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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 – A Precious Island Life

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

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

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Island Blog – Passerine Birds

They’re here now, the passerines, lifting and lighting up bird feeders, trees, shrubs and gardens. Each morning begins a new bud, a slight of colour, pink, yellow, green, buds bursting like pregnant women into new life. A bird lands, the stem bounces, a confluence of energy, just for a moment, but it is enough. Connection is an imprint made, the duplicity fixed in time. Up there, in the wild sky, whether cloud brown with incoming rain, or cloud white as puffballs against a still slightly icy blue, whooper swans seek rest on their way south, or is it north; various geese honk by, all hoot and panic and in perfect formation; thrushes sing from the tippy top of any tall tree, talking a load of shite, all sqeaks and burps and farts as if one bird makes a whole orchestra.

We wake earlier. Afternoons are actually afternoons, instead of a snippet which goes rudely dark over a cup of tea and a biscuit. It is, as everything is, just a passerine thing, for changes come, unbidden, unbound, just as life should be, if we understand change in that way, in the only way to be honest. I’ve lived long enough to know that this is how it is, no matter how much we may attempt a singular annihilation of such a limitation. Acceptance is all. And that means what? Living every day, yes, as if it is your last. Yes, indeed. But that may be too much. I remember laughing my head off at such crap, once, when I was 30/40 and sinking under the weight of business demands, of children’s needs, of a husband who tried to be what I needed, but didn’t really get it, of collies needing feeding, of muddy feet, of guests, of phone calls asking me to be sure of the best day to see whales in the wild and in good weather. Of so very much more.

I’m thinking of Lizzie. Her funeral soon. How can this be? She, already 72, but only just before me. I am alive for mine, and it feels wrong somehow. I don’t make sense of that, nor try to. I am all about living life each day. You know that. There’s a however and a but in that, neither of which I can explain. She has been in my dreams, her naughty smile. Although I was the one who took the fall as a teen, the instigator, the trouble maker, I must tell you that Lizzie was right beside me. Yes, I was mouthy, a leader, but no leader is worth anything without a Second. Lizzie was calm to my lunacy. She was so gentle beside my absolute fury at absolutely everything and everyone. I wonder at her commitment to me. Most friends ran away and judged. Ditto their parents. My poor mother. I do, now, recognise that.

Now she is gone, sharp and sudden, sort of. A shock indeed. A Passerine Bird of multi colours incorporating musical brilliance, people skills which gathered in choirs and friends and moments and times. We didn’t connect a lot once I left Englandshire for the Island, but she is still in my dreams. How extraordinary to have that impact on someone. Like the passerine bird on the branch of a budding shrub. She bends me, we bounce a bit together, and, then, she is gone.

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Island Blog – A Spangled Lacuna

In every life a little rain must fall. The trouble is that we, as negatively wired humans, tend to collect up all those rain days until the sunny ones get tired of shining, and all but disappear. Folk around us can say ‘Look on the bright side’ until our ears deafen, but it makes little difference. They can also suggest that we focus on the positives, but blind inside our fog or darkness, we just cannot find them. Am I a ‘glass half full’ person, ‘glass half empty’ or ‘no glass at all’ person? Oh please…….too much platitudinosity! In truth, we are all three of those, at times, all of us, even the ones who exhaust us with bounce, their faces always lifted, the lie a cloud in their eyes. None of us are Either, nor Or, Black nor White, for we are both at times. A million colours and a million greys at others. And to feel disallowed when wallowing in black is to feel corrected, fixed and re-routed which does little, if anything at all, to help. We long to be heard, listened to, accepted, befriended, our injuries noticed and respected, and only then can we decide to lift our heads from the ground. It is not easy to find such support outside of a counsellor’s cocoon, because, bizarrely, we all feel the need to elevate a ‘fallen’ one, seeing it as encouragement and inspiration when, in truth, it only serves to highlight the state they are currently in, stuck in mud, pale and lost, beaten down by life.

