tapselteerie

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Island Blog – Nothing So Finite

The birches glow purple across the sea-loch as dawn hefts night over her shoulder and away. No, not purple, not just one colour descriptor. There is wine in there, the deepest darkest Rioja, some indigo (how come that rich word does not demand a capital letter?), amber, chestnut, a little, ebony and ivory. Not just purple, never ‘just’ anything. However, all that aside, the flow and blend of faraway birches in winter colour, arrests me. I watch them for a bite, even though they’re not going anywhere, rooted as they are to the whatever of whatever. The sky is blue-grey like our young heifers on the Tapselteerie hills, and, like them, refusing to be contained. Every time I look up, the dynamic changes. Flat and apparently peaceful, they erupt into crescendos and subside again, fooling us all. Feeding those female heifers took all my courage, the blue-greys I mean. Like rebellious teens with a strong sense of self and a kick-ass attitude to any authority, they would bound like puppies. However puppies are usually afoot whereas these wenches powered over me, canting and taunting with way too many kickerly hooves. One sent me flying once, the little madam. I got too close to her girly bits and she lashed out. I caught it on my knee and, in slow motion, flew miles, or it felt like it, before crashing to the unwelcoming ground in a most ungainly heap. Needless to say, as I slowly came back to myself, the whole playground had come for a looksee. 20 noses puffed sweet silage breath into my face and all I could see were legs, legs with hooves attached, far too many of them to make sense of the nose count. I touched one, wet and soft and like rubber. I looked into enquiring eyes. A child’s eyes.

Walking today, the wind is coldsome and from the east. It thinks me. What countries lie east of me? Ah, yes, the cold lands, the Swedish, Danish, Norwegian lands. Oh the stories I can hear as the wind brings them in. Tales of hardship and cold, of desolate winters in unbroken places that could break a person in the end. Tales of survival against odds I will never experience, the harsh honing of a human body, the dark, the endless winter dark, the pervasive cold, the snow children moaning at loose window panes, the biting teeth of a wind that will not abate until the very last minute. Of frozen lakes, no fish, of impassable tracks, no food supplies, of harpies and wood sprites and other complex variables that can, and will, derange an isolated mind, break a body, fracture a family. Of course, any environment can do that but my imagination likes to fly and the very thought of only 3 hours of light in a whole long winter shivers me. I have read the stories, the memoirs and the fiction and I can see how easy it might be to capitulate and to sink. We only have laden clouds to winter us through and very different stories to tell. Today, I might say, inside a story, I took my wellies off for 5 whole minutes, dancing in the freedom of toe escape. I scrubbed the mould off my legs and clothes and basked in the lick of flames from the fire we all fight over because A, it is pathetic due to the wet wood that would so love to dry given half a chance, and, B, there are way too many of us doing this basking thing. Plus, the smell of wet sock, unwashed feet etcetera is only for the desperate to endure. Some of us slink back to the cold. I have done this, lived this and, with hindsight, loved that I did.

The track is coppered now with beech leaves, a warm colour, a lie but I love that lie. Is it a holding on to the last warmth of summer past? Is it a transition, yes it is definitely that. Standing here, watching not the birches, purple or not purple, but the skerry, pumped like a lunatic with rising salt and spume and flying birds and danger, it thinks me. Do I like transition? Hmmmm. Nope. Who the hell does? Only those who think too much before they answer that question and I smile when I hear that think translating into Politely Positive Response. Way too much blah coming. The sky is darkening and is putting on a spectacular blue-grey show. There’s a moon landing ahead. I watched the moon this early morning. She’s a crescent just now, clouded in puffs of those lower in the ranks, those fluff balls loaded up until their bellies birth, and all over thee and me.

How extraordinary life is. How transitional. How small we are. Purple? No. Nothing so finite.

