sea

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Island Blog – Fog Horn, Wren Song and Ellie

Something woke me at 5. It was just light. I could see this ‘just light’ sneaking around my blackout curtains, the wrong light, the too early light. Just before I swore I heard the sound again, a low growly sound, long and breathy. A foghorn, a warning to mariners, although I doubt any of them needed such a warning. The landscape was erased and at sea that is very upsetticating indeed. I remembered, as I wheeched back the blackouts and as my eyes landed on absolutely nothing at all beyond the fallen over daisy-like blooms in my immediate garden, those times when fog had descended on a lone yacht on its way from somewhere to somewhere else. Very scary. The sea is still bulky and yawling beneath the boat, the rocks are still there, hopefully not ‘very’ there, the sky, if we could have seen it, is still there, but the way ahead is a complete blank. Even radar and the other whatnots that tell you where you are have drunk too much, or so it seems as their dials shimmy about between all quarts of the compass. Due north has gone on holiday. I just went below and cooked something at such times in order to halt my thinks. Thinks out there in the middle of an ocean you were watching like a hawk yesterday, one you could track, every wink and every malevolent plan at its inception noticed and addressed, and which now has laughed itself into invisibility, will create a negative spiral in the mind of the most experienced of mariners.

I haven’t heard the foghorn up here for a long time, although I did hear it often down south where the sea was crabbit and contained and it must be tough being a sea when you want to be an ocean, so I get it, the crabbit thing. But here the Atlantic has free flow for thousands of sea miles or kilometres and holds in her grasp depths nobody has every plummeted. Nonetheless, she fogged us up this morning, creating a strange white-light, the clouds following her lead and lazily hanging about all day like bored students. There was no windy mother/father/tutor to tell them to move on.

Back to 5 am and the waking thing. I came downstairs. I always know when sleep has left me and there’s no hanging on for more, made coffee, sat watching the fog. As the morning began to yawn and lift, I heard wren song, so bright, so clear, so pure that it halted me. It sounded so close and so confusing. The blackbird is the first bird, isn’t it? Why is a wren awake this early? The song was so near. I knew all my windows were open for the heat, but still……

She sang again. I turned, slowly. She was perched on a chair behind me. I went rigid. She paused, bobbed, looked right into my eyes. I smiled. Ok, I almost whispered. (Can you deafen a wren?) I rose as if I was in slomo, moved to close the 3 doors into the house and turned back to open the two garden doors, stood back, watched the battering flapping against windows, waited. With a frrrup of wings, she found her way out. She must have been inside all night, so quiet as I drank (there’s no such word btw) my coffee at 0500. All day in my work, in the crazy of visitors, lunches, clearing, providing, protecting each other, I remembered the wren and the fog whilst I thought of one young brave beautiful wren heading into what seems like fog, for now.

It will clear brave wee wren. You have wings, remember? And no fog will ever stop you.

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Island Blog – So Worth It

I’m watching the tidal flow. Full moon tonight, the Buck moon, Feather moon, Berry moon and a load more, depending on where anyone is and what a full moon means, or has meant, for generations, for cultures, for people around the world. Here, the Buck moon tells of the young bucks, the hopeful stags, whose antlers are just growing now like a Big Thing in the way of their traverse. Imagine it. There you are, bouncing disorderly through woods and around trees and suddenly, you snag. Must be a twist in your sobriety, don’t you think? An encumbrance has encumbranced you, one you were never warned off, much like a period to an 11 year old girl, only different but no less embarrassing. It seems a tad bothering, however, that bucks soon get the hang of their antlers, whilst girls spend a frickin forever being embarrassed about their emergence into adulthood. Just saying.

The tide. It moves so slow, the tide, taking its time as it careens through the Narrows, initially in a wild and ebullient whoosh, then silent, to slide and saunce like a slattern as it arrives little by little, inch by inch, a burglar, a power with a knowing. Once it, no, she, has filled the basin, she keeps on, at full moons, rising higher than she ought, than she has before, just because she can. I know women like her.

I like the naming of moons, each one born of history, noting the seasonal changes, the life changes which ensue for those whose work on the land, on the sea and in the air, need to know and to really know which damn moon is which and what that moon presages. Once, it was survival. It still may be. Although here, watching the bigly intake of the Long Sea, there is no bother. But what a big moon means to me can be floods for others.

I walked today with a young friend, she concomitant with all things earth and sea, and we talked of such things. I don’t think we discussed the moon, nor the tide, but there is a knowing up here in the wild isles, that we just know. Beyond weather and whimsy, away from street closures and businesses closing down, a timbrel shake apart from the dire and the district, the closures and the chaotic, we can watch the tidal flow. No sound at all beyond the baa of a lamb, the slink of a moontide, the siskins, blackbirds, finches, sparrows, wood doves.

