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Island Blog – Tumbletast

My Dad liked bloaters. The rest of us baulked at the whole bloater thing, the name being enough. I don’t know, even now what is a bloater, and am not sure I want to. I think it is half smoked, or half something and half anything is not for me. I remember many times being called to shores where a huge whale had beached and died (thankfully), each sight a bloat, big enough to eventually explode with enough force to cause turbulence in the flight from Glasgow to Iceland. the swellbelly of that magnificent, once free, wild person was a trip in my step, the deep sadness a hold in my belly, a gasp. Even as I had seen death many times, sheep, cows, calves, lambs, dogs, cats, in-laws, these encounters, seen afar off, yet known, walked to over stones and tumbletast, maybe in the darkling, with torch, always ready to defend, to protect, from gulls, from people, from the weather. A lonely death, a lonely walk. But, I would not have missed any one of them. I saw them. I see you. I put my hand on your bloated beautiful body. Hallo.

I understand why some of us choose to beach.

I watched the sky today, the first open one for frickin days of slanty rain and grumpy clouds and the whole wotwot that goes with such control, mud, puddles, landslides, the withering of our confidently constructed land. How foolish we are to think we can do this. Nature allows no half measures not neither. (sorry Dad) By the way, what do three negatives mean? Perhaps a lot. I might look into the three negative thingy. I know 3 to be the perfect number, and I employ it myself in my writing. This, this and this. It seems to work. In fact, I struggle to do two, as if two fail me somehow. Then I feel sorry for Two. Life is so complicated.

I am scared. I am anxious. I sleep little. I am tumbletast.

The post arrived today from Ros, my lovely friend. Everyone here is a friend. She, however, has the smile and the welcome that could begin a new history. I collect, barefoot, and not under rain. She, in her luminous PO kit meets me over the fence, hands over. She asks me how I am. I tell her I am waiting, waiting, two weeks till surgery. How do you feel? She asked. I am not half anything, so I smiled and told her.

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Island Blog – The Joy of It

I swam today, not, as I would like, in the Atlantic, but after a long and sunshine drive to the pool, I clock in. This pool is affixed to ground control mid island, as is right, accessible to all of us who live sprachled over hillsides, down tiny access roads, and with posties confused for miles and many many miles apart. Like last time, after two lengths I loathed the whole thing, my neck aching with all that looking up required from a breastroke. Two other women were there, early doors, pre lessons and wotwot, the pool calm and the sunlight fluttering against the walls, in our eyes, a sunshine mosaic, fractal, beautiful. I pushed on. Last week I managed 20 lengths, this week 25 and helped big time by the chat in the shallow end. I learned of other women who live here, have done so for frickin ages, just like me.

I didn’t lock my mini. It was a choice. I thought this think. This is an island. People are good. I abandon my control panic la-di-da and I lift, like Bouddicca from this sprightly mini and into my swimwear and onward. Always onward, to hec with, well, pretty much everything. I watched a coach welcome folk from the hotel, off on a voyage somewhere on this beautiful rise of rock, and I waved a smile.

Home again and you’d think I’d been gone for a century for all the welcome I got. The dog was watching through the fence rail, waiting, waiting, but trusting. I always tell her to stay and that I won’t be long, and, knowing that she has no idea of time, I won’t be. But she waits, and she watches. I am it for her, and she is the it for me. We walk, slowly, and, thankfully, into the shade. I clocked 26 degrees pre leaving, but, once into the fairy woods and then to the shore, it will cool. I notice there are no conkers on the horse chestnuts. I wonder why. I have no answer, nor do I need one. The turning of the world over millennia has shown loss, failure, rise and ebullience, over and over and over again.

We walk to the shore, me and the wee dog. She always wants to go there. When I am tired, I divert her. Home, I say, feeling guilty. I always regret it, that slope to the shore, where grand girls dived in wetsuits, lofted onto dinghies, crab fished, scrambled the ancient rocks with bare feet, light and easy. Today we went there. She was a scoot on the green download of the earth, all the way to the crunch of sundried kelp, still there, wild flowers, holding on, some canoes, kayaks, tied tied to hazels. The blue moon tides have been, well, luscious. Over the top. Well over. Boats need to be secured. I walk by them, remembering their launches, remembering my family, not here anymore. And it thinks me.

I sit on a wonky rock. My arse slideyways, my feet ditto. I hear an irritation of herons across the sealoch, watch diver birds dive, rise with a splash that laughs me, then dive again, I see an otter flip a fish, the rainbow flash an indent in my mind. As we wander home, as the crunch of new life supports my feet, as everything I have never known begins to unfold in the now, I smile for the joy of it.

