voice

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Island Blog – I Love This

When my life get’s tricky, bad news, no news, the lonely, the what now, the what if of it all, the olding with all its tired and broken bits, the hurtings, the way my fingers gnarl and bend without my permission, I think this thing and get that think to roll through me, to take over from toes up until it lifts my mouth into a real smile, one which reaches my eyes……..

I love my home, black coffee, red wine and a wave from a passing stranger. I love the sound of giggles from a child, the feel of a dog’s wet nose against my fingers. I love sudden encounters, shared smiles, the warm voice of a friend telling me without words that I can do this living on thing. I love the birds at my feeders, the finches, gold, green, ‘common’ not in the way I learned that word from my old ma……’common’ was basically ‘trash’…….the sparrows, blackbirds, starlings, robins, the way they fly in, watching for skyborn attack, dense aflutter, then scattering, grabbing a morsel and gone into the wind. I love that when I need help I can ask for it and not feel needy. I love tweaking my geraniums, the warmth underfoot of my heated sunroom. I love doorways and windows, my faithful car, my work, my gift of writing, my ancestors, seamen and women, out here in the wilding islands, the way they handed down such inner strength to me.

I love noisy pubs, scampi and chips, Atlantic salt on my face, the bite of winter and my ability to light a good fire. I love to welcome. I love cosy. I love sharing. I love gaps in conversation, the wait, the light and the chance in that wait. I love random smiles in unexpected places. I love boots that lace well, soles that grip. I love the West Coasters, the Island folk for their humour, their strength, their ability to turn any talk of trouble into opportunity and then take action. I love my laptop, the way she works with me, the lightness of her body, the way she can go quiet for two days when I fly to Africa and never give me grief. I love my children and theirs even if I only see them now and again. I love my sisters, my brother, my memories, my lifestory.

Then, as I turn back to the tricky, which has visibly diminished, I say (and I do out loud) I say, Hey, I see you.

I also see this.

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Island Blog – Lucky

What is Luck, beyond being a word oft wrongly understood? In my ancient thesaurus, the word has many and diverse meanings. These days I meet those who consider ‘luck’ to be a chance happenstance, a random beneficence and they have reason to fix on that belief. However, in my study of words and wordage, I discover more. ‘Luck’ can mean opportunity, a new chance to shift something, to make it anew. Well, not anew, because there’s nought new in this world apparently, although I disagree with that too. What the writer meant was that all humans are humans, after all and after all, as if we are all either robots or born from the same womb.

So, when I say I feel lucky, I can just hear the triproad of rocks in my path with all this analytical tiddleypom, all rising into mountains only they can see. My through road is clear. I feel lucky. I can see. I can freely walk around a rip-tidal Atlantic coastline any time I want. I can smell the sea, watch her stories rush in, pull out, rush in again, and I catch some of them. I can see a hover of gulls, hear their screeching, watch the lift and luff of their agile wings. I can taste the clean rain on my tongue, feel its healing on my skin. I can walk. I have wonderful caring friends. None of my children died, nor theirs. I can buy the food I want to buy. I can travel. I live in my own home with a view (I will never say ‘to die for’) that others envy. I live in a warm encompassing community. I belong. I have shoes and boots, warm clothing, a comfortable home. I am not belittled, marginalised, racially attacked, afraid of any walk on the streets. I have not lost my voice.

So many right now have none of this. It disgusts me.

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Island Blog – A Feral Susurration

Talking with a friend today over lunch, many subjects, a deal of which covered my favourite subject, the emancipation of women and I left with many thinks, as, I suspect, did she. I turned my car one way, she the other, as we moved back into our own home lives, own agendas, own to-do lists, and we waved, a strong and confident wave of connection and support, a knowing across the divide, a real something. She is younger than I by many miles, but there is a wild in both of us and a shared commitment to our own freedom to be who we really truly are, although I doubt she has to fight for it quite as much as I did. The culture of my way was so very definite, so finite, so limiting. Women came second. End of. Women should never attempt to rise above men, particularly the ones to whom they were legally connected, particularly them. Because why? Well, for starters, that woman would be, at best, laughed at, mocked as ‘butch’ or deemed hysterical, illogical or ignorant, and, at worst, kept at home, away from her ‘influences’ and threatened.