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Island Blog – Fin Whale and a Change in Thinking

Fin Whale. All 75ft of itself, not that I saw it and even my translation from metres to feets may be dodge. Never trust me on math nor on absolute truth as I am wont to make things more magical than they are according to those who do know math and don’t know magic. Humpback too, big sassy tail holding, holding, almost waving before slipping into oceanic depths. Because my sons have learned cetacean ethics from their dad, they are utterly respectful around anything wild. Stay back, cut the engines, settle, wait and hope. No push, no ‘we only have fifteen minutes’ thinking; either you choose to come and visit, or you don’t; after all, you have your own agenda and yours is all about survival, about food source, procreation, intelligent selection whereas we up here aboard this delicious and luxurious boat complete with skipper, professional chef and guide are as nothing in the above of your life, the minute by minute tensions of such. What do we know? Nothing. So we wait, we invite with respect and no expectations.

This huge whale did come in, was curious, eyed those high above on the superly polished teak deck, slid beside the boat (dwarfing it) and changed the lives of everyone aboard. I have seen this before, way back in the days of Tapselteerie, on Alpha Beta, RIP, when nervous visitors stepped aboard in the morning and almost flew off board on their return, breathless, sun-caught, eyes wide as planets, unable to process an encounter with a whale. Is it that we so infrequently, if ever, have such an opportunity? I guess, yes. But once seen, everything changes because once seen cannot be unseen. It can be forgot, eventually, if refusal to challenge the mundane and ‘so in need of the road less travelled’ opportunity, but I reckon that over the years when the old sea-dog ran whale-watching trips, bringing in students from universities studying geology, marine science, photography, ecology, biology and all the other ‘ologies’, he raised the bar.

Our sons continued his work, respectful ethics at the core, finding wildlife out there and ‘out there’ encompasses hundreds, more, nautical miles in all weathers. Sons go offski into other things but there is one still working the Hebridean seas, continuing the line of respect and strong with it. No matter how much pressure from longing visitors, he will not invade wild space. This son, now a captain for http://www.hebridescruises.co.uk works in the way of the way. I say it like this because it means respect for all ways. It wonders me, a lot, that we cannot seem to respect all ways on the land, those with cultures we don’t understand, skin that isn’t the same colour as our own, beliefs that don’t conform with ‘what we know and believe’. Shame. If we could just be curious and respectful instead of fearful and defensive, we might find a gentle synergy. However, as long as the overland fight continues, I cannot see respect for all ever being taught beyond primary school.

Out there may be just a holiday and a life changing one at that. I have been there many times but never far enough out to see fin or humpback. No matter because a minke whale was more than enough for the seeing and especially when an intelligent skipper cut the engines and told everyone on board not to move, not to speak. Every vibration is felt by the whale. Be open. Mindfully send out your invitation. Wait, watch, breathe. The gift of an encounter, chosen by the wild creature, is a mind blow. Suddenly you feel very small indeed and so very the receiver of a gift, one no parent, no Santa could ever bring into your life for this is a gift like a dart to your heart and that particular dart leaves a wound, one that can only heal by a change of thinking, of direction.

And, no matter how perfect a life (if such exists), a change in thinking and direction is always a good thing.

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Island Blog – The Magic of Christmas

Hallo it’s me, the 4 am riser. Actually I would have, could have, slept longer but for the early dog. There is little I can do as she appears not to understand my reasoning around things like consideration of others, dawn rise and the need for humans to enjoy a good night’s sleep. She just cocks her head and blows down her small nose at me, derisively, continuing to patter across the boards and to clean herself noisily. I have to give up, eventually, pulling back the covers and telling myself it’s fine, there’s coffee waiting and the light will come as it always does.

I think on Christmas past with a smile, now that I am frocked up and swilling with strong black coffee. I loved the build up, the knowing that work would stop for himself once I persuaded him that family comes before his work. That was always the tricky bit, persuading him. I doubt I am the only woman who had to find clever ways to get this elementary message across. It bizarres me. Why does a man want a family in the first place if he never plans to prioritise it? Ho, I say, and Hum. At first, when the children were little, I managed 2 days of him not working. Over time I achieved a greater number until, oh joy of joys, he would agree not to work all the way through to January 5th, his birthday. I felt such euphoria then. I could actually relax into family plans and believe they would come to life instead of waving him goodbye and turning back to the chaos alone.

