January 4, 2026 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – A Beautiful Share

It’s damn cold here, like freezeballs. A rarety for the West Coast where, to date, and over Sinkturies we have enjoyed endless rainfall, no floods thanks to upthrust rock formations and a very nearby Atlantic, happy to take on the slew and the wild of overexcited burns, rivers, swamps, bogs, lost wellies and various other waterswingles. T’was the island way. My kids made sure one wellie always got oopsed off some boat, some pier. We knew nothing of ocean plastic pollution back then in the 70’s. I wish we had because we met that problem so very often as we tracked and studied marine mammals and the unintended but immense blockages in their natural flow. I do remember the cold back then, but it was wild cold, the one you always meet out at sea when the wild is biting your face off and the swipe of waval spume would threaten your balls, if you had them. Out there, the fishers, they face a supreme cold. There is nought between their boat and the Antarctic blow, the wind snap from the East, North. A load of winds, cold, colluding, dynamic in what they decide. I’m not saying the weather chooses menace. It may sound that I do.

But that all thinks me as I shiver my way into a shower in a cold bathroom, slipping off clothes I don’t really want to slip off. My home is warm, yes. But this cold is new. I remember it and for 15 long winters on Tapselteerie, when ice frosted the insides of all windows with spectacular art and the iced carpet, about 3 feet beyond the frost catch, and when I just wanted to shout a load of abuse at the Winter King. This bit thinks me. The ones who live in places I don’t know, now I am warm. We change our levels of acceptability as we move on. I know it. I lived under a minus 3 all flipping winter. No hot water, mice everywhere, five kids, five vibrant and wild kids, not enough food, a load of making something out of nothing, their laughter, their spin, their don’t care about a lamb in the hypothermic oven, the calf in a nest around the aga, warm lamp lit. They slept through our wakening.

I remember a night, dark, no lights, no warmth. Hallo you, I said. I’d come down to make a cup of tea, sleep too cold for sticking. Me too, he said. I think I lit a candle. We toasted cups. Fuck the cold, I said, and we laughed a beautiful share.

January 15, 2025 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – From Gimcrack to Newbuild

Arriving back in Scotland was a right shock. From 34 degrees to minus 8, and overnight. Doesn’t seem possible. All those sleepless hours inside a huge metal bird, squashed and fighting for leg room and elbow room as we all hurtled through time and space, over countries we may never set foot in, delude us. We left in shorts, well, I didn’t, still buzzing with holiday flutter and fast departing tans, breathing in many other breaths and emissions, only to land in a cold, dark, very early, winter morning, wishing we’d chosen thermal longs instead of cotton shorts.

Outside the terminal, folk with fast departing tans, shivered, puffing steam like the Hogwarts Express and stamping. I didn’t risk the stamping thing, having only light plimsoles on my feet, one of which threatens a hole. I just stood in awe, watching the excited departees, smiling at the caved in faces of others like me who wanted nothing more than to run back to the plane demanding a return ticket. It’s winter, for goodness sake, I hissed to myself, teeth chattering something I couldn’t catch. Get over yourself. You’ve made it back, after all, no damage done.

Met, as I was, by my daughter and granddaughter and hugged warmly, my shivers abated. The car pulsed heat, the snow was stunning, I was safe. As we drove in lines of traffic, all going somewhere, I presumed, I felt many twinges of sadness at my leaving Africa, the son, the sun, the heat, the music, the warm sea, the ease with which anyone can live in a place that never gets cold at all. Of course, to live there would be a very different thing. Perhaps the heat, sometimes rising into the late 40s, might cause problems with working conditions, with comfortable sleep, with mental alertness. I didn’t have to be alert at all, had a fan blowing me almost out of bed each night, didn’t have to work. that’s not real life, however, that’s a holiday, an adventure every day with company, laughter, games, walks, moments that lifted us almost off our feet and nothing mattered, not even the threatening hole in my shoe.

Slowly I acclimatised, very slowly, and particularly so as I had managed to land with extra baggage – a novovirus bug, always a risk when travelling, when inhaling other breaths and emissions, no matter how clean the recycled air professes to be. The virus is brutal. Don’t catch it. Then I gave it to my daughter who missed her 50th birthday as a result. So unkind of me, but what control do any of us have over the invisible? I am happy to report that, it seems, nobody else in the family caught the devil, and today I begin my journey back to the island in sunshine. It’s still going to be winter for a long while, I know that, but I feel as if I have moved from gimcrack to newbuild. Plans for self-improvement, for more fun, for more adventures, all just waiting for me to press ‘play,’ and I am ready.

