter end? I don’t mean death. There is an end in a relationship, one we really wan’t to ignore, wishing it away, and, yet not. We know our hearts. We know this. What we find wanting is courage, and, in my experience, it will lack, be wanting, unless just one bigger, more confident and older person, one we trust, has told us we have courage, and, more, that it is ours and that we can pull it up as a new employee. That was a long sentence, I know. However, according to my English language tutor, I am alowed this dance across the floor of regimental grammar, but only if there are well placed commas, hyphons, apostrophies, colons and semicolons and wotwot. Sounds like surgery.

So, did you? I did. When love breaks into shards of itself, at the time when we are placed in a home, placed in a role, sugged down in routine, money worries, debts, fears, routines, over many years, we may become a sludge of ourselves. We used to dance to Footloose, did we not, like yesterday? We grabbed chances, opportunities, we laughed loudly and wild. All this does not end in a Full Stop. No Way. Living life to the full is not only for the young, in fact, the young just do that living thing without many thinks, when the biggest chafe may be from parental jurisdiction. The next bit is supposed to set itself in place, which probably means this young person with Footloose dancing in their hearts has to ‘settle’. Hmmmm

I didn’t. I did try, honestly, but I am a wild card. It is not a comfortable persona. So, I loved him, until not. However, there was a strong historical build of companionship, and it worked. Much as I would have loved one of those big loves I see in my sisters, it wasn’t for me. And, there is a learning in that. My children (I can say that now without a reminder that they are ‘ours’, which, for me was a given) are strong, loving, kind, giving, astute, intelligent people. I have no idea how they burst from the turbulence of their parent’s breaks, but they did and I am so proud of them, just the surviving bit, never mind the rest.

So, are you at the bitter end? I’m saying nothing. You know your heart, Scary, yes, (another bloody comma) but this is the one life. Relationship, work, something. Could be neighbourhood (ridiculously long word btw) could be any connection that is fighting your heart. Courage. We don’t feel it, do we, nor know it for we don’t remember who taught it to us? In our childlife we watched compliance, obeisance, bowed shoulders, quiet voices, servitude. But we can change that, and not just for us, for our children and their children.

That’s a whole load of thinks. Happy Friday my friends.

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Island Blog – Through the Pond Weed

I am gradually growing used to city life, even as I absolutely do not wish to live in one. So many people, cars, bikes, streets, houses and windows. So much white noise, black noise too, sudden sounds of too many folk living cheek by jowl. A car bump, horns, ambulance alarms, a shouted caution or rebuke. Even the darkness falls with a clunk, although mornings slip quietly through curtains and under doors. I love mornings and today I took off for a walk around Blackford Pond, feeling the harsh resistance of pavements give way to a softer track, muddy around the stones. Benches flank the curve of the pond where I see ducks, moorhens and a family of swans with four healthy looking goslings, velvet grey, necks long, heads proud as they move with grace through the pond weed. Plaques name those long gone, etched in brass. ‘In memory of Jim and Mary, Robert and Matilda, who loved this place’. I remember this pond years ago, the banks less densely covered with spindly trees and ebullient water weeds, the body of water more visible. I exchange Good Mornings with dog walkers and joggers as we pass. each other by. The sky is white with sprachles of grey but no blue. Gulls cut through the white, a single hawk, pigeons. I miss abundant wildlife and must keep my eyes up to see any at all.

I am playing the waiting game, but it doesn’t feel like a game. Some day soon I will receive a letter with a date on it for an MRI scan and the process will nudge forward a few steps. For now, all I can do is to build strength, rest, play and keep my imagination under firm control. If I was at home doing this waiting thing, just me with my thoughts, I doubt I would manage such control. It is good to be here, with family distractions and in a completely different environment, despite the lack of wildlife, of space, and this constant movement of mass humanity. In quiet moments I watch people walk by under the window. Mothers or fathers with wee ones, old grannies, like me, with shopping bags, stout footwear and ice white hair. What is going on in your lives, I wonder, you tiny old woman, you, jogger with a dog, you young families with laughter or angst on your unlined faces? Are you well, happy, frustrated, sad, disappointed or thankful to be upright, well fed, free to walk, supported and loved? I wish you some of your dreams, because nobody gets to live all of them. Life has her own plans, after all. And it isn’t what happens to any of us that matters, but how we deal with it. Thus we make a deal. We say, okay, I didn’t want this, ask for this, even imagine this would happen to me, but it did anyway. How will I accept, with the spirit of fight, whilst concomitantly showing to myself and to the world, that I am bigger than my circumstances, way way bigger?

