travel

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Island Blog – When a Big Thing and the Oldish

Happens, in a family, suddenly, all are thrown into outer space. For a bit. It’s a few days in, now. And all of us are coming back down, thanking the whoevers for parachutes…..and they were there. It all suddened me, although I was on the outside of it all, as in not right there, but the shock waves on, way on, and not just throwing me into a right spin, but all of us, many of us, and we are many.

Once we land back down into the ordinary of our own lives, all we can do is think, wonder, pray, hope, and keep getting up, getting dressed, emptying the bins, cooking something for supper, make soup, walk the dog, clean the bathroom, that sort of ordinary, as we imagine, pushing unhelpful thoughts away.

In the trying to sort out some sort of regulation in our thoughts, which, by the way, still haven’t landed, we can founder on the rocks of the thing. It is a strange time. I know that I come back downstairs and then realise I am unclothed, not that it matters here in this wild place, but nonetheless, t’is an oops. I have to think before driving out in my wee mini, bless her fearless and loyal heart, who now, since the bump, is showing more signs of trouble. It thinks me.

An initial shock, a crash, a bump, a stopping, will not just be itself, or, at least, its first self. The future of the first smack has a voice. In the immediacy of our culture these days, I’m not sure this is fully understood, nor allowed. I know about the throwaway now. But I also know of the oldish, the way they could sit back after a massive crisis, eventually and obviously, and let go. We have done what we can, what we ever could, and now, we have no control. I like that way of being, of thinking.

Thank you, Oldish.

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Island Blog – A Speluncar Paradox

Blimey it’s hot. Even the stoics are wilting, including me, although I rarely confess to any such thing. And that thinks me, a lot. What is this inborn choice/need to always present upbeat no matter what the what or the whom? I spent this non work day with my thinks. We played think tennis together, the ball whacking over the net and back again. We both did a load of sweaty running about. The ball, the answer, said damn all, and no surprise there. Had I been that ball, that question, in this heat and being arse-whipped again and again, never mind the bouncing thing, I would probably have remained silent. Did we come to a conclusion? Well, no, although the match may have brought in a synergy because what I (we) realised is that I choose to be upbeat and also that I need my cave. There’s another also. I do not need to explain nor justify either, particularly the cave bit. I am human, chancing into weak, rising into brilliance. No, not weak. Bin that. If I always bring in the light, my choice, my need if you like, and my pleasure, then this cave choice is my safe hideout. Equally vital.

So, when I mourn for the lost children, for the wars which devastate ordinary lives, when corruption in high places decide the way the streets will or won’t move safely, when social media desecrates young trusting children, when lies are told in high places and those of us is ‘low’ places hear of them too late; when huge companies hide their truths, when weapons trade across oceans, hidden and politically permitted, when news comes too late, when everyone knows what’s coming, but if the sun shines and there’s a barbecue, a dance, a chance, a band playing, then everything’s ok. Isn’t it?

I am ready for my cave, my paradox, because tomorrow I will leap into the light I bring and spread it blooming everywhere.

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Island Blog – Celtic Sea and Me

We were born, before the wind, some of us. We are irrefutably connected to the mystic, although there’s nothing mystic about it, not for some of us. We’ve always known it. Trouble is, with all this concrete covering over earth, all that burying, that disguising, turns our land into, well, Pleasantville. Watch the movie. It has much to say about the falsehood of our lives. We, out here in the blast of the thrawn Atlantic, still bumping over tracks, still able to walk barefoot without (sort of) any fear of broken glass shards, used needles, cutting things, are still connected. It wonders me, as I think back to my time living in a flat in Glasgow after so many years in the wild, that pavementing damage to a human connection to what once was (and still is) so vital for a goodly life. Over years, over time, the strive for money success, the building over bones, over history has taken us up many miles by now. We are lifting ourselves beyond oxygen.

At work today in the cafe kitchen, working with the team, filling the quick-steam dishwasher over and over and over again (and more), we fried, all of us, but we knew we would, and we kept each other cool just by asking “you okay” a lot. It’s a very uplifting question. My thoughts as I sank my old fingers into the deepsinksink scrubbing pots and pans and kitchen whizzy things went to the oceans, the seas of the world. I don’t question my thoughts anymore, nor did I much as a young woman. I know I am connected and it is a warm bond, like a cord, like a chord. I saw and see what those caught on pavements may well, and do, dismiss, although not so much these days.

My thoughts today as I batted away a persistent wasp sailed on the Celtic Sea. I love that name, feels me at home, my sea, although it isn’t. However I came home and studied a bit. This Sea, which immediately tells me it is confined somehow, like the `North Sea’ and thus, a possible grump. However, this sea, a big tradeline traverse, has the blood of the massive Atlantic in her veins and that smiles me. She will be feisty for sure. I check more. Celtic Sea, Basin Countries (the ones she bangs up against) Ireland, Wales, Breton France, Cornwall. She follows a tricky coastline and, knowing skippers (sons) who have launched into the Bay of Biscay in slight trepidation, she has a temper. She is also the minder of part of the Continental Shelf, where land falls away into scary depths. She curls around landfall, so she needs company.