Whatever we go through, whatever befalls us, cannot break us if we refuse to break. We may lose confidence, bodily parts, outward beauty and all control over flesh gravity, but this olding generation is a tough cookie. And, all we have to do is to keep getting up, keep looking out like excited children, who just know they will catch a falling star. One day.

January 18, 2024 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – A Softening, Perhaps

On the track, the snow is dibbled, pecked and scribbled. Footprints slideside with others, creating giant boots, the skitter of bird, claw of dog, a circle and a stop. The pines, spruce, fir and thuja overhang the track, endless fingers luffing in a breeze that whispers thaw, falling drips to pepper the snow, and deeply. I see that other walkers have, mostly, kept to the midships of this snowfull track, each side flattened by big ass tyres, pressed into a slipslide.

When a thaw is coming, it makes noise. My neighbours will notice that noise, as snow slides and crumps to the ground, but I won’t because I have no insulation in my loft. Their roof holds the snow. Mine shucks it off. It laughs me, when I’m not worrying about it. As I walk, I can hear the trees register a change, a lift from the stasis of snowfreeze. They creak and groan like old men lifting from a chair (or being told to do the washing up) and I stop to listen and to lift. You old buggers have been standing here since 1840. You have seen so much, heard so much, learned so much, withstood so much. I know you can keep on keeping on. I imagine an eye roll at my retreating back.

Turning into the Fairy Woods, where the beeches ghost, I notice where the thaw is slow. Needle spread underfoot, no birds, no song beyond the scrawing screech of a jay, the ground is still hard, still snow covered. It wonders me. Does the earth feel the warmth of snow cover, as would a polar explorer, Inuit, Bear? Perhaps it is kind of cosy below that duvet of ice crystals, soft and almost motherly. Usually we have slice-rain, sleet and unkind slapdunk. Perhaps you like this new thing? I ask and something rustles.

Rounding, I tramp the track homeward, keeping to the midship. Younger trees stand here, scalped and ghosted but just resting, really. They will return in Spring. On this track, the thaw is more obvious, not on the track itself, but beside it. The dance of endless birds leave their prints, the pock mark of thaw-drips pepper the besides. Everything was covered yesterday, covert, hiding truths. Today, a softening. An opening, perhaps.

January 17, 2024 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – The Snow and a Wink

It came down, the snow, yesterday when I was washing up dishes at the twice monthly Lunch Club, organised and devised by the best soup and pudding makers, surprises always a happening, like the profiteroles this time. Who on earth makes them? S’not me, not never, but there they were all perfect and breathily awaiting that chocolate rum sauce. The folks attending scraped their plates, begged for more, loved every mouthful. The snow fell on, warmed just a twist, slushed up into icepuddling and then kept its mouth shut as the next freeze blew in like a breath. We, the kitchen staff checked the window, the out of it, The snow and ice checkers. Our guests are tricky, need sticks. I’m washing and rinsing and watching the snowfall. The buzz in the kitchen is warm and laughing, alltalk, village, community, life, health, loves, all of it. My back is to the room, but I hear it all, the glorious buzz of friends, of community.

I rise, or my trusty mini does, up the twist hill to the gape of the road. I swing right and then take the slide right and down into the village. Down always works, no more hills, no matter the slide shift of snow and ice. I will get home, even if it is a sort of sledge thing. The snow falls on, and, later, I walk with a stick, just in case. I keep walking daily even if it has scant fun without the wee dog. I purpose myself, watch everything, notice each change, check footprints, see the chunnels of slewed freezing rain trying to find its way back to the sea, halted by fallen leaves, sticks, sludge. I cautious my boots along the slippy track, keeping middle ground where nobody walks and where the road fill has elevated like the ridge on a badger.