In my attitude of gratitude, that’s how, my acknowledgement of all that I have, all that love and support and friendship. Priceless gifts and completely free. I hold them close and, in doing so, the waiting loses density and gravitas and I am light as the swans on the surface, effortlessly moving with grace through the pond weed.

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Island Blog – Birthday Hallelujah

This day my wild son Ruari turns 40. Nobody, especially he himself, ever imagined he would make it thus far. He was bent on self-destruction from the get-go. Risks were normal for him. Frying bacon at the big hot Aga at 4 am, stark naked, aged 2, and balanced precariously on a chair I had no idea he could even shift, never mind climb on to. He was making us a surprise breakfast. He would think nothing of setting fire to anything that took his fancy, or climbing onto the highest roof and, once, shinning up a lamppost in the centre of Edinburgh after a boozy dinner, all the way to the top, like a monkey. My eyes rarely stopped rolling around him and my heart was always in a state of turmoil, because whatever came next never entered the heads of anyone else. It was too dangerous, after all, but not for him.

Now look at him! Shortlisted for Entrepreneur of the Year Uk, married to a beautiful, feisty and very tall Viking and with two lovely wee daughters; launching a global business that innovates and supports any who choose to leave alcohol behind and thus to become fitter, happier, healthier. Check out OneYearNoBeer to see for yourselves. I am so very proud of him and not just because of what he has achieved, but of how he has turned his whole life around; how, through walking his own talk, he has generated a huge following of all ages who were lost once, and are no more. There is no greater leadership. Experiential wisdom cannot be bought, nor learned like a script. We do not follow a talker. We follow one who is leading by example.

I wish him another 40 years. Who can say where his lunatic road will lead? I am happy to say he is considerably less reckless these days although I know that light in his eyes, the one that twinkles like the North Star, the one that tells me he is still the wild child and always will be. Delivering a child so unique and impossible, so fast and so enterprising may sound like the most wonderful thing, but it had its consequences. I was never not worried about what he was up to, or planning to be up to, and he was baby number 4. But, despite all the eruptions and chaos he brought to bear, that fabulous face, that gloriously cheeky grin could, and still does, melt my mother heart. I could see, as could his dad, the extraordinary talents he was born with and we both wrung our hands as we agonised about the chances he had of living to this age. We knew that, given the right protection and the right guides, this child would rise to stardom, hopefully feeling happy and proud of who he is. We just had to wait and see, like all parents of a genius.

I honour him. I also honour the beautiful, feisty, very tall Viking, for without her, he may well have spiralled off into the stratosphere. She through love and support has helped him to grow into himself. I don’t know if he likes himself now. I don’t know many of us who do like ourselves. But I can feel a peace around him these days, a confidence born from his own self belief, one no longer rooting from the naysayers, the bullies, the neglectful teachers, the cruel bosses. He is becoming his best self.

I know his dad would have been so happy for this day. He would have growled out a happy birthday song and he would have told this crazy boy how very proud he is of him. As am I.

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Island Blog 115 Primary Three

 

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Thirty Three years ago this morning, a child was born.  A boy.  The Third Boy – 3 being the first prime number, the lucky prime, the only prime triangular, the triad, the noblest of all digits, and the only one of five to be born on the island; the only one to spend his first night on this earth in matron’s bottom drawer.

Let me paint the picture……….It was a wild and stormy night (which it was) and I was determined to miss the last ferry.  I knew a-plenty about birthing by then, had already had 3 labours (one being the Only Girl) and did not want to be inside a hospital.  The first two had been home births and the process is straightforward enough anyway – I mean, there’s only one direction to go down, and all I have to do is swear a lot, push when told to and trust in the doctor and nurse, both of whom I knew well.  So, in the middle of this gale, and in the darkness and in the crankitty old landrover with its binder twine door hinges and sheep food in the back, we rattled to the old folks home and Mrs MacFlorrie’s bed.  Not that she was sharing with me, you understand, but was, instead, shunted down the corridor to bunk up, temporarily, with another ‘old folk’.  That is how it was in the olden days, for we had no island hospital back then.

He was small and stayed that way for a while.  They suggested a growth hormone, but we said..