I was not one of those women, but I had seen too much among my mother’s friends, the older women with whom I worked on the farm, the Pauline in the local shop with her black eye, the Sarah in the surgery who, if I spoke with her in this public and mostly silent place, cowed and bowed and, I could see, wished she was invisible. I was a young mother then, younger than they in all ways, in experience, in lifestyle. I had privelege, opportunity, freedom. What did they think of my reach for friendship, I wonder now? Middle class, protected, safe. What did I know of them? Nonetheless, they responded, and I loved that they let me in, talked to me, trusted me. I knew right then that, whatever life sent my way, my passion would be my voice for women, all women, whenever I could, wherever I could. I was, probably, about 23. It thinks me. When searching for ‘what-to-do-with-my-life, as so many do, and particularly now when there are thousands more young for a few hundred opportunities, it could be so easy to feel like a failure. Someone else got that job, that apprenticeship, that flat, that adventure, so what am I doing wrong? I have talent. I can paint, draw, sing, write, I know it. Or I thought I did………….

And then, at some point, I wanted to climb the ladder, the one that had been handed to me, and one that scared me. I had hidden it in my understair cupboard. I don’t do Climb, I said. My daughterhood was built on a foundation of polite conversation, appropriate behaviour, appearances (never mind the truth of a thing) and susurration. It was the way of the time, our situation, the culture all around us, the bubble. I know that. However, that doesn’t mean it continues. Perhaps, all the while, I was learning, and where in the hellikins did that come from? To know you are feral whilst contained is not in the least comfortable and leads to all sorts of impolite, inappropriate behavioural choices, a sort of wild that creates fire, an out of control fire, an all consuming fire. A pointless and destructive fire.

So, this ladder. When I eventually wheeched it out through the blackened cobwebs, throwded in historical (or is it hysterical?) dust, and leaned it up against the clouds, and began to climb, I met limitations. It surprised me, and didn’t at all. I realised that the feral in me had been attractive until it gained empowerment. Now, that was a confrontation and, thus, uncomfortable at best. But I never wanted to have power over anyone but myself. I had head the susurration, the tidal chatter the upstart of arguing winds beneath my feet, within my heart, for so very long, and finally, I remembered the ladder. So I climbed; poked my head above the clouds visible, saw the possible, the impossible. I know now, that those who are feral hear a call in whispers, a rustling, a discomfort underfoot, a veritable challenge to the ground beneath their feet. There is more, there is more……a feral susurration.

And they are right, you are right. Listen, and find your ladder.

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Island Blog – The House is Singing

The noise is spectacular! Five roofers gadding about, a mile high and as if the land beneath their feet was as flat as the tundra. They have performed this task before, methinks, so confidently do they work as a team. The first day there was a lot of hammering and poking through the thatch with long poles to establish contact with the beams. Building a structure a short way above the existing roof, a skeleton of struts to hold the Harvey tiles in place whilst still allowing for air flow so the thatch doesn’t sweat is something else to watch. The men work quickly but not quietly, chatting to each other in some African language no, shouting, even if they are just a couple of feet apart. They sound as if they are here in the room with us and yet they are balancing like monkeys, effortlessly and high overhead. To work with concentration down below is something that requires patience, concentration and the odd yell out of the window asking them to please talk quietly. This, it seems, is impossible. Their natural voices are loud, and it might take an operation to change that. I notice it’s the same among the black men and women wherever they are, shopping, working, shovelling, tidying litter or sharing an office space. These people are naturally ebullient, ready to smile, always polite, always ready to share a greeting, more than ready to laugh. A far cry, indeed, from the UK where all of us are strangers to each other, heads down, avoiding eye contact, barely able to disturb the air with a wave, let alone cut it with a sentence, and as for smiling, well, there aren’t many of them around on crowded streets or inside cars, a bus, a train. It’s as if life is happy here and unhappy back home. I don’t refer to the island folk, nor the Celts, nor a lot of other folk of whom I have little experience, but mainly in the cities and towns. It’s as if they, the ones with heads down, no smiles, empty of greetings, are living in a quiet desperation (not my words) and that makes me very sad. I digress.

