short-story

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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.

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Island Blog – Fiddle Work

I was thinking about fiddling today. I was. We do fiddle about, do we not, with fingers, with ideas, with olding, with blockades, with the constant push against the barriers we meet on a daily basis. Should there be a question mark here? Honestly, the whole ‘how you do grammar’ thing was once my absolut. Don’t mess with me on that word. It doesn’t need an ‘e’. There are kids this day bothering about results on where the eff they place their ees, never mind their hyphens and dashes and please don’t bring up exclamation marks, which, btw, were just fine a few years ago, and which have now become a yawn. Turmoil at worst. Fiddling at best.

Let’s fiddle. Fiddling requires finger movement, dynamic finger movement, in the fingers, that is. Limited, yes, unless you have learned how to. In the mind, different. There’s a wildscape in that head which (not ‘that’,….never ‘that’.. #grammarqueen) can spiral the brightest mind. You might go low one day and all the old stuff rushes in as if a tide has suddenly turned on you. It stutters, physical momentum, there are stumbles, hesitations, pauses, a want for hiding. Other days, and for no particular reason, the fiddle mind plays a wonderfully dynamic tune, and your heart is light, your clothes feel right, your make-up worked, the path ahead clears like a walk into bright opportunities and surprising serendipities. What you expect, you will attract. I know this. It is a fact and proven. So what is the thing about days when your fingers tangle-damage your scarf, when, in irritation at said tangle-damage, you wheech off a precious gold chain, breaking it; when you forget your keys, can’t decide what to wear for an important something or someone or when your ego is way below knicker level, in fact it’s ankle deep and asleep? There’ll be days like these. Mama said.

I had one today. I know these days of old. They’re trying to be the seventh wave, and maybe they are. They do piss me off, nonetheless, because I never gave them permission to diffuse me into a spread I feel incapable of. I wanted focus, a strong light ahead, a clear path, and now you straggle me into a general illuminator. I don’t care who else can see. I just want light for myself. Ah! there it is, the conundrum. So I don’t appear to be the master of my own days. Instead there is a force I cannot see which confabulates my story, my plan, me.

When I arrived at work, I felt as if my outside, all uniformed up, didn’t belong to me. At the door, I pulled up, said some stern words to myself, got to it. But it didn’t shift. I listened to the laughter from my delicious co-workers, chatted, heard their news, cleared tables, engaged with customers, laughed with them, loved their dogs, filled water jugs, cleaned endless kitchen equipment (inventively), but I still felt I was limpish . I thought ‘tired.’ I thought ‘old.’ I watch my fingers type this out and I laugh. Tired, yes. Old yes.

Ach, wheesht! Fiddle on. Always fiddle on.

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Island Blog – Thinkfull Traverse

It began gently. We worked on this and that in the almost empty cafe, tables waiting, our voices echoing in the space, rolling up and over and down again back to us behind the counter. We commented on the bajonkers of yesterday when folk arrived in bulk packages, and the difference this day. Someone, I won’t name her, said the jinxword ‘Quiet’. And that was that. In they rolled, those with children, those on a tour bus, those in couples, singles, triples and more. The sun shone on them until the clouds snatched that chance away and even the roof builders, noisy nail-gun-toting buildmen, with voices and shouts and good works and noise, had to demur, to capitulate as the heavenly water threatened to dilute their egos.

Meanwhile, down in the depths of cafe-ness, everything changed. Suddenly, and it was ‘suddenly’, we were serving lunches, quiches, soups, baby chinos, scones with or without cheese, cream, jam, foccacia sandwiches with beet, green stuff, hummus, quiches, fresh, intelligent, spontaneous, ice creams, cakes so soft and so spectacular, I do marvel. These bakers appear to bake without effort, all bonhomie smiles of welcome even if they are mid shift on a pastry or spongeal bonkers. When something runs out, they say, Ok and go back to make another fabulous.

