short-story

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Island Blog – Now and then

It’s cold, the wind an iceslice with bitey teeth like a ferret, not that I know a damn thing about ferret teeth but I can imagine. Tiny sharp incisors and no filters in the mind of the owner thereof. I was bitten by a mouse once, the tiny rodent I was trying to save from being sluiced down a push of rainwater. I grabbed it, no thoughts of teeth in my own mind and was hurt and upset until I understood an instinctive reaction. I could have been a ferret after all. However, and this is irrelevant, the wound rose red and its subsequent pulsation required a switchback trip to the doctor because I was basically carrying a balloon on my forefinger, thus unable to text, employ finger recognition, or point an accusation at anyone without inviting ridicule. Irrelevant.

This time of year is yahoo Spring although it isn’t yet. I do know, of course i do, that Spring up here on the butt of the west coast of Scotland with the wild Atlantic wheeching up huge waves and making a great big noise about it, munching old rocks into pivots, and flipping sands into a beachy confusion, is to be expected. I remember lambing in April in the snow. Not me, the cheviots. But I was on the early shift and for weeks. 5am, swallowing mouthfuls of darkness and cold, looking for colour. Not moon, or maybe moon, such a fickle light. I’m searching for those undercover, the ewes who take their hideaway in cowers and coppice, under hedges, in the brack and barm of stone dykes. Twins or triplets definitely a challenge. Too much for the exhausted mother. Delivering, shifting tricky ones coming arse first, all out, all ok, pulling off the sticky stuff out of tiny mouths desperate to breathe, sucking the stuff, mouth to mouth, blowing in whisky breath probably, the wriggle and pulse of life in my hands, the shouty thrill of it, in the early dawn. The crows are not awake yet. My job, to deliver if I can, to make safe if I cannot and to leg it back home to wake himself. I can’t do that one, this one. He was exhausted, had walked the fields/parks all the day before right up to Crow Sleep Time. He rose, still clothed and smelling like days of unwashed and sheep. The daytime walks I couldn’t do. Feral kids, guests, dinners, bedroom changes, cleaning, phone calls about cottage bookings, calves to feed, cow to milk, stable mucking out, hens to organise, eggs to collect. Enough. We did well. I know we did, the clueless We who had never done a single thing on that list before. Lambs survived, mostly, children definitely did, guests returned to the Quirky Hotel and now……well, now I have none of that other than what I’ve learned and that is a powerful and energising gift. This is what I did, what we did.

Now, when I still swallow mouthfuls of darkness and cold, I remind myself of what I have achieved and, therefore what I can still achieve, not in the same context, nor genre, nor situation, but I still can achieve. And here’s how I do this achieving thing. Any time the alien thought marches in tooting a trumpet, all important and (somewhat ridiculous) I shake my head. Ah, I smile, no thanks. You think you define me now as, yes unsure, yes with less self confidence, yes a bit wobbly whilst hanging heavy curtains, yes in a dither because my car computer tells me I have a stop alert when I know that everything mechanical is quite fine and always was before computers made us all doubt our own intelligence. I am grafting myself off this failing tree, because I realise I stuck myself here. And, it is so good to notice, to realise, and then to take action. I have strength, huge strength, maybe not physical although don’t tell me I can’t lift this, nor carry that because I damn well will. I have wisdom, experiential wisdom. Not many care to connect with that in these sad times when oldings are written off as a right pain in the arse, and that saddens me. I learned so much vital knowledge on how to cope with life, the world, the isolation, from my granny, my parents, and, I am happy to say that my ferals and their kids do connect with me, asking things, smiling a lot and with no understanding at all of how life was without the internet.

Talk to your granny, grampa. Your wisdom guides. They really never thought they would ever be a pain in the arse. Trust me.

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Island Blog – Thin spaces, Intrathinks,Otherness

I’ve been aware for a while of my dead husband. I don’t mean memories of the missing of a life partner, but more an alert, as if he is there in a doorway. He loved doorways, used to stand in them all quiet, just watching me batter the living dalights out of a souffle or a ton of bread dough, lost in my thoughts. It always made me laugh, once I caught sight of him. He’s back now, not standing but in his wheelchair, still in doorways. I am not going mad I assure you. I know he is not there but it does think me. Way up here in the wilds of the West, we inhabit the thin spaces. Have a google on that. The further north, the further wild you go, the veil between the world and the Otherness is super thin. I can walk in woods I have walked through for 47 years and can still catch a glimpse of a beloved dog in a scamper over old roots. I see her clearly for as long as a bubble burst. I can be walking in my nowadays thoughts and suddenly I am back into a memory of my kids laughing, the song of it lifting into a winter sky. It’s just a second of two, the image so fleeting, but it comes and I welcome it, them. They always turn up when I am somewhere else in my head, so I know I don’t conjure them up. I’m not even thinking about them, caught up in an Oh I forgot to buy a bayonet light bulb, or I should probably turn up to do this or that. And that is precisely how I know I live among the intrathinks, the otherness. It can be damn confusing, but only if I try to explain any of it. Rather, I accept, even when it tumbles me, alterspects my spects.

