time

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Island Blog – To Disturb Gravity

There’s still a hooligan outside which is a damn sight better than one inside. At Tapselteerie one was the other but making different sounds. Outside it was all crashes and bangs and thumps, whumps and with a refusal to own up to any of them, whereas inside the whistles and toots, the rattles and shakes seemed quite happy to locate themselves. Many newspapers gave their lives for a gap filling, holes in the walls, gaps in the window panes, cavernous splits in outer doors, the underneath of which had never touched ground for decades. Rain found its way in, under, through and over. Even my children were damp of a morning, wondering, as they did, if they had wet the bed. Even I wondered that.

Nowadays, as the hooligan refuses to let go of it’s fury, my home is better protected, even though it is as old as Tapselteerie. Yes, there is the odd leak, and it isn’t wise to open a wind facing door to greet the exhausted postie unless I close it smartly behind me. The ferry didn’t run so. he had to wait for the possible next one, which wasn’t possible, thus demanding another two hour wait. Hey ho, island life. The disturbing of gravity is quite the thing up here. Lord knows what it must be like further north. Today I returned 8 wheelies to their upstandment, wheeched over and obviously nauseous judging from the mouthal eruptions littering the track. Interesting, nonetheless to see the food choices and waste of others. A load of plastic wrapped somethings, dog poo bags and a ton of wine bottles. Moving on.

Disturbing gravity, according to my ancient Thesaurus, refers to ‘being ridiculous’. I immediately jumped on that one as a brilliant interpretation. It thinks me, as I was talking just this lovely morning with a very dear friend about the importance of fun, of being, I suppose, ridiculous. We take too much seriously, especially ourselves when all we really want is to have fun. And it is entirely possible. In me it is natural. I can be in the most ‘serious’ situation, with everyone being ‘serious’ all I want to do is to play the fool because I can see the ridiculous. Not to hurt anyone, of course, but just to remind these wonderful doing-their-best humans that it is so much easier to let go of pretence and to be honest and thus, individual. I remember this in my younger days, but, like most, keen to be accepted as one-of-the Ones, I spent hours dressing myself up as someone who would fit. In short, it was not good enough to be who I was.

Now, over 70 I will be who I am and give diddly squat about trying to be someone else. However, I do acknowledge the young now, the ones still stiffing themselves into the wrong clothing, employing an almost alien language, a new shape, just to fit in. I. look, hopefully, towards the wise parents who probably suffered those restrictive chains themselves and who will now look carefully at the young of our future and get to understand them, to listen and to learn and to ask them the questions most of us have never been asked.

Who do you want to be?

What would you like your life to look like?

And then, and then, to sit and listen.

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Island Blog. – That’s my guess

There’s a time and it comes as the night pushes down the day and takes over. Before, when they argue with each other, the clouds tangle and squish, bumping against each other like school kids in a lunch queue. Inevitably the dark wins. How could it not, pushing down like that, an easy pressure, whereas, just saying, the light has far harder work? Dawn has to push up, after all. I think of Dawn with strong shoulders, her determination strong. She’s been doing this for millennia. Let’s hope she doesn’t get tired of the whole pushing night away thing.

Once night has squashed all of the light, I move me towards music and candles. It isn’t a stoop of my shoulders, more an invite to a new dance. The fire is fiery, licky flames thankful for the island timber, those old trees felled, usually by some storm with a dinky name. Eish the nonsense in that! A storm is a storm is all. I will never understand why there are pet names for such as storms, those massive and upwrenching take-out blasts of gargantuan force. We are, in my opinion, both foolish and blind to the truth of what is true. Nature will always win. We are almost irrelevant in that truth, but not quite, not those of us who learn, who are as prepared as anyone can be. It’s those who pretend it isn’t happening who concern me.