I am truly fortunate. A chance move 46 years ago, on a whim, a risk, a huge risk. T’was so worth it.

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Island Blog – Rings

Today I called a nurse, took my kitchen compost up to the bin, felt the wind slap dunk me, the smell of other climes, other stories, blustery like Winnie the Pooh. He was pretty cool about winds, bees and troubles and he is my guide when I feel worried about pretty much anything. Calling the nurse was just about the jojo of jags for old people, covid, pneumonia (tough spell) and shingles. I said No to shingles. She said you’ve already had it twice, which makes you more susceptible. I had thought my trusty immune system had this. No Shingles Allowed. Not so. Anyway, I now have, it seems, to check with the cancer team about everything. Those jags, a simple visit to the dentist for a teeth clean. It rings me around.

Rings. I Love rings, oh I so love rings. Rings are the firsts in my looking as I press towards a jeweller’s window, the dynamics of a ring, the gold, the silver, the copper, the rose gold, the jewels, the dynamic twist and swirl of the modern artist. It all halts my breath and my feet. I think of the meaning, the intent, the power of all that ringing around. Then I remember control and I walk on. However, I have bought rings for myself, rings I try on, now and again, but rarely hold for more than a day. What is this ring thing? Capture? yes. Oh…..maybe I rest there.

This day, the ring thinks were loud in my mind. There is no reason for it. It just came. I laughed as I recalled a day on the island ferry, en traverse to the mainland, and himself angered me beyond my reaches. I was aloud and not allowed. I was at the end of my reasonable thinking. I was done. On the upper deck of the ferry, I turned like a wild animal, and took off my wedding ring, dramatically, and threw it into the sea. It was like taking off a whalebone corset, or, in my experience, removing a liberty bodice. Ghastly things, trust me, and inaptly named for sure.

Today I was moved to check my jewellery box. I kept one ring from my mother-in-law, an eternity ring, gold band, thin as wire, with, I think, battered dark sapphires as a surround. It made me look for my own, gold with five dark sapphires for five beautiful children, and I tried both on. My own will not fit me on my wedding finger, but my mother-in-law’s slim band fits nicely. It’s loose and easy. Maybe I can wear it, bear it. Nothing on that wedding finger has ever felt easy before. Rings contain, control, or they did it my life, even as I love them. I still love them, even though I cannot wear them for long due to my perception of ring control, as if it was a restraint, which it never was. My fingers have memories, it seems and one finger in particular. As I turn the ring around, I wonder what it meant to the old girl, and I make smile. It is a lovely thing, that ring, as is my own, which goes back in the box, too small, too tight.

Thoughts of my surgery rings me around, although I distract well and keep occupied. How can it not? I have a date now, not far off and welcome indeed, because this perceived restraint, the whale-bone corset of it, the ring control, is not for eternity. The surgeon is confident, thus am I. A short period of discomfort is just a short period of discomfort, and thereafter I will celebrate my freedom every single day, in this wild place. On the return ferry voyage, as we pass the lighthouse and carve our seaway home, I will stand on the deck (not burning) and throw the ring of cancer overboard. Not in fury, as I had when sending my own wedding band down to Davy Jones, but in joy and gratitude.Today I called a nurse, took my kitchen compost up to the bin, felt the wind slap dunk me, the smell of other climes, other stories, blustery like Winnie the Pooh. He was pretty cool about winds, bees and troubles and he is my guide when I feel worried about pretty much anything. Calling the nurse was just about the jojo of jags for old people, covid, pneumonia (tough spell) and shingles. I said No to shingles. She said you’ve already had it twice, which makes you more susceptible. I had thought my trusty immune system had this. No Shingles Allowed. Not so. Anyway, I now have, it seems, to check with the cancer team about everything. Those jags, a simple visit to the dentist for a teeth clean. It rings me around.

Rings. I Love rings, oh I so love rings. Rings are the firsts in my looking as I press towards a jeweller’s window, the dynamics of a ring, the gold, the silver, the copper, the rose gold, the jewels, the dynamic twist and swirl of the modern artist. It all halts my breath and my feet. I think of the meaning, the intent, the power of all that ringing around. Then I remember control and I walk on. However, I have bought rings for myself, rings I try on, now and again, but rarely hold for more than a day. What is this ring thing? Capture? yes. Oh…..maybe I rest there.

This day, the ring thinks were loud in my mind. There is no reason for it. It just came. I laughed as I recalled a day on the island ferry, en traverse to the mainland, and himself angered me beyond my reaches. I was aloud and not allowed. I was at the end of my reasonable thinking. I was done. On the upper deck of the ferry, I turned like a wild animal, and took off my wedding ring, dramatically, and threw it into the sea. It was like taking off a whalebone corset, or, in my experience, removing a liberty bodice. Ghastly things, trust me, and inaptly named for sure.

