travel

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Island Blog – The Road to Somewhere

6000 miles and 6 days later, I am wrapped in African heat. One very long flight has carried me, and a gazillion others, over deserts and oceans, well, one ocean, depositing me into new sounds, new songs, stories and landscape. I left muddy puddles and pale faces, bodies so wrapped up as to become almost unrecognisable, and walk now among bright colours, new languages, unfamiliar birds and wide African smiles. It is so much easier to smile when the sun shines bright and hot.

On this wine farm, one of many, we seek the shade of massive trees, gum, fever, oak, palms and many more. We walk alongside well-established vines, heavy with fruit for the second picking. The staff here are always at work, strimming grass that doubles in size almost overnight, and particularly so after the big thunderstorm and heavy rains of yesterday. When it rains here it’s as if the whole sky is coming down, but, unlike the West Coast of Scotland, it is warm and refreshing. Nobody dives for cover, but instead stands beneath the waterfall wearing wide smiles. Rain is so very precious here.

The house I stay in offers a wide and open view all the way up to the mountains where, two nights ago, a huge fire lit the night sky. We saw it first as a golden cloud above a blue and distant peak and those who knew recognised it at once. As day gave way to night, the blaze was clear, crimson, poppy, scarlet, orange, yellow and frighteningly hot. We watched it from miles away, and there was a gasp and a beauty in its devastation as it moved down the mountain, consuming all in its path. Thankfully, and after two days and nights, the fire-fighters, from the sky and on the ground, managed to quell the burn and no homes were destroyed. It thinks me, the beauty in destruction and the chance for new growth. Twins.

When something appears as destruction in a life, it will always proffer the opportunity for new growth, even though at first all you see is charred earth where once there was vibrant life. When such an event has evented me, and on looking back, I can see that it’s all about attitude and letting go, two tricky buggers for sure. I invested every part of me in preparing the ground, planting seeds, growing a sense of both ownership and control. I had made myself more important than the far stronger forces around me. This is mine and I build me a fence to protect what has now become my ‘familiar’. Of course I am upset when my castle is toppled and it is understable and acceptable to wallow a bit in the loss. But is it a loss? I ask this of myself because, just perhaps, I had made my life smaller with this fence thing. Perhaps I am far more enterprising that I believed.

I stand up to look over the wasteland of an old dream, and I just let go. I won’t build this way again because that familiar is gone. Instead I will step lightly into my imagination, tell myself that I am merely a part of the next adventure and must remind myself of this daily. In the uncertainty of our lives nowadays swirl a billion opportunities for new growth as long as we let go of holding on too tight to what was. With open eyes, ears and heart, we are magnificent creatures, capable of so very much. Does any one of us know what step to take first? Nope. Does anyone see the completed dream? Nope. It is always a case of stepping out, left, then right, then left again, holding the dream lightly, ready and willing and open to every new encounter. Yes, it takes courage.

I’ll meet you on the road to Somewhere.

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Island Blog – A Curve of Change and Beacons

I’m watching my tulips, a huge vase of them, a gift from a friend, curve into fingers of fire. Others might have thrown them out days ago but I like to notice change and its effects, so they remain, still wild with colour, but obviously existing in the end days. Do they still have a voice, something to say? I think so. In the sky the clouds move fast like a conjoining of grey-haired line dancers full of gin. Today, yet another big gale was all about push, like a bully, without care for the lids of my wheelies, the cancellation of all ferries, of no mail, no deliveries, the village shop scanty on all the expected usuals. The rain pelted and I didn’t walk. I watched, from the goldfish bowl of my very obvious conservatory, those who did. I could hear them crackling by, all waterproofed, all with dogs. There’s a kind of ‘have to’ about dogs no matter the weather. Although I have always refused any noisy clothing, just fine about getting soaked, I regret not getting out there. It was cold, the wind full of teeth and menace. However, I know that, had I got out there, smelled the wild, soaked myself, been buffeted beneath very compromised trees, watched the uplift of wind over tide, the upsurge of startled water, I would have engaged with the change. It thinks me.