I believe that we are all connected, but the thirst for Armani and Tiffany and Celebrity and the smartest car, don’t do cars, all shiny and tinted and purring and impossible to park, drowns us. We can forget who we are and what we really want. Out here in the thrick of endless storms, home battering, forest falling, we know. Life is simple. Food, friends, family, shelter, ceilidhs, a great local shop, a village hall, a church, a fabulous pub, single track roads, massive potholes, loads of rain, seasons, shared lifts, communication and the openness to an uninterrupted connection with nature and all her wild tantrums.

I have rarely been to his grave, him, dead over five years now. I know his bones lie there but not his spirit and maybe that’s why I haven’t gone to tell him things. It’s as if I am pulled into a maelstrom, down and down and in this downing down, I see a load of differentials. The Intra, the inter, the whatever of logic and what, illogic? I do have a big issue with the either and or of pretty much everything. There is so damn much in between, quietly moving on. So, back to point, I thought today that, instead of just waving at him as I pass en route to the harbour town, I will stop, park, push my way through sheepshit and rain and hurdles of slamdunk wind and go to his bones. I will read his inscription. There is a small space for me. And I will tell him that he was my everything. And then he wasn’t. And now I am here and doing just fine on a sheep-soaked hillside looking very conspicuous and with not a lot to say.

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Island Blog – She

Fingernail moon up there in the blue. Clouds gentle, moving grey and soft and ever changing. Silence, as day sinks away and night rises all black and holding. It doesn’t fear me anymore, although it did once. It’s as if an inevitable Onething decolours, swallows all other things down a black throat, until a wee intuitive light lifts. I can see now, a bit, admittedly, but I can see. Of course in all places of street lights, cafe welcomes, car headlights, Darkness does not have her time on stage. Here she definitely does. The fingernail moon is enough in this wild place. She can, and has often before, lit my way home after a ceilidh, walking among gentle trees, the only sound a burn trickle, a rustle of wildlife, eyes watching me. I’m amazed I never fell in a ditch. The pull of home is ever strong . It was about two miles but with the ceilidh in me, still hearing the dance, the tunes, I knew I would get there, to that door, into that home of children, dogs and safety. I never felt unsafe here, still don’t, not for a minute. I am Island blest.

I did stuff today, kept doing the stuff. Most of it is boring to be honest, cleaning, checking, sorting and that’s how life is. However, and I always have one of those in my pocket, I know I have a choice as I head for the hoover or the power drill or the hose, or the mould clearing squirt. A choice of attitude. I can see myself hearing this and swearing like a fisherman or someone in my local pub on a Friday, and I halter, falter and soften. Dammit. Ok, I will do this utterly boring and repetitious pointless thing again, again, again. I can hear Life laugh. It isn’t a giggle, nor a false Haha, Heh Heh, but a real fall back laugh and I can’t help joining in. Once recovered, I consider this. Ah, yes. To laugh at my self, the one who walked home 2 miles after a ceilidh and didn’t fall in a ditch; the one who got home to begin again the endless round and who regrets not one single second. She.

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Island Blog – Light in the Dark

I love the dark, the way my eyes adjust, the way I can see something of the way ahead. I love the way it prevents forward motion through the fear of it, and the way I can feel that fear whilst the my of self says, stop, stand still, look and see, and I do. I suddenly do. A terrain of black grows light just because I bring the light. Fear still lurks like a smirk but I can allow its companionship. It’s just a kiddle, a scurry, a nobody much. I can step out into the island dark, unpolluted, only stars doing their twinkly winkly thing, no threat, and pull out annuals which have, heretofore, hidden wee tulip hopefuls, their green thrust a whoop in my discoveration. Hallo you, beautiful you, wonderful powerful you, so strong, so bloody determined. You inspire me.