When I, rarely, flip through social media, I notice there are a gazillion ways to lift my spirits, wisely worded, some ancient, some contemporary, and they all make perfect sense. To my mind, that is. But this is for others, surely, not for me down here in the oubliette. I can see the daylight, yes, long for it to surround me as it seems to surround everyone else in this whole coloured-up world, but I cannot reach it. I am unworthy of this light, obviously. The platitudes and uplifting phrases are as irritating as bluebottles around my head, buzzing out my failure to keep above ground. Until, that is, my eyes adjust to the dark, until I can smell my own decay. I might look back on my life already lived and recall a flash of rainbow, a shift of perspective, and remind myself that I played a leading part, and I played it to the very best of my ability. It was I who made that choice, that decision, took that first step, activated a change. Nobody else did. It was all mine, and still is. Yes, I made mistakes, some ghastly, but I made something happen from nothing. My head lifts as the sun glides overhead and I feel the warmth brush my face. My shoulders soften, my mind gentles, the tanglewire now compromised. Yes, I have been weakened by this decline, but I am stronger too, because I am done with this darkness, and it is I who found my way here, and I who will raise myself up again, with new thoughts, a new energy, singular and vital.

It is precisely because I have become lost in this lacuna, that I have learned just how strong I am, how resilient, how much I want this one life to be all it can be. Others’ lives impact on my own, of course they do, and some have taken all I can possibly give, too much in fact, I gave too much. What was it that led me to give myself away, to believe that, in doing so, I could ‘fix’ all their manifold human problems? We are taught to give, are we not, that to be ‘selfish’ is to be a ‘bad’ person? We are also taught that everything healthy grows from self-love, without which we cannot effectively and wisely love others exactly as they are. If, however, we build ourselves from the amount of love we are given, and that is often lacking, we tell ourselves we don’t deserve it, anyway. We are easily hurt, put down, can feel judged and misunderstood, awkward, unseen, unimportant, invisible. Just as in the oubliette.

I see a rope, one I hadn’t noticed heretofore. The spangle-light dances off rocks, footholds. I rise and stretch my limbs, turn my face to the sky, and begin to climb.

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Island Blog – To Head for the Stars

As I move forward, always forward, even if it feels like I’m moving back, I know that we all are. When someone says ‘I am going back to work, back home, back to school, back to the ordinary’ I will gently question. How can you be going back when you have experienced so much since last you were in those places? I believe you are going forward to them all, or to whichever one applies. Think on it. You possibly made a new friend, learned a new thing, experienced a change, noticed something you hadn’t noticed before. We are always moving forward, always, even, and I repeat myself here, if it feels like we are moving ‘back’.

We may, agreed, be returning to familiar circumstances, be it a job we hate, a relationship that no longer works, or a a school that doesn’t respect us in the way we need. There are many such scenarios. But we have, even if only in our minds, left those places in our understanding. So what do we need right now? Will we continue on the old and comfortably uncomfortable treadmill, or will we find the courage to say No. Enough. In other words to speak out our own truth. And that is a tough ask, I know it, but if we don’t, then nothing, nothing, nothing changes and everyone thinks we are ok about the totally not ok of our lives. We always know when we are unhappy or unfulfilled. The feeling has grown for weeks, months, years, but we seem unable to rise up and shout, unwilling to cause a stir, to rock the boat, to make a ghastly mess. And Life trudges on without us, when what she really wants is to spread her wings, to hunker down for us to climb aboard and thence to lift us both into a sky of hope, adventure and stars.

The reasons for staying stuck lie, mostly, in the old voices, the old judges, the ones we have held on to for years, even when those voices are stilled in death. We take them on like clothing, wear them, quote them, live by their rulings, even though those rulings confined and defined us, squashing us into shapes we could never, ever, sustain, because we are not they, or is it them? We are absolute and unique and there is no copy, not even in a twin. When we are caught up in appearances, we will always be a shadow of what we can be, always, because we are an I. A single I, and this I is not part of a We, not in design, not in mind, nor body, nor experience. I am unique, and if my uniqueness bothers you then it may, respectfully, be your problem, and not mine.