In less than a week, I will be in South Africa. Am I anxious about the journey, the airport overwhelm, the weather, the ferry situation? Hell Yes. But my thoughts on these are just thoughts, my feelings understandable and still just feelings. It is how I deal with my fear of change, over most of which I have no control at all, which will matter. Matter…….sounds like someone who makes mats, as a Hatter makes hats. Sorry, wordal irrelevance. In any life there is always a surprising element of control, not over anyone else, nor over everything, but over self, over me, oh definitely yes. My response to fear, to a scary change, will shift the whole dynamic. Not like a bullying wind but more as a gentle turnaway. The anxiety comes in. I gently whisper, and I do, and out loud, I See You, but You are not Helpful to me. Please Go. And then I find a Thank you, for something, anything and the list builds itself.

Everything passes, the good and the scary, the gales and the calms, the good days and the not so good, the seasons, the daily round and its upsets, the friendships, the losses, the changes. Like the line dancing clouds, it all moves on, has done for millennia. We just need to accept and to dance on, in the rain, through the shite, bright as beacons, because we all are. Beacons.

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Island Blog – Time after Time

I sang this at my African son’s wedding, beneath a tree and without a mike. It was hot, most of us barefoot on scorchio sandy scrub, feet tingling, so alive. I sang it a cappella , nervous, determined. All those guests looking at me. Me singing Cindi Lauper. A big ask. The tree, not a Fever tree but something stunning with a greeny peppered bark, big, twisted, old and with a handthrust of outer limbs all dizzily leafed up, dancing in the hot wind. That was a very big while ago but every time I hear the Cindi song, I’m back there in an African wildness, dancing under twinkly lights, hearing the music, the sound of cicadas,frogs and the dodgy others, the breath of the ocean in and out.

It thinks me. We do so much time after time. Boil the kettle, get through Christmas, change a nappy, do the school run, sort the tax return, go to the supermarket, pay the bills, go to work, send the birthday card, get up, go to bed, attend parent meetings, water the flowers, sweep floors, make beds, and so very on and so very so forth. Jeez it is frickin endless. Yes, it is. Always is. never stops. The beginning does not gentle on to the end. The midriff is fat and ghastly. It is. Let’s be honest. We celebrate beginnings, new love, and I am no cynic. I always hope. We all meet it, we do, the change when children arrive, money strife, the influential differentials between potential grandparents, the demands of work. So very much and time after time.

I sit here, writing, my absolut, my constant, my have to each day, after loading up five spectaculars into the world which now throws me often into a confuse. It is dark now, complete, no false light, no sound but the rickus of a feisty wind with some swear words in her mouth. I watch my old fingers. They still work.

Time after time.

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Island. Blog – It Rains Down and Big Red

Well, obviously, although on the island it can shoot up your trouser legs, nae problem. I used to take it personally, on Tapselteerie days when it was my turn to quad myself out to the arse of beyond pulling a trailer of sheep food. The mud threw up shoulders of peaty mud just for me, ridging with a ‘let’s tip her’ thing. It was a heavy quad, right enough, a solid beast with attitude and held together by rust and bloody-mindedness. She lives on although the demands on her have changed. Now she. is just a Wahooo for kids and grandkids as they break the speed limit and probably challenge the sound barrier as they skideroo around the estate which, thankfully, is no longer ours. Now it is a beautiful place to wander through, old pines, beeches, bent-backed hazels, birches, all telling their stories of how damn tough it was to find the light, to survive. Some are so twisted, they’re feral, corcksrewing out and then up, seeing a chance. Such patience, such syncreticity. We can all learn from that, the willingness to enter a dynamic and to gently, softly and with intent, find our way into the light.

I went to UFOs today. UFO stands for Un Finished Objects, a crafting, artistic group, the chance to coffee up, cake up and to gather around a table in someone’s home. Around this table we talk, about our lives, our stuff, our worries, concerns and planned adventures. We reassure, kid on, tease, laugh and sympathise. In turning up we meet the unknown, even as we all, intentionally or otherwise, bring our own daily scrabbles into the light. We redimensionize. It doesn’t take away from our own angst, just re-jigs it, thinks us in a safe place. A shinglestropper. Think on this word. Not mine but that son of mine who is definitely related to Roald Dahl, Dr Zeuss and Terry Pratchett, not that I personally knew any of those men. Walking over Shingle……..can be tough if the Atlantic has anything to do with it. Stropper, strong, elevated, in control, as in the right shingle boots and with a good hold on the sky. So descriptive.