It rains. I have never experienced this much rain in Africa and nor has anyone else. However much Africa needs rain, the roofers do not. Add to that the regular load shedding and there is a problem, Ma’am. No power. I see that, I reply, you will need to fire up your generator. He grins and shrugs and fires up his generator. In the times of a drowning deluge, the men run for cover but in gentle rain, the work continues and I watch in trepidation as they skid across the tiles, the sky a mackerel of clouds above them. A tile falls to the ground with a crash. These tiles are long, about 4 ft, and lined with something like aluminium making them heavy. I shudder as the guillotine hits the deck, thankful I had not just walked outside at that very moment. But no man falls, of course not. They have done this job for years and, besides, men don’t fall, or so they believe. Almost 3 days later, the roof is almost completed and having watched the craftsmanship of its creation and elevation, I am very impressed. Now we will have no leaks through the thatch. Now the house looks sharp and proud and the garden looks like a war zone. Offcuts of woods, bits of thatch, bits of tiles, power tools and no-power tools, all scattered across the grass, poor grass, and just as it was gaining new life thanks to all the rain.

Yesterday I sat here at the kitchen table working away on my laptop when a shower of thatch landed on my head. It was a shock and then it was funny. I walked carefully, like I was top of the deportment class, to the bathroom mirror and there it was, a neat round birds nest on top of my head. I do admit, as the holding poles stabbed through the thatch, to a frisson of fear at the thought of a beam collapsing down or a holding pole or a whole man crushing me to a splodge, and I did have to move around the house to avoid more birds nests, but all has gone smoothly. Beyond a lot of clearing up, sweeping and dusting and coughing and spitting, we have all survived the process. And, today, as the sun shines merrily and the generators gurgle and chunter with life giving power, it will be finished, completed and done. All the rubble, the offcuts, the tools and the men will be cleared away, allowing us to put the garden furniture back into place and to enjoy an evening, a braai perhaps, a shared sundowner, laughter and conversation beneath what promises to be a starry starry night. You hear that? I will say. The house, she’s singing. And she will be.

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Island Blog – Cats, Strong Women and Learning

The cats greet me at dawn, four of the five. I’m still working on the fifth, a nervous lad, a rescue like all the others. He is coming around, inch by nervous inch and I am hopeful that one day we will be friends. As I observe these cats I notice how independent they are, how individual and how they take no shit. Each does what it wants to do regardless of my plan, my agenda. I find that I like this sassy attitude even as one of them escapes my palm to leap atop the fridge freezer and to stare down at me. That’s what they do. They stare down at me. Ah, I think, I can learn a lot from you up there all lofty and dismissive and I rather wish I had adopted that attitude as a young woman. You can watch me all you like, try to reel me in, but if I don’t fancy your reeling in tactic I will distance myself and say not a word.

The South African women I have met have a similar attitude but they do use words, and confidently. They also will take no shit. If they encounter injustice, rudeness or inappropriate behaviour or just someone getting too close or sounding too patronising, they will round, talons out, mouths full of retaliation, minds confident, bodies strong and assertive. They sigh me too, a bit, because they show me who I always wanted to be, but wasn’t. Unlike in my youth, these women were taught to be singular and independent, their lives required it for living in Africa is real, no benefits, no guaranteed safety net, no easy path. There be dragons. In the UK it is more softly softly, girls are pink princesses requiring protection from all the boy stuff or from big decisions and these girls should behave themselves, wielding nothing more dangerous than a mop. At least that was how it was in my girlhood. I don’t think it’s the same now, but unless difficulties are encountered and imaginative practicality taught them at an early age, how can they learn? Here, where most need to face down dangers and restrictions, independent thinking is perfectly normal. If a woman wants something she must fight for it, and with her claws out. I like that and it thinks me.

Looking back on my own wifelife, there were plenty dangers and restrictions and, at the time I probably did mewl and whine as I encountered them but there was only me facing me during those times and I had to overcome my mewls and whines and to get the hell on with it. I guess I learned imaginative practicality on the hoof. If I didn’t sort something it would just stay unsorted and I had pride enough in myself to leap into a higher place and to look down on it with assessing eyes, my mind whirring. Living in a remote place, there was nobody to call on, not while himself was all at sea and guests required answers and solutions. If my kids were in trouble, I was the one to untrouble the trouble and I am proud to say that, in the main, I did just that. If some disaster struck or something collapsed or dissolved, I had no manual to read beyond the one inside my own head. I grew tough even when exhausted and overwhelmed because tough challenges are character building and I wanted to think of myself as a can-do solution oriented woman, no matter the restrictions I lived with. I gradually found room to move, to make space for myself and found, to a degree, my voice.