The past and our present are separated by a divide. It is, initially, once we choose to work on discovering our own self,a narrow one, like a slight tectonic shift. The crack is not threatening, as yet, but because of this weakness revealed in the earth’s structure, we know it will widen. And, in the story of our past and our present, this is a good thing. Initially, we can easily leap from present to past, for reassurance, perhaps, validation, if we’re lucky, but it will widen, leaving us one day orphaned and feeling very alone. We are I now, aren’t we? I know that can be scary if the scared ‘I’ has been a significant part of We for longtime, but take courage, and really take notice of your gut, your inner voice of wisdom, because there lies the truth. What any of us were required to be as children, teens, partners or in the workplace does not define the I in any of us. I stands tall and alone. It begins a sentence. It takes back the power from We. And, as you probably all know, someone inside the We is just the one who is determined to retain the status quo and therefore to control.

I have no idea where all that came from, or maybe I do. I watch too many talented beautiful people remain inside the We for safety, protection and appearances, including myself. But I know, now, as I head for 71 as a determined I, that Life is still waiting for that chance to hunker down, to lift you on her back and thence to head for the stars.

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Island Blog – Nature and Form

I felt overwhelmed yesterday. Stuff came in, calls and wotwot, like a collision. I am not good at that, this, it. I confound at dawn, no, earlier, because the beloved old frickin dog wakes me at o400 when I am finally asleep, btw. She means no ill. I know this, deal with the rag of this, and she still rises me with a smile as she squeaks and dances around my sleeping form.

Form. We all love this. It has a geometric shape, can solve an equation, can create a whole frickin building. I love form too. But today had no form, nothing form about it. My overwhelm took over. it was a spread across a peat bog. All those acres of apparent nothing. Generally speaking, I love the nothing, the gasp of cold air, walking out there into the sparkle of ice.

It thinks me. I take me and the dancing squeaker out for a walk, feel the cold hit my face like an energising gift, stopped to hear the thrust of an incoming tide and looked up at the skinny branches cutting the sky. I watched my little dog bounce through the ice-crisped leaves, saw he pick up a stick, long as a fence post and a definite threat to my legs when she scoots into the lead. I chuckled and felt the expulsion of air blast out all the overwhelm. Among the beauty of nature, things simplify. Fallen bracken stalks create a twinkling mound beside the track, all covered in ice and flashing in the sunlight as I move onwards. Ghost trees stand like sentries either side of me, and through the evergreen pines, the sky is a cerulean blue. Tiny clouds, miles above me, look like they’re painted on with a wide and wet brush. Ahead, snow clouds puff up behind the hills, a sort of ariel bonfire, ice white, sun-tipped. Will it snow, I wonder?

I meet nobody at all. Cutting through the woods, I look to the beyond. It seems to go on forever, and however hard I stare at it, this beyond, I will never get to the end of it. I realise that I have been staring at the ground too much, scurrying like a frightened mouse through my small concerns, and allowing them to create my state of mind. I watch a sea eagle slide through the sky, wings wide, slow and easy, and decide I need to get myself up there, to let my small concerns remain on a page or in. my diary, small they are, very small, and I am at liberty to alter or change any or all of them. I am unsure driving in icy conditions so, once I am home again and have rebooted the fire, I call to organise new appointments for a hair cut, an MOT, a shingles jag appointment. I settle to some sewing, eat lunch, switch off the phone and go upstairs for an hour to rest. Perhaps I will sleep a little. The walk into the wilds has given me form perspective, as it always does. Always.