‘Leave him be. When you have this many children, it’s handy to have one you can just pop in your pocket.  Whilst other boys are growing and talking about how big they are, Rhua squeezes through the gaps.  he is as wiry and as fast as Spiderman, and just as fond of heights.  Look at me! he shouts, aged two and half, from half-way up a cliff face, or from the top of the massive old oak tree, and we all do look, just to keep him quiet, and we keep looking, although I must have looked away at least once, as there is another baby on the way.’  (Island Wife Chap 17)

When he came home to Tapselteerie, he spent any sleep times, never longer than 20 minutes, day or night, in the tea towel drawer, whilst I worked in the kitchen.  Because the house was so huge, I could never have left him upstairs, just below cloud level, for goodness knows what he might have got up to.  He was the one who tipped all liquids and powders from all bedrooms into the loo and mixed up a cauldron of seething bubbles and curious smells.  He is the one who left home aged six in the dark of a wild night, with only his toys as luggage.  He is the ‘chef’ who signed up for trial of a deep fat fryer, one that arrived in the back of a big lorry.  The delivery man did not believe me when I tried to send him away, saying it was a mistake.  He would not countenance that he had driven all the way from the depot in Glasgow to this isolated place, with moon rocks and pitfalls and nothing but sheep and heather for days.  I had to show him the 6 year old chef, before he would even consider returning to base camp.

It was this third boy who rose from his short sleeps with a head full of ideas, and a deep sense of purpose.  I found him once frying bacon on the aga, start naked, aged 2.  For our breakfast, he said.  He had already laid the table, with brandy, bread, salad cream and red sauce, tonic water and chocolate. It was hard to be cross.  How he managed to lift the heavy aga lid, without nipping his manhood in the bud, still amazes me.

I took to sleeping outside his bedroom door, lying across the narrow landing on the servants floor (no servants to be seen) in order to save us all from this boy’s nocturnal ideas and sense of purpose.

When he finally grew into a young man, he hit the world with a force it might not have been ready for.  Wherever he went, wherever he worked, he was enthusiastically bonkers, and very successful.  And now, as a father and husband, and broker in the flatlands, he still is, but it is not the outward success that matters, but the man he has become.  A man I respect, admire and adore.  One who makes me laugh, whose heart is huge and strong, who can blag and wind up, who can reach too far, fall down, and get up again in a nanosecond.  Although he is born of me, he is himself as are all my kids, and each one of them delights and surprises me.

I remember the illnesses, and the times of trouble.  I remember the nights of worry, the fears and hopes, the dreams dying, the prayers a-plenty, but when I look at them, at any of them, I am so very proud.  All we ever wanted for our children, was that they find their own way into a fulfilled life.  I know this is not a thing that comes gift-wrapped – indeed no,t for it is a process, and a long one, but to see young people on what appears to be the right track, is indeed a blessing for any mother, or father.  We couldn’t give them life on a plate, or expensive tuition or finishing school in Switzerland, but we gave them Tapselteerie and we gave them adventures and memories.

‘From the mound of dogs and kit, they(the children) marvel at everything, and, in their marvelling, I can taste the freshness of seeing things for the first time, the elation and sparkle in that seeing, like having lemonade in your veins and butterflies in your head.  There are no seat belts in the back of the Landrover, and no law to put them there, so the children bounce and whoop and flip like monkeys, free as air, as the car rocks like a boat in a storm.
Suddenly, my head is bursting.  Enough!  I roar, causing everyone to freeze mid-flip, and Alex to swerve.  He is not pleased.
Why are you shouting? he asks with a frown across his face, deep as the Limpopo River.
I don’t bother to respond, enjoying the sudden silence.  Instead, I turn to fluff up a very flat collie and to settle my sons the right way up.
What are you going to spend your money on?  I beam at them.
Jake is buying a Lego set, one of those big ones with enough pieces to block the vacuum every week.
Rhua wants an Action man.  Well, that figures.
And Solly?  Well, Solly wants a gun and chorus.
A gun and chorus?
Yeah! Gun and chorus, like Duncan’s at crayboop.
He is getting upset, as he always does when we have no idea what language he speaks.
Okay, okay Sol, that’s grand.  We’ll find one.
Cassie, seeing my predicament, pulls her finger from her mouth.
It’s a dinosaur with flashing eyes.  Duncan’s got one and he brought it to playgroups.  It’s called a Gunnacaurus.
She says all this in a monotone, staring straight ahead, like a code breaker in a spy movie.  I wonder what we would all do without her translation skills.
I bend my head down to hers.  Where do we get one?  I ask.
She looks at me in puzzlement.  A dinosaur shop, she says.
Of course!  Silly me.    (Island Wife Chap 21)

So, to the First Odd Prime Number I say…….Happy Birthday!