And on it snows. We don’t know this non stop snow thing, not here on the west. I watch the morning, the garden birds zing and slew around the feeders, as the snow lifts the ground into a new level. I crunch out in sand shoes and almost disappear, or they do, to check the mailbox. This takes me a wheech and a fight with the flip lid catch thingy, gloves on, to reveal nothing much. The sky is a wildscape. I see highrise winds luffing the faraway clouds, a reveal. There is argument up there, so far up there. Closer, the snow clouds fluff up like boys at a disco, all puff and promise. I walk out and stand to look up. Whatever is coming will come and I, me, small unimportant old woman, am here. I say this out, and just as I do, there’s a skedaddle in the clouds and the sun winks at me.

Ha! I smile, and crunch my way back home.

December 30, 2023 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – Feral Contours

That’s an oxymoron, by the way you academic goonies, but you know I like to play with words and to challenge boundaries. In my contoured life, I was as feral as possible, and deliberately. However, I’m talking about snow just now, not the blanket covering thing that you may know as snow, but the white stuff that drives in on the back of a blustering wind, only to whisper itself into corners and crevices, and then, to melt. I watch the hillsides on the other side of the tidal loch, as the waters barrel in and out, capped today with ruffles of white water, like a line of choir girls in a hurry. Gulls float backwards, the wee birds twink and startle above the feeders and even Madam Sparrowhawk missed today, her skirts flipping about white, feathers in somewhat of a disarray as she sulked atop my berberis. Although I know she needs to eat, I won’t make it easy for her, not with all these miles and miles wide open to her, for she is a she, the fastest bird of prey and horribly accurate. I have watched her close her wings at 80mph to get through a wire fence, then to fill out once again, to flip and level and to grab Jock. Jock is the name of all male blackbirds. I notice that the girls are far quicker to juke away. Much like women.

Back to the snow. It came suddenly and making a hoor of a noise. Actually, it was the wind, the shout and slam of it, suddenly elated with a thousand snowflakes on its back, and laughing at the slamming thing it achieved against all windows and doors. I am sure we were collectively startled, even though a cloudreader would have known what was about to come, the whole flinging aboot of wheelie bins, the tattering of bird feathers, the resigned bend of the big ass pines on the shore below me. I watch the way the snow has stayed. Over the sealoch is the cold place, little sun for months and a frozen promise when, over here, we melt. It isn’t resignation, but just a good choice of position. I can do Dark, but I need light, particularly natural light. I have gone from my home, all wet and leaking and light, to a friend for coffee across the water, and crunched my inappropriate shoes over solid ice. T’is bizarre.

I look over by, as they say here, and see the snow has painted a new picture. It was just a few hills yesterday, with empty land after felling. Larches still stand, now ghost trees, elevations, dips, wrinkles, brown and more brown plus boulders which sometimes catch a wink from the low sun and rise into a glister of beauty for just a moment. But now there is snowvelt. There is a new land over there, the ridges crisp and with a curious turn this way and that. The forestry lines are ruler straight, pulling up into the bumpy clouds, all shades of grey and quite unsure, it seems, of what to do next or where to go. I see faces in the light touch of the snow painter, here an old man puffing out his last breath, there a child running out to sea, chasing a ball. In one place the snowland is thicker. Why? It wonders me, until I see the stand of evergreens. I think of who might have planted them and why. Stories abound when we are curious and I am always thus.

We all have to live within contours, some of us more than others, when our sky is grey and our light lightweight. We can think sink or we can rise like a surprise. We can speak out, even as we are hoping our bladder won’t let us down. We can. We are naturally feral. It isn’t any easier for a so called privileged person to find a voice, to speak the truth, to point out the cutaway contours, to definate the self, to see the old man dying, the child chasing a ball out to sea.

A new year lies ahead. Sounds good at first until the old stuff kicks in. Don’t let it, if it isn’t what you want. Be brave enough to see, to acknowledge and to act. Create new contours, feral, of course.

January 23, 2021 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – Pock, Shot, Falling and Holding

Early. I am up for the silence. The silence of snowfall. I hear something that sounds like nothing. A flip and a flop against the roof, the window, like something soft landing, politely. I know rain. I know hail, the blatter and scattermongery of it, the slap and splat against doubled glass, the alert of ice. Rain is easy. Like a friend. A well-known. It may cause me to sigh or raise my thinning eyebrows when it comes in the night but I know it nonetheless.