In my life there have been one or two whose recognition of who I am brought light to my eyes, my heart, lifting my step, giving me self-belief. I was walking in the dark, so much dark, the unfriendly kind, and then someone came, someone said something, didn’t judge, correct, didn’t try to fit me into a shape I could never fill, but oh my I was trying so hard to do that. It was like being a size 16 and being in a fitting room with a 12, longing for it to fit. But this person, this person saw me. She saw me. She didn’t do the parent thing. I wasn’t a number of many. I wasn’t an outsider. I wasn’t too loud, a showoff, an embarrassment, a girl to be kept away from gatherings of others in order to avoid the upskittle of bone china coffee cups with her quick wit and the flicksnap of her dance shoes. Nothing predictable about her, about me. Eye roll.

I think this has learned me that darkness is actually see-through. Even at an early age, there is cognition, even if the early-ager doesn’t know how to work the whole thing out. I remember well the moment when a woman, my mother’s age, said to me, stopped me with her hand on mine and looked me full bore, her eyes stars. ”You need to be who you are. I curled away, all broken and lost and 16. You are talented, beautiful, gifted, even. Take that. Own it.” I didn’t know her. I don’t remember her name, but she shifted some blockage in me and for the first time I found the light in my dark.

Right now, and for my own reasons, I want to raise a glass, a light, a life-changing Thank you to all of those who notice, care, speak out and recognise all of we who feel they are worth notalot unless they fit the shape required. You have given us the courage to step out, step up, move forward, and to pass it forward to the next darkling we find.

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Island Blog – Time after Time

I sang this at my African son’s wedding, beneath a tree and without a mike. It was hot, most of us barefoot on scorchio sandy scrub, feet tingling, so alive. I sang it a cappella , nervous, determined. All those guests looking at me. Me singing Cindi Lauper. A big ask. The tree, not a Fever tree but something stunning with a greeny peppered bark, big, twisted, old and with a handthrust of outer limbs all dizzily leafed up, dancing in the hot wind. That was a very big while ago but every time I hear the Cindi song, I’m back there in an African wildness, dancing under twinkly lights, hearing the music, the sound of cicadas,frogs and the dodgy others, the breath of the ocean in and out.

It thinks me. We do so much time after time. Boil the kettle, get through Christmas, change a nappy, do the school run, sort the tax return, go to the supermarket, pay the bills, go to work, send the birthday card, get up, go to bed, attend parent meetings, water the flowers, sweep floors, make beds, and so very on and so very so forth. Jeez it is frickin endless. Yes, it is. Always is. never stops. The beginning does not gentle on to the end. The midriff is fat and ghastly. It is. Let’s be honest. We celebrate beginnings, new love, and I am no cynic. I always hope. We all meet it, we do, the change when children arrive, money strife, the influential differentials between potential grandparents, the demands of work. So very much and time after time.

I sit here, writing, my absolut, my constant, my have to each day, after loading up five spectaculars into the world which now throws me often into a confuse. It is dark now, complete, no false light, no sound but the rickus of a feisty wind with some swear words in her mouth. I watch my old fingers. They still work.

Time after time.

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Island Blog – The Twirligation

We have one now, well, not just us, but all other Everyones who are currently trying to stand upright whilst refilling a water can, or on a walk to the village pub or just to maintain some modicum of dignified taking of the few steps to and from the car, holding on to bloody anything fixed firmly to the ground. Not that being firmly fixed means much, not after Amy, when hundreds of ancient trees fell politely to the ground, killing nobody. I always wondered about this politely falling thing. I have known it for over 40 decades and it still trues itself. Trees fall respectfully, politely, and kill nobody, huge ancients with girths I could never wrap around, 200 years old, old friends which supported bird nests, held whispered secrets in their inner core, absorbed insults, the derilection of duty overheard, and the magic, the imagination swifting from spoken to hopeful whispers late into the absolute dark of an island night.

I have candles, am ready for blackout as the gustpunches elevate and will continue overnight. I know that power (so called) will drop like a bomb. I have what I need. Neighbours, a community, candles, a range to warm food, gas to boil a kettle, a woodburner and wood. Nonetheless, I confess, even after all these years, the gales afear me, a bit, no matter my ready to twirl mentality. It is fierce black out there, no lamplights, no false lights at all and there’ll be nae stars tonight. But, you know what, and just let me get the know what thing for myself before I continue……I have been called out into the darkest of the dark nights, all Twiddlesticks and Fallover to find an ewe struggling to deliver, with torches and clever hands, to the outer edges of Tapselteerie when a canoeist was missing, when the dark was twirly and confusing, the rain all focus and drenching, the night an endless black.

