recognition

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Island ~Blog – Thank you

My second fourth day in the cafe. Consecutive. It matters. It smiles me, the wondering of the whether or the not of this four day working thing at my age. I did wonder a lot, until I decided Oh to hec with this wondering flippancy. Let’s go. And I’m two weeks in. It thinks me about spontaneity, about random, about Hell yes. If I remember, and I do, those in my past, who did just jump, who did decide not to fade into beige, who, despite confines and restrictions, emerged in colour. And she is me. Now, I don’t want to say that only women do this colour-up thing, this stand alone thing, but I am a woman and cannot speak for a man.

The cafe was quiet a bit and then loud a lot, visitors coming in, all smiles and askings, and we were there. The baking and the soups are fabulous, the cakes high rise and flipping endless. I know because I am wheeching cake tins and spatulas and bake tins and whisks and bowls and scrapers and wooden spoons out from the kitchen and into the washeroo, a lot. It thought me, and this is nothing to do with the cafe, more my own life. Recognition for work in my day was not expected from a man. It isn’t now.

But now it is given. Thank you

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Island Blog – A Precious Island Life

The mist is definitely on a mission to smudge. I saw it first around 4 am, woken as I often am when the circus of the skies, the cosmos, opens for business. I know there are conversations going on up there, ones we need to hear and to understand, but, sadly, I only talk human, child and dog. I feel it nonetheless, and there is a freedom in that itch, that discomfort, because it connects me to more than me, to more than the solo and the loneliness, to more than ridondulous concerns about which wheelie to put out.

Work today was busy, wild at times, and tiring, until I approached my own tiring nonsense and sharpened it into a soft lead pencil. I can write my own next sentence. I always can. It felt a bit limpy, nothing for a while and then a big invasion of lovely customers, so smiley, wanting soup, quiche, cake, hot chocolate, iced latte, extra bread, focaccia sandwiches, and yet, do you know what all of them really wanted? A welcome, a recognition, a pull to forward, an invitation and a hallo and we are so happy you came, thing. Chances are, not one of them will get that, but I do, and so do the owners of this welcome cafe. They, the visitors, are spinning through life, escapees from huge pressure jobs and lives and here they are under the mist mission with a chance of blue. It must take time to process. Actually I hate that word as I have never consciously, nor knowledgeably, processed a damn thing in my 70 years. And then, these big and possibly powerful folk are gone back to the whatever of possibly powerful lives, leaving us with the mystery of mist mission, the lift of sky birds, the wild of spatter rain, the thrum of maybe thunder, the friendship in the pub, the people long here, grown wild from the nonsense and fun and hard work and deprivation of a precious island life.

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Island Blog – Bubbles and a Rare Bird

Sorry, been a bit distracted these past few days, and, to be honest, I never imagine anyone wondering if this frickin eejit has finally sqwarked her last, fallen off her perch, not to be discovered for days, and then feel an element of concern. I always thought that everyone is absorbed in their own lives. My blogs, and me, might be a pleasant diversion, when bored on the bus or in a tea break. I kid you not. So, when I get a nudge or two, it bubbles me. I suddenly feel seen, important, that sort of thing. And that feeling is affirming, because who feels seen, let alone heard? Not many, I think. Until we are, seen, noticed, and heard, really seen, noticed and heard, we think it only happens in stories. T’is

A rare bird.

I have a strong woman friend, and she, recently, has chosen a new path in her life, in order to be in the right place for the right people, even as it cut her heart. She has had many cuts prior to this one, and they have healed, or she has determinedly healed them. She doesn’t look broken at all, tall, beautiful, standing fast, and yet she has to adapt, once again, to new surroundings, new challenges, a. new location. I watched her leave the familiar, her eyes brimming rainbows in the capture of sudden sunlight, her focus forward to the what the hec now. She’s

A rare bird.

As for me this past week, I found bubbles everywhere, rainbow globes, in conversation, in the clouds, in the sudden and random. And I am lifted, changed, energised and a bit wild (surely not me…!) by these bubbles. I’m going to buy a bottle from the local shop tomorrow, let them fly free, watch them catch the sky, float cloudward and then disappear like rare birds, gone for ever.

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Island Blog – Fair Warning

Yesterday was dire, the whole way through to evening, when everything lifted. Sometimes I wake beneath a cloud, heavy like a cloak or a shroud that pushes me floorwards, or tries to. However, being a woman of Lift and Light by nature, I tolerate this not, even if it is a big struggle to reach my full height. I have flexible knees, strong limbs and eyes that look out, although it feels almost impossible to keep those eyes from flipping inwards. When they succeed they peer into all my private corners like snoopers in the attic, opening this old box and that in search of treasure. In other words, Reasons To Prove I’m Not Good Enough, Not Coping. Believe me, there are billions up there, in those old boxes. I know this because I lugged them up there myself. I don’t need you anymore, thanks very much for nothing. That’s what I said. I should have burned them, I know it now, but I always thought, and still do, that the old beratements have a purpose and need acknowledgement and recognition. On most days I can do this. And then yesterday comes at me full face and loaded with power.