Today I was moved to check my jewellery box. I kept one ring from my mother-in-law, an eternity ring, gold band, thin as wire, with, I think, battered dark sapphires as a surround. It made me look for my own, gold with five dark sapphires for five beautiful children, and I tried both on. My own will not fit me on my wedding finger, but my mother-in-law’s slim band fits nicely. It’s loose and easy. Maybe I can wear it, bear it. Nothing on that wedding finger has ever felt easy before. Rings contain, control, or they did it my life, even as I love them. I still love them, even though I cannot wear them for long due to my perception of ring control, as if it was a restraint, which it never was. My fingers have memories, it seems and one finger in particular. As I turn the ring around, I wonder what it meant to the old girl, and I make smile. It is a lovely thing, that ring, as is my own, which goes back in the box, too small, too tight.

Thoughts of my surgery rings me around, although I distract well and keep occupied. How can it not? I have a date now, not far off and welcome indeed, because this perceived restraint, the whale-bone corset of it, the ring control, is not for eternity. The surgeon is confident, thus am I. A short period of discomfort is just a short period of discomfort, and thereafter I will celebrate my freedom every single day, in this wild place. On the return ferry voyage, as we pass the lighthouse and carve our seaway home, I will stand on the deck (not burning) and throw the ring of cancer overboard. Not in fury, as I had when sending my own wedding band down to Davy Jones, but in joy and gratitude.

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Island Blog – The Dance Ahead.

That’s the Lonely banished. It took a while. I had to wrestle this demon to the ground and, although my spirit is willing, my teeth and claws still in situ, my body is a bit wonky-chops at times. I managed it, nonetheless, holding down the limbs of it, all flailing whack and kick, its big mouth wide open and full of unhelpful words such as Fail, Stuck, The End, Best You Can Hope For, etcetera. Phooey, said I, blasting breath into its face, because I plan to have fun from now on, no matter my age or situation, circumstances be damned! The Lonely finally gave in, I felt it soften in defeat, lifting myself off its grabby little body to watch it slink, yes slink, out of the door, last seen heading towards the village. I did give it the bus fare to Faraway, however. I’m not a mean woman, after all.

Since its departure I have dived into a whole lot of exciting things, such as hoovering my floors in a dance of feet and nozzle, made hummus, walked miles and sat myself sitting on a stone bridge that affords me sight of the old days. This inlet of water led out to years of exciting sea-ventures in search of whales, puffins, shags, guillemots, kittiwakes, porpoise, dolphin and gannets, to name but a few. This inlet kept our boats safe from the mighty, and bullying, blast of Atlantic fury. I remember the boats bucking like broncos on their tethering, my hair, when I had any, flying in the wind, my ears ringing from the cold. I remember the trees bending in obrigation, root strong, the hazels as bow-backed old women, saving everything that grew inside their motherly protection from a spectacular crash-bang. No greater love……….

As I walk with my memories, the good ones finally rise to the surface, delighting me. I had forgot them, I confess, but I so wished for them to return. All I could see were the dementia years and the decline before that, for I know it is true that what began as wild love and unstoppable hope morphed from exciting plans such as ‘where shall we eat tonight?’ to ‘Did you put the bins out and if not WHY NOT?’ Or, ‘It’s YOUR turn to collect the kids, bath them, read the story, wash up, cook (arf), walk the dog, do the weekly shop.’ It comes to us all. Surviving such a disappointing change and remaining together is a sign of strength; learning how to dance it in a different way, to make it fun, to laugh together about the whole daft parabola of a shared life is genius. I like that word most of all when it applies to a shared and connected forward motion. It is a life changer for everyone involved, kids, outer-space family members, each other. Did we manage that, I wonder, just as a lone stag bursts from the trees. I was so caught up in my parabola/genius thingy that I gasped and stopped dead. We eyed each other, this young 6-pointer and I with no points at all. Those brown velvet eyes, the stand of its powerful fleet legs, the proud of its neck. It was only moments, but we shared those moments. Then it was gone, like the wind, becoming the wind.

Back home to hoovered and well-danced floors, I checked in all the rooms for the Lonely. No sign but a thought flitted about me like a butterfly, beautiful and fleeting. T’is this. What brings in the Lonely? It isn’t that I hate living alone, my life full of choices sans explanation, justification, apologies. I am loving all of that. And then it came to me, the answer. I am addicted to love and not in absentia, but in persona. In order for me to thrive and love life I need to love. Then a second thought breezed in. If there isn’t a person right beside me, that doesn’t mean I am deprived of the opportunity to find and to feel love. I just have to learn a new way to feel love. I can love the moments, noticing everything around me. I can love my children and their children actively through texts and calls. I can love a morning, a slow afternoon, the catch of light and the soft fall of the dark. I can love myself and that’s always the hardest thing. I can love the chance that I will encounter something wonderful just by believing that it is out there somewhere so that all I need to do is to build on that belief whilst keeping myself in trim for the dance ahead. And when the Lonely comes back, I will be ready.