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Island Blog – Ouches

Ouches. I’m unsure there is a plural for an Ouch, but it can so feel like there is, or are, at times when one just doesn’t cut it. Well, it does ‘cut it’ but in multiple directions, like fissures. Too many esses in that word methinks. Backing to the point……

This morning he left, my big African son. He came to be with me after surgery and stayed just over two weeks of big son in doorways, that smile as wide as a continent, those big warm arms, that massive heart, that love in his eyes. We are so easy together. He worked with his coaching clients, stacked my load of wood, repaired a collapso chairo, went through the Spider Darkness of the dodgy understair cupboard, which, back in the yore of yore was a corridor, and they are always dodgy. I remember, as a little boots, on my tricycle, scooting a corridor in a big house/boy’s school and it was miles, and there were rats (yes, there were) and I was there pinging away on my bell and heading for Cook in the huge steamy kitchen with her buns and her smiles and her bosomy welcome. I pedalled like a dingblast. You never saw such footwork. It was darkling, old place, old lighting, possible rat attack, always a thingy. Parents were well into gins and fizz and nonsense and there was me, or I, on my tricycle. I was a brave one, even then, or was I just after Cook’s buns. They were spectacular, but you decide.

He left in the beginning. Morning was pushing Night away with her flaming torch, the sky flipping fire. I was in ma goonie and with coffee to hand. I am fine with this, I can do this, I can let him go off and up into his own life, I said to myself and she, as usual, did this folded arms thing and smirked. And, the daylight was light enough for me. I cleared old clothes, tidied the Spider Darkness and found a few things I had thought swallowed up by the Mouthie past. That chattering reminder of all we failed at, didn’t say, did say, wish we had done, wish we hadn’t done.

But as light concedes to dark, day to night, I miss him, our sundowners, flicking on the twinkly winkly lights, the jacking up of the wood burner, the shared tunes, the dances. And we did it all. And I am so thankful. Although there are many ouches, there is a fricken wealth of memories and I have them all, right here beside me, inside my heart. I can go there any time I feel an ouch.

As I walked today, knowing I would return to the alone of my life, I looked up at the leaves still falling from the beech trees, the caper of their float down, like dancers, a capricious play with the breeze, and I thought, there is so much pain in our broken world, and so much beauty, in loss, in struggle, in play, in dance, in moments shared, even in the ouches. We grow from all of it, even the shit of of it. Have a wonderful weekend. I will. There will be ouches. There always are.

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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 – Just Saying

My garden throws its colour to the sky. I know from the slow down of all those throwing blooms, that these wise creatures are saying farewell for another year. They feel the chill of Autumn, are bent tapselteerie by the sideways punchgusts of October, and they accept. They’re probably knackered anyway. I know how they feel. Pushing out colour and brilliance, every day and for months, is a demand and a half, for sure. Languid clouds in a troposphere of unusual calm, float like holidaymakers, pulling apart now and then to let the sun blast out his light, dazzling my eyes. I watch the season turn and it thinks me. I probably do that thinking thing a bit much, but everything fascinates me. On walks with friends, I point out the spot where deer have traversed the track. I see the flattened grass over here and then, look, a continuation to our left. I see where mice or voles or wotwots have nibbled at fungi, where birds have pulled off the buds that come, always too late, a nourishment as food supplies dwindle. I hear the change of birdsong. And I think about all of it.

What is it like to roost hungry, and how many days can any bird manage that? How many deer in this fold? Are there young? A hind and her healthy looking calf, stand just beside the track. I lasso the dog and avert my eyes. I mean no harm, I tell her, in my calmest voice, and keep walking. I look up now and then to see here black eyes fixed on me, her head turning as I move on. She is beautiful. From the look of her calf, she is a good mother. I remember that this is the rutting season, the big fight ahead for the stags. I will hear them roaring soon, the clack of antlers across the sea-loch and that will think me all over again. Survival is key to all animals, the continuation and strength of bloodlines. The old guys will be thrown out, or killed on those hillsides. It makes sense, in the animal kingdom. The males fighting, always fighting. The females protecting, always protecting. Who is the wiser, I wonder? Neither, is the answer. Both have a role, an essential role, and in the animal kingdom it is clear and unquestioned. Perhaps in the realm of humans, this is where we get in a muddle, because I believe that our men can feel very lost around all the powerful and assertive women.

Not that I pay any homage to the old ways. I have, personally fought against that load of nonsense, and with zeal and planted feet, but I do think that even our young men are in a spin. They learned a role, it was clear. And now, it’s as if they have been thrown into a womansphere, in which they might be forgiven for feeling that they have little space, if any. Perhaps we women might refrain from criticising men in general, much as we worked hard to stop them from critising us, and to, instead, see them as individuals, just as we women are.

