tourists

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Island Blog – The Longtime

The rain is so loud I can’t hear Mark Knopfler. I have to turn him up and it takes me out of my chair, my finger pointy. I want to hear the lyrics. The rain challenges me. It thinks me. Well, actually it doesn’t. I’ve had a lifetime on the island meeting those two. The weather and me. The dynamic I know so well. Nature, storms, heavy rains, wild days and nights, so very many, the irritations, at first, then the fears. My husband heading out into the thing I want to silence and deaden, my boys too. Now, with a husband gone and my boys wise, seasoned and knowlegeable seamen, never sure about any sea nor ocean, and so far, securious, I can find some peace, althought a mother never does that well.

Everything is waggling, the overgrowth at this time of year, and I watch it. The louring sky is dank, empty, wondering what to do next. Sky white paused me coming back from a busy work day at the best cafe ever. So many lunches, bit voices, gentle askings, queues building, the Washeroo going like a dingbat, whatever that is. I was behind a learner driver coming home, wipers on speed. I clocked this and held back. I thought about the learner, and on these roads and at this time of year when most (it seems to me) tourists don’t reverse for whatever reasons. Here, just let me say, most single tracks follow the sheep tracks, and that’s flipping obvious. There are rocks and troubled grounds, bog and spill off. So, we, the islanders know this. Visitors don’t, and how would they? It can still piss me off, not that I’m proud of that. You head for a corner, one of 4, and you just know it’s clearthrough on island days. Not now. The reverse manoeuvre feels like a snake recoiling, and in this rain, unclear. I do it a few times as an oncoming vehicle stops dead and flicks on emergency lights. Oh dear.

I do care, I really do.

I also welcome winter. And that thinks me again (god help my thinks) Because and what Because? The time to rest, the pause of voices, requests, little roads with everyone pulling in because we know, the settle, the unwind, the emptiness, the wildness wide open, the longtime.

I love the longtime. I hate the longtime. T’is how it is.

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Island Blog – Even When

There are times, I confess, when I am not proud of people. We islanders know it’s coming, the influx of visitors, and that those folk who arrive bringing all their issues with them do not represent the whole of island-hopping mankind, but the few can spoil it for the many. Since expected accommodation standards have elevated to 5 star, no matter what cottage nor house a visitor might pay for, at equally elevated prices, the reality of skinny single track roads, the paucity of supermarkets. the angst that arrives within each big-ass four-wheel drive, complete with bike racks, canoes atop, arrives too. I meet you on my drive to the harbour town, through the glen, through any glen, peppered with cattle and calves, with sheep and lambs, with cyclists, and I do shake my head. I’m thankful for Radio Two to calm me with tunes as you, the few, continue until we are both stuck in a hard place. No, not a hard place, a skinny, blobby, fall-off-the-edge,soggy place when your wide passing place is just a wee scoot behind that big black ass of yours. Oh, but you can’t reverse. I forgot. Let me shimmy and jimmy my way around two corners and let me wave with a smile. But do you return the wave?

We work here. We also need you, to fluff up our economy, to buy our builders, plumbers, sparkies, cleaners, servers, cafe and restaurant owners, hoteliers, guest houses, yes, we need you. Our winters are way longer than yours. When you are back in the hopeful warmth of your earning and your sweetly safe home, in a city, all without friendship and community, after you have complained of one dirty pot in the house you enjoyed big time for a week and left in a 6 hour mess, after you demanded space and questioned a slightly dodgy entrance, a slight wobble in a decking, spare a thought for the work we put in to make sure that you have a wonderful holiday next time winter goes. Because we do care, we absolutely do. We just ask respect for that about which you have no clue. We will always do our best. even when you are careless.

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Island Blog – Accidie and Work it Out

Well, I’m having none of that. Mental Sloth? No, no, not me. Or so I say. But the truth is, we all know it from time to time, that stimied stultifying collops, sorry, collapse into the I’m not going anywhere, even though I should, ought, should, ought, to. And, even if we do have to go to that Anywhere, we fight it every step of the way. And then comes a morning when we feel like Peter Pan, or I do, and nothing, not nothing will stop me flying out there. The trudge sludge days are the way life is. I do wonder what it is in that clear and researched knowledge that makes us think we are wrong to feel that way, when everyone does, over and over. What I have learned is to unjudge myself, and to celebrate the days of crash/ lift and shift. However, I do know that accidie may well be lurking. I don’t look for it, she, him, but they just might be awaiting the chance to pounce and for no reason at all. I dig down for the roots of accidie and I find them, tendrils that go back, if my fingers can trace them, to childhood, through teenage, through marriage, through motherhood. It seems to me we love/hate guilt.

Today, this morning, I awoke to sunshine, or the beginnings of it. I smelled it coming through my wide open window and we met in togetherness, once I had worked out my eyeballs and a dissociation from a completely bonkers dream. We humans take a while to get there. I heard a robin sing out like Pavarotti, as they do this time of year. No other bird sings and that makes sense. They no longer seek a mate. So what on earth the robin is doing, making dawn melody is both a wonderfulness and a wonderment. So not a chooser of accidie.