I am dunk-sunk in the Washeroo, my choice, definitely my choice. I like it in this bubble, even when the temperature rises to silly high, all that steam from the dishwasher and the hot water required to make everyone safe from whatever they imagine is out there. I am good at my job, I know that, even as I remember the washing up thing back in my day when the process was often all about the visual and less about the temperature of the water, the cleanliness of the scrubber (not me, the thing that scrubbed). Different now. I also remember Health and Safety appearing, she in a suit (so very obvious) having driven up the long pothole track to sit alone at dinner, like a bird, her head pecking left and right, her judgement the next morning, clear. She knew there were 4 collies in the kitchen, 5 children dragging in brush and mud. and vibrant stories, a husband who never cleaned up for anyone and who, for sure, had a chainsaw to mentor with oil and spray and gloop in the cooking kitchen, or a lamb to deliver in the warm because the alternative was hypothermia and death. But she had her remit. I sat with her, I did, I could hear her stockings rasp as she sat, as she moved and I did feel for her feral self. I’m sure there was one, somewhere. inside.

Today did think me. My thumbs hurt, I stood a long time, it was humid pre rainfall. I did feel it all. But I felt all of this before my cafe work, all on my own over many widow years, and then at times the sore thumbs, the ones which have served me for over 7 decades, took on a magnitude, when other bollix, olding bollix, rose into the ‘it’ of a day, and on and on until I, even I grew sick of my winging as if this was how it would always be, and from now on, the olding crone whispering a downfall. So, instead, ignoring the olding crone, the sore thumbs, the souciant eruption of care for my thumbs, hips, old legs, slower arms of me, I rose. I did. I remember doing it and it recalled me, the doing of it many times before, although I was younger then.

It doesn’t change, that choice, that attitude. Nobody has to turn in, if they don’t want to. I’m going to turn up every day no matter the what, the which, the who, the when of anything. Feisty, Fairy, Failing, Freeing, Focussing, Free-ing up, Friendly, and, trust me, all the other F words chuckling me in this daily throw of the dice, and that also shuts me the f up on my sore bits. We dance together, work in a dance dynamic as we serve and serve, clear and clear, smile and smile. In short, we have found a home. I really think so.

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Island Blog – Aestival and a Hotchi Witchi

Work today was a spin and a din. Lordy, I swear folk decide to arrive in a gamut, they do. From zero to bonkers in moments, and it is moments, not minutes, although, technically they both may add up to 60 seconds. But it’s the moments that trixillate the arrival thingy. A drift of one family, small noses level with the cake counter, a scarp of I Wants spilling across the wood, echoing, developing. Big parents minding them with hand fusses and gentle remonstrations. Tired, I bet. I remember that time. Nothing pleases for long, minutes, maybe. Maybe. A group of time travellers. Well, they look like Time Travellers to me, all lycra and speedo and helmets and smiles and buzz. Then, older folk, white-headed, gentle, of their generation, polite and smiling, asking for tea for two and cinnamon buns, yes please. These sell out in minutes. All of the baking is ridonculous. So soft, so inviting, so tasty. I plate up, plate up, out it all goes, and in come the compliments, the thank yous.

The spread of the Best Cafe Ever is a good sprawl. Tables not too close and there is, on days like today, sunshine enough for a spill outside into sunbeat or shade, the circular bench tables offering the chance to chat among the feral and opportunistic sparrows who have so worked out crumb snatching. They are even brave enough to sit right beside delighted customers, heads cocked. I so admire them, and the customers who don’t swat.

I love the team of Us. the summer now is full of folk for from Englandshire, school holidays and a choice, I guess, not to fly to abroad, wherever that is, but coming instead to a beautiful island, thrumming with history and the chance to get out there on a boat into the biggest ocean, the Atlantic, the one who controls lives for a gazillion coastlines, carrying as many stories on her back and within her depths as would delight a bedtime child all the way up to adulthood, if said child hears something that lights a light within. And there’s no given on that.

As I drive back home from work, I notice that some still spray poison. I also get it, not that I would ever choose to spray poison. But, I do remember, I do, the overwhelm of bracken, stealing foodal ground from cattle and sheep, and our own internal battle with the choice between poison and the slow and endless alternative. However, there is a disallowance in me now. Where we were dealing with frickin miles of green and the skin-legs of grisly cattle and skitter sheep. this poison is in small gardens, constructs within a wall of hedge and strappish fence. There’s no need for poison here. It’s quick, yes, but it also kills wildflowers, insects who tap down, any water supply, albeit deep down, any birds, spiders, bees, wasps (we need them), flies too, ditto. I do really wish that, in the crevasse that divides generations, there is a wise person, an Hotchi Witchi, one who would not let a single young thing pass until they proved they wanted to be a facilitator of intelligent change.