Waking, too early. Darkness with cold fingers, pre my ineffective central heating set for 0600, those ancient radiators puffing like old women losing the will to breathe, the ones affixed below windows as if that was ever a good idea. Hunkering behind thick, light refusing curtains, they pump their lightbulb warmth into a wide open space. But, I tell them, thank you. Good for you, you little cobwebbed fatlings. You do your best. If I had the money, I would sentence them to the metal tip, to landfill, and buy myself those svelte flatscreen daughters of effective heat. I don’t tell them that.

Walking in snowfall. It feels cold but is, in truth, warmer, or there would be no snow. My boots pock the elevations. I am old enough to know that it is wise to walk upon the elevations, the fresh-fall, where other booted feet have been equally wise. Where the tyre marks ride lie ice and a potential slip. I don’t beckon a slip, potential or otherwise, with my spindleshanks and my old bones that, apparently, break on contact, first with gravity and thence with a landing. We are not so good at landing as we age. Too much caught in the fear of it, tense, awkward, doomed.

My boots follow the high riser boots that have gone before, invisible walkers who only came today. I am enough of a tracker to know this. Pock, pock, scrunch, scrunch, my boots louding the sound of distant gunfire. I think of the trenches, of war. That sound must have brought such fear to listening hearts hiding in the dark. I notice the tracks. A man here, a bit overweight, or maybe just confident and well-balanced, his head and body strong above his striding legs. A child here and another, a bigger child. but both walking at ten to two, as we were always encouraged (enforced) to do. Here, someone, a woman perhaps, lighter of foot, and distant from the familial group. Or, maybe she walked alone and the other prints relate not to her snow traverse. I will never know. The scoot and slush of a bicycle, hollowing out the resistant mud of the woods, easy to slop and skew, wiggling and re-founding on its passage through the trees, beneath the moss-covered trunk of the massive Elvish Beech. Rounding back onto the other track, I study a flush of blown snow from last night creeping up the almost fallen trunk of a massive pine. It has fallen, but not quite, against another somewhat weaker tree. It makes me think of family, of sisters and of brother. I am huge. I falter and fall, but you are there and I know I am putting an inhuman pressure on you, but look at you……you are holding me up.

Do trees brace? Do they make a decision when they are fallen against, to hold and hold and hold for both? I like to think so. In human terms I know this. I can fall, but I will be held. But, as I watch this ‘a deux’ I can only see a final crash to the ground. The roots of the holder are still beneath the goodly earth, but the ‘leaner’ is showing her underpants and is so much bigger. Time will tell.

Today I did not feel great at all. It was a big thing to walk at all in the sunlit snow where most folk are out sledging and laughing and being eejits. But I did walk and I did track and this has to be a tick in my box of who-the-hec-am-I-now. There are so many fears. Fears that were possibly always there but were swashbuckled away by Himself, and, now, my kids. But the bottom line is just me. And that is my biggest ever learning curve and not one, if am honest, I really want to learn. I gave my final statement to the police this evening. He tells me the abuser has been located and will be contacted. I said, Oh, just a warning? No, he said. This is a crime. They will let me know once they have knocked on his door, but to be honest I can only guess at what the Met has to deal with on a 24 hour basis, real dreadful crimes, real imminent fear, and I am patient. Nothing has come since my number change.

How bizarre that it unnerved me so very much; made me fear shadows, look for footprints at ten to two or not; when I live hundreds of miles away from the caller, the sad, lost, angry man who, randomly (obviously) targeted an old woman.

The snow stands. The light it gifts to the evening, the way it answers the inside twinkly winky lights, marvels me. I will not shut the outside out. Is that a double negative?! I will embrace the inside and the outside of my life. I will not live in fear. I reach out, right now to anyone who is afraid. I won’t say Don’t be Afraid, because you might punch me as I would you if you said that to me. I am just waving. Just saying Hallo. I know how this feels and I so wish it wasn’t happening to you or to me.

Salut.

February 27, 2020 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – Light Remembered

There are two kinds of light, said James Thurber. The glow that illumines and the glare that obscures.