But I was also raised as a traditional girl, one who was told how a young lady should behave, all mannerly and subservient, all politeness, acquiescence, and femininity. In my time, women did not rise above their husbands, good lord no. Women who did were labelled bossy, man-like, loud, selfish and more, were required to speak with a husband’s opinion, to quietly lay down to his rules and restrictions and never to make a public fuss about it, although it was acceptable to talk with other women (gossip) in order to unburden the angst. As long, that is, that we go to another room to perform this unburdening lark leaving the men to roll their eyes at the pretty palaver of women as they knock back their brandies. A man who has too much to drink of a night is just, well, normal, such a lad, hugely entertaining, let’s put him to bed and cosset him as he sobers up. We’ll tease him at breakfast. Whereas a woman who drinks too much is a lush, disgusting, badly behaved and should be dismissed from the party in a ball of shame and rejection. No breakfast for her.

Confusion reigns in such a womanly life unless that is we can learn from cats and from other strongly independent women who will stand their ground until they fall over and if they are labelled as unfeminine, so be it. I have admired such women and learned from them over the years and I am so thankful to them. There weren’t many, t’is true, but when I found them I observed the way they quietly or loudly held their ground and I took the lesson given to heart. I learned to be not aggressive but assertive, to study my own mind and to put it in order. What do I believe about this? What is my position on that? Although I still step back when a strong man steps forward, for goodness sake, I am learning how to unlearn this, to question this presumed privilege and not to falter at any ensuing male startlement. I just hope the young pink princesses of today learn too, and a whole lot quicker than I did because the world is changing and the need for strong leadership in women, without the black cloud of bias, has never been more important.

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Island Blog – The Quisling

There is an event coming, let’s say, and we are excited, a big birthday, a birthing, a leaving from longtime in hospital when nobody was sure that leaving thing would ever happen: perhaps an outing to meet an old friend, a weekend away, so many anticipatory delights, I could list for the whole side of a page of A4 and still keep going. And then what? The anticipation is history, the event momentary and, I ask again, Now What? We go back……no, wait, nobody ever goes ‘back’ because everything and everyone changes everything. Not suddenly, as we might wish, but with a slight tilt, a wind shift, a disorientation, a curiosity. We looked forward, oh for so very long to the This thing and when it sped past our eyes like a mosquito on drugs we are still here, stunned and suddenly we notice the cold. We pull our coat around our body, realise that our feet in those ridiculous heels are sore as hell and will suffer us for many days yet to come. We irritate at things or people whom we adored, till this moment of passing. The taxi is late, the rain rains heavier than a cloudfull of Oxford Dictionaries and we see our cold kitchen, the ordinary flat/house/bungalow which looked pretty fab last week as what……..less than it was, that’s what. Even telling ourselves that all people feel this way doubts us. We might know this truth at a logic level but what we feel shouts like a banshee (whatever that is).

Home again, divested of soaked outerwear and inside our ordinariness, the quisling has the stage, the traitor, the mind game player, the voice within. I have one of them (might be two, used to be many more) and I actually believed it, them. I am sure you never did and good for you and all that jazz. This quisling is not necessarily a legacy of critical parents. Not always, but it can be birthed there in those soft and vulnerable years. It might come from school, from teachers, peers, even from an adult with authority who said you wouldn’t amount to much, not with that attitude, that shape, that running nose, or just from life experience. People are not always kind after all. Nonetheless the quisling is born and once born it is like a cuckoo, determined and vicious. I would say Don’t Believe a Word, but I know that’s not so easy as it sounds. I believed because its voice is loud, its roots sunk deep, strong and spreading through my heart as if the ground was mulched and ready for the victor and the quisling is never stronger that after an anticipated happy event because that is when we are most at risk for a fall. It tells us that this is how it should be ALL the time and, because we don’t like where we live or with whom we live, we choose to believe the lie. Choose.

In a wonderfully long life, I know a thing or two. Not three. I’m no guru. But (never start a sentence with a ‘but’!) I know that the quisling lives long. It is up to each one of us to decide if it prospers. I laugh at it now because I have seen it raw and naked, spindly and without a home. Shoo! I say. My home, partner, bungalow, flat, whatever is ok for now. The event was wonderful but it does not define my expectations. I do not go ‘back’. I go forward and should I decide to change anything in my life, be assured I will not be asking for your advice.

