today

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Island Blog – Tumbletast

My Dad liked bloaters. The rest of us baulked at the whole bloater thing, the name being enough. I don’t know, even now what is a bloater, and am not sure I want to. I think it is half smoked, or half something and half anything is not for me. I remember many times being called to shores where a huge whale had beached and died (thankfully), each sight a bloat, big enough to eventually explode with enough force to cause turbulence in the flight from Glasgow to Iceland. the swellbelly of that magnificent, once free, wild person was a trip in my step, the deep sadness a hold in my belly, a gasp. Even as I had seen death many times, sheep, cows, calves, lambs, dogs, cats, in-laws, these encounters, seen afar off, yet known, walked to over stones and tumbletast, maybe in the darkling, with torch, always ready to defend, to protect, from gulls, from people, from the weather. A lonely death, a lonely walk. But, I would not have missed any one of them. I saw them. I see you. I put my hand on your bloated beautiful body. Hallo.

I understand why some of us choose to beach.

I watched the sky today, the first open one for frickin days of slanty rain and grumpy clouds and the whole wotwot that goes with such control, mud, puddles, landslides, the withering of our confidently constructed land. How foolish we are to think we can do this. Nature allows no half measures not neither. (sorry Dad) By the way, what do three negatives mean? Perhaps a lot. I might look into the three negative thingy. I know 3 to be the perfect number, and I employ it myself in my writing. This, this and this. It seems to work. In fact, I struggle to do two, as if two fail me somehow. Then I feel sorry for Two. Life is so complicated.

I am scared. I am anxious. I sleep little. I am tumbletast.

The post arrived today from Ros, my lovely friend. Everyone here is a friend. She, however, has the smile and the welcome that could begin a new history. I collect, barefoot, and not under rain. She, in her luminous PO kit meets me over the fence, hands over. She asks me how I am. I tell her I am waiting, waiting, two weeks till surgery. How do you feel? She asked. I am not half anything, so I smiled and told her.

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Island Blog – Ordinary Knickers

Today I went to buy new underpinnings. T’is a while since I did this. What I wear beneath what I wear is functional and, although an important, nay critical, part of the dressing process, I rarely think about buying new. Unless, that is, I discover exhausted elastic or a seam falling apart. My reason for yesterday’s adventure into the lingerie department, a terrifying place in my opinion, so much choice and with so many consequences, is because I have purchased a white dress. It isn’t see-through per se, but bright turquoise knickers would definitely be making a loud statement. I need white. I have no white. White knickers are for children. My teenage longing for something of colour beneath my clothing is a feeling I still recall, even now. However, needs must. I take a deep breath and dive into Lingerie.

I’m like a little girl in a strange world. I study the various bras in amazement. Every consideration has been made, it seems, to provide endless and puzzling results, to uplift, separate and transform what is into what isn’t. Just looking at these things is enough to squeeze the air from my lungs. I cannot imagine wearing any of them for more than a minute. Head down, I scurry through the weapons of torture and on to knickers. Just white pants, that’s all, white, cotton, functional, medium at a guess. I wander through high-leg, low-cut, no-visibility, full-cover, high waist, post-birth, thongs, mid-rise, none of them either suitable or white. I search for Ordinary Knickers. I glance over to the pay point. One young man, deeply inside his mobile. I decide not to ask him for Ordinary Knickers. This is Africa, after all, and we would both be embarrassed, my voice loud in the almost empty department and he, stumbling for words, an unsettling image in his mind. It wonders me he is here at all. I dive back into the confusion. There are no Ordinary Knickers it seems. But wait! In the budget section, I spot packs of 3 and one shows me a glimpse of white between ‘skin-colour’ and ‘black’. I purchase hurriedly and leave, gasping in gulps of freedom air, relieved to be leaving the terrifying and bewildering world of Lingerie behind me.

All good so far you might think. Back home I try on the white, size medium, and sigh. The shape is not my shape, the waistband which isn’t at my waist, too tight. I pull on the dress. It works. The underneath of the overview of me is invisible, although sitting down creates a skin-fall mid body, but, I suppose I can bear wearing the damn things for an evening. I guess they, like all my ancient colourful knickers, will soften over time. I also know I could snip around the elastic, not right through, of course, I don’t want an embarrassing knicker-fall, but just enough to give some give.