That’s what I wish for future aestival days, ones I will never see. Maybe I will be the Hotchi Witchi. If so, plan your responses, you young things.

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Island Blog – Invectus

Last night, Buck Moon, btw, full and shouting, although I missed the earlier rise into sky disco mode, because I was in bed by nine, still light, still opportunity out there, but my opportunity opening had closed. I was happily Beach Cafe tired and there was a good book awaiting me along with my nightie (sorry for the detail) and a big mug of knockout drops, aka, Chamomile, 2, Sleep tea, one. Works a treat. I can actually leave the night unattended, she gets on with herself, darkling corridors and alleyways and rocks on the shore, inviting the night creatures out like a disco queen.

However, and this was a big However for me, last night when the night disco raised hell for neighbours and when the Buck Moon was rubbing the velvet off his antlers, asleep was I, calm and well-read, chamomile drugged, my heart the rhythm, a gentle beat. Actually, that’s a lie. I am hellfire in my chest, the beat of acid house, or whatever that hysterical thrumming beat is called. Anyway……is there another word for a crossroads in direction? Happy to receive ideas. Let me begin.

I think I fell asleep around 10. I flipped off an extra pillow, felt the fresh breeze pushing in the wide window, and gloried in it. T’is done, I said, I did, out loud. Sleep now. And we did, the breeze and I, until the carbon monoxide monitor rose into a soprano that would split any ears, all ears. It began as a chirrup, which I ignored. I’ve done well on this island ignoring alarms, any sort. Mostly, they are nonsense. However, this scream would not be ignored, rising into a definite panic. I came downstairs, checked the house and found a citronella candle still burning, encased, yes, but burning nonetheless. I had forgot.

I pulled the CO2 thing off the wall, after extinguishing the candle, and pushed every damn button. It screamed on. I sat with it for moments, doing the pushing thing, but that ear-splitting scream continued and I mean continued, non frickin stop. I made tea, sat, shook my head a lot. I knew I needed sleep, there was no gas leak, no nothing, all windows open in this heat , no threat. I filled a bucket with water and dropped the monitor in it. I had already unscrewed the back from the front, always, in my opinion, the best advice to give to anyone, no matter the problem, but still it shrieked, even underwater. I went back to bed and applied ear plugs, slept a bit, but when I woke about 3 am, I could still hear it, burbling away drowned, not drowned. Apologising to my, now, exhausted fluffy dressing gown, I literally caterpulted downstairs. It is 04.30. I have work tomorrow, no, today. There is no danger here. Still shrieking in the drowning bucket. Ach……Ok, you, I thank you for being so wonderful, I think. I put it in the fridge and still it beeped. I got some sleep, and loved my day in the Best Cafe Ever. However, when I did come down at 04.30, I knew there was a reason for all this nonsense. There, like a new planet, the full Buck Moon. Held, in sky stasis, right in my face. I didn’t need lights.

Thinks me. Someone who irritates, something that irritates. What can we learn about another and, what’s more, was there a random something that led us here, this now, one we might not have chosen, but one which may give us the insight we need?

I am happy to say. that, with help, my feisty and wonderful CO2 monitor is no more. I will buy another one because I know, and this may be a big shift, that when something alerts me, no matter it electronic, I am alert. I honestly don’t believe that things and people are apart from each other. After all, and think on this, we constructed the things. We are connected, as we are with the tides and the moonflows, even if we live in concrete and streetal limitations and confines.

If only we believed,

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Island Blog – Can you see me, hear me?

I repot the Money Tree. I’ve had it for decades and in the same pot, the escaping roots lifting it all wonkychops. I cannot think how long that feisty wee bonsai darling has allowed the wonky. It thinks me, about wonky, I mean. I had heard it ask for a repot, for a long time, but, as happens to us all, I was just too busy with the what now of pretty much everything so that its asking floated into the air until I couldn’t hear it above the insistent demands of each day. Until I did, hear it ask again. It now stands in a slightly bigger pot, roots tended and loosened, wonky no more.