It is the anticipation for me. In everything, if I’m honest. Just moving softly into the magic of carols, messages, decorations and meal designs brought the fairy dust out. I would skip through chores that dragged at my ankles the rest of the winter. The cold at Tapselteerie retreated, not least as I was ‘allowed’ to burn all the fires at full blast for a whole ten days and he chainsawed, hacked, chopped and delivered half a fallen forest without a single tut. The heating, which proffered a whisper of warmth at best, was on twice a day. This was unheard of unless we had paying guests, naturally. The ice inside the lavatory bowls took considerably less time to thaw of a morning and the sound of excited and capering children throughout the big house was a delight to hear even at 4 am. We were happy and together and that was all that mattered, for ten whole days. After that time, grim faces would return, school would cast a gloom over chilly child faces, and back would come the annual dread of another tourist season and the huge amount of work required to make each room, each cottage a dry, clean welcome for whomsoever would brave the long track of potholes. But not yet, those feelings and dreads, not yet. For now it is us and warmth and Christmas just around the corner.

I feel it still, even now. Although there is no ‘We’ anymore and the children are far flung across the world with their own anticipation and fairy dust, I still feel it, right here in my heart. It is under my feet, inside my head, all around the house. It is in the music, the twinkly winky lights, the blast of skin-searing cold as I chop wood for the fire. It is on the faces of islanders walking by. And I love every minute. Although we are all missing someone this year, we have memories and there’s a whole world of them inside each one of us. I can do nothing about the rules this year. I cannot change a thing about any of them. But, I can sit with rememberings, smile at those faces I cannot see, one I will never see again, and I can still feel the magic of Christmas time. And, I remind myself, that this will pass; that there is someone out there, someone I cannot see, don’t know, will never meet, who is far worse off than I; someone desperate, neglected, rejected, abused, terrified. In this light I am humbled. In this light I have everything. In this light, I am a lucky woman indeed. I have loved ones, I am warm, I have lights, friends, beloved family, my health, my working brain, my gifts and skills and my cherished memories.

And I have the magic of Christmas, once again.

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Island Blog – Shift, Fly and a Dog’s Questions

This afternoon I walked into Tapselteerie, as I do every single afternoon, small terrier bounding afoot. She is always full of ridickerluss bounce as if we have never walked this way before; as if she and I are about to discover a gruffalo nest or a ferocean of fairies. I pointed out the conkers to her, the star moss, the positive pebbles I hid that someone has moved on, but she just looked at me like I was a weirdo. Her plan is to locate the biggest and longest stick she can find and then lift. She waits for me to forward, then runs full tilt, whacking the backs of my legs with half a hazel tree, thinking it hilarious and most satisfying. I don’t mind. She thinks I don’t know what’s coming, but my advantage is my human brain. I have worked out the math of this particular pole, considered the level of scratchy branch activity, the then width of the track, the level of recent rainfall and its ability to soak my calves. It’s a daily game and only infrequently I am required to say enough is enough. This day was one of those times. The pole would have held up an elephant’s weary head, no bother.

Up in the woods I heard childlaughter, my favourite sort. Poised on a rock and looking like a dream, a little girl squeaks with delight as her father completes the construction of a swing. I can see she will begin on the rock, but the fall away of the hill and the subsequent leap into the sky takes her 20 foot off the ground. She is tiny, wiry, slim and excited and I want to hide. I see a thousand disasters, but she sees none of them and nor does her father. He has swung many times higher in his time, almost to the moon and back, and, for all I know, touching moon base. He is, after all, my son and all of my children are risk takers and always were. I have no idea where they got that from. After successful launch, momentary panic as she looks down to see the blue planet below her tiny butt, followed by a happy landing back on the rock, the game is on, the shift from land to outer space completed.