Back to the sheep. I head out in a circular rain with intent. Ridges, done that bit. I race through growly Galloway cows (don’t try it) who, or is it which, have all decided they were, in fact, sheep. After opening and closing endless gates, soaking like a ginner each time, and shouting them off, because, and you may not know this, a gather of Galloways is much like facing a brick wall with the thrust and speed and malevolence of a tsunami. Okay, so through the angry unfed cows, all chasing me to the next gate and through to the next, I do confess a doubt or six at my choice to become a farmer’s wife. Heading for the sheep, all baa-ing and sweet and completely manageable, I offload barley straw, cake (not our cake) and stand a minute as their heads dunk into the troughs. I look out. I can see the beyond of forever out there, the sea lashing the ancient rocks, the sky, wide with clouds and strata and greys and flips and shapes and big conversations and I am drenched. I have no idea how to turn Big Red around, not with a trailer and those humpy ridges. But as I head for home I just know. I don’t want to live anywhere else.

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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 – But the Brave

I’m listening to a song that a famous someone is completely turning into a complete personal indulgence, but I am sat sitting as they say and so I, not you, am going through the excrutiate. I do wonder why those who once were so brilliant, return obviously compromised. It’s a Judy Collins number and she, for certain, was the only one to sing her songs. Moving on. Where was I?

Today felt like a bit of a sladge, my word. It’s sludge with an A and that’s a bit of an uplift in itself, A being the firstborn, the Alpha. I rose, ate, sorted, cleared a thing or two, brought in wood, watched the moon the cantankerous madam slip behind the hills. I washed up, prepped for my trip into town (it isn’t a town btw) which takes many manoeuvres and swingtwiddles to get through because it’s single track and that whole single track is always compromised by the Parkings. The Parkings on this island almost define us, or they do in the summer months, mostly because there are none. This is due to the crap knowledge of Parking. I have known some who take over too much for their parking thing and then head off for the day. Often. I could have got two minis in there. Two locals.

Back to the point. A sladge, yes I said that already. I tramped in the rain, I did, and the waterproof coat failed me. I could feel the sky invading my skin. I waited for my mini to be fixed, dripping and cold. I had gone to no shops and why was that? My damp tramp sladge. I admit. The shops are alight and bright and welcoming. Oh. so it’s me and my self pity, my angst and sladge? what happened to the frolics in me, the wild and inspire, the fun, the mischief? Good question. It seems that we have learning, And we have turnaround. Oh we can’t do anything much now, to save the world, the ones we love but we can do something for ourselves and more for the young who want to know, who are listening, and there’s another think. Whom of us have been honest with our own children? When have we sat to talk with an emerging adult and hung our heads, opened our hands, admitted we have no idea, being completely vulnerable? Not many but the Brave.

That’s me. And you.

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Island Blog – Everything a Touchstone

Another damn gale. We have many damn gales up here in the pointy end of two countries joined together at Gretna Green. It’s all thanks to the fact that there is nothing but Altantic swell for a gazillion nautical miles, which, let’s be honest, makes for the best playground. However, I took notice of something. It wonders me. Wind, at any level is actually silent. It just blows. But, when it hits something, a building, a person, a mountain, a ship, anything held by gravity, it can shriek, whine, even sing. Think of the rustle of leaves, the melody that comes through cracks, the siren scream around the corners of buildings, the blatter of bamboo wind chimes, and so on. The thwump of a wheelie bin toppled: the sigh and crash of a falling tree.

Power on, power off, power on again. It is island life, life in the land of the Scots, and across other countries in the northern spheres. When I talk with others who don’t live here, they are amazed at our resourcefulness and we have that in spades. We have known saving cows in blizzards. We have known endless winters and even smile at those who are filling flowerbeds in April. Our winter has a greater hold on these beautiful, exposed and rocky lands. Was Englandshire formed by ice age or volcanic eruptive chaos? I don’t know, but we were. Collisions, cosmic fury, undersea upthrusts, the moon in a right stooshie. That’s us, and do you know what? We are tough as nails, but more, so much more. Nails are rigid. We are not. We learn to bend with the winds, we laugh at the rain. It’s just rain, after all. So, when ‘Disaster’ happens, let’s say on social media (and god, those disasters are endless) such as when something isn’t delivered, or the nail surgeon has ruined nails, or the dress isn’t really silk, or Deliveroo didn’t, or the whatever didn’t whatever, I do wonder if a winter on a remote island might be a grand idea. Not in an expensive rental with all accoutrements and a live-in maid, but in one of those wee bothys with the best view you will ever see in your life, the seabirds overhead and the selkie singing you ancient stories: where the ferry may well not run: where the mail arrives when it can: where the skinny roads may not be gritted; where outlying farms and homesteads are way more than a bycyle ride away even on a good day: where the path is not perfectly gravelled, the door sticks a bit and the fire takes a bit to get going and the kindling is damp.