I think about re-potting, about asking and about not being heard. Today I had no work and I was very tired, all bog-eyes and rising from a very restless sleep, if sleep came at all. The dynamic in work is a great place to learn, about others, about the space, about the levels, about wonky. My mind scoots back to the times I have listened to the angst in a workplace, the strife of it all spilling from another’s lips, the obvious wonky. Having lived this long, I know that it is natural to look for a solution outside of oneself; the wrong dynamic, the wrong allocation of duties, the member of staff who is so in your face that you just can’t find a way to work with them. The ones who avoid duties leaving them to you. The getting away with it just because they are who they are, damn good at their job but not able to work with emotional intelligence within a team. I’ve heard it all. It’s wonky.

I have also learned that love, compassion, a listening ear and recognition of another is key to solution. It takes humility, yes. It asks for a choice to make something work, together. There are many people, all awkward with their things, who cannot communicate as perhaps I or you can. They just cannot. Nonetheless they are asking to be seen, heard, loved, kept safe, and, if that is determinedly acknowledged, the wonky can find a level. Not their wonky, but the one of the whole. Imbalance is a sea thing. God, don’t I know it, out there where each wave blocked out the whole sky. I know it in a bumpy marriage, a tricky parentage, an uncomfortable time with my own children. There is wonky everywhere. But here’s the thing. It isn’t about being perfect, or, maybe it is, because not one of us can aspire to that, but being the one who allows, who befriends, supports, nourishes, even if another is a complete alien in our perception, that one can actively prevent a serious wonk, one which just might tip the whole thing over into disaster. If we all stopped thinking so much about ourselves and our own wants and needs ALL of the time, we might hear the little voice asking.

Can you see me, hear me?

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Island Blog – Two Sparrows

I love my work. I’ve said this before, I know, I know, but I am happy to say it again. The energy required, the energy generated, both are like two sides of a something that has two sides, which, pretty much defines all of us. Our bright talents can go dark, but that is all about personal management, a noticing, the ability to uprise road blocks should one be careening, and our inherent goodness, because we all have that. It is slightly off-pissing that we need to keep a hold on the wonky planks of our personal attics, to ensure that the ‘cobwebs’ don’t become thixotropic, dense. cauterising. Oh, we who are honest, know that place, and there’s a choice thing there. Actually, it’s mostly an ‘oh bugger’ because what we inherently know, regardless of parental influence, is that we don’t want to harm, that we are listening, noticing, learning.

No idea why I went there. Perhaps it is because on my journey to work I meet eejits who are, very possibly wonderful people but who don’t feel the need to wave a thank you as I skid off into the briars and sludge in order that they, in pristine big-ass vehicles with one wife and possibly one dog, slide by. I’m happy with the slide, and I always wave first, but when another living, breathing, vulnerable human makes no eye contact, proffers no acknowledgement of my skid into the briars, I confess I do ‘miff’. Momentarily. It wonders me. Is this how life is for them in wherever they come from? What I do know is that it isn’t a warm community, like a remote island, wherein we all recognise the need for each other. And that is sad.

Today, as the cafe filled with soup orders, dogs, children, bikers, walkers, holiday folk with a hunger for delicious scones and fantabulous cakes, coffees, herbal teas and a welcome that seems to bring everyone together, there was just me, behind pots and bowls and a sort of lull. I heard a sparrow cheep, insistent, and recognised it immediately (the benefit of a mostly silent island life) as a young one shouting at dad. It’s usually dad. Mum has had enough. She is not there for the endless ‘feed-me’ demandings. I emerged from the pots, nobody else there and followed the sound. As I passed by the tables, conversation flowed, nobody else caught this, to discover two sparrows inside the door, on the stairs, baby shouting, dad (I imagined, exhausted, with a ‘what now?’ in his voice}. I slowly rose the stairs, the door behind them, the birds, thankfully open. I gentled ‘ off you go, you guys’ as if they could understand me. Eventually they did.

Inside the busy, the curriculum of any work, the random, the sparrow, will fly in and will think you. Some will notice and respond. Many will not. I want to notice everything, everyone, all of this life, the random, the awkward, whilst learning the ability to accommodate, even to whisper a freedom. For me, there is nothing else.