This, apparently, is grief. It makes me furious. Why on earth am I gifted days, weeks, even, of feeling the healing, only to be cloud dumped and snooped on and to know that I have just landed on a snake and slidded back to square one? How completely cruel is that! Not only do I plod like an old cow through the minutes, which is so unlike me with my quickquick scurryings, but this cloud fills my mind too and it doesn’t have a single positive thing to say about me. A double attack. It is, was, tempting to believe the lies in my yesterday state, the criticisms and judgements in old voices and to lose sight completely of tomorrow, of hope, a future, freedom and the Springtime. I felt like Miss Haversham, even finding the cobwebs and dust and fluff to complete the scene. You should hoover, dust, clean, sneered the attic snoopers. I ignored them.

Now it is today and you would be forgiven in thinking there is a new woman in this dusty, fluffy, needing cleaned house. I had to check in the mirror myself. What changed? I have one idea. In the soggy black of yesterday I was invited to supper with my bubble family. I didn’t want to go. Wasn’t hungry. Wanted to melt into the evening with my cloud wrap and my snoopers, all chuckle and blame, the judgements and criticisms, fear, sadness, self-pity and Miss Haversham-ness. However I did go and as I walked in the door I was hit by light, music, granddaughters, the warm arms of son and daughter-in-law and the delicious smells of roast pork with all the trimmings. As I sipped the wine and crunched the crackling I looked back on the day. It was just a day, that’s all, part of the process. Perhaps the snoopers were also cold, lonely, longing for connection and interaction. Perhaps the cloud helped me allow myself to rest. Perhaps the silence, the no contact with the outside world was just what I needed. Perhaps.

I can accept that, from where I am now, inside my bouncy-happy new morning. However, I have one demand. The next time you decide to come, Heavy Cloud and Chuckling Snooping Judgemental Critics, please email me first. I want plenty of warning so that I can be out when you come.

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Island Blog – The Friend Ship

Sailing, as we all do, alone, and some of us more alone than we might like, I oftentimes find another sailing beside me at the most unexpected moments. Now, as a sailor’s wife I know this unexpectation to be impossible. In that vast expanse of flat ocean, even one in a grumpy or ferocious mood, I can always see someone coming, and from far off. However, in a grounded life, I don’t always see someone coming. I might be distracted, sweeping the floor, or suddenly in the wide mouthed conservatory, like a goldfish in a bowl. Someone might come walking by, someone who pauses to communicate affection and support from their friend ship. They move by in silence, the window glass between us, the Covid restrictions refusing a close encounter. Even as they pass me by, the feeling that they and I confabulate leaves me feeling like I just took something in something warming like porage or soup. More, it elevates my steps thereafter. I feel seen, acknowledged, noticed, of value. This friend in his or her ship may well move faster than I through the ocean, but it matters not, for this encounter has told me I can keep going, regardless of my slow pace. I may have a smaller ship, less crew, less rations, less focus on the whereabouts of my destination. They seemed to be certain of theirs, after all, or it appeared so. But they paused in their trajectory, just for me.

I notice that before this time, this time of isolation and the lack of our ships meeting as we did so gaily and with no thought of it ever being stolen from us, I took it all for granted. I might even have waved it away. Another day for this for I am busy with my own piddling thingamajigs and have no time for this friend or that. Let them WhatsApp me first, or call at the very least to ascertain my availability. Funny how all that has dissipated now in this lockdown fog. Funny, again, how much I have learned to value any contact. I may not instantly respond, but that ship that just passed me by with a friendly wave will not be as it might have seemed to them. I did not disallow, not did it mean nothing much to me. It meant very much.

It thinks me. Do I honour those friend ships that bother to slow and to communicate? I caught them as fish in my net in the abundance of my past life, whence I might think that life would always supply me with a big haul. I could afford to throw some back as unwanted bycatch because I never considered that I would ever be standing alone on a ship, the helmswoman, crew-less and traversing an ocean that seems to go on for ever. It also learns me. I may be alone on my slow ship in the midst of storms and slack-water, in the doldrums or riding on skyscraper waves but I am not alone. There are other ships out here, even if I cannot see them. Ships will gravitate towards each other in the ‘way out there’ of sailing. I know this. I have encountered this. Even if we are all sailing alone, we care for each other in the wild spaces, in the ride and crash of darkling skyscraper waves and it teaches me.

My analogy comes to ground, and still as a teacher. My loyal friends who still walk by, who still text, email and message, who still call, despite my carelessness, who communicate in silence through the window, I salute you all. I value your persistence and loyalty, the ocean depth of your always finding me no matter what I do or say or what I don’t do and don’t say as I hold this wheel and fight the ocean traverse.

Thank you for being my friend.