Not any more, although my body memory remembers all of it. So, when gales, hooligans, barrel in like a takeover, you might forgive me for an overreaction because such of this, or these, take me back to being out there, out there in the wild, in the dead of night, half asleep on the back of a quad, bumping into darkness, over trackspit, my face rearranged by the gale, to help deliver a calf, the mother to be a growling, twizzlestick of fury. We could hardly see each other, no stars, just another bloody shut down gale. She was black as soot. Follow her eyes, he said, and moved in. I stuck to the quad, knew he needed help, fuck………legs jelly, follow instructions, I told myself. It was almost morning on a frissball February night and right on the edge of the world. I could hear the thrash of waves, the wild of the night. Something moved me. I know me. I will always answer the call, no. matter the fear. The mother was grinding, growling, fighting, but he moved on. She would not lay down, the wrong hooves showing through her, the wrong birthing. I watched her growl, turn, eyeball him, he a minuscule in her eyes, so huge and ferocious was she. I watched her allow, I saw it, and finally I moved from the quad. The cow sank to the ground and in moments he clocked one front hoof, one back, no good, and gently pushed back, pulled forward and delivered. Immediately the mother grunted, turned, licked the babe into life. It was hailing, big ping pong balls, so cold. As he rose to leave the cow turned, rose and bumped him. He almost fell, but didn’t. She didn’t want that.

You want to. drive? I asked. No, he said, you go. and I did.

So, a gale means something, and a very big something else to others.

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Island Blog – Left of Right in the Dance

There’s a silence at this time of day, when the sun has set behind the hills and the dark, greedy and heavy is bloody determined to win the game. I think about that game. It’s gone on for a gazillion years and yet these two keep on keeping on. We adapt. However, I notice that at certain times of the year those two fighting for space, early themselves. On a cloud-sworn cover up day, the dark finds an invenue and grabs it full force so that, say from about 2/3pm it is effectively dark. The school run is all headlights and avoiding those horrid blue-lit-light cars which confuse and diffuse clarity of vision. Or, they do for me. I’m pulling over thinking Ambulance.

This morning I knew I was going to collect my beloved mini who has been in the operating theatre for almost a week. I was up twirly, Dark still holding like a control freak but obligingly (or maybe because Moon is stronger than Dark), hoisting a crescent moon into its sky, and that light showed me big frost. Oh shoot. I de-pyjamad myself after a couple of strong coffees, black. I did falter. The sun will be low, the courtesy car frozen up, the switchback road possibly an icescape. Then I calmed, ate something and set off. I got as far as my neighbour (8 yards) and could see nothing but black, even with switch-eye shades, the visor down, nothing, no road, no concept of a landscape I have known and trusted for decades. It was gone. I did falter. I could go back home, explain, they’ll understand, I’m old and a fearty. I could. But I didn’t. I stopped, parked, thought ‘what is the left of right, and what is right? It jinked my thinks. I love movement, the physical, the mental, the way we can shift in a dance.

And I remember the dance, the way I went to the left of right with a partner who was making a collision mess of such a simple swing, couldn’t count, legs flying, hands barely gripping. My feet knew better than I ever did, and I saw what might happen if I didn’t guide this galoot back into formation. It’s the same inside my own mind, the crazy galoot, the dark and the light and the whats are there for me to hold onto when the dark oppresses, the light is quiet and hesitant and the galoot is a wild tom on the hunt?

In the silence, now that this island comes bome to itself, there are bare roads, plenty parking, no holidayers, some of whom expect more than they might if they just got the whole island thing, the way we have to go left of right, a lot. I’ve met plenty who’ve come here, and they love it. I do, I confess, have a squidge of an issue with the expectations, as if here is the same as the ‘there’ they have come from, with everything perfect. Island life is far from that. Instead we learn to go to the left of right a whole lot. Here it is all about acceptance, understanding, a gentle acceptance of the way that every single one of us do our best. And, all of us can keep up in the dance.

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Island Blog – Inquillinate

I cut the slimy ends off my syboes until I get to the crispy green, the last addition for a salad. The potato is already baking, the fire lit, the tunes on, the stuff of an admin and action day done. The clouds are back lit, sunlit, fire lit. Just moments. If I move from one room to another I can miss the show. It’s all about noticing, about watching the passing of something, about holding the experience. Everything brings that, every action, each moment, the longing to be noticed. We all want that, if we are honest. Which, mostly, we aren’t. We spend so much time in an inquillination, we do. A place where we ‘dwell in a strange place’. T’is an obsolete word, not used since the 1600s but it’s a gorgeous word and means so much because we all spend time in the strange of a place. Over and over and over in our lives. Those times, say in childhood, when some friend who was always a friend suddenly turns on us when around others. What happened? The times when we presumed everything was just fine and ordinary in our life and something hit us, someone caused massive damage, just like that, in a second, just when we were annoyed about delay, about lack of response, about someone not showing up. When someone we always knew was there, suddenly isn’t. So much cloud hiding the sky. Looking back, well, there comes a clarity, one often too late for reparation.