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Island Blog – A Story for the Bridge

The birds wake me, for there is no other disturbance here. I know, I know, many hear the bin lorry, early traffic, noisy neighbours, those heading for work or those heading home from work, but not here, here where the biggest sounds are from Nature. And I am glad I live here. However, it is not always a treat. The sun doesn’t always shine big, bright and warm and oftentimes the birds are punched backwards by the gales that can rise in Spring, Autumn, and definitely in Winter, and Winter stays way too long. Always has. But we who have lived here longtime, have learned to love the whole of island life. We might turn blue in the endless months of rain and chill, but we know that our weather, an unique weather pattern, will, in time, turn on the sun to warm us. And we have learned how to bring a smile into any day, even if it takes a lot of physical strength to remain upright when moving from car to shop.

The garden is dry, the island is dry. A rare thing, and not so rare, historically. There is talk of a water ban. I remember one, way back in Tapselteerie days, when bowsers came over on the ferry, their big rotund bellies full of someone else’s water. Not for us, though, with our independent flow of spring water, but for others on the mains. Holiday cottages, bed and breakfasts, hotels, all flapdoodled without water. Water. The {almost} only thing we need to survive.

I am watching weeds thrive in this mini drought. It thinks me. If I had to come back as a plant I would come as a weed, a pretty one, mind, but a weed, nonetheless. These creatures are tough, survivors, invasive, yes, but they survive. What does that say about me, I wonder? I believe I am hot-wired for survival, and not just a wimpy sort of almost there sort of survival, but a pushy, strong and flowering one. I meet many of my age and on into their 70’s, and see myself as fortunate, indeed. Others have not been so lucky, as weedy me, I see, walking with sticks and supports, with hair that hasn’t seen a hairdresser for some time, who are out of breath and melting in this heat. I put up a big thank you, and pull down a blessing for each one of them. These folk are my folk. We danced in village halls together, not so very long ago, but there will be no more dancing for them.

There is a bridge over our lives, one we all must traverse, at some point. It’s a swing bridge, one we don’t really trust. Half-way across, exactly, is the keystone. It lies in the middle ride, and without this keystone, we would all end up in the water. I am on it, we all are, once we hit our three score years and ten, and, because I can still dance, i can help, encourage and support others around me. Together we can laugh at the inevitable, remember our younger days and lift our long memories into play, batting them back and forth between us like shuttlecocks, because we have shared a history on this island, through all the difficult days and through all the happy ones. Only our circumstances are different. Our sense of fun is the same.

I just went to the shop to buy compost for the dry earth, readying it for a sluice of goodness. Prior to this, I had walked the hotdog to the shore for some coolth and a tiddle about on the rocks. I found a tiny shell, a twizzley one, like a minute snail. I also picked up wire, plastics, rope and twine, which would, had I left it, have rejoined the ocean at high tide. Having only two hands, I pushed the tiny sea-snail shell down my front. I would find it again, eventually. Forgetting it completely, I drove to the shop, smiled everyone up and lugged my compost into the boot. Once home, something caught my attention and I burst out laughing. This snail shell had migrated into just the wrong place, so that it looked like one nipple stood out and proud. I thought the shopkeeper had looked at me, a tad abashed.

I wish I’d had that story for the bridge.

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Island Blog – Skitterlings, Venus and Mars

A skitterling of sparrows erupts from a dense thicket of rhododendrons as I wander by. I was in the harbour town this morning by 8.15 for a few errands. The sun blinds me on my drive, rising fierce and dominant into a vast expanse of blue. Earlier, like at 5 am, a wispy mist danced through the forest across the sea-loch as the tide slacked, paused and began to ebb beneath a gibbous moon and Venus. Hallo Venus, I said, even as I wondered if it was, in fact, Mars. It is a mistake to mistake Venus for Mars but the other way around just makes the heavens laugh. Venus is just fine with that mistake. She never got on well with Mars anyway and she likes to watch him huff and disappoint, as his ego flops somewhat.

The ground is hot to the tough, the air almost still but not quite. There is a quiver in the ferns, a wiggle and I feel sorry for them, the ferns. That one fat stalk holding a gay abandon of green fronds is compromised when the breeze hits it. All I can do is this rigid left to right thing whilst you fronds dance your dance, feathering the wind and sometimes I wonder if you are reaching for your freedom. The fronds chuckle. I can hear them and chuckle too. I walk to the old pier as I always do. Sandpipers call out in alarm, curlews erupt from the shore, an oystercatcher too. Herons screech at each other and I am tempted to tell them they both need counselling. The wee dog suddenly growls, turning towards the dense overgrowth behind me, up there on the rocks. If I was in Africa, I tell her, I would be very afraid. She keeps growling and heads for the dense overgrowth. She won’t go in. She’s a great big jessie after all. We sit awhile, watching the birds watching us, the oystermen at work and the tide ebbing away. Soon it will have its mind changed once again and the endless widdershins of a greater tidal flow will decide what these underlings must do, these inlets, these sea-lochs, these beaches and promontories. They are not in control but we don’t tell them that because nobody wants to hear such a truth.