I make coffee and think a bit. I do understand, and vaguely remember, the delight of new underwear but as my young and middle life demanded functional clothing, a farmer’s wife ensemble of tee shirt, jeans and a jumper, I didn’t spend much time choosing what to wear underneath, didn’t give it much thought at all. I remember my first bra, a little white thing, a most uncomfortable restraint and one I resented daily. Not much has changed over the years it seems, and now relieved at the thought of another few years of not having to brave a Lingerie department, I move happily into the rest of my day.

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Island Blog – A Warthog, Clouds, Shapes and Colour

I am quickly getting friendly with the heat. It bizarres me that I can go from 6 degrees to 36 and not only love both but able to adapt almost immediately. Walking off the last week plane (Orville from The Rescuers) into dazzling sunshine and a load of hot people, I felt my spirits lift. Of course there was relief in there, somewhere, after gruelling airport and plane-ness, but to feel the slam of heat in my favourite place is more than warming. There is air-con in this lovely thatched African home, cool tiled floors and plenty shade on the outside of In, not to mention a swimming pool from which I just rescued (hopefully) a huge centipede critter with a name like Chingaloolie, with a million legs and a body about 10 inches long, as thick as my dad’s middle finger. I paddled in, scooped it up in a sieve and laid it on the deck. I’m hopeful as I definitely saw its feelers wiggle. This life-saving thingy reminds me of swimming in a Corfusian sea past endless (it seemed) honey bees paddling like dingbats and with no hope of survival. I scooped them up on the back of one hand, holding it aloft as I turned for shore with a lopsided breast stroke. I managed about 8 one day and felt super delighted with myself as if I, alone, had saved all bees. Finding a rock I encouraged the enfeebled to move off my hand. No thanks, they all said with a little tail waggle. Lord knows what they were saying to each other as I became a little nervous of upsetting them into a stinging frenzy. They wouldn’t, I said, not after I saved them from Davy Jones’ locker, and they didn’t.

It is too hot to walk the dog except for early doors but not too early because Lady Leopard might not have managed her night kill and still be hungry, not that scraggy me would fill her belly. Even the big dog, although more her style, wouldn’t be enough. I’ve seen the size of her dinners half way up a tall tree, where she dragged it away from a hyena scavenge, impala legs sticking out like bicycle spokes, its glazed over eyes no longer with sight, whilst her Ladyship lounged on another branch, yawning. It’s too hot today to make foray over the decking which burns like fire under naked feets. The good news is that, once I got the hang of the mechanical options, the washing will dry in about 30 minutes, unlike back home where clouds (obviously watching for the chance of mischief) gather and merge to dump their load just after I’ve gone back indoors. I watch the dragonflies, rainbow coloured, dart and dive through the garden. Electric blues, vibrant reds, butter yellows, like the birds that sing and whoop, screech and chitter through the acacia. So much colour so much life. I read and watch, startle at a bark. Baboon? They come, you know, without any idea of boundaries, leaping and bouncing through gardens, over high walls or to swing down from trees in search of food. The abundant Grenadilla hangs heavy with fruit and they love it. But, no, it isn’t baboon, this time, but a neighbouring dog with a talent for impersonation. I relax back, for now. I remember the last time I was in Africa, inside a wildlife reserve and working on my laptop on the stoep. I heard the bark of the head male, a massive creature with big yellow teeth and scarpered inside just in time to hear the roof drumming with baboon. Mothers with babies a-clung, exuberant teenagers and himself, the patriarch. I ran to lock the windows and doors. They pull doors open. In no time they were gone leaving my ears ringing with their screeches and thumps, my heart beating so fast I had to hide in the loo to calm down. It took me some time to ginger back out.

Yesterday we did walk through the reserve and enjoyed a stand off with a mother warthog. Her piglets squealed around her and we were careful, very careful, not to get in between her and her young. Those tusks are big and she will charge in a flash. She wouldn’t budge off the track. We inched forward as everything in me screamed TURN AROUND! My African son held my hand tight and slowly we moved onwards. She watched us pass, through those piggy eyes, as if we were no big deal but for the rest of the walk I was on tenterhooks. I had always considered warthogs to be hideous creatures but this far-too-close- encounter. showed me how stunning they are with that red-dust colouring and those fine lines. Nonetheless I would rather see them ways off from now on. Driving into town I see a male giraffe, his head way higher than the trees, whilst overhead huge vultures wheel and loop through the blue. Nothing compares to such sightings, so close, so free to roam, so endangered. Much of what I will see, have seen, will be nothing more than a picture in a school book in the not too distant future, a sad thought indeed, albeit an inevitable one. At least I have seen, with my own eyes, the real deal, watched it lope, run, pounce, climb, swing, charge. I know the Go Away signs, the body language, what not to do in the event of trouble and these come with feelings and memories not many future generations will ever experience.