Back home there is a shift. A sudden shift. In the journey that is dementia, this is oft how it works. Plateau, shift, level out, plateau and shift again. Everyone involved needs to catch up, learn, accept, take action. This is where we are now. Just 2 weeks ago the plateau felt like it was staying flat, for some long time, with only little skips and twirls that showed a gradual demise. But now on this road, the pilgrim has met landfall and it seems there is no way around it for him. He doesn’t want to eat, cannot move anywhere or anyway without help. We, his family, are coming to terms with that but I won’t say it is a natural nor an easy thing to come to terms with nor accept. How could it be? This is Dad. This is the strong provider of 50 years and then some, the one who knew the answers to everything and, if he didn’t, never let on. I remember a violently horrific North Sea crossing when I was so terrified I thought I would faint clean away (but didn’t), with a force 10 gale battering our boat, full sails up because it had come in so fast there was no time to reduce, nor crew (me being terrified) to strap on, walk the slippery deck in lashing rain, and then find the strength to work the winch. But, and but again, he never left the helm, navigated us home to within a few maritime feet of home harbour, using his skills and whatever stars he glimpsed. 17 hours of rocking and no soft cradle in sight, but he got us home and intact. This is the Dad who took risks, flew high and taught all of us to trust in him and to shut up and fly.

This shift is tough. I want to reach out to anyone and everyone who is going through this end game or who has gone through it. My utmost respect and admiration to you all.

Even the dog knows something’s up. She keeps looking at me, a million questions in her eyes.

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Island Blog 146 Travelling Light

suitcaseAs I pack my bag for the trip to the Reader Room on Skye, I meet all sorts of thought tangles. What to take, what not to take and in which suitcase. The big stripey one or the smaller spotty one? Both have noisy wheels and both weigh too much empty. I won’t need much, will I? Just jeans and tops, a warm jumper, walking boots, books, notes, wash things, face paint, a frock for the night, leggings. The smaller spotty one will do. Until it won’t.

Travelling light is a dream of mine, almost a passion. I want to be light and flexible, easy to move along please, to glide through doorways, over metal bridges without needing CPR on the other side. I want to fit into that space the huge-suitcased lumberers leave between themselves and the dangerous side of the pavement or platform. To scurry, hurtle, dash with momentum and forward thrust. I want to be at my destination before half of these goodly folk have reached the ticket barrier. I catch earlier trains that way, denying myself the takeaway coffee, the creamy bun. I don’t push or shove. I am perfectly respectful of the Overladen, but my constantly working mind maps out the fast route and my feet take me on. I don’t mind queuing at all and must be the only Brit who doesn’t. I just factor it into my dash to wherever I’m going, and speed up where necessary when momentum is paused.

Travelling light, I tell myself, is a state of mind, a decision. Taking too many changes of clothing, just in case, comes from a place of fear. Will I have the ‘right’ thing to wear? Will I be too cold or too hot? Have I the right shoes? All of this is dithering and arrives me laden, out of breath, hot, bothered, and with a load of unnecessary vestments, not one of which gets beyond crumpling itself in the dark depths of my suitcase. But we all do this dithering, if we’re honest.

When I first decided to travel light, it was to a funeral in Yorkshire. I just needed the gear for the church, and mufti. We said bye bye to the kids, minder, collies and cats and left Tapselteerie. It was coming into York that we discovered we had left the cases in the front hall. As our life had always been lived by making good decisions quickly in the face of adversity, we dived into a dress shop and bought this and this and that, then shoes, and arrived at the funeral with the labels still attached. Nobody cared. It was enough that we had made the journey.

The second time was when I went South for a different occasion, on my own. This time, I did have my lightly packed suitcase with me, too heavy even when empty, and handed it over to the nice Easy Jet steward at check-in. I arrived, my case did not. Mum and I dashed to Sainsbury’s, picked this and this and yes, shoes, and off I went to my date. Nobody cared. It was enough that I had made the journey. My case arrived home ahead of me, minus a handle, rendering it completely pointless.