I went off on one there. I am not a worrier, not a fearty. I turn on the tunes, light the candles, begin to write. In this simple island life where roads may be passable in icy conditions, when a ferry may run, where rain falls a lot, when there are parking spaces in the harbour town, when everyone sees everyone else as an islander even if most of us are blow-ins, white settlers, whatever, even as we did choose to actually live here, to work here, to join the community and there is a strength in that. I think on that, as tunes play through my speaker, as my twinkly winkly lights twinkle and winkle. So simple. Enough, yes, enough. I walked today, twice, once with. a friend who laughed me a lot. We met muddy dogs, squelched through mud and the sharp stones of puddle refills. We talked of life and hope and christmas trees and future plans as we listened to the plop of raindrops on rhodie leaves, or from the ridonculous highs of Cyprus, Caledonian Pines, the Oldies in this place. The music of it, the beat, the laughter it brings, the musicality of Nature. Who hears it anymore with headphones on?

Community life is simple, bloody hard, difficult, awkward, challenging, slow moving, and wonderful. What else is real life but this? A confusion, an out of self. That’s my guess.

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Island Blog -Dishwasher and Changial

As I load the wee feisty dishwasher for the nth time today, it thinks me. For a few days, this wee and faithful soul has made herself a feature, not because she performed to standard and without complaint, but the reverse. Coffee cups came out still coffee-ed, cutlery not up to scratch. She is saying something. We listened, we scoured and scrubbed, took her vital innards apart, and I felt we stood her tall then. She is diminuitive by the way, down there, a wee fat square of genius with a big mouth. Our care and concern (I watched us doing this caring and concerned thing, talking, suggesting, idea-ing) guided us and we came to ‘fro’, as one of my forbears said, although I forget whom. I think he meant a. together thing, an agreement, a forward action put in place. Anyways up, she, the moothie darling, now washes everything into spectacular. We laugh about this and it thinks me, a lot.

Around humans who are a gazillion nautical miles more away from machine-land, we may presume too much, as we did with the dishwasher, that the way it was, they were, last week, last sometime, still stands. It doesn’t. It really doesn’t. I have heard too many say things like ‘I thought she was fine, he loved his work, they enjoyed their evening class in Belligerent Living Tactics, had fun with Granny, were really committed to classical piano lessons, wanted to stay living with me, and so on’. Unless we check our collective self, almost daily but without intent, agenda and without too many questions, just observing, we can still presume too much. After all, we want the status quo. T’is comfortable, an easy grab each morning as we dash, all dyspepsia and inner angst, into our own selfworld, and, if we are honest, that is our world, no matter how much we try to persuade ourselves and others that our thoughts are always on them, him, her, they, I, me, and more.

My thinks are thus, or this if you prefer. Thus is a tad ‘older generation’, even as I believe thus means more than this. It has depth and mystery to it. Just saying. In any situation, what is anyone looking for? That’s a bit broad, I give you that, but let us settle on the dishwasher for now. We need her, big time, we need her, the moothie one. We discuss, disemminate. The doors open in 20. We do what we do, and as we do, we share, we laugh, we idea, we watch, we are curious, we observe, we learn and the end game is a caring synergy. Synergy equals mutual growth.

Amongst humans it’s not so different and it is so very different, of course it is. As we come together on an ordinary morning, it isn’t necessarily one for one of us. The mood shifts, the dynamic changes, the unpredicted has joined us. We might need to support. We might not want to. We might find our flow from here to there compromised because of a perceived threat, we might stand back and snort at this whole circus, thus refusing to learn, to change, to alter within a changial. My word. However, I believe we have presumed too much and for too long. I do raise a glass to the very few institutions which actively embrace the irrefutable change in our societies, but their action implementation is too behind the behind of it and that shuckles my head and my heart. We heard the siren song decades ago. Just saying.

I might end there.

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Island Blog – Feelings Left Behind

We can lose years of feelings, yet remember moments burgeoning with them. When someone died, or was born, we know the date, but have quite forgot the feelings around that event. We get a glimpse of joy, of sorrow, of relief, of anger, of being there, as a person, remembering, perhaps, what we wore and who was there. Feelings flitter away. The sense of presence, of engagement, of inclusion, seem, to me, to float into the already past of such events. It thinks me.