Where, after dark there are a million stars and all of them silent, and where you can hear all those words the wind never got to say.

Everything is a touchstone, or it is lost as nothing.

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Island Blog – I Rest There

It rained all day today, heavy stuff, non stop. Actually, no, it wasn’t always heavy. Just looked like it through my windows. And there’s a coolth in rainy days, even as it isn’t as cold as yesterday which was all slippy ice and still as a still thing. It just feels that way, all that wet and slam against windows and the wind pushing against the glass like a bully. It thinks me. Perception. Always a good thinkster. Let’s dance with this……

I see a rain day as an internal rain day as a VERY BIG RAIN DAY. Others not so. You, jolly old you who don’t give a rip snort about weather, skipping out on your skateboard, or heading off for a sea swim, or just happy in your life, or a kid who never sees anything as a stopping of fun and opportunities. See? Hence my thinks. If I awaken as I usually do thinking a couple of things, such as I am so thankful I have woken up at all, and in this beautiful cozy island home, or Oh dammit, I can hear the mice in the loft and it’s only 4 am and dark as hell out there, I have to decide how I feel about how I feel before I set foot on the bedroom carpet. If I don’t, the negative overtakes me, the fear, the alone, the self pity. I am crap at self pity and also very good at it. I read that two contradictory thoughts can be held in the brain, but nowhere have I discovered how to deal with that. No amount of googling. So, with lofty mice and gratitude diddling with my brain, I downstairs myself and into the day. It’s still dark and the rain drowns out my audio book and my thinks, until I settle. That’s when I stop to listen to what is actually going on right now around me, and I re-jig myself. I am Alice, I know it. Curious, adventurous, a bit wild, a lot wild, trusting, too trusting, saying Goodness! a lot, eyes bright and without fear, even if the Red Queen is just around the corner.

In this real life, I can see how damn tough it all is. We have made our families islands and there’s an understanding and a loss in that. We want control. We also want to make the change we want to see. I get it. Waaaay back we were the same. There’s no way there will be the restrictions on our kids, not yet even conceived, no way this patriarchal control will come into our plans, no way this, no way that. I’m smiling now, writing this. I’ve no idea if our plans worked, probably not, but I do know that, no matter the child, no matter the chaos he or she brings in, we just loved, floundered, got lost, spent nights without sleep, hoped, prayed, loved again, barely noticed if the broccoli was yellow, cooked something with gravy, baked bread, answered calls, washed clothes, hoped that school was ok and dreaded pick-up, barely noticed the day of the week, tidied bedrooms, thought thought thought of the best treat with the money and time available: on days of non stop rain, on days when the wind threatened to take out windows, days when I was late for pickup because the sheep got out and it was just me trying to negotiate with a dog who did not understand a thing of me, when the landrover broke down and I could do nothing about the damn thing with it’s huge tyres all fixed with a spanner thing that would defy a god strength. Or, when I am feeling so broken and don’t know why, and that’s why I just look blank at you as if I don’t know you at all, and there’s no treat and I’m sorry.

Basically we have no idea what we are doing, most of the time. The problem is we think we do, because admitting we don’t feels like a personal failure. It isn’t.

I rest there.

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Island Blog – Make it So

Blimey, it’s been a while since I tapped these keys. Life loughed in and I was busy being mindful and also going to the mainland which is mindfulness enough for any sentient and emotionally aware individual by the way because we never know when we will get off, nor home again and at what time and in what state. Anyway, all is well for now, until the next venture into a Neverland we islanders believed was something to do with Peter Pan.