It has happened since, the careful planning, folding, fitting into a small space, all that I think I might need, in case of shipwrecks, strandings, sudden invitations to a military ball, a funeral, a heatwave in October, that my luggage has abandoned me. I have always found a laugh in it, after my initial fish wife impression. I have borrowed clothes I would never buy, applied make-up all wrong for my small pale face, shared toothpaste, boots and even underwear, but, most of all, I was given the chance to find my sense of humour and to lean on it as my support. In the absence of things, I found people, and people can rise over things every time. It’s boundless, the human spirit, warm and strong and constant. Their handles don’t fall off, and in the main, they do what they say they’ll do, and much, much more.

But we forget don’t we, as we live out our lives as islands.  We think we must have everything we need with us, just in case.  We imagine, with horror, the disaster of being cold, or hot, or lost, or stranded, of our train/ferry/plane being late or worse, cancelled, and yet, in all of those circumstances I have found human warmth and friendship.  I have found team spirit, good attitude and kindness.  In times of trouble, we look to each other.  Sometimes we might consider doing that every day, troubled or not.  It might make us less fearful.  We might engage in sharing ourselves with others until it’s easy to do, natural, uncomplicated.  All of us are alone, but we can travel side by side.

Now I’m going back to fret about packing, about the ferry being cancelled due to gale force 22, the bus breaking down on the way north, and, finally, me arriving on the wrong day.

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Island Blog 115 Primary Three

 

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Thirty Three years ago this morning, a child was born.  A boy.  The Third Boy – 3 being the first prime number, the lucky prime, the only prime triangular, the triad, the noblest of all digits, and the only one of five to be born on the island; the only one to spend his first night on this earth in matron’s bottom drawer.

Let me paint the picture……….It was a wild and stormy night (which it was) and I was determined to miss the last ferry.  I knew a-plenty about birthing by then, had already had 3 labours (one being the Only Girl) and did not want to be inside a hospital.  The first two had been home births and the process is straightforward enough anyway – I mean, there’s only one direction to go down, and all I have to do is swear a lot, push when told to and trust in the doctor and nurse, both of whom I knew well.  So, in the middle of this gale, and in the darkness and in the crankitty old landrover with its binder twine door hinges and sheep food in the back, we rattled to the old folks home and Mrs MacFlorrie’s bed.  Not that she was sharing with me, you understand, but was, instead, shunted down the corridor to bunk up, temporarily, with another ‘old folk’.  That is how it was in the olden days, for we had no island hospital back then.

He was small and stayed that way for a while.  They suggested a growth hormone, but we said..

‘Leave him be. When you have this many children, it’s handy to have one you can just pop in your pocket.  Whilst other boys are growing and talking about how big they are, Rhua squeezes through the gaps.  he is as wiry and as fast as Spiderman, and just as fond of heights.  Look at me! he shouts, aged two and half, from half-way up a cliff face, or from the top of the massive old oak tree, and we all do look, just to keep him quiet, and we keep looking, although I must have looked away at least once, as there is another baby on the way.’  (Island Wife Chap 17)

When he came home to Tapselteerie, he spent any sleep times, never longer than 20 minutes, day or night, in the tea towel drawer, whilst I worked in the kitchen.  Because the house was so huge, I could never have left him upstairs, just below cloud level, for goodness knows what he might have got up to.  He was the one who tipped all liquids and powders from all bedrooms into the loo and mixed up a cauldron of seething bubbles and curious smells.  He is the one who left home aged six in the dark of a wild night, with only his toys as luggage.  He is the ‘chef’ who signed up for trial of a deep fat fryer, one that arrived in the back of a big lorry.  The delivery man did not believe me when I tried to send him away, saying it was a mistake.  He would not countenance that he had driven all the way from the depot in Glasgow to this isolated place, with moon rocks and pitfalls and nothing but sheep and heather for days.  I had to show him the 6 year old chef, before he would even consider returning to base camp.