I drove to the harbour town, swinging around the bends, the single track gloriously free of tourists, not that I mind tourists, we need them, but their driving skills are so insouciant and it minds me of something. Lack of research. We have tippy roads, cows everywhere, sheep, deer. We have ridonculous corners, big drops, loads of reversing opportunities and more, locals in a hurry, going to sort something and needing to get there, doctors, vets, and more. I’ve been here 46 years and I am still hoping for a touristic change!

Home and a walk into the wild, hearing a young man sorting a fallen beech, talking to him about regeneration, about the danger to touristy kids on fallen limbs, because he knows about woodland, and also about the complete cluelessness of visitors who, it seems to me, expect fallen trees in a wild woodland to be health and safety safe. I am glad that my kids lived in a time when we said, Work it out, Keep vigilant, Check where you are, and then, Go for it.

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Island Blog – Season Shift – Resist or Lift

I always do this, although I only noticed the ‘this’ that I do quite recently. As Summer gives way to Autumn I continue to wear bare legs and feet for as long as I can outrun chilblains. Once into Autumn, I find ways to layer up without ballooning and look forward to each morning, even planning my layers whilst still beneath the covers. As Winter sinks in her teeth I find it progressively harder not to balloon, but I am on a roll here and the cold comes incrementally, in the main. But when Winter begins to concede to Spring I am oft confounded. I have become used to my layers, ones that used to fit me the whole day long. Now they only suit me up to midday and from then on become a massive irritation. I feel as if I might combust, but it is still not yet warm enough to leap out of a vest. I open doors and wonder where on earth my shades are. I sit in the glare of Father Sun and feel cross. Go Away, I want to say, even as I don’t. The fire still burns and I will need it in about an hour when the Old Man is taken down by the forever hills, but it makes the room stuffy. I open windows and in whoopees a freezing draught full of chilblains and icicles. Jersey on, jersey off. It’s a ridiculous day and not the first, nor will it be the last. Perhaps, I tell myself, it is so much more natural to layer up than it ever is to brave off the layers of comfort, layers that have become my friends and protectors for months now. Is Winter the longest season? I always said so in my talk with tourists who decided on a happy holiday whim to buy a plot and build a home. Don’t. I said. Do Not. Not until you have spent a winter or two here. Why is that? they quizzed. Because winters here begin in October and hold fast till Mid May, that’s why. Not with frost and clean clear icy, shiny, sunny days but with wet, wet and more wet and when the wet thinks we need a change, it turns to ice and sleet in an annual battle against the rise of a Spring sun. Just in time for lambing.

I walk in the slipslide of ice meets sun and marvel at the blue of the sky. Hallo Mr Blue Sky, I sing to myself without the backing group and I search for buds and studs of green on trees. It is pointless. These studs and buds know jolly fine about winters up here. I hear them snigger from the safety of their twiggy nests. You think this sudden sun will fool us? It only happens once, after all. It is, this time, a holding time, a waiting. And yet it is we or is it just me who is longing for warmth and the chance to open doors to let out the stuffy, even if I might have to de-balloon. Is Winter the longest season, and what does that mean for the inside life?

First off I can see the dust. Blimey, it is legion. Although I say I don’t believe in dusting, I am glad there is no chance of visitors. My dust is remarkable. Not quite an inch thick, because I move about within these walls at speed, but almost. I don’t notice it on grey days, normal days, but when this lunatic sun decides to shine like a beacon into the future, lighting the way for all but the blind, I find him invasive. Shine out there, I tell him, and not in here. Don’t bother flagging up my smeary windows or my table tops that once were oak and shiny. You make me feel like I will never win a good housekeeping award. The dust is on every single surface. I sit and watch it, the way it sparkles in the sunlight; diamonds and pearls, rubies too and emeralds. Are there stories to tell in that dust? Is there history? There must be. My cleaners have not been here since just after Himself breathed his last. Almost six months. I have hoovered and wiped, a bit, but dust and I will not meet. Clearing dust, in my opinion, is not for me anymore. I have shared my life with too much dust for decades and the clearing of it, if indeed that is ever possible, is no longer for me. But I can smell it. I can see it, lit up like it was a celebrity, glinting, sure of itself, holding ground.

It is this time of the year that I find hardest. Not only is the dust shouting out her stories and memories, but the sun is taunting me, offering light and bright but not enough warmth for me to shed a layer. Getting dressed in the morning is just confusion. 5 layers till midday and then what? Upstairs to take it all off and start again? This, this, is the winter and it is the one season that fights like hell to hold on. And it is the only one that makes me cross, even as I love it. What dichotomy. At Tapselteerie, I remember hoping winter would never end, that the new season would just forget to arrive along with all the tourists and the work, even if I did have chilblains on my chilblains. But once that season began I felt a lift and a joy. Life was living again and so was I. Momentum creates momentum, at least it does for me. Having to bare my wintry arms and legs and to see my body after months of concealment under layers might give me an awkward moment but perhaps this is the gift winter leaves behind her. You have rested, she says. You have covered and concealed but now is the time for joy and lift. Take my gift and rise with the buds and studs.

You are stuck with me. Deal with it.

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Island Blog 162 Blue Moon

Blue moon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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