Tapping away, I recall learning a qwerty keyboard. I remember it well the Pitman rise of keys, the required strength to punch the Q or the P, the Z or the Y or any other damn consonant rarely used and under the watchful glare of eyes, pin-striped, narrowed, judgemental (judge…..mental, now there’s a thought or two) of the Ma’ams who ran the show. One, wide-arsed and slow moving, her nylons sounding like frenetic waves on a shore as she marched between our desks, and the other prinky pink, sharp as a cut, glasses peaking aloft, holding tight to her edges, a bustier, a confiner, controlling knickers, something like that I was sure. She could barely breathe. I wondered about their love lives, but only for two embarrassed seconds, to be honest. They were old and I was recalcitrant 16 and knew it all. However, I was bright and surprisingly keen to get out of this place but with honours. I didn’t manage those, as others did. I watched the others who did. They were alight with the joys of being a secretary. check that word out. A secret-ary. You get it. I was absolutely not. Lasted a week in my first job. Second job, my ‘boss’ decided my pert arse was his landscape. I kept no secrets after that.

I digress. What I wanted to write about was fairy lights.

Because I don’t go shopping, don’t go to the mainland unless I have to, I trust the google search on Warm Fairy Lights. It doesn’t always work, in fact it often doesn’t work. So I hesitate to risk purchase. I’m not interested in battery powered lights which are gold for as long as it takes to sigh and smile and turn away,and die very slowly and whitely and flickery. I have seen golden plug-in lights in family homes, other homes, I seek them like a drug, asking where did you find these and they all say, with a floppy hand wave…..Oh, I don’t remember. I want to pin them to the ground right then and to choke the answer out of them, but I won’t and I don’t, much like, on the back of the trust and hope and belief of my Secret – Arys, I really did see golden, the chance to be somebody, noticed, respected, a part of something growing and wonderful. I’m not saying it can’t happen, chance is always a thing, and I am still hoping for that chance, for plug-in warm, golden fairy lights that don’t lie about their lack and for secretaries to make it so.

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Island Blog – All about Light

The light here is ridonculous, changing all the time. I can be not paying attention to the light at all, being as I’m all inside and split with the electric (as they call it up here) and caught in the spot of a standby red or the blue of a fading charger or the flicker of a gas flame, or the sudden of blue eyes, brown eyes, any eyes, any distracting lights. And then I turn to the outside of inside and see it, the change. From a lemony sun to purple, to grey, to blue. The whole place is blue, the hills, the trees, the whateverness. Then, incoming, zeon-neon cycling kits all wrapped around a couple just off their bikes, and I turn in once more to the standby red etc. It’s quite a brain swirl, I’m telling you, although you already know it for yourself. The key, I tell myself, is to keep a hold on the outside light changers because there is definitely something feral and organic about the way it morphs and swingles, evolves and full stops itself. If I was to step out on some mission, like those who ‘conquer’ mountains (Bens, if you want the actual definition) or who do any other conquering nonsense, to what…..capture the light change, get it so right, so perfect, I would be wasting my time. It is enough just to glimpse. Now there’s a clumsy word if ever there was one, although that maybe just in my mouth. You wouldn’t choose to use it in a song. But, a catch, a sudden turn, an eye-capture, that’s it.

Anyway, (never begin a sentence with that word) I’m home now, back from a fun, busy, happy day at the Best Cafe Ever. Loads of laughs and chats and learning that sourdough is a right shit to wash off anything, and that anyone arriving on the other side of the counter feels shy. It thinks me. These grown-ups are suddenly unsure, looking for a welcome, compromised if that welcome doesn’t come quick enough, the light of it. It’s all about light.

Now the fire is lit, the hills beyond the sea-loch have settled into a uniform brown, although, as a painter, there is nothing uniform about brown, nor any another hue. just saying. There is tinder, ochre deep and light, and medium, there is rose gold, there is burnt umber, tango orange, falafel yellow, a skid of drowned lapis, a whitish tense of skinny limbs, bared like my arms in defence, minus the lichen, obviously. I see snaps of old lost grass, a pecker of distant woodland. I see the light of the flooding tide, a slug slide, grey but there is no ‘one’ grey. Everyone knows that.

I’m watching the light right now as the fire breathes and the candles flicker. Out there is more than a closed sky. It always is.