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Island Blog – Captured in Words

Today I awoke to a gale, a Sou’Westerly blast and birthing rain. Good Morning, chirruped I, wheeching back the blackout curtains to see goldfinch flying backwards and the mouths of my wheelies opening and closing in excitement. Here we are again. We did this, I said to my first frock as I pulled it over my head. It’s climate change. My frock said nothing as it fell in silent acquiescence over my body. Once dressed I downed the stairs and made for the coffee pot, noticing the time. 04.30. Great! Another long day just bursting with opportunities to notice and to learn something I didn’t know yesterday. The wind ruffed up the rain-stabbed water on an incoming tide making the fretful waves popple irritably. I didn’t share the mood. I don’t get irritable, not any more because there is too much to wonder at, to watch in peaceful silence and too many opportunities to learn something new.

I work through Book 2, drafted some months back and in serious need of distance (from me) and revision (by me) throughout the morning, discarding much and slashing my red pen across swathes of utterly indulgent nonsense. I was too close to it. My agent was right. Later, after reading for an hour and listening to a podcast on grieving, I decide to wander. Wander! I admonish myself as I note my fast pace, feet going like the clappers as if Himself was still back home and without a grasp on the concept of time. For him, 45 minutes, the length of my walk, was more like 3 hours and counting. I slow my pace, watch the thrust of my right foot, then my left, noticing everything as I go. The bark of an Alder. Must pull some off to make a yellow dye, I say out loud, very probably startling said Alder. I swear she pulled her tummy in, holding tight. I laugh and she softens. Just a little bit, I soothe, and not all the way around, I promise. Sunlight dapples the track into negative space. I stop to admire the ever shifting mosaic for the wind, now westerly warm and more like a caress, still lifts the leaf-heavy limbs of beech, oak, alder, birch, hazel, chestnut and the conifers I cannot name, although I know a pine. Everyone knows a pine.

A snapshot of the now calmer sea-loch shows me sparkles as if the sun is melting golden drops. Dandelions answer with butter yellow, speedwell with indigo, oxeye daisies with snow, stems swaying as if in time to the music, all faces turned sunwards. Turning down to the shore, a path I haven’t walked since my baby sister was here with her husband some weeks ago, I gasp at a crowd of foxgloves. They stand as tall as me and in that disco pink Himself loved best. Bumble bees fly in and out of the bells sounding like tiny dirigibles but without the threat. I stand awhile and tell them all how beautiful they are, out here where only a few will ever see them. We don’t mind that, they say. We like our isolation and besides, the bumbles will always find us and that’s what matters. Out on the shore the wind whips at me, warm and westerly and full of stories. I smell seaweed and salt, stories and history. Men rowed out from here once to fish for their families when to catch fish was to stay alive, at least for one more long winter. Seaweed in rainbow colours cover the rocks, the 200 million year old rocks that line the shore, the seaweed lifted and abandoned by the recent full moon tides. Rust, lime green, yellow ochre, kettle black, it looks like art to me. It is also draped over the old Alpha Beta pier, now just a skeleton made beautiful with mermaid hair and shells, random, natural, passing. Soon it will dry and break up and be gone. Such is the life death cycle.

Wandering (yes I am still mindfully wandering) back home, I see a broken egg shell and stop to study the crushed coloration. It’s a big egg so not a blackbird, robin or thrush but it is blue, striated grey, silver, rose gold. A heron’s egg, it must be. I lift my eyes to where the herons nest, just over there among the bow-backed hazels that flank the shoreline, frontliners, protectors of the woods and they can take it, have done for centuries. How sad, I whisper. This little one didn’t make it to life. I pass the pigless pen, move through the gate and step onto the home path. So much I learned today but what did I learn? Ah, I know. I learned that disco pink foxgloves grow at the shore for the first year since the bracken was cleared. I learned that they can stay dormant in the earth for 50 years just waiting for sunlight. Such confident patience. And see how they they gasped me and changed my whole day and poignantly because in a few days me and Himself would have been married for 50 years. When I drive the switchback I look down on his gravestone. Golden script. Sun-melt, captured in words.