It was this third boy who rose from his short sleeps with a head full of ideas, and a deep sense of purpose.  I found him once frying bacon on the aga, start naked, aged 2.  For our breakfast, he said.  He had already laid the table, with brandy, bread, salad cream and red sauce, tonic water and chocolate. It was hard to be cross.  How he managed to lift the heavy aga lid, without nipping his manhood in the bud, still amazes me.

I took to sleeping outside his bedroom door, lying across the narrow landing on the servants floor (no servants to be seen) in order to save us all from this boy’s nocturnal ideas and sense of purpose.

When he finally grew into a young man, he hit the world with a force it might not have been ready for.  Wherever he went, wherever he worked, he was enthusiastically bonkers, and very successful.  And now, as a father and husband, and broker in the flatlands, he still is, but it is not the outward success that matters, but the man he has become.  A man I respect, admire and adore.  One who makes me laugh, whose heart is huge and strong, who can blag and wind up, who can reach too far, fall down, and get up again in a nanosecond.  Although he is born of me, he is himself as are all my kids, and each one of them delights and surprises me.

I remember the illnesses, and the times of trouble.  I remember the nights of worry, the fears and hopes, the dreams dying, the prayers a-plenty, but when I look at them, at any of them, I am so very proud.  All we ever wanted for our children, was that they find their own way into a fulfilled life.  I know this is not a thing that comes gift-wrapped – indeed no,t for it is a process, and a long one, but to see young people on what appears to be the right track, is indeed a blessing for any mother, or father.  We couldn’t give them life on a plate, or expensive tuition or finishing school in Switzerland, but we gave them Tapselteerie and we gave them adventures and memories.

‘From the mound of dogs and kit, they(the children) marvel at everything, and, in their marvelling, I can taste the freshness of seeing things for the first time, the elation and sparkle in that seeing, like having lemonade in your veins and butterflies in your head.  There are no seat belts in the back of the Landrover, and no law to put them there, so the children bounce and whoop and flip like monkeys, free as air, as the car rocks like a boat in a storm.
Suddenly, my head is bursting.  Enough!  I roar, causing everyone to freeze mid-flip, and Alex to swerve.  He is not pleased.
Why are you shouting? he asks with a frown across his face, deep as the Limpopo River.
I don’t bother to respond, enjoying the sudden silence.  Instead, I turn to fluff up a very flat collie and to settle my sons the right way up.
What are you going to spend your money on?  I beam at them.
Jake is buying a Lego set, one of those big ones with enough pieces to block the vacuum every week.
Rhua wants an Action man.  Well, that figures.
And Solly?  Well, Solly wants a gun and chorus.
A gun and chorus?
Yeah! Gun and chorus, like Duncan’s at crayboop.
He is getting upset, as he always does when we have no idea what language he speaks.
Okay, okay Sol, that’s grand.  We’ll find one.
Cassie, seeing my predicament, pulls her finger from her mouth.
It’s a dinosaur with flashing eyes.  Duncan’s got one and he brought it to playgroups.  It’s called a Gunnacaurus.
She says all this in a monotone, staring straight ahead, like a code breaker in a spy movie.  I wonder what we would all do without her translation skills.
I bend my head down to hers.  Where do we get one?  I ask.
She looks at me in puzzlement.  A dinosaur shop, she says.
Of course!  Silly me.    (Island Wife Chap 21)

So, to the First Odd Prime Number I say…….Happy Birthday!

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Island Blog 114 Two Shadows

 

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Well well well – here I sit to tell you that I have done all my Christmas shopping, wrapped it and posted or stored it under the skirts of my easy chairs.  When Sula was alive, that would have been impossible for she would have joined them, cooried in to the crackly nest and torn the cheap skinny wrappings into a gorgeous cosy nest.  I would have heard her, of course, but probably not in time.  I would have grabbed her waggy tail and hauled her out, whence she, astonished and alarmed would have embedded her sharp claws into the soft winciette pajama bottoms or the fine weavings of an expensive cardy, exacerbating the situation skywards and threatening me with spontaneous combustion, for which, at this time of day, there is only one cure. The Chilean syrah.