A scoot into town for a coffee and I am thrilled to be remembered. The welcome from Cosmos at the Rock Fig was warm and smiley and the coffee as I remember, hot, strong and delicious. Thence to the material shop because I plan to sew a story using soft linens, threads and wools. Sewing without a scooby as to what will reveal itself, just working on instinct and with colours and shapes already seen, the insects, birds, animals and people, is deliciously freeing, the result oftentimes a complete surprise. It thinks me. A life is painted this way, starting at the beginning, being curious, trusting instincts, with courageous application of every small step. Looking back on my own life I can see the patterns and shapes I never saw at the time, not believing that these apparently insignificant choices and decisions I made could ever become a whole painting, become just that. We need the bland hues, the times we thought nothing much was happening, would ever happen, for the vibrant lifts of rich colour to really show. Life is a lot about waiting for something to present itself, a new path, a new relationship, a new opportunity and those times demand and require a patience we find lumpish and pale, like yesterday’s porridge. But Life has her plans. All we need to do is to show up and to keep showing up; to fake courage and a can-do attitude no matter how grey our sky, how full of colluding clouds; to keep taking another step and, most of all, to be curious like Alice, however old we might be in years. It is easy to falter, to fall and we all do it but there will be someone nearby who is upstanding. Reach out a hand and hold on tight, eyes wide with the looking and something or someone will appear to colour up the bland, to inspire, to startle our canvas into electric life. A new way to work with the old things is like sunshine on a rainy day, an eyelet through which we can see for miles. They were always there, the miles. We just needed a wee rest for a while.

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Island Blog – Huge Grey Knickers and Moving On

Today I had frock trouble. Admittedly it was 3 am when the ditherment began, dark as jet outside and moonless. It was also 3 am, an hour when all the doubts and wrinkles come blasting in. I think it’s the noise of them that wakes me, the chaos of voices all saying something different but all in the same unsettling tone. Critical. All that I didn’t do, should have done, did do and shouldn’t have done rise like goblins from the dark ground of the night woods. It was the wrong time to have a frock issue, I know that, but it seemed like a good focus at the time. My wardrobe is dark inside, frocks hanging like a line of empty women, all colours, styles, shapes and drops. choosing aright is important on any day because my frock combo creates me a story for the day ahead. Do I feel like a Spanish dancer today or a bag lady? Am I needing colour or is there colour already in me? Do I want midi or something just below the knee, reds or blues or do I want frock chaos? The latter wins today. I might as well continue the theme after all. I swat away the bluebottle buzz internal and focus on the external response. I select a pink straight down dress with a sauncy little frill I wheeched off an extraordinary summer top from China, the rest I used to stuff a soft toy. I add a bright lemon yellow slightly shorter dress for layering and complete the whole hysterical combo with a butter yellow cardigan. I check the mirror. Triple ghastly. I’ll do.

Coffee and music and no cake-baking today. I’m enjoying the quiet of the nothing of these nobody hours, waiting for dawn to yawn awake. No sun this morning, not visible anyway through the flat grey that reminds me of my school knickers, thick, huge and woven tight enough to blank out all light. I smile at a dorm dressing memory when one of my friends, tiny and slimpicked, demonstrated how she could get a pillow down hers without any stretch of the elastic. My mother says I’ll grow into them, she laughed. I met her decades later and just know she never did. In those school days when frocks, loathsome frocks, measured, controlled, no waistband, long sleeved, high collared, no buttons, were our only escape from the sternly tailored skirts, I confess we did feel an almost kittenish sense of freedom between prep and prayers. We could actually move without creaking, lift our arms without the snap of angry starch, breathe without the throttle of a tie, wiggle toes freed from the brace of stout lace-ups. I can feel that freedom now.