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Island Blog – From Four Stone Walls to Wild Places

I have been too scared to go anywhere beyond the safe confines of the little village. Most days I spend right here within my four stone walls (best song ever, in my opinion, by Capercaillie) or out there in the out there-ness of a wild place. I can walk a whole walk and meet nobody. Well, nobody with two legs and coated in either lycra, weather permitting, or waterproofs. I meet plenty of other-legged creatures of course. Spiders spinning, deer bolting, rabbits wiggling noses, an otter or two and plenty seabirds. I chat with the trees, imagine their long strong roots and know they help keep each other up, much as we humans could do if we just understood the power of it, instead of jousting at windmills.

I am mostly content with my life, the island wife without a husband. Mostly. Some days are black as the soot in my flue, some days bright as a lighthouse and I never know what will be which. It doesn’t matter what I do or do not do the day before the soot day, it dogs me like the shadow of a giant and no matter how fast I move, I am always in the dark of it. I have spent over a year searching for an answer to this upsy-downsy nonsense and find no answer at all and this is why. It is not a question with one answer at the other end of it. ‘Why’ is never a good question. ‘Why’ is a journey within, a quiet and solo traipse across a mind, not one to be voiced because any answer will fall short of the mark. The voiced question invites opinions. The one who receives this Why question can never respond with a solution. Not never. No other person in the whole wide world, across a zillion continents across all those wild oceans tossing stories and songs into the air, through the air that blows around the globe, can ever know the answer for someone else, because each one of us, like snowflakes and zebra stripes, is unique and therefore alone. So don’t bother with a ‘Why.’

I digress.

I am fearful, yes we got that. I am mostly content, yes, yes. Where is this leading? Ah, thank you. It leads to a phone call from one of my marvellous sons, one of the skippers, the skipper who skippers right here. Would you come on a cruise mama, a loch cruise for four nights on board? We have had a cancellation. My heart takes off but I catch it before it makes a hole in the conservatory roof. I hesitate, visualising massive waves, those ones I remember in a small bouncy thing of a boat crossing to Coll in a hooligan, the ones that, when they rose up like my swimming teacher in a furious mood with her eyes on me, blocked out the light. Then the fall, the slow slip down the other side in the sure knowledge that we would just keep on going down all the way to Atlantis. Or Hell. I breathe. Yes, I say. Yes. And then I twist to look at myself in horror.

I have days to organise things. How many things, I ask myself, noticing my endless pacing and the 2 pages of A4 lists. Well, not much in truth. Just some loving person to look after Poppy dog and my four stone walls. At short notice. A text to friends, a link, a number and she is found. Yes she can come, yes no worries, yes yes and yes. Committed now and planning my approaches, my frockstock, my beanie, socks (never wear socks) my underpinnings, enough for 4 nights. I wait for the fear to giant-shadow me. Nothing. I wait for indigestion, doubt, sheer terror, nights dense with 40ft waves and not a mermaid in sight. Nothing. Momentarily I wonder if I am finally going the way of the senile, that time I remember with Himself when nothing really mattered beyond his clear traverse up to bed. No, I am not there yet. But this is odd, this is strange, strange and rather wonderful.

On the day, Susie arrives, Sunshine Susie and she beams just like the sun which is a timely reminder that there is one at all, a sun I mean. I had quite forgot inside all these days of endless rain and cloud cover. I depart and manage the ferry thing just fine, staying outside the minute I board and arriving on familiar concrete, knowing my way. I keep my new mask firmly affixed to my face but find I am struggling to breathe, so efficient is it in keeping out all breaths, coughs and sneezes including my own. I walk around the harbour, among the visitors, along to the North Pier where the boats will meet and greet us. There are two boats ready for us this wet afternoon. The company is Hebrides Cruises and I recommend an online check. We, the guests, gather atop the pontoon and begin to introduce ourselves to each other. Some have travelled the length of the country for this cruise and me? Oh, me. Well I live over there, I tell them, waving my arm towards the island. I can tell they are amused, interested and disappointed all at the same time. I notice this and turn the conversation back to them, their tales of train changes, delays and clogs on the motorway. I just stepped on and off the ferry after all, did I not? They, on the other hand have much to say and much to share and I listen in pleasure because other peoples’ stories are always a fascination to me. They live a life I just don’t remember, one of limitations, of traffic, of timelines, of restrictions and rules whereas I am always free. Leaning against some metal thing that appears to have no reason to be there, I listen and watch and wonder. These lives, a glimpse. Just a glimpse. Faces, eyes, body language, baggage, all of it a wonderment to me.

Then the metal walkway rattles and we all turn. The skippers are rising like gods from the pontoon, together with the guides and the squeaky baggage trolleys that nobody ever bothers to oil. Relieved of our cases, we walk down the narrow ramps, back in our own thoughts, moving ever closer to the shining bellies of the boats that will be our home for the next 4 nights. They gleam, the superstructure white and all aglow. Our confidence rises yet again although it did already once we met the skippers. This one for you, that one for me. We separate on the floating pontoon and turn to the steps that will lead us all in to an adventure. I don’t know who is scared, who is dealing with something sad, who is hoping that this time will teach them something new, open a new window, show an escape. But as I wave goodbye to those on the other ship and move into the arms and the safety of my son, I know I made the right decision. To go or not to go? Always, always go.