I love her already. She sounds like me.

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Island Blog – Peppers Ghost

Last family gone now on a very long drive south complete with two girls, one sausage dog, one cat, one hamster, two bicycles, a ton of kit in back. Ten days of bonkers, of opportunity grabs, of endless and fun-filled action packed crazy. In other words, normal for my family. I have watched them fly huge kites, slice the sea-loch into tiny particles, wheeling and squealing and all the way up to sunfall, catch fish on the flow tide, barbecue, dig a fire pit, build dens, bond with a friendly deer, watch stars, straggle over rocks at low tide to gather big mussels for supper, and so much more. I have those memories. It wonders me that I have them at all, that they all still come. This island roots them all, even though they spin away into very different worlds. This is home and, as always, I am the one to wave them off. I’ve been doing this wave-off thing for decades, for ever, because I was always the one to stay home. It was as it was. And still is, certainly now in the autumn of my own life.

The silence is deafening at first. Any car passing by isn’t a goodness me here they come. I don’t hear the quad, heavy laden with way too many kids, careening down the Tapselteerie track. The sea-loch is calm and in one piece. The evening is gentle, soft, empty, and yet full of echoes, laughter, children, questions, invitations, halloes and goodbyes. My home is at rest. And, although my head quick-turns at an approaching car or at a tumble of high voices sneaking through an open window, or at a sudden flash of someone small. running, laughing, shouting something, I know t’is peppers ghost, an illusion, a memory, a wonderful memory, just one of a million and they’re all mine.

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Island Blog – Escape, Inscape.

Today was a Wednesday of exception. Actually, we were run off our feet, trays flying, clearing, washing on a hot and constant roll, and for a big load of time. Soups, two, quiches, two focaccia sandwiches, 3 flavours like roast veg, goat’s cheese, salad, Mull Cheddar with a musical dressing, I forget. It was diaphanous. There was a lot of eye rolling in the Washeroo, which, btw had three busty thrusts of plates, cups, glasses, little pots of little potness, small pants hot chocolates, dough bowls, teapots offering every sort of herbal tea. Balancing is a thing here. Not just the trays for the wishdosher, but for us all. We keep checking. You ok? you ok? Bosses do the same. They are the best to work for, so intuitive, so watching, and I know that place. Nice, nonetheless to see it in the young uns.

As I arrived for work this morning, I parked below a willow. Love her, We have great chats. Ahead of me, t’other side of the car park, stood a camper van, a big one, doors open. Too early for a cafe opening, but they were waiting. I walked by, we smiled, said hi. Nothing happened.

And then, it did. I wash steamed up, eyeliner gone, washing and washing and a man came in, saying he had backed his camper into my mini. He could, so easily, have driven off. He didn’t. So many good people in this broken world. We talked, smiled, tried to fix things. Nobody died. We agreed on that, and the damage did not stop me driving home from work. We exchanged insurance tiddleypom, and all that it fine and dancey. However, it thinks me.

scape,inscape,love,happy,There I was, finding this Wednesday as a loud haler, shouting, you are too old for this stuff. I did. I spoke it out, my body bending, my arms, thumbs, whatevers drooping like a load of nonsense. This is not me. I love my work. I love this cafe, my co-workers, my canny bosses. Today, the mini crunch, the family connect, the random of it. Driving home with Ellie, such a dude, btw, we laughed about the beeps on my onboard computer which has no idea at all about the relevance nor location of itself, thus requiring a shut the eff up with your beeps, and watching her, Ellie, walk up to her home, I thought a think. We escaped today, the insaneness of today. We’ll go there again, oh yes we will. The inscape of it all is many more thinks, no, perhaps observations and reflections in the gentle quiet of an island evening.

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Island Blog – Silence and She’s Green

I found my old mum’s mood ring today. My jewellery box is mostly full of stories and not worldly wealth. I like that. I am not interested in worldly wealth, nor ever I was and nor was himself. We were all about stories, learned from them, made our own, spun them out into other times, other lives, like frisbees. Catch if you want, if you can. I put on the ring, a little finger fit, and noticed the changes, from green to blue to black to purple to amber and that was just one morning. I thought some about what goes on inside my mind and heart, and paused to notice and reflect in the early morning light. To be honest I have eschewed any rings and for a very long time, even though I love rings, because, for me, they denoted a control over the self of me. They actually itched and had to go. I remember being on a ferry back to the island, yonks ago, and an elevatory conversation between me and himself on the aft deck, and I flipped. I yanked off my wedding ring and tossed it overboard. A moment. Will you replace it? he asked. No, I said. I know I am married. I don’t need to show that. I never wore one again, but did stay married and for decades thereafter.