It thinks me. I believe there are as many kinds of light as anyone wants to acknowledge. For instance, through the hail and sleet and snow as it traverses the sky, tipping the hills and turning the mountain tops into sugar buns, there is the white light of ice, the distance dark sheets of hail looking like treacle poured from the heavens. There is the flash of sunlight on a hill road as a steadfast patch of ice refuses to melt, a glimpse of car headlights as some brave driver rises over a summit, temporarily highlighting a fall of snow, to fold over on a slippery descent. The sealoch lifts into light only to drop back into darkness as the clouds conjoin, part and join again at the punch of a volatile wind. Sunlight turns the bare maple into a Christmas tree, each stem bedecked with tiny drops of water, rainbow tears. Spider webs look like intricate works of art, the cold spider a dark huddle of hope. I haven’t seen a single fly yet, and nor, I guess, has she. The garden is late despite the daffodils doing their best to pretend Spring is on her way, their stalks disappearing into the white slush.

Then there is the light in someone’s eyes, You see it and it tells you something. That’s what eyes do, often belying the words let loose from the same page. Recognition, rejection, admiration, hope, belief, affection, remorse, desire, delight. All clear in someone’s eyes and infectious too, catching, almost physical. If someone is sad, I see it first. Their eyes tell me. If they are exuberant and excited about life I see that too and both will change me. We respond to light, if we take the time to notice it, to watch it. Wherever that light comes from it is wired into our very souls to answer back. Sometimes our own dark can blow out the sun, like a match, but it is dangerous to keep blowing and foolish too. Our beautiful earth is awash with light. The light of recognition, the light of hope, the endless variables of light in nature. The eyes of a startled deer hidden in the scrub as we walk quietly by; the yearning look of a child who really wants us to pick them up; reflections of bare branches moving over the surface of an ordinary puddle, a magical sky painting; the light of an epiphany, a new understanding, gifted, often, by someone else who can see light where I saw only darkness, the way that new understanding, that re-jigging of what I thought was fixed in place for always, sends light through my whole being and suddenly, I see.

As the snow and hail moves on out to sea, I watch it. It changes as it meets the salt-laden air, changes colour, changes shape, softens and demurs. Ha! I tell it. The sea will always win. Didn’t you know that? A walker goes by with a little dog. The dog looks at me through the window. For a moment, just a moment, our eyes lock. I don’t know this dog and this dog doesn’t know me but we share a glimpse of light.

That’s what we can do for each other. Shine out light, receive it gratefully, store it deep within so that we can gift it on, pay it forward. Someone is walking in the dark. Light them up and when it is your turn to feel like a huddled cold creature, accept light from someone else. It’s how the world keeps turning. We all have dark times but the light will always shine, from somewhere, through someone. And all we have to do is remember that.

January 31, 2020 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog – Snow Angels

This very day I set sail, winds permitting, for the mainland. Destination the French Alps. I travel with family, kiddies and adults and am away for a week. In theory I will don ski boots and give the slopes a chance to delight and excite me, but my last efforts at maintaining the vertical in such conditions warn me that I may not continue with my lessons. Back in the day when I was a tricky teenager I really hated ski lessons. In fact, I only had one and that was enough. I am a walker by nature, taking my time, gathering no speed and certainly not at the mercy of those long Turkish slippers. In walking, I control myself.

It thinks me. Although I am not interested in gathering unnecessary speed either grounded or in elevated position, such as on the back of a horse, or inside a car, or, even, on skis, I always like to give something my best shot before saying this is not for me. It is the same with anything I do in life. To say ‘this is not for me’ without experiential knowledge of that to which I say No, is just plain foolish. How can I possibly know from the outside of anything? Of course, there are many things in this life, in any life, to which saying No is just not an option. But there are ways around that too.

Say I am stuck in a job I dislike, that doesn’t float my boat. I may dread stepping into another day of this arduous drudgery, among these people who aren’t of my tribe, who don’t respect and value my work, and yet it seems I have no choice if the bread is to be earned. There are two ways to change how this goes. Either I tell myself that these people do not define me, that I know my work is of value and that I wholly respect myself, leading me to research new work and to give in my notice, or I take a good look at my perception of the situation and work on changing it. I know, from experience that this is entirely possible when giving in notice is a million miles from possible.