Welcomed with pink champagne, cake and introductions, we heave-ho as the skipper turns the snout of the ship seawards. Into a pink cloudlight, into a blueing sky we move smooth as melting chocolate. Everyone is on the fly deck, binoculars at the ready, looking, searching, hoping for the wonderful.

And so it begins.

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Island Blog – Till Tomorrow

The seals are calling today. I hear them as I round the point but I can’t see them. Their eerie crooning comes on the breeze, one, two, maybe three of them. I stand to listen, allowing the song without words to enter my body, my mind, my soul. It shivers me but in a wonderful way. I cannot live without the sea and all her friends. She lives inside me, her tidal ebb and flow, the pull of the moon, today a pink fingernail hanging like parenthesis. The seals sing on, the lift and fall of their melody something unreal, ghostly. I am not surprised that such music terrified sailors back in the days when they feared falling off the edge of the world and felt the dread of scurvy. Safely rooted here on the Tapselteerie track and inside the knowledge we have today about seals and their singing, not to mention the confidence that neither I nor anyone else will ever fall off the edge of the world, I smile and linger. Taking the song home with me I wonder what they are saying. It will be for a purpose, that’s for sure. There is no sentimentality in the animal kingdom. Every sound, every move is about survival.

I meet nobody on the track. It is just me, the turning trees, the dying bracken and sunlight dapples. Birds flit and flutter, busy on the berries now red as blood and just asking to be eaten, the seeds spread only by travelling through the digestive system of the birds that respond. Scabious host peacock butterflies, blue, red, purple and of such delicate beauty. Harebells, heather and many bullish seps, big enough to shelter a small rabbit from a rainshower, flank the track. Leaf fall carpets the woodland cut-through, red, gold, brown, butter yellow and copper and I see nature’s artwork laid out below my feet. A cooler breeze today I think. Autumn is moving in, but softly this year.

The last visit to the sea takes us down a steep slope and across crunchy seaweed. It sounds like I am walking on crisp packets. Last week this weed was stodgy soft, greened up again in the high tides of a full moon. Be patient, I tell it. High tides will come again soon when that fingernail gets above herself and puffs out like a balloon, causing many of us sleepless nights and itchy teeth. It will wait. It knows how to wait, has done this waiting thing for thousands of years, after all. I heft my old self onto a tall flat rock. After himself died I did no hefting at all. I just stood like a dwarf before a giant and longed. Now my hefting ability is growing balls and I am thankful. I am no good at dwarfing. Although I am shrinking, it is normal but I know that it is just my body, not my mind.

I sit in the sun and watch the water. A Merlin erupts from the bow-backed shore hazels behind me in a startle. He lifts and floats across the narrows to scoop up into a distant tree, startling a heron who lifts with a screech. Ordinarily, the wee doglet would ignore a heron but as it lifts, it screeches and that screech bounces back from the far rocks creating an echo. She is startled, the doglet, and barks back. In turn, her bark barks back at her, once, twice. She barks again, certain there is another dog around even if she cannot see it. I clap my hands to stop her and the far rocks clap back. Good Lord this is turning into a situation. I am aware that the folk in the holiday cottage are at home today and I don’t want this echoing percussion to upset their peaceful afternoon. I heft myself down and whisper a farewell to the sea, the Merlin, the heron and the echo rocks. Was I to speak it out loud, the whole echo thing would kick off again.

Till tomorrow, I breathe. Till tomorrow.

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Island Blog – The Sky, Skerries and Staying

Today it is falling, the sky I mean. Earlier the pocks of deeper grey sat like skerries in a white sea. A few spots of soft rain fell, hardly worth a mention, but the wind was cooler than of late. Now the sky is leaking down onto the land, covering the hills, blanking out the trees, undefining contours of a land I know like I know myself. But do I know myself, I wonder? I think I do, and yet, there are times I catch my reflection and stop, mildly astonished (oxymoron). You do know, I tell myself in my best English student remonstratory voice, that it is impossible to be mildly astonished. This is lazy ‘speke’. Astonished, is, after all, a superlative and ‘mildly’ does little more than dilute with too much milk. It blands itself. And it thinks me.