Home again and music on and then an invite to dinner with my beautiful gift-daughter (Such a more truthful name than ‘daughter-in-law’ and way less of a mouthful) her sister and the three wee skitterling daughters, precious children, out future, our delight, my future, my delight. I did think of himself as I walked. I did. I thought I would never be so free if you were here. I thought, how much you are missing, even though you wouldn’t have joined me. I felt a Venus uplift, guilt at that uplift and then I laughed, not at Mars, of course not, but at the fact that still this separatist thinking lives on.

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Island Blog – Unicorns, Bananas and Hope

I wake with a wobble this morning. I suspect I am not the only one. I know there is a big shopping list downstairs in my cosy kitchen, plus a couple of things to post, and, yet, I don’t want to go anywhere near people who still breathe. I make tea and drink it, watching the day rise like Venus from the troubled waves of the night. She looks good. The usual fly-by of geese, loons, swans and garden birds entertain me for a while until I hear the sounds of the seventies overhead. That’s himself getting up. It thinks me of a first drum lesson, all bangs and thumps and with no rhythm to speak of.

Although I am not nosophobic at all, I have a healthy respect for an invisible enemy. Who doesn’t! So, after a ridiculous and chuckly conversation with a girlfriend about what bananas remind us of when baked and floppy, I decide not to shop this morning. We have enough in store and besides I can cook the sole of a gymshoe and make it tasty, or so I tell my grandchildren. I decide to inhabit the day with an attitude of ad hockery which feels rather racy and sounds loaded with opportunities. First, I bleach the door handle after a delivery of unicorn poo. For those who have never encountered a unicorn, never mind its poo, let me explain. These pellets, prettily gathered into the depths of a little hessian pouch, ribbon tied, are, in fact, wildflower seeds. You just push the pellet into the earth, not deep, and wait for your unicorn to grow……should take between 4-6 weeks. I can’t wait. I bake the bananas and cover them in custard. They may taste lovey but, naked, they are far from eyesome. Listening to tunes of the 80s and dancing along a bit, the day moves forward in a beamish sequence of start, middle and finish. Many tasks complete themselves this way and all I do is walk beside them, mindfully, of course. We sort it out together.

Walking, I see the larch green above my head, the little primroses peeking out from sheltered dips, yellow as sunshine. A pair of mallards lift like an eruption from the burn as I startle them into the air, the drake a rainbow of colours. Two otters cavort in the sea-loch, pushing out from the rocks, from the safety of their holt, out in the wide open on a fish hunt. I watch a huge fish jump although it seems too early – maybe not. Horse chestnut leaves look like green fingers against the sky, now a mackle of clouds in shades of grey. I see nobody. For a whole 40 minutes as I walk through woods and along side the rocky shore, I am alone, just me and the little dog. By this time, visiting walkers would be all over this place like a pox, and welcome indeed, but not this year. Maybe not at all this season, for who can say? We are, after all in the incunabula of something we cannot explain nor define and that’s enough to wobble the sturdiest of us.

I light the fire for it is still chilly, even if the sun does shine down his generous warmth. Flowers are pushing through the earth, shrubs throwing blooms and trees beginning to spread their canopy. It’s a time of hope and that is one thing that never runs out. If one person loses it for a while, someone else can bring it back and it doesn’t require physical contact to spread. It just flows between us like a soft breeze and we can safely breathe it in until it fills us up once more. Then we can pass it on to another who needs it.

In 4-6 weeks I hope to have a garden full of unicorns. What larks, Pip!

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Island Blog 83 Travelling

Most of the time life is predictable to a degree.  Not a huge degree, out of choice, for me, but there is something calming about a routine, until it becomes boring which is quite a different feeling altogether.  A lot of us, I notice, live alongside ‘boring’ doing everything we can to cheer it up into a fizzbangpop now and again, to add colour and texture with a weekend social or a new frock, or, more recklessly, a Wednesday dinner date.  For the rest of the time, we allow the long chain of endless weeks to pull us along in a sort of mindless stupor, our eyes searching the week-day gloom for a glimpse of the weekend- those two short days when we can really be ourselves.