Snow is both cold and exciting. If I don’t continue with my lessons there is a vast array of alternative pleasures. I could walk over it, listening to the scrunch of it beneath my feet, look back on my footprints alongside all the others of those who have walked this way before me. I could consider their lives, their size and weight, their choice of boot. I could look up to where the mountains point into the sky, imagine the cold up there, wonder who climbed so high and how it might have changed their view on life. I could see the flowers in Springtime, now sleeping beneath their winter blanket, careless of the weight of human trudge. I could hear the laughter, ride on the chairlift, laugh and play with snowballs, breathe in the ice and feel it freeze my face. I could watch the skiers and marvel at their skill, my heart in my mouth as they hurtle down the breast of this huge majestic mountain. I could even see Hannibal and his elephants and wonder at his courage.

In ordinary times, as the West Coast rain rains and rains without ceasing, it is hard to imagine that in a few hours I will be in a very different landscape. I have my writing pad, my books, my waterproof kit and, most important of all, I have me. How this holiday goes for me is down to me, no matter how many others I may share it with. In order to really ‘see’ it all, I must clear my misperceptions and step out naked, obviously not literally or I may not get home at all, and be as a child, ready for any mystery to open out before me. It is no different at home, just much harder to believe in, but it is the key to life and I have proved it over and over again. The drudge is inside a mind, not out there, as is my definition of myself, my love and respect of self, my childlike sense of mystery ahead. And, although it could be hard to make a snow angel from rain, I will give it my best shot when I get home.

July 31, 2015 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 162 Blue Moon

‘A blue moon traditionally marks a time of change and possibility in the astrological world. The blue moon is the first since August 31, 2012, and won’t be seen again until January 31, 2018.’

It won’t be blue, however. The Blue bit refers to the fact that there will be two full moons this month, this lunar month; a phenomenon, and we like those. For the star-friendly among us, it denotes a time of change, of possibility. We say that something happens ‘once, in a blue moon,’ as we refer to the rarity of an event. We, on the island, might struggle to see any moon at all through a closed and soggy sky, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t going on beyond our vision.

Although I usually avoid anything political or strug-mental (my word) inside my blogs, there is a time for every season, one of which is to be counted, to stand tall for something I believe in. Okay, I’m not so tall, not so important that my little stand can change circumstances, but perhaps, by becoming one of a crowd of ‘standers’ I can make a difference.

On the island, no business, no charity can survive without extra oomph. That old ferry boat divides us from access to all the instant supports you mainlanders take for granted. Every one of us has to work that bit harder, that bit longer, our wits and ideas our lifelines. Tourists come in the Summer months, in the main, although a friendly Autumn or Spring can bring stout-footed walkers and hikers, lycra-clad cyclists to pump their calves into balloons as they rise and descend our endless hills and valleys, eagle-nest watchers and so on.

So, the work we think about all winter long is distilled into a powerful action once the snowdrops begin to show and what should pass for Spring (but forgot this year) lifts the sun a centimetre or two higher in our skies, to illuminate the snow patches, many of which have only just thawed.

One of these worthy and high-profile attractions is our theatre and arts centre, Comar. I remember, and many of you will too, watching excellent theatre in the barn in this village, where the idea was birthed and delivered to the world. The Smallest Theatre In The World. It attracted thousands of thespians and the excellence of this theatre spread far and wide.

Nowadays, it is bigger business, grown from that tiny seed and tended and loved and fed and watered by those whose passion for theatre, music, dance and art led them to invest themselves completely in its development. Today, amongst its ranks, chaos reigns. It seems that some now consider it not an island thing anymore and, in their eagerness to make money, have removed the control of it from the very hands, the talented and caring hands of two men whose life revolved around little else, such is their passion. Being made redundant is not fun for anyone, but on an island it is tough indeed. Jobs are few and there are many more months without visitors than with.

I am not able, nor willing to state accurate facts about this situation, but the press is doing a good job thus far. You can read it for yourselves.

http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heraldscotland.com%2Fnews%2F13521125.Equity_calls_for_board_of_Mull_arts_company_to_resign_en_masse%2F%3Fref%3Dtwtrec&h=DAQExViOo&s=1

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-33728339

What I can do is stand beside these island folk, and I am and I will. Too often we overthink ourselves into stillness, watching precious moments pass us by because we feel the fear of challenging the bully and we logic ourselves back home where life is safe enough, where we can pretend everything is okay.

Theatre and art and music and dance are quite without logic, and all about emotion, about passion, about the red blood of who we are. The island is like no other place.

Once, in a Blue Moon, we must stand and be counted.