I think, no I really believe, that the more experiences we have in situations of constraint as youngsters give us a real opportunity to learn compassion. To know what it is like to feel in any way imprisoned, whether inside light blocking huge grey knickers or in a relationship, or a job, or even in a whole life, teaches us something that gifts great power, if we can rise from blame. I find an instant compassion when anyone shows me, no matter their age, old or young, that they feel starched shut. It matters not that I have experience their circumstance. I know the feeling and, if we are honest, feelings are everything to an individual. Everything. If someone comes with angst and anger, we can just sit and shut up. Just listen. Just be there. I remember the ones who were there for me just like that. They, without realising it, gave me the courage to move on. And I thank them.

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Island Blog – Innovator Generation

For all that we might berate the ways in which our lives are susceptible, nay wide open to corruptive influences, we should also notice and admire the benefits of that wide openness for it teaches us. Everything teaches us, both the perceived good and the perceived bad if we acknowledge that nothing is as it seems viewed from our own limitations of fear. Yes, there is ‘bad’ out there but there is far more good. This visibility also allows us to see further, look deeper and accept our small place in a very big world. We might be tempted to hide from being so seen and I am not saying this is wrong, not at all if it is mindfully considered, but if it comes from a place of fear, we are forgetting to love, to love the way our young are finding their stumbling way along paths we have never walked, at least not as young innovators. We might remember that we were just that once, recalling the tuts and the warnings of our own elders and so-called betters whilst dancing off into what, hippiehood? reckless decisions? risk taking? And more, and more.

This day at midday on Radio Four, You and Yours, my son Ruari is being interviewed. From oil broker to One year No Beer entrepreneur, founding a business to encourage and support anyone wanting to cut down or quit alcohol, risking everything, he and his wife are finally finding recognition and I am so very proud of their passion and their determination. It has been a rocky road, and still is, the one they have chosen. Losing the income they enjoyed, moving home more than once, building on through Covid when the consumption of alcohol elevated considerably according to stats, when nobody wanted to think beyond just coping with the restrictions, the fears, the tension, they persisted, changed shape, adapted, kept going. I have followed every step and I feel nothing but admiration. To stand for something you really believe in and then to walk away from comfort and predictability in order to lead from the front takes a great deal of courage and then to keep walking out front as followers fall away presents a test many would fail. This isn’t working. Where is everyone? But they didn’t give up. They kept walking and now their followers number thousands and worldwide. Wild tundra is being tamed, not from the desire to control, to develop for personal gain but from a passion for people, a belief in the individual’s ability to rise from circumstances as a powerful game changer.

I wax lyrical on this in order to show the good side of wide openness. Without social media, without vulnerability, this entrepreneur would have struggled to gain such recognition. In my days of no television, bad radio reception, no Facebook, instagram and other animals, how could it rise in the way it has? It would have taken decades had it been limited to the paths well travelled. Yes there is risk out there as I know all too well, but without risk and the opportunities that come with it, it is impossible to discover the extent to which we can adapt whilst still moving forward. Fear is a killer as we know. Instead of retreating behind our protective walls, saying nonsense things like “It was better in our day,’ we might take a moment to seek the good in this generational change. And, when we do this seeking thingy we will amaze ourselves. I write a list at times when I am confounded and afraid of wide openness and as I note a negative, I consider the positive aspect of that perceived negative. It laughs me because one comes almost immediately. I decide I have a choice about how I see what I see. It takes brainwork, yes. It can feel almost impossible at times but I am determined to employ my innate intelligence, to thwack the sleepy dwarf into a tall and wide open woman, to stretch those mental limbs, to flex, to look around at the very big world, one I am more than happy to be a tiny part of.

Good or bad? Retreat or walk forward in vulnerability? Learn or refuse to listen? The choice is yours.

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Island Blog – Forward to go

Today I drove the hill road into the harbour town to meet a friend. I was early and picked the sofa and the comfy armchair beside a warm open fire. The buzz was…..theatrical. I think I say this because the welcoming staff were all dressed in colours, with rings and tattoos and artistically coloured hair. Smiles wide, looking at me. I get it. An old woman in a big frock with bare legs and short boots and a home-fashioned jacket, seeded once in an old cardigan that freaked out when I washed it on ‘Too Warm’. I had thought at first, dog blanket, then I heard the story in it. My feisty impossible mother-in-law had knitted this thing, and for me. That had to have been days of knitting; days of love and commitment. No, I will lift this hunched and crunched woollen thing into my life, breathe my breath into it. Okay, great big respect. Now what? It thought me. I decide to wheech out the material drawer. I find velvet, or something that thinks it’s velvet and it is not for me to disappoint it as I finger the hold of it, the depth and then bring my own knowing into this I am Velvet thing. I am quiet on the subject, lifting out the deep colours, just knowing that this Not Velvet will be a right bugger to shape. It won’t shape. It yawls like sails in a slack-flack wind somewhere off Cherbourg. Hmmm.