It is hard to be myself in an uncomfortable suit, one that grabs at various bits of me whenever I sit down and overheats and confines me until I fear I might have turned into a lizard.  I must bow and scrape to those I don’t even like, never mind respect enough for any such bowing and scraping.  I must hear things I don’t want to hear, witness unkindnesses about which I feel I can do nothing, and, finally, at the end of this day, I must push my way home for a short rest, if I am lucky, before doing it all over again the next morning.

Now, I know this doesn’t apply to those who love what they do and have made their life into the right shape for them, but I really believe these people number few.   What they have done is to say ‘ How can I make life fit around me?’ and not ‘How can I make myself fit into life?’

Everywhere I go, when I see someone out of kilter with their work, their lives, I will ask them what they want to do.  Many will shrug and say they have no choice, are in too deep now, too committed with a mortgage or debts or schools or whatever, but I will challenge that.  It isn’t always a popular challenge, and I am not in the least bit surprised.  When a person challenged me, at a time when I was trying to squeeze myself into a life two sizes too small, I would flap them away as I would an annoying wasp.  And all because their questions touched me deeply, threw me off balance and into a black hole from which I could see no way out.

How do I go from here, where I don’t want to be, to somewhere else, when I can’t see my way ahead?  I don’t even know what I want to do, how to make my life fit me.  All my clothes are two sizes too small and I have no cash to buy more.  Nor do I want to admit the defeat I will inevitably feel when my friends challenge my crazy idea.  It just isn’t sensible.

How do we define sensible?  Is ‘sensible’ just a word made acceptable by the world we live in now?  A hundred years ago, the way we live now would have been considered completely un-sensible by every living soul.  So, which meaning do we choose to believe?

If I know anything now, I know that if a person lives with stress that leads to unhappiness, they will become unwell.  Learning to manage stress is saying ‘I am not important enough to honour myself and how I want to live.’

It takes courage to make big changes.  The fall-out can range from disapproval to downright rejection, but this blows away in time and is forgotten.  Whenever I find myself doubting on the shores of a new ocean, I remind myself of the time I walked away from work with no income.  I remember the reactions around me.

I also remember the smiles and admiration from the same people when I made myself a new life.

If this is the encouragement you need.  Take it.  It can be your truth too.

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Island Blog 80 Acorns

Dreams

Let’s say I have a dream.  Not one that requires a fairy and a wand, but  more like I’ve felt a change in the wind and I need to tighten my sail.  Oh, I’ll still arrive at the next shore in the end, but I could make all the difference to the quality of that arriving, if I made a correction or two.

Well that’s fine.  In the bag you might say.  After all, my big and agile brain has come to this conclusion.  I can just sit back now and watch it happen.

Wrong.

As the day begins I am a veritable bounce of good intentions.  I go about my list of tasks in the way I usually go about my list of tasks, but this time my step is lighter and my inner movie is definitely Disney.  I reel in the line of hours, wind them around my spool.  Done.

Ahead of me, I can see the old habit coming closer.  It’s part of the pattern, of course, so it will come closer and closer until it is right in my face and looking at me expectantly.

This is when I begin to tell myself that the whole commitment thing is pointless.  Who’s looking anyway?  Who cares?  I am still dashing along with verve and vigour, sails full, ahead of the game, aren’t I?

But I know different.  So how to make this change, that’s the question, and the answer is, baby steps.  I just need to correct my sail once, just once, and then to feel the shift and tell myself, Well Done!

Then, do it again the next day.

People we admire are always those who overcome themselves.  We all know what it is to be ‘ok’, doing away, not bad, and other such beige states of being.  We also, I think, imagine that those who overcome themselves, and therefore the mountains that block out their sun, are just lucky.

Lucky Schmucky.  No such thing.

You don’t get through to the Olympic team by luck, nor to Wimbledon, nor to the finals of The Voice.

What those ‘lucky’ people chose to do was to tighten their sails every single day and often during it.  They pushed themselves when others sat back in the sun with a pint pondering the meaning of life.  Over long lonely hours, they kept practising over and over and over again until they stepped out into the light with a Da-dah! and we all marvelled at their superhuman-ness, something each one of them would deny with a derisive snort.

I may not want to play at Wimbledon, join the Olympic team or sing on TV, but there will be something in my life I just know I want to change, if only that fairy would appear with her wand and make it happen.  If I do nothing, nobody will know.  But I will.  And when the fat lady sings, will I know that at least I tried?

We found an acorn and planted it in the woods, just pushed it into the soft peaty floor and moved on.

So did the acorn.  Now, it’s shade from the sun and shelter in a rain shower.