How many of us can accurately come up with a date, when asked, one which includes lockdowns? Not me for sure. I start off answering a question, one that requires a datal fix, and I founder. It was four years. No, that cannot be. ok, 6 years. No again. And. I trawl, literally trawl as through a whole expanse of ocean, sky, time. I can feel my arms reaching back, lifting as I try to gather in an answer, wanting so much to gain a hold on ‘that time’, but I cannot. Then, when some semblance of datal knowledge (did I just invent a word there) arrives between you and me, I find myself alien to the facts, because I cannot find the feelings. This happened. I know it did. You just told me it did. But i am not there without feelings, so, basically, I am not there at all, although I was. I did get a glimpse (stupid word btw) of a sudden rush of something, but it was gone in a second, and I couldn’t hold it back.

There are so many memories I want to haul in like a fisherman, to pull ( with my own strength) into the boat I am now captain of, and to spend time bobbing in the salt, the wind, the sun, the storm, picking through those times, feeling them in my fingers, remembering them as I was then, as everyone was then. A memory bank, like other ocean banks where living is visceral and immediate, and time is but an illusion.

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Island Blog – Fly Safe

There’s a thing about an upskittle. It, well, upskittles. And that’s okay because life is no straight line, no matter the planning. We do have to plan, of course we do, but then, all of a sudden, the incoming is not friendly. So be it. Sleepless nights ensue, the buggers, and in those hours of not sleeping, as I might imagine everyone else is, I walk through the fog, the mist of it all, and I accept. I believe that to be key. Key to what? Key to the door of acceptance.

I had a commitment today, a hair cut, a meet with a dear friend. I was cold, shivery, after all the night fog, the walking about, the cold unhug of such a longtime, and considered saying I Can’t Come Today. It’s a give-up to me, a mistake, at a time like this. It isn’t always that way. If I had scarlet fever or if the mountain river had broken its banks and flooded my home, then such a retraction would have been absolutely correct, and appropriate. That was not the case this ditzy morning, when my eyeballs worked independently and I could barely pull on my knickers, let alone the rest of my kit. Even applying eye makeup was a challenge, and I will go nowhere without that.

Time ticked on. I watched it, tick, tick, tick, the minutes not minute at all. Each one was loud and thorough with contradiction and discombobulation. To go? To not go? And then it came, as ‘it’ often does. Oh for effs sake, get on with it! Boots on and go. No excusing the fog, the missed, neither of them. I heard a sound, one I recognise, but haven’t heard for a year. I twisted up to look, as this sound came from the sky, I knew that. Five Whooper swans just outside my window, in a tight formation, in the rain, the windthrust, in the wild, in the now, going somewhere, going on, going on.

Hey, Lizzie. I said that, spoke it out loud, my breath flickering an early candle. Fly safe.

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Island Blog – Lucks Penny and a Mouse

There is a time in my day which isn’t what it was. Once, it was flaming chaos. Now it is chaos for endless others, but not for me. The time spans, approximately, the 4.30 to 6pm tilt towards lunacy. It was home from school, food preparation, feeding dogs, lambs., children, workers. It was welcoming guests back home all drippy, flush faced, possibly contused, all requiring reassurance, warm guidance, hot bath, drying room, dinner by the fire. All of that. I don’t miss it, but I am so glad I was there with the drippy, questioning, angry kids, food, endless food, thing.

That thing is no longer active. And, does anyone get this, it’s a huge empty space? Oh, we fill it with rememberings but there is small, if any, gravitas in rememberings. None of us want to go back, to relive, but and, that but is a butt in my thinking, there is an empty. In approaching this, I know about fixing. I know about that Elastoplast being totally inadequate when faced with a scarple of a wound. And I don’t just talk of my long family experience. What of the loss of a relationship, the abandonment? What of parental rejection? What of a whole lot more? The Gap is there. What we did, once. What filled this space, gone. It is scary, and we have to fill it all by ourselves. Well, that is so shit, btw. I recall running like a hare through the tilt towards lunacy, knowing that, eventually, it would calm, to a degree. Food. Always works.

So what to do, what to think, as that damn gap moves ever closer, as the clock ticks on? Well, I am no guru, but, I have found that being thankful for the laugh memories in my life, pulling them up, has changed my thinks. We did have such fun, such naughtiness, such crazy. Such lucks penny.