I brought down my ridiculously pink tailors dummy on a white stick. I laid the compromised cardigan around her perfect pink shoulders, marvelling, with a snort, at her perfect pink breasts. I tell her this. I am amazed that anything I make for me, knowing my own body and using you as a caption of what I never was can ever fit, not with those pointy things almost taking my eye out each time I move around to pin or tuck, or wheech. But I, we, move on. She stands quiet whilst I pin and sew, pin and sew and then it is done, this bejewelled jacket that can only come out for air on dry winter days. Two, maybe three. Today was one so there won’t be many more.

We ordered soup. It’s always home made and so is the bread, so are the scones and the sweet baking. The fire was tended by a smiling young man. I hailed an artist I know well, one who has got his work into the online Saatchi gallery, and congratulated him as he passed by. There was a writing group just finishing up on a table nearby and I hailed the leader and signed myself up. So cosy in there, so easy, so fine-art. After lunch we visited the new exhibition, all local artists. I was enthralled at the work. I knew most of the artists just from their work. Many had sold and I was not surprised. I talked with my friend, an art therapist working with textiles, and we laughed and shared and quite forgot our old caring roles as we became two women in a space, with nothing but forward to go.

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Island Blog – Autumn, Our Gift.

I almost didn’t go to the pier today, to sit on the flat rock and to watch the tidal activity. Almost. Waking twirly and feeling it as the day slowed on, I conversed with myself as though to allow such a falter, to give it credence and approval. I will walk the short walk today, I said. It’s fine. I am allowed. But, as I moved closer to the exit opportunity, the rebel in me drew blood and stood in my path. I could see her in my mind’s eye and she laughed me. Ok, ok, I said, I will walk on. She withdrew to allow safe passage. I would so not want to challenge her.

Leaves are turning. Above my head, beech, alder, hornbeam and birch show me tip. That tip into Autumn, that acceptance with a rebel of colour shouting at them. No dying without colour, she says, no dying without that glorious dress of swish and ruby, of gold and speckles, that differentness that comes only now, only as Summer with all her flounce and confidence yawns like a princess and takes a first class flight across the world. There, she can astonish as only she can, lifting tired human minds, human bodies into swimsuits and flowing wraps and barbecues and beach encounters, but Autumn is pragmatic. She speaks to the dying light, to those on the cusp of change, she is change. And she does it well. Even though the storms may come and the light give way to a big dark, she is clever with time, for those who are watching. She is not one to sleep in.

The light lifts as I walk. Although it seems that the sky is closed, all grey and without comment, there is a shift. I can feel blue coming even if I cannot see it and it comes, with dissonant clouding and cerulean blue. For now it is just sweaty and cloying and my frocks clamp my skin. Then home again as Father Sun finds his spot and beams hot and sweaty after a jumper and boot day. I roll my eyes and peel off morning layers, damp down the fire. The temperature flips from nothing much to 27 degrees in a matter of moments. My neighbours suddenly barbecue. It is what we do if we are working with what is on offer, much like Autumn. I like her. She is feisty and determined. She is beauty in the face of death only it isn’t death. Death is forever, whereas she, Autumn is just one of four and playing her part. She is that jazz singer with a whisky/cigarette voice you hear whilst walking home, one that draws you in to hear more. She is nuts and berries, vibrant and wild, offering a harvest that comes only to her. She is preparation for the winter months when we all lose the plot, light endless candles, and pretend we don’t mind the dark and the cold. She is a herald, nonetheless. She is saying, get ready, pay attention, get real about this time, in particular, This Time, for we are all afraid, all wondering, all peering out at a world we are no longer sure about nor confident to walk in.