I studied and loved language. English, French, German, even Latin, and am still a devotee of the way language flows like a river. Or it can do but, if I am honest, less and less nowadays in the ways learned by me. I remember my old dad with his linguistic brilliance, puffing like an old pipe should he encounter poor English, poor grammar, the ‘wrong’ use of punctuation. I also recall a conversation with him about acceptance. As cultures collide and collude, language shifts. We adopt and adapt and before we know it, words fall away like birds. When I read a classic novel, superbly crafted and written, it seems effortlessly and in lingual confidence, I can see that without incursive verbalism such writing would indeed flow like a river for a creator of stories. So do we, the now ‘we’, who must work with the fast moving changes of our world, go with what is, or resist and remain in academic slippers? We could, but we would risk losing a load of readers because language is changing. We might find ourselves moving up a floor, and up again, until the only person left is a lonely one. All the rest have died off, and their slippers are too worn for a charity shop, and burned as litter.

I find new language dynamic and fascinating, even as my eyes roll at much of what I read. Get with it old woman, I tell myself, because if you do, you remain in the game, the game that is life in motion. To refuse to abdicate the throne of those torn and floppy slippers is to choose loneliness. As writers, and we can all be a writer if we just pick up a pen and are ready to learn and grow in the world of words, we are duty bound to be gymnasts. Not actually gymnasts, the thought exhausts me, but acceptance gymnasts. There is another type, the one that holds on to the slippers for grounding, and who does a lot of eye rolling and pipe puffing and shuffles from room to room as if there is no world out there and if there is then I want none of it. I am not this person.

We live with danger, threat and menace. We are hacked and hi-jacked. We are compromised, surprised, confined and defined. Out there racial and sexual prejudice is alive and kicking, literally. The sky is falling. But wait. Look at how the sky reaches down both to confuse and to alter our perceptional lens. See how, in the not-seeing of what we know invites us to look at something another way. We can dismiss this as an opportunity, ignore it, even, say Mist, say Fog, say Close the Curtains. Or we can actually look and if we do, we will marvel. It is the same with words, with language, with change and with people. I get that it is exhausting (nearly said pretty exhausting #oxymoron) to be always required to adapt and adopt, but it is the way the world is spinning, faster and faster. New technology brings both healing and death, the whole circle, and the greys in between are like the skerries in a white sky sea. There are millions of them and each one offers footfall. They are like stepping stones. We might not know where they lead but if we don’t keep leaping from one to the next, we remain lonely, in slippers and pipe puffing at what only we consider lost.

I can write into the mist, or it can blind me. I can see banks of clouds or I can see skerries in a white sea. I can allow new cultures to enhance me or inhibit. I can hold to the old or I can estew the new, allowing myself to simmer and to blend with whatever comes in. Together we can make a delicious meal. I am not a new writer. I am honed from past teachings but I am curious and interested and I want to stay in the game.

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Island Blog – This Goodly Day (even if it is Monday)

A bit sleepless for no good reason. I wasn’t bothered, nor troubled. I just experienced awokeness. When dawn tiptoed in around my blackout curtains I decided up was for me, so I upped accordingly. Coffee and a watch for the rise of light, the lift of garden birds, the backdrop of accompanying sounds. I heard the trickle of the burn. Trickle for now but in the Autumn its voice is wild with flood, catapulting over rocks and plummeting into the pool, then under the track and offski to the sea. The eternal flow. Rain falls, burns erupt in noisy excitement and then spend days splashing everyone on their way to join Mother. It is indeed a joyous sound.

I hear the tap tap of my complication of creepers, wisteria, jasmine, clematis as their floating fingers try to gain some sort of purchase. Might need help, I tell them, and they waggle at me. I see an otter fishing in the sea-loch, flipping silver fish against the morning light, the darkling hills. Geese set forth and fifth and sixth, in fact, make that double figures, across the flat water with goslings in tow. One parent leading (guess that’s himself), then babies, then mother. A line, no ten, twelve lines crossing together as the black backed gulls circle. I watch them. The airborne predators lift, and lower, tip and flip and by golly if I see just one of them pick off a babe, I swear I will finally wild swim. They all arrive safely and now, my coffee cold, I can draw breath once more. It is quite a wide loch and I am, on reflection, rather proud of my ability to hold my breath. I remember trying it in a bath as a girl and exploding back into the air after about 60 seconds in a state of snot and sneeze. Not something I put on my CV.

I weeded a bit and discovered a tiny clematis creeper (who planted that?). I madly cleared the grass and such like around it to give it space. The flowers are huge and magenta. So brave. Not just the colour, nor the size of the flowers but all that struggle beneath Aquilegia, and other tall things I cannot name. I affixed the stems to the structure that upholds the original clematis which is 30 years old and not flowering quite as much as she once did. I know that state. Then I remember who planted the wee magenta thing. It was I some 3 years ago and I allow myself the forgetness of such a birthing because I was thwack in the thick of caring during that year. Nonetheless it is such a relief to solve such a question, I find. Reminds me I am not losing any plot.