Today, I went to pull out a big pan to cook a curry. I pulled out the drawer. A wee mouse, raised, terrified, looked at me from within the big pan. I pulled back, whispered, I mean you no harm. She, it will have been a ‘she’, (only the ‘Shes do the hunting, just saying) rose up, her wee paws held together. A few seconds before she took off. Obviously, I scoured the pan and cooked on, but there was a gift in that encounter, and I call it lucks penny. Which, I have learned in this island place means a gift unexpected. I like that.

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Island Blog – Misty, Clarity, Beyond the Veil

Dark morning – yes, of course, with this nonsensical time change thing. I watched the clock dilemmas, worked them out, poor confused things, as light annihilated the dark, blinding it. There’s a misty thing going on across the sea-loch, a sort of translucent mesh hiding the pines, the backsides of hills, a strip, moving, lifting, expanding, thinning. A bit like a bridal veil. I never had one of those, but they are pretty. You can see eyes, a vague facial shape, the red of a smile, if there is one, and there usually is.

The mist has retained her veil control, all day. I walked in it, not through it, noticed how, what was clear before, is more of a shimmy, a sort-of, a possible. The autumn colours, fallen or yet branch-held, were bright, as the artist in me might have made them so, with a good gloss medium over oils. Nature does it without any of that tiddleypom.

This evening, the sky is pinkling strips, reaching down, very soft pink. Gone now, the mist, the veil. Now clarity. It thinks me.

From the bridal veil to clarity. Take this lightly. I am no misery guts about relationships, but what I have learned over long time, is that if we look for another to fill the big darkness within, we will always be disappointed. It is up to each one of us to find that hole-filler within our own forgiveness of the past, of self, of whatever damaged us. That clarity will show us more than the backside of anything or anyone, and we will stand strong as one who can see beyond the veil, as the person we really are.

We can play misty a whole lifetime, or we can be brave and stand up and say, No More. I have no frickin idea who I am, but I do know who I am not. A good beginning, I would suggest.

I love the mist, to walk through it, the touch of its fingertips on my skin, the gathering of it on leaf fall. I also love clarity. I can do both. Beyond that contusion, I can heal.

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Island Blog – Keeping Time with Time

I wake early and with the sunrise. Out here, in Africa, we are two hours ahead of the UK for a while yet, until the clocks go forward this month. Africa doesn’t bother about clock changing and it wonders me why anyone does. There must be a point to it. Perhaps there is only a limited amount of time in the world and it needs sharing. We lose an hour and another continent thousands of miles across the world finds it has gained one, over us, that is. What is achieved in that gained hour I wonder? Does somebody somewhere get a job done more thoroughly or is that hour just 60 minutes of boredom, time wasted, time not needed, time spent in waiting for something, anything to happen? And when we claim back that hour, around now, with Spring in our step, do we notice the gain of it, treasure it, make it really count, or is it just lost in sleep, a sleep cut short? This musing thinks me. I don’t need to know the facts around time gained, time lost, because this is not the way my mind works. I am more interested in the concept of time and what it means at the core of itself. Time gained? Who gains? Time lost? Who loses? All answers float in the stratosphere, high above factual explanations, beyond the reach of science or physics, free-flowing through the vast and unlimited space of an imagination. There is no such thing as time. Time is an illusion. We all have the same number of hours in a day. But what do we do with our no-such-thing, illusory and equally gifted gift of Time? Now that’s a question.