I won’t do the cheesy and say that this is nothing. It is not nothing. But we humans have survived, lived, loved danced and made a difference over and over for thousands of years. None of us know what will happen next but next is out there and we are right here, right now and this is Autumn. Our gift.

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Island Blog – Not like a suitcase or a door

Today I wake in the lime green light of absolutely not dawn. It thinks me that the Morning is pregnant, nauseous and letting me know. I groan. I want the buttery light that tells me is it at least 4.45am. Then I can close my eyes quick quick like a camera shutter and count the minutes all the way up to 5 which is the time chickens, babies, outside four-leggers and garden birds leap into life. Then I will perform what laughingly passes as my own leap, although I need to be cautious and one can hardly leap cautiously. T’is an oxymoron. But this lime-green morning light groans me. I had awoken oft in the dark because that flipping Barn Owl was having a party all alone on the telegraph pole, screeching insults or whatevers mere feet from my open window. I got up and gave it my best glare but all it did was that 360 thing with its head whilst its feet remained affixed to the pole. I won’t yell, I whispered, nor throw my Ponds cold cream jar at you but only because of your astonishing beauty and this irritating sense of privilege I am feeling that you chose my pole on which to screech like an old fishwife.

So passed the night and now I am flagging. Actually, if I’m honest, I flagged all day so that at this hour of the very long assemblance of hours I consider myself a high achiever in the world of flagging. I didn’t do nothing, though. Not at all. Doing nothing is so not my thing. In fact, I sometimes wonder if my not doing nothing makes me too busy to allow internal troubles to make some sense. It’s like I am ‘busy’ shutting out anything painful when I know only too well that ‘we’ must allow the pain a voice in order to heal. I tell myself that and myself usually snorts. She knows that understanding something we have read, and that makes perfect sense, has to travel a different route to actually click. I sweep the floor, very sloppily. I answer an email and work some more on one of my ridiculous fantasy landscape tapestries. This one is particularly ridiculous but I have thought that before now as I work without pattern or design only to find a rather lovely scene enfolding before me. My eyes are squint from sewing today and the rain is non-stop. I eat breakfast at 5.30 and lunch at 11.15. I am like a tortoise preparing for hibernation, going slower, s l o w e r s. l. o. w. e. r. From time to time I whack myself into startlement and we do something like go for a walk all coated in rain repellent plastic. Well, I was, but the doglet, newly shaved, was not and she decided after all of 14 feet that this was enough thanks and I’m off home now. It took me 15 minutes to get all this clobber on. Well, that’s okay. Another fifteen minutes to take it off and that makes 30 minutes which is half an hour which means the day will soon(ish) be over. Thank goodness.

I go back to thinking about the thinks I avoid thinking. Let them come in and overwhelm, says myself. No, I say. I cannot allow that. I don’t want to let that tsunami in, that one that has multiple shipwrecks inside it, smashed and broken, ruined and unrecognisable. I want to do this closure nonsense, putting everything, my life, my experiences, my marriage into a suitcase and to shut the lid. I want to slam and lock the door firmly on the past and turn away into a new life. I don’t want memories dribbling through the cracks, hissing like venomous snakes. Who the heck does? And yet, and yet, my long fingers keep reaching back through old times, to how it was, to who I was and they are the fretful fingers of an old woman looking for something she will never find. Answers.

I suspect it is natural to quest for such, for answers. I often ask myself why. Why I did this, why he said that, why she made that awful decision, why secrets secrets secrets were kept so hidden. There is a big unrest in the desert lands of Unanswered Questions. Oh what I wouldn’t give for a day with himself to get those answers and yet (and yet) I know he would never reveal a thing. He didn’t when he was alive for almost 50 years. He was obviously quite the thing about not answering difficult questions. So how do I get to a place of acceptance? I suspect there is no fast track answer to that one. Are we all mysteries to each other, I wonder? Perhaps we are and perhaps this is a normal human state, one of intense frustration right up to the end. Is death a marvellous escape? Do those who know they are dying feel a wonderful sense of relief that finally, finally, they are excused from the Accountability Class? It sounds rather kind when I think of it that way.

But life right now is like being stuck on a telegraph pole but without the 360 head turning ability. I have that screech voice and I silence it. I say I am great, fine, well, busy. We all do, I guess, in the hope that something will click at a deeper level, that my brain will believe it and invite my heart to take it in, to warm it, to beat it into new life. I know, I know, it is early days, but it is also a year, no it is over ten years of watching his secret self slowly leave the room whilst remaining in it, noisily. That is a long long time.

