I remember being told that my book, Island Wife, would resonate with older women. I sat there, across a table with my publisher and my agent thinking, older? Yes, I was 59, but sassy. I was still in complete charge of my accoutrements, faculties and agendas. I could move like a dancer, arriving in some sort of wild costume and just off the Oban train, complete with a jaunty herringbone cap. Older for me was my mum heading for 80 and, although still feisty, a bit cautious over rocks – still game, though. I get it now. I started early, in love at 18, married at 19, mother at 20. Nobody does that, not in the lasting game, as mine was. I suppose that I just could not relate to the ‘older women’ thing. The ones I had experienced were tired, downtrod, got their make-up wrong and spent a huge amount of time pretending they were ‘fine’ even though that word meant something so different to me. Fine was about spectacular art. Fine was the way a butcher cut a fillet just right. Fine was how someone arrived looking magical into a gathering; a spectacular arrangement of flowers; a perfect sorbet. Now it has become a dismissal, a middling beige nothing.

I do remember the train journey to almost home, the stunning landscape, the chacha of the train along winding tracks, around lochs, through endless scapes of empty deliciousness, past the Hogwarts Express bridge, the winding of endless drover tracks, the moody mountains, the clouding, the spritzer of light. My thoughts carolled me to the ferry port. ‘Older’? I got that even as it thinks me. I realise I was being a mayfly on the surface of real life, aka, the truth. I believe that as I walked onto the ferry for home that I sunk a bit, got it, and it freed me. Of course my story will resonate with others who have experienced such a life.

There is so much vanilla out there, so much beige. On the out-there forums, everything is ‘fine’. It isn’t. Where is truth? Where are the young writers going through rebellion? Facebook and more are all about memories and wonderful moments. I do love to see that but it is not the truth, not real. If I said anything in my story, it was raw truth, still is.

Be brave.