When I was mostly tapselteerie, way back when children were children, when I was taller than any of them and when, if I said NO, then NO it was, I never thought much about time as a concept. It was something the clock told me, tick, tock, tick, a hand at my back, a hurry up, a panic, a flurry of hours that allowed for no sit-downs, merciless in the tick and the tock of itself, selfish. Selfish time, stop a little, slow a bit, let me catch up? No chance of that my dear, you just need to shape up and move faster. It is like this for all in the muddle-frenzy of young life, building children, building a business, clambering up corporate ladders, learning new ways to fit in, diluting self for the benefit of the team and so on. From where I sit now, watching all this flurrying about me, I am glad it is done for me, no longer diluting self, no longer at the mercy of time, of business, softer round the edges, watching, smiling, calm. I was never calm in the olden days, although I did know people who managed the calm thing and it really irritated me that I couldn’t, me constantly on the boil, my guts in a right fankle, my legs never still. These people seemed in control of their time, allowing it to pass them by, yet still able to fire on all systems when required. Something to do with my faulty wiring, I told myself, and there was a damnit in that thought. However, looking back now through the rosy lens of hindsight, I smile as I recall the fankle, the self-flagellation, the waste of those minutes, those hours spent wishing I could be who I was not. Time wasted, or was it?

Self-reflection is no bad thing, as long as it is not indulged in and developed into a standstill. In my long journey through wasteland and over capricious and sometimes spiteful expanses of ocean, I did, and still do, need to trim my sails, to learn from life herself, to change this or that, to find a new way to look at an old thing. Learning is a lifetime’s work and I am still learning, still a student, an understanding that can really up my fed at times, and delight me at others. I still have my mind, my health, my precious life, time. None of us know how much of that we have, myself included, and it seems to me that this doesn’t really matter much. It’s who we are in the time we do have that remembers people, makes a dent in others lives. Did I waste time in my life? I did. Was I completely marvellous at filling my time to capacity and at all times? I was not. Did I share my time, gift my time every time it was needed? I did not. Am I deeply thankful for all the time spent, shared, gifted, wasted? Those hours of shared chatter, laughter, tears and silent companionship, those highs and lows, those moments spent staring through windows and wishing life was different, that something would happen to change everything……….am I thankful for all of that time? I am.

And now, for however much time is left, no matter the loss and gain of hours, I will keep time with Time. I will sleep some away, waste some, share some, sit alone and gaze through windows but this time without wishing for transformation, without regrets, analysis, criticism of self, all of that time wasting nonsense. Even through the rumpelstiltskin hours of a tossing night, even when I wish she would hurry up, slow down, stop completely for a while, even then, for Time is my friend and she is gift. So many have no time left at all.

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Island Blog – Diversifly

Moving on from the Accept and Adapt thingy, I have thought many thinks about how I might diversify. As I very gradually learn to accept and to adapt to this new loneliness, my search for how to make something of this apparent nothing has led me to a new light. Instead of dreading another long evening alone I whittled the stick of it down to a fine point. As late afternoon draws near, as I watch other people slow into a time shared, heading back to wherever together, exchanging laughter and conversation, I come back to where I sit here watching them. Although I still yearn for what was and will never be again, my inner imp sniggers at me, taps at my brain, asks me (with rolling eyes) when I plan to get off my ass and take some action. My start point may appear to be so not what I want, it is, nonetheless, my start point. I must diversify, I must find a something to replace a someone, something that absorbs me and that moves the minutes along in a happy and engaging way. By this time I am too tired to read, not very interested in television and my eyes are done with sewing. So what to do? I ask my inner imp. What do you love to do? I answer her. Cooking, I said, but…….

But nothing, she snorts. I wish I could snort as she does but I am unpractised and she has turned snorting into an art form. My resistance stands firm. There is no point cooking, I whine. Cooking for one small eater is hardly worth the bother. Pshaw!! she says as I knew she would. If, she continues, you want to diversify and you love cooking then what is there to lose by trying it out, at this very time? It will take your eyes off imagining that the whole world is happy and content with their own lives and curve you gently back into your own. Your investment in your own life can only bring you joy, even if you cannot see that yet, and it will tell you that you is important. Okay, I say. Maybe. I go to my fridge at the lonely time and turn back to her. There’s nothing much in here I say. Oh, fiddlesticks! She is right behind me. I see mushrooms, an ancient lime, natural yoghurt, that jar of capers, an onion and two old apples that look like they were born in 2020. Bring them into hope. Invent. Think. Diversify.