I am mindful, as I wander into houses where most of the inmates wear very small pants, that their days were mine, once.  The only large-panted members of the Tapselteerie clan, numbering one, (that’s me) were far too sensibly grown-up for such fun, hence the elevated size of pant.  We, or, rather, I, would never have bothered tiptoeing around by torchlight to rustle, as quietly as possible, under any skirts in search of a label with my name written upon’t.  Certainly not.  I was the one, with the megaphone and steel toe-caps, who stalked the dark reaches of the baronial mansion house, in search of rustlers.  Even the island husband could be caught snooping, although, to be honest, he could, quite easily, and did, lose a chainsaw under a sheet of A4, so he was never the leader in this shenanigan.  It seemed to me that everyone worked in secret, as if they didn’t want to be caught by anyone, let alone Miss Trunchbull.  I would find them, red-faced and jabbering with guilt, often in gumboots and hand-me-down jama bottoms, pretending to me, their Trunchbull of a mother, that they were looking for a book to read.  Like I was going to believe THAT!

And yet, a wistful part of me longed to be them.  Being sensible is deathly dull on a good day.  As my pant size changed, it seemed I had to become my clothing.  As a child, pulling on just something to get me down to my cornflakes was all I cared about.  How I looked meant absolutely nothing.  I didn’t consider what would happen if I was cold or if my shoes didn’t go with my outfit.  I didn’t consider my outfit at all.  I just yanked off my nightie and pulled on something a little more robust for my descent into the day.  I don’t recall wondering what I might feel like if the milkman caught me without a good 2″ of slap across my face, or if my jumper might be too warm for the time of year.  I just got dressed.

Admittedly, there were times, many of them, as my pants got bigger, when my mother might smirk at my bonkers assemblage of gold sequinned jumper over hotpants, but it was only her smirk that upset me, not the clothes upon my back. At Tapselteerie I fussed like a hen over my children’s casual attitude to clothing.  Wear a warm jumper out there, I would say, trying to thaw out the collie dog currently frozen to the ground by her girly bits.  She only sat down for a minute.  But they ran out, wild and skimpily clad into the day, into every day, and there were times I hated my job.  My Miss Trunchbull job.  At the shore, they swam in the freezing sea any time of the year, emerging sapphire blue and making wonderful percussion with their teeth.  I couldn’t even catch their jumping knees to rub them dry.  There, I said, now NEXT TIME……….. but next time was just the same as the last and still they laughed at me.  I think they probably still do, because I still do it.  If they had listened to my fears, they would be locked up by now, terrified by the voices in their heads, portenting doom if they so much as open the fridge.

Now, at my big pant age, I think back and I wonder.  What if I had just shut the hell up?  Well, I will never know what the answer to that, and I cannot change the past, but I can make a new future for myself.  I watch them with their own children, letting them fall, letting them burn a finger or two, warning quietly, then letting go.  I watch other people, other nations, like today at Madiba’s memorial service in Jo’burg and I see the wild musical African women, bopping and singing and ululating, and all in very much bigger pants than mine, and I see a new freedom.  I also see the stiff backed British sitting with stiff backs and not letting go at all.  Well, it isn’t British, is it?

There are times, many times, as I find myself in a train station of grownups, or a shop or just walking down a street, when I have the intense desire to spin around, to begin a song and to sing it right through.  Not for an audience to boo or applaud, but just for me.  The other day I went out at dusk in Glasgow, to collect something from a shop.  As I walked back among other grownups, intent on their mission, their Iphone, their deadline, I had this feeling and just spun around, my arms wide.  There was a fingernail moon in a clear cold sky, and, as I walked back feeling very delighted withe myself, and smiling like a loon, I saw two shadows on the pavement.

They were both mine.