There’s a gap in my noise thing. I listen to Radio 2 and mostly love it. As the afternoon shifts into a difference, birds flying out, flying home to roost; as the tidal shifts and swifts, bringing in new seaweed, new fish flow, a change of the sea-mind, I listen to silence. Visitors may drive by, but mostly everything stops on the cusp of dinner plans, everyone showering, dressing up, timing departure for the table booking. I watch it, distractedly, as I make a new salad dressing with a load of inventive stuff. I also sense the tense of it all. I wish I could say I remember it, a family with young ones, but I don’t. In the days of running Tapselteerie, we went nowhere much. Five kids and debt will do that for you.

However, I did learn and that learning has held me up ever since. I notice everything. Everything. In the absence of television, no wifi, no mobile phones (none existed) there comes a deep need to find something beyond self, beyond the washing of plates, the providing of experiences for others. The Self demands a voice. I took myself on walks in the wild and at crazy times, and suddenly. I thank my reckless and colourful self for pushing me on, in the wrong boots, ill-equipped for the slam-dunk of west coast weather, in the silence and the shout of blast weather, among wild and growly cows, over lichen-slip rocks, over shell beaches, squishing through bladderwrack, kelp, sugar kelp, dabberloks, all wonderful as I sink into their gush of salty tannin. No nowadays visitor is going to like this. I love the connection. They will just angst about stain. I’m watching this happen, the distancing from the real, even as I know there are those who will listen in the silence, who will research, who do care about the beyond of worldly hoo-ha, the strive for monetary wealth, the need for ownership. the hunger for dominion. I know it.

I watched a young Osprey today, being hassled but gulls, all full voice. I saw it dip and flip across the sea-loch, giving no aggressive response. It thought me. There are times we just need to accept that the hecklers win, and we move on in silence. I look down at my mood ring. She’s green.

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Island Blog – Under Shouty Clouds

I watch visitors wander by, walking into the Tapselteerie magic, or just heading for their rental for a week or two. They seem happy, wave to me, or, more correctly, I wave to them and they respond. Not all do, heads down, even though I know from my goldfish bowl, that they have clocked me. It wonders me, even as I absolutely know the head down, don’t make eye contact thing of not just Englandshire, but of many big places wherein people have forgotten their place, their identity within a dynamic that actually needs independenties. I’m amazed I was ‘allowed’ to create that one. What I am saying here is that we have become a smudge, a number and why the hec are we doing that when who we are is fire and water, sky, smoke, wild, intelligent, vocal, skilled, powerful? I get ‘polite’, no gawping, all that, but it does sadden me somewhat. These visitors, many of them, have never witnessed the wide sky, the lack of intrusive noise, the call of owls at night, the black sky when the sun has blown out, the stars. There is no threat here beyond inner fear, and that’s a whole different thing. I won’t even go there.

The clouds are shouty today. A collusion of confluence, a bumping which may have upset the ears of the upper eschalons. We can’t hear it in the down below of down below. It just manifests in a bout of tooth grinding, or of over-the-top outrage in a car queue, or ditto in the wrong sandwich for lunch, or of someone arriving late for a meeting, so hefty are the pressures of down below. It thinks me. If we could, if we just could, for one day, decide that the pressure is pressure? That’s all. And, then, detach. Who am I? Who do I want to be? Any response will be inchoate, unformed, but I know that beginning. I remember asking this, mid five kids, mid Tapselteerie, sunk, or so I thought, beneath the pressure of many clouds. I want to be someone different, to see things differently, to go beyond the limitations perceived and learned from before.

We might see ‘finite’. We don’t need to. More and more we subverse our own story. I know I write this beyond the wild of influence, watching more those who become a smudge, and wanting to remind them of the rebels who changed so much, eventually. We need them now. Not drunk nor drugged, not hiding away, but here. Right here, under shouty clouds.

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Island Blog – Take the Risk and Fly

The Rose Bay Willow Herb (I’m so glad my parents didn’t weigh me down with this name) is waffling, backlit with sudden sun. I’m watching it doing this waffling thing and I get it. You beautiful lot, all purple and strong and waffling down there upside of a sealoch, are stalk stuck. For all you sway, that’s the it of it for you. The next bit is a windthrip of petals and then the aftermath. I close my windows for that. A thousand piloted seeds float in. Any window open and opportunity knocks, although it doesn’t, not for the RBWH. Indoors is not a beginning. It’s more a load of sweeperoo, and even that requires a lot of dancing about with brush and dustpan and for days. But, when I stop to catch these seeds, hold them in my palm, I am brillianced by nature. These seeds, flighter than dandelions but with a similar modus operandi, can go for miles and miles. How clever is that! We stop and start at traffic lights. We queue politely (heaven help us on that nonsense). We pause before speaking. We say ‘Sorry’ way, way too often. We can float, we can, in silence.