I soften the onion in olive oil, add the mushrooms, chopped apples and seasoning and let the lot simmer. I am absorbed, thinking outside my box, engaged. I add veg stock and a few capers, the juice of the lime and turn down the heat. People still wander by, wave, move on into their shared evening but I don’t feel sad. I am completely involved with what to do next with this flavoursome concoction. Serve with rice, reduce the liquid, add a tin of butter beans, what? Once the ingredients are softened, I decide. Soup it will be. The flavours float through the house, the punch of mushrooms eased and tweaked by the tang of lime, the snatch of capers, blending in a way that surprises me. My olfactory senses are dancing, alert, lifted. Once combined, I blend the mix, add seasoning and stir in two tablespoons of natural yoghurt. It smells heavenly. Once slightly cooled I taste. It is divine and who would have thought it? Later, once cool, I taste again. The lime and apple have challenged the mushrooms and facilitated a conversation. I hear it, smell it and taste the unity. This is as delicious cold as it is hot. I am overly chuffed enough to make a decision. Cooking will be my activity when this lonely time barrels in. It doesn’t matter that there is only me to taste whatever I prepare. I can deliver to neighbours, I can share and I will. This is not important but I is and I will build me a new way. I check recipes for inspirational combinations but I know I won’t follow them word by word. I am too flighty for such. I am more ‘bird by bird’, cooking spontaneously, using ingredients that challenge each other, not for domination but for conversation.

And so I am learning to diversify. No, more. Diversifly.

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Island Blog – Candy Floss Tastes like Clouds.

It seems like yesterday I foraged for wild garlic in the Fairy Woods. Now I couldn’t get there if I tried, not with the bracken man high and laden with ticks. But I did go before the bracken woke up and the woodland floor was a carpet of gentle white flowers and strong green leaves. Now, the big jar of pesto in my fridge is almost empty for another year. It thinks me of how quickly Time and her inhabitants pass. When children grow they do so whilst, it seems to me, we are not watching. From a little girl or boy to a strapping, strongly independent individual in moments. The catch of their sweet and awkward 5 year old selves to this girl who decides what she wears of a Tuesday school morning and it is SO NOT THAT! From the boy who played with toy boats in a puddle to a the lad who can ride his bike no-hands and way too fast. Gone times. But I saw them, I watched them, I noticed and there’s the key, right there in my hand, and yours. Those of us who remember no television, no social media, no media in fact, no streaming, no downloading and a finger dial telephone knew of a different world, a very different time. We can smile at our memories, laugh at the puzzlement on the faces of our grandchildren or we can hanker for the old. Don’t do that. It’s boring.

Today, on Father’s Day I celebrate my sons and my son-in-law. There is no big daddy here now and even though such a day meant little to Himself and for many years, I remember. I remember him at Tapselteerie, strong and with no thought of any sort of demise and I smile at my rememberings. I was there, oh lucky me, I was there. I saw. Adventures, meltdowns, angst and hilarity, all of it and more. What a privilege to be able to remember and to have been there because I know our shared life was way more bonkers than many others. We were wild, spontaneous and sometimes reckless but we really really lived. I don’t ever remember feeling bored. There just wasn’t time.

This afternoon I walked my grandgirls and the Poppy dog down to the shore in a rare burst of warm sunshine. We skipped in and out of the water, played word games, watched duck fly in, a heron land, oystercatchers twirtle overhead, a sea-eagle surf the sky. Conversation can fly too and I sat on a rock listening to the sisterly interaction. I began. I go to the shop and in my basket I put……..Oh, I know this game, they cried. Good I said. Play. Ok, I’m first! No, I’m first. No, you’re always first. What is so important about being first, I said from my rock seat, genuinely interested because I get it but never questioned it till now. They both rolled their eyes, unified once more. Gaga! they said. First is best. Ok……well I will go third. Why? they asked, mystified. Well, because that way I can hear all your mistakes and learn. Long pause. You go first Gaga. Ha! So I put sausages in my basket and the next one put in a Rainbow Dragon with a Big Heart. The Redhead’s turn. She went through the list and added Candy Floss. Of course, says Big Sister, you always choose candy floss or other boring things! Quick as a flash the Redhead is back. Candy Floss, she announces importantly is not boring. Besides, it tastes like clouds.

And that was that.