Someone died. I knew her for decades. I worked for her when she couldn’t manage her beloved garden. She was so strong before she wasn’t. And she was determined. She was a friend. In discussions about any subject, she was a wisdom. She saw a foot slip in any statement and challenged it. Many round tables with her and we all waited for her to speak. She was commanding, but without judgement, confident, knowing.

When we moved to Mull, we threw an open dance ceilidh. Anyone, everyone, just come. Everyone did, including her and her husband. I remember seeing her in the line for Strip the Willow, in her synche-waisted dress, all wide skirt, all white and yellow, her eyes sparkling, waiting for the moment to reach out for a swing.

Rest in Peace my longtime friend.

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Island Blog – All about Light

The light here is ridonculous, changing all the time. I can be not paying attention to the light at all, being as I’m all inside and split with the electric (as they call it up here) and caught in the spot of a standby red or the blue of a fading charger or the flicker of a gas flame, or the sudden of blue eyes, brown eyes, any eyes, any distracting lights. And then I turn to the outside of inside and see it, the change. From a lemony sun to purple, to grey, to blue. The whole place is blue, the hills, the trees, the whateverness. Then, incoming, zeon-neon cycling kits all wrapped around a couple just off their bikes, and I turn in once more to the standby red etc. It’s quite a brain swirl, I’m telling you, although you already know it for yourself. The key, I tell myself, is to keep a hold on the outside light changers because there is definitely something feral and organic about the way it morphs and swingles, evolves and full stops itself. If I was to step out on some mission, like those who ‘conquer’ mountains (Bens, if you want the actual definition) or who do any other conquering nonsense, to what…..capture the light change, get it so right, so perfect, I would be wasting my time. It is enough just to glimpse. Now there’s a clumsy word if ever there was one, although that maybe just in my mouth. You wouldn’t choose to use it in a song. But, a catch, a sudden turn, an eye-capture, that’s it.

Anyway, (never begin a sentence with that word) I’m home now, back from a fun, busy, happy day at the Best Cafe Ever. Loads of laughs and chats and learning that sourdough is a right shit to wash off anything, and that anyone arriving on the other side of the counter feels shy. It thinks me. These grown-ups are suddenly unsure, looking for a welcome, compromised if that welcome doesn’t come quick enough, the light of it. It’s all about light.

Now the fire is lit, the hills beyond the sea-loch have settled into a uniform brown, although, as a painter, there is nothing uniform about brown, nor any another hue. just saying. There is tinder, ochre deep and light, and medium, there is rose gold, there is burnt umber, tango orange, falafel yellow, a skid of drowned lapis, a whitish tense of skinny limbs, bared like my arms in defence, minus the lichen, obviously. I see snaps of old lost grass, a pecker of distant woodland. I see the light of the flooding tide, a slug slide, grey but there is no ‘one’ grey. Everyone knows that.

I’m watching the light right now as the fire breathes and the candles flicker. Out there is more than a closed sky. It always is.

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Island Blog – Convexity

My fingers are twiddling, flexing above the keyboard, readying themselves. Most of the time, and this is the truth, they do the work, have done for years. I can think something, choose a starting gun, and in they come. I know it’s a gift and I am thankful for that gift, that infuriating nudge when the trudge is mudding me.

So, (when did starting a sentence with ‘so’ become a grammatical ok? ) Hallo Dad. Actually I so value his tuition. I wouldn’t be the me of me without his influence. I realise I am diluting myself into waspitude, too much crititude, and it cringes me until my spider fingers flex and fly. I will regather myself, as the sun, so absent today, has suddenly arrived like Lady Gaga singing feisty as the tide withdraws and the sea-loch stills and there is comment in the wondering water.

A new friend, met in the pub today. We arranged to meet at 3.30 but I was ready for earlier. I arrived and she was there, a woman who clocked me, as I clocked her on first meet. From another continent, another generation, but a welcome nonetheless. Taking this off ground, I would say we collided without damage. So random.

And then another came in, dropped his backpack, pulled out a stool. Hey you, I said, and from then conversation grew between strangers. I learned bits about family history, about the art world, about mother love, about the knife attack of trouble, about rising from trauma, about rewinding a neck for all-around looking, about the unexpected thrusting of pain like a dagger in the gut, about gentle landings, about acceptance, about moving on, about recognition of what i can do in the this of that, about sort of letting go. On on bar stool in one hour.

I know about convex. Never knew there was an upward curve. From limitation to elevation. Like today on that bar stool. I arrived curve down, left curve up.