I walk beneath brilliant green boughs, dappled sunlit tracks and take myself, slightly resistantly, to the old pier. The pier that Popz built and from where he ran the whale-watching trips for many years. Latterly, when the trips no longer left from that pier and he was no longer captain of the ship, he took down a plank of wood to make a sitting bench. Using old stones to form the elevation, he laid the plank and many many times we went there. First, he walked, his little Poppy dog beside him barking at pretty much everything, and latterly, driving on his quad. Sometimes he could get off the bike and sit with me on the bench, sometimes he could not. We would take tea in a flask and biscuits and just sit, often in companionable silence whilst we listened to the geese, the oystercatchers, the curlews, the gulls, seals and herons, marvelling at dragonflies of electric colours, butterflies and various buzzing thingies. We talked over that explosion of Thrift (Sea Pinks) that fanned out from the rocks, the bloom of downy feathers here, the way the seagrass chooses where it wants to grow, the slip and slide of the tide. I sat there in the sunshine for a while and took it all in. I am glad I went today. I could see his smile, the Old Impossible, and we walked back together, even if I cannot remember him walking in my memory.

T’was a goodly day.

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Island Blog – Ice and Fire

The past 3 days have been glorious. Cold, freezing, in fact, with clear skies and sunshine. T’is rare on this rainy promontory to enjoy such clarity on joined up days. We mostly slop through puddles, our frocks flying out like sails and our wellies musty with damp. Although the faithful rain returned last night, somewhere in the middle of it, and the wind rose to shouting point, it is enough to have had those 3 joined up days. People’s faces shine with light, cheeks pinking, noses dripping, as they stride out along the track. Even the dogs bounce, no slinking, no wet backs, chasing sticks and each other. The stones hold fast to the ground and the puddles are all but gone. Stands of pooled spring water show me a tapestry of ice lace, greened brightly by the strangled mosses. Long grasses, now the colour of sand, stand proud and stiff, frosted with crystals and the cobwebs white-lace in between. I watch the sky through the branches of the trees, lit as they are by sunlight in shades of red and gold. Songbirds chitter all around, a musical accompaniment, their colours brighter, their flight light-hearted in the absolute stillness of the air. Ducks fly fast just above the surface of a sea-loch, cloudy with ice. Water sprites shimmer like mist, ice maidens dancing. Geese lift into the cold sky and I wonder how high they can go before their wings freeze, Oystercatchers twitter down by the water’s edge and closer to where the sea-loch becomes the sea, I watch curlews and herons and scan the water for sight of the resident otter and her cubs. A bright red fishing boat gentles its way back to harbour and I consider the haul of lobster and crab on board. It must be cold work for those human fingers, bringing in the fleets of creels in such low temperatures. I wish them hot tea and safe home to the fireside for the sun is sinking now and the sky is taking centre stage. The cold sharpens, nudging us all back home, reminding us that darkness is coming and she will bring a billion stars for our delight. Even when the sun has dipped below the hill, the colours remain. Blood red, platinum, gold and silver twists of cloud like angel hair, slowly disappearing into the darkling air.

Walking out in the night I see those billion stars, recognising only a few constellations, which doesn’t bother me one jot. What difference would it make to them, to me, to anyone if I could rattle off each name? Zip, that’s what. I don’t need to know, don’t need to photograph, don’t need to understand or explain any of this majestic beauty to anyone, even to myself. I simply need to watch it, notice it and to move into it, fully engaged. All bothersome things, all worries and concerns are not welcome as I meander along. I am intensely focussed on what I see, what I hear and smell, the sensation of extreme cold and the clarity of the air I breathe. And, after it is gone, blown or washed away, I will be able at any time to take myself back into those 3 days and to feel as I felt inside them.

This day, the day of rain, I will walk again, this time my frocks flying out like sails and my boots bravely rejecting water ingress as best they can. Ice stands will be puddles again and rising, birds will need to look to their flight plans and trees will drip. The fisherman’s fingers will thaw and the wind will cause my wheelie bins to buck and dance. I will notice the beauty of raindrops held in the branches and shivering on the tall grasses. I will feel the bite of cold wet wind on my face and hear the wind singing the pines into melody.

It is as it is. This day, those days, all just days, but there is nothing ‘just’ about any of them. Whether ice clear and light or dusky with rain and grumpy clouds in varying shades of grey, each day is precious. Many won’t have this day at all. For some it might be their last. All that really makes us truly alive regardless of weather or worries, ailments, lacks and losses is the noticing of each and every day. To mindfully walk through the minutes and the hours, paying attention to every small thing, is how to feel well. If each day is noticed and engaged in, mindfully, there is no waste of time, no ungrateful thinking and see that chattering jibber jabber of bothersome worries and concerns?

Fire it.