An irreverent chuckle comes to me in my turmoil. I have an image memory of people who won’t go. You make it obvious that after ten hours that your come-for-coffee invite is wearing very thin. They rise, eventually, but keep talking. You head for the door and open it. They stay where they are and keep talking. Now a freezing wind with accompanying rain is drenching both you and the floor. Still they talk, flapping hands and saying giggly things like ‘Oh we should go, you’ve been so kind, we stayed too long…’ You shut the door, well defeated. You didn’t offer lunch, having clocked that these good people are having so much fun that their going home just might feel like back to jail and you are not unkind even if you didn’t offer lunch. You finally get them out the door and close it quick quick. The short distance from the door to the gate suddenly looks like the road to Zanzibar. Inching, inching, inching, hearing, and enthusing about this cousin, this new baby, this new purchase, you get them through the gate.

Waving them off feels like heaven.

Maybe I will do that with my long staying unanswered questions.

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Island Blog – If this is how it is, then Act

I feel sad for our world today. I know I live in a tiny part of it, beautiful, stunning, peaceful but yet tiny. It doesn’t stop me noticing the rest. Although for many years I have busily inhabited the aforesaid beautiful, stunning and peaceful place, it seems like there is a loudspeaker on the others, on the bigger world. I know of corruption in governments, of hidden information in order to keep the ‘masses’ quiet and I have never been okay with that. It is as if the ‘masses’ are mindless idiots who don’t think and who don’t need to know. I am one. I am protected up here with the Gulf Stream and with lunatic winter gales the biggest threats to my survival. They don’t stop me knowing, even as I am able to turn off the news, ignore the ‘bad stuff’ that might infect my sleep.

In my busy young mother overthetopworkedout life, I ignored with impunity. After all, there were guests to feed, hospitality requirements (endless) and a family to protect and provide for, so I never had a scooby about wars and corruption and governments hiding pretty much everything. Now, there is silence, endless silence in my life and I finger my way into the light of outside information. I don’t understand most of it, which, by my way of thinking, is just the point, but I know when I hear, or don’t hear, something that butts against my gut, when something in me stands up. Hairs, goose bumps, those sorts of things. If you stood me up in a group and demanded explanation I could not find the words. Much as my dream job was to be a thoroughly difficult woman in all situations, I am not her. I loved to hear the confidence and courage from those who wore red shoes and lipstick and who stood to be noticed at great risk and just knew I would only ever be a choir girl to their solo.

Now I find myself needing to be that soloist. Not in a group, not in public, not on a soapbox on the corner of a dank lonely street but for my own self. I see, even from the aforesaid magical place, that I must make difficult choices, brave up and stand for myself. We would love to have had clear direction from our ‘leaders’ but even they had no idea how the virus would morph, develop and consume. Nonetheless I see good leaders and I see dithery ones. I still won’t blame. This is up to me, me is up to me and, you know what, it is how it was when people thought for themselves instead of waiting for direction in a crisis. We seem to have lost the use of that muscle.

I find myself listening to the news more now, just the headlines. There is fear and doubt in all our hearts. There is detail and posturing although how anyone can posture against an invisible enemy astonishes me. It’s a bit Scifi. But, I remind myself as I contrive a grin with my teeth, this is how it is now. My mail box is coloured with bright offers of ‘freedom’ through summer sandals to cheap flights to loans. The world has gone mad. The leaders are flagging (not all of them) and the country is sagging like an old woman tired of the fight. Another winter of fear? Maybe. Another lockdown? Maybe. Another slug of fear in our whisky? Maybe. Another endlessness of isolation and loneliness? Maybe.