Trouble is, we are grounded and within a thoroughly controlled environment, rules, queues, strictures, opinions, cultures, or we believe we are, and, thus we limit our lift and our fly. Of course, I realise that plants don’t have parents, nor do they go to school, nor work, and that trio can define and control us. And, we cannot fly, not like seeds, not like birds. However, I will challenge this, not in ‘realism’ but in mind belief, in dreams, in the longing of those who just know there is something more than the grounded This.

I am old. I am experientially so. I have lived a bajonkers life. still am. I see, still, an upper age control, at times domination. I see, still matriarchal and patriarchal chains suffocating. I see, still the confines of religious beliefs, the social expectation, the racial bullying. It goes on. What I would say is this, only this:-

If you have a dream, a real focus, no matter your place, your state, your anything. Take the risk and fly.

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Island blog – The Plosive and the Fricative

The Cafe was bajonkers today. It seems to be a Wednesday thing, although I imagine, now that most of Englandshire is on holiday here in big vehicles with kids and dogs and a tiny wish they were on a beach in Spain, that Wednesday will not be the only bajonkers day. Serving excellent coffees, an abundance of quirky teas and hot chocolates, a fairground of colourful high rise cakes of many flavours and combinations, people thronged. In fact, there was so much thronging that all inside tables filled over and over again, thus sending those made of tough stuff out into the spitspot of west coast rain. Those ones ate fast, with good humour and in rainproof jackets. It was all smiles, it was, even when the queue was long enough to cause me pause on my return from sourcing more brown sugar lumps and another bag of ethnically farmed (and salted) hot chocolate nubbits, with a lot of excuse me’s.

What all this meant to me as the small and salty washerwoman was a deal of dishwasher management. It’s a great wee thing, maw of a young whale and a very hot wash in five. A purging, apparently, and one insisted upon by the gods of cafe standards. However, I have discovered that this delightful washhelper has her, or his, limitations. He/she is crap at sourdough mix. We all are crap at something, yes, but this dough takes the prize. Soaking, endless, stuck bits, concrete, drain-blocking, spectacular. The bread is gorgeous, so that makes it all ok.

I did notice, pausing more as my arms disappeared into the depths of a mammoth sink, the water hot as Hades, a rise of wordage in my gullet. Such an unattractive word. Picture me, in this cocoon, although I doubt the butterfly bit, surrounded in steam, endless dishes coming at me, and I mean endless. I noticed how I say nothing, just keep moving, keep working. I also notice how my co-workers, decades younger than I, do expel breath, plosive, after a huge rush of soups, quiches, pita with hummus, cakes, scones with this, without that, as they speak out the phew of a break in pressure, pulling back into the fricative when another customer appears and smiley welcome slaps on. They are so professional. And, then I wonder at myself, all quiet in the Washeroo, no plosives, not even a fricative. I know, of course I do. This is training, this is my learning. You just don’t expel anything young lady, not ever, and there is a huge weight of pressure in just that admonition. My generation, my time.

I love the new.

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Island Blog – A Precious Island Life

The mist is definitely on a mission to smudge. I saw it first around 4 am, woken as I often am when the circus of the skies, the cosmos, opens for business. I know there are conversations going on up there, ones we need to hear and to understand, but, sadly, I only talk human, child and dog. I feel it nonetheless, and there is a freedom in that itch, that discomfort, because it connects me to more than me, to more than the solo and the loneliness, to more than ridondulous concerns about which wheelie to put out.

Work today was busy, wild at times, and tiring, until I approached my own tiring nonsense and sharpened it into a soft lead pencil. I can write my own next sentence. I always can. It felt a bit limpy, nothing for a while and then a big invasion of lovely customers, so smiley, wanting soup, quiche, cake, hot chocolate, iced latte, extra bread, focaccia sandwiches, and yet, do you know what all of them really wanted? A welcome, a recognition, a pull to forward, an invitation and a hallo and we are so happy you came, thing. Chances are, not one of them will get that, but I do, and so do the owners of this welcome cafe. They, the visitors, are spinning through life, escapees from huge pressure jobs and lives and here they are under the mist mission with a chance of blue. It must take time to process. Actually I hate that word as I have never consciously, nor knowledgeably, processed a damn thing in my 70 years. And then, these big and possibly powerful folk are gone back to the whatever of possibly powerful lives, leaving us with the mystery of mist mission, the lift of sky birds, the wild of spatter rain, the thrum of maybe thunder, the friendship in the pub, the people long here, grown wild from the nonsense and fun and hard work and deprivation of a precious island life.