Just saying.

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Island Blog – A Wonderful Thing

I’ve decided. I may have breast cancer and wotwot, but the knowledge has kicked my wobbly butt. I used to think that bereavement and loneliness was a fricking big deal not so long ago. Then I was Nearly Dead for a couple of weeks and now cancer is my new companion, offering a new perspective. It thinks me. How Life twist and tapselteeries us, what a tumbler, a flipdoodle, and once a simple human using a minute percentage of her huge brain has come to some sort of agreement with all this twisting, tumbling, flipdoodling thingy, there remains a think or two. So much of it all is way beyond my control, but there are snippets of life or self, over which I have complete control. So that is the country in which I have landed. It is new territory, for sure. I have sat on said wobbly butt for almost 3 years now and you can tell. I refuse to run anywhere for fear of setting off a landslide. Looking out at Life through windows is no way to live, even if the looker cannot see any side of Life to which he or she belongs any more. Once, she was this busy, rushing, active, caring woman and now, well now, she is a blob, a pointless one. It isn’t that she misses the man to whom she was married, because she doesn’t. He was wonderful and infuriating. He was everything to her and he drove her to distraction. He reached his Sell By date most timely. She was done with caring for him. And yet, and yet, his presence was something she thought she could live without and with ease and, in that, she was delusional. His company, his very self had merged with her own, dammit. She knows that now. It took that horsefly bite, that collapse into Nearly Deadness and the subsequent cancer Hallo, to sharpen her wits, to tell her that she is now her own purpose and that knowledge requires action.

So, I call the local swimming pool. Local! ha! It is 23 winding miles away, a real shlep and I do not like swimming pools, no thank you. However, my wobbly butt tells me it needs attention and not the unwanted sort. I, through 3 years of sitting on it, writing, sewing, hiding, reading, are done. I had to go for a chest Xray this morning and that takes me very close, dangerously so, to the damn swimming pool. So, I clear my throat and call. I speak to Nadia, delightful, and she tells me there are no lessons on a Friday. I explain, overly so, that I must build up muscle tone having lost it all somewhere, although I couldn’t tell her where. X ray complete, no metal, no, hold this, rest your chin, done, thanks Helen. The sun is warm, ditto the wind. Glorious. Well no excuse now. Damnit again. I arrive, book in, swim, hating the first two lengths and then, and then, I get into my stride. Instead of jerking and splashing and hating it, I begin to flow. Well, sort of. After I spend a while chatting with the girls at reception and we laugh and connect and now I have to go again next week because I said I would.

I swing my sassy mini out of the car park and drive home. My energy level is up. It hasn’t been anywhere near the Up thing for 3 years. I grab a mushroom omelet for lunch and decide to take the barky terrier (bored) to Calgary beach, ignoring the usual flaps about No Parking Spaces, or Meeting The Bus on That Tiny Road (especially on corners) and we are off! I feel wild again, my favourite feeling. No jumper required. Only a poo bag and a my phone for photos. The sky is as blue as my hair, the tide way out (Blue Moon) and it is lunchtime so the sands are almost empty. The bay is huge and we walk it, in and out of the warm saltwater. Geese fly overhead and I almost fall over watching them. Life. Life. Life abounds, and in me too.

Home again but still fizzing with NRG, I decide to wander to the shore to gather sloes for gin, even as I have no gin, yet. I balance cautiously, on the rickety rocks of the shore, and gather the beautiful blue berries. I hear seabirds, the rush of a changing tide, the laughter of children somewhere across the sealoch. I wander home as leaves fall around me. The faithful old trees are heading for a long sleep, and Autumn is in full and fine fettle holding up blue skies and clouds, stars, Lady Moon and Father Sun. The circle of Life circles on, as I move gently through memories and hurts and joys and promises of more to come. I don’t know what, of course, but just the knowing is a wonderful thing.