I always see a ‘Maybe’ as a butterfly, or a moth. I have done since childhood, perhaps because the word was employed so often by my mother as I asked the endless questions that drove her crazy. And, the thing about Maybe is that she has two sides. Will and Won’t. Show and Hide. Run and Stay. And more. There are times for each side of her and we need to tap our own intelligence in order to know to react. Our own intelligence. Not the government’s, not that or our opinioned friends/mothers/relations, not that of our neighbours, but our own. Some of us have not gone there for years, maybe decades. Hallo Maybe…. But we have it people, strong within us. Ask yourself ‘What do I believe?’ What Do I think?’ And keep asking until the only right answer comes. Then Act.

by

Island Blog – All About Henry

I awaken into a beautiful crisp morning, all blue sky and Wolf Moon shining enough light to afford me a greenish wander from kitchen door to kettle. Barefoot, I encounter what I already knew was there, even if I have been keeping my eyes above floor level for a few days. Dust. Bits of dropped food. Fluff. Well Dammit, I mutter. I will need to take action today. Knowing, as I do, my excellent ability to distract myself from housework, I decide to add another dull task as a sort of punishment. The bathroom needs cleaning. These days I can ignore the bathroom-needing-cleaning thingy for days. When Himself was still above ground, it needed cleaning daily and I accepted the work as a part of my morning routine without question. Even before that I would clean it just in case the Bathroom Police dropped in to check. But, now there is no Himself and absolutely no chance of anyone dropping in, let alone the BP, I have grown indolent and Henry mutters away to himself in the dark of the cupboard below stairs. He is bored, I know it, but I also know that precisely because I have neglected him, he will take full advantage of today’s outing for he is mischievous and resourceful.

I can hear him now, as if he is reading my thoughts, or maybe I spoke out loud. He has perfect hearing and I know this as he knows I know this. I move towards the door and open it a glimpse. I hear rustling. It could be him or it might be a scuttle of mice who have enjoyed a long period of quiet, undisturbed. Hallo Henry, I say, my moon face peering into the darkness. Are you where I left you or have you relocated? Are you hiding? I know he is shy. My hands find him and I begin to tell him where we will work this morning. He grins. It’s quite an area of carpet I plan to let him loose upon and he is full of anticipation.

First we climb the stairs and I thank him for being light. My previous carpet sucker, a very expensive Miele, weighed a flipping ton and refused to recover on stair work after I pulled too hard on her trunk, thus sending her into a series of backflips thus landing her, most undignifiedly, on her back, her belly exposed to the world. At that point I recall sitting down for a think. Perhaps, I thought, I should buy myself a male hoover this time and one that weighs less than an SUV, one with a very long and hand-winding flex, no electric one that almost but not quite draws in the cable, one with bags I can bin instead of having to wash out the catacomb of Miss Miele every time in order to get rid of the smell and the bits.

When I first met Henry, I thought everything would now be easy and un-smelly. I was wrong on the second count. It was so depressing because now I had no chance of washing out the innards. I was hardly going to bin a bag after every hoovering session after all. Once I had risen from my depression, I decided to seek some fragrant oil, one that could be dripped onto the filter, and one that just might do the trick. It did. But for Henry’s shyness there seems to be no cure. He snags in every doorway. I encourage, wheedle, soothe, beg even, but nothing overcomes this unfortunate trait. I try empathetic questions. Is it because you are embarrassed to be cleaning? Is this a Macho Man thing? Are you afraid the Bathroom Police are in the next room just waiting to laugh at you, to mock and deride? To say, This is Women’s Work, in that idiot man sort of way? Henry just grins and keeps schtum.

In the bathroom, quite alone with me, Henry sucks bravely, intent on his work. I wheech off the brush and point the nozzle at the corners and the edges. We move behind and under everything that isn’t stuck down and I feel quite jaunty at the difference we are making. Hoover/Woman synergy, a sort of bond between us and I turn to tell him so. My mistake. Never trust the smile of a man who says nothing, for there is a deal of control planning going on behind that face. In that moment of complacence Henry sucks up a cleaning sponge and a cloth. Just like that, straight into his belly, no chewing. Henry! I admonish, and here he turns to the skirt of my frock. It takes me a few seconds to reclaim myself even if I do realise there is no chance said frock would disappear in the same way up that proboscis, affixed as it is to other parts of my body which would need surgical removal in order to allow such a snatch. After I have a word with him about respect for a co-worker, the engine silenced, we continue across the landing and down the stairs. He only backflips once and I right him with abject apology. Now we are cruising and, apart from two further attempts to pull my frock off, eliciting a raised eyebrow from me, we lift the dirt from all floors, up and down.

I thank him and return him to the mice and the dark. The house smells lovely and I tell him so. I thank him for his help and say magnanimously, as an afterthought, that he can keep the cloth and the cleaning sponge. As I close the door, I can hear him chuckle.