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Island Blog 93 – Tapselteerie Dreams

Tapselteerie

 

 

 

 

Last night was an awfully big adventure.  Sometimes nights are like that. Short on sleep and long on dreams; dreams that skitter away in the process of waking, so quick as to leave me with the odd snapshot, and a depth of emotion I can’t necessarily fix into a shape.

Whenever I dream there are a couple of venues that consistently provide the backdrop for the drama.  One, oddly, is a little corner flat in Glasgow, where I only lived for a short while after Tapselteerie and before moving back to the island.  Those dreams are often good ones and I walk through the park or sip coffee in a busy café and there are no obvious lurkings of menace in any shadows.

The other and main venue is Tapselteerie, I know it is, although the stones and layout of it are often wildly wrong.  For example, we had a roof over our heads there and walls and floors, the usual household structure, but in dreams, they are often shaky if not completely absent.  When I am inside one of these dreams I am always looking for my children, which, for those of you who have read Island Wife, will not be a surprise at all.  The stones are grey and cold, the plaster walls missing, and there is often sky overhead instead of a white ceiling.

In these dreams I always have to fly to save them, my children.  I always know that I can fly, but each time I must find the courage to do it again.  I have sat myself down to think deeper on that search for courage, once the morning comes and strong black coffee brings me in to land.  Is it courage to take on the ‘saving’, I ask myself, or is the courage to fly again?  And, if I know, as I do, that I can fly, why would I need courage?  After all, I don’t need to think twice about walking, running, skipping, now do I?

And I find no answer to that.

One dream took me into the empty ruins of the place, cold it was and abandoned, the grey stone bared, the layout changed beyond my recognition, and yet I knew where I was.  I was alone.  The crunch of fallen debris under my bare feet echoed around me and I could feel my heart beating fast, hear my quick breathing.  Looking up, I could see my children way up high, higher than Tapselteerie high, flattened against the walls, no ground for their feet.  Each one was hooked to the wall by their clothing, and they just hung there, making no sound.  Much younger and smaller than they are now, they looked like friends of the Artful Dodger, all raggedy and torn and grubby.  There were no stairs, no structure, however skeletal, there to allow me to climb.  There was only one way up.

I had to fly.

The resistance to just taking off, knowing I could, surprises me every time.  It seems, in my remembering, to take a lot of wasted time, dithering about in the ruins of a broken house, when I could be up there gathering children off hooks.  But I always do it.

Then, suddenly, I take a deep breath and lift and the feeling it wonderful, the process effortless.

Once, I met Shrattle (Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake), or his lookalike half way up, but he was balanced on a spindly ledge and quite without wings, so no threat to any of us.  I lifted each child, light as a feather, off their pegs and into the sky, waking with that glorious light-hearted feeling that always follows flight.

Last night is already leaving me, the memories of the dream, but I do remember one thing.  This time it was in colour.  Never before has Tapselteerie shown herself in colour, and yet she had bucket loads of it.  She gave me walls and ceilings and laughter and spiders and bats in the cellar.  If I came down all those stairs, during a sleepless night to make tea, I had to remember to make light, because in the dark I would have ploughed into the huge migration of slugs from somewhere (I never knew where) to the wine cellar.  Sometimes a dozen deep and many feet long, the army flowed in silence to wherever they were going.  It was a marvel to behold and much less of one to land in the middle of it in bare feet.  People said salt will kill them.  We said, why would we kill them?  We lived with a good number of wild creatures and managed to do so, in the main, without disasters, although the floor in the back hall always needed a wash of a morning.

Dreams I know have symbolism.  Mine are often a chorus of many influences.  My past, my fears, the book I’m reading, the present circumstances, the last thing I watched on television. Add to that something on my mind, a new truth learned and understood, a forthcoming event and so on.  But whatever the graphics, however bizarre and unbelievable the storyline, the emotions of it linger longest, so, to a small degree I can understand what my imagination played out for me and why.

Tapselteerie looked just fine in colour.  It may be 20 plus years since I moved inside her walls, heard her song and moved to her rhythm, but she is alive and well and with her own place in my heart.