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Island Blog – Thing with a Point, Small Whispers

Have you ever said, or asked yourself – What’s the point in me doing this thing? I certainly have and still do, only now I understand that even the smallest step is always worth taking even when I can see no end result, no point that brings me the whole Something; that Something that would show me the point of my pointless steps and would surely confirm that I was actually prophetically brilliant without realising it.

Every single day proffers opportunities and we evaluate each one. What is the point in me sweeping the kitchen floor when nobody but me will see it today? What is the point in my adding a few more stitches to my latest fantasy landscape tapestry when I make no effort to market them? What is the point in applying loud makeup? For the sheep to ‘baa’ at or for the birds to tweet to their own Twitter mates? Why am I considering hoicking out that lithograph of an ancient stuffy old ancestor I never ever met, just to add ink and make a print? For whom? Whom cares?

Chances are, nobody. Not a who nor a whom; not at step one, nor two or even ten, but when a body remains committed to the small steptasks, something wonderful joins that bodymind on the long and winding road. As I make myself perform these, frankly ridiculously ridiculous, tasks that have popped into my intelligent head only to be sideswiped by my intelligent head, I feel a sense of achievement in my soul. Now, the soul is powerful and it has a voice. I turn to address the cynic in me and hold up my hand. Stop right there. I am doing this ‘pointless’ thing because something way bigger than you or me sent me a whisper. Through a word, a song, a looking, a noticing and I am tired of being so grounded in earthly limitations. I have wings and you, Mrs Cynic, do not. You are not spiritually wealthy. I can tell by the tight purse of your mouth.

So I do all the pointless things because every one of them has a point, in itself, its own point and who doesn’t want one of those? If I honour the whisper as the one who can make this thing a better thing then, what is not to like? In my long life, I have found that the end game is often imagined. The success story we read, the achiever, the award winner, the one who won Strictly. We are fools to aspire to such ‘success’ unless we are prepared to swallow the bitter pill of the millions of small steps that would make that success possible. I don’t want awards, nor to win Strictly, but I do want that sense of warm pleasure that comes from any job well done, no matter how pointless it felt at first. It doesn’t matter if nobody sees because I do and I am my finest seer. We all are. I wonder sometimes that we teach our children shortcuts, to run fast and not to stop for anything, resulting in hollow hearts. Taking the fast route can work at times but not all the time. There are small whispers being missed at a cost.

So, I would say this. When a small task whispers in, take action and value that connection. You never know what will come in to help and to guide. Don’t give up and don’t give in to old Purse Lips. What does she know, she who never partied till she lost a shoe? Live wild, people, no matter how old or young you are. Adventurize your life right now. Otherwise that life, our only one, is nothing at all.

And nothing is pointless, at best.

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Island Blog – Free Thinking

Cicero said, way back in the day when men wore skirts and women bathed in milk, Our Thoughts Are Free. I’ve thought about that a lot. My thoughts seem to come to me unbidden and unsought, triggered by something I have seen, heard or read. Some rogue thoughts are dangerous as they push like an uncontrolled mob into my mind, each jostling for prime position. Prime position requires the loudest voice and that voice is always critical, angry, accusing. How strange. How infuriating. Does this seriously mean that, even at my age, I must needs deal with these uninvited guests? Must I catch them sneaking in through the doors and windows of my mind and fell them with my trusty thought-feller?

I must – and daily. Thoughts are things, or they can become things – things like a choice of action or the decision to develop them inside my mind, bringing in my own resident judge, jury and courtroom full of hissing hecklers. I have done this a thousand times in the past until now. Now I am learning to stop and notice each thought, critical or uplifting; to step away from myself and to watch, a sort of eagle eye view of things, of me and my current thought. If the thought connects with something from the past, a cruel comment, a rejection or a mocking, it grows legs. I watch it happen. Now I have a choice, me on the outside of me. Will I allow this to grow and develop or will I tell it that it does not serve me, is irrelevant to who I am now, and that it should scoot back to the past. Even then, if I am completely honest, it was a cruel put down, unnecessary, point scoring. It was only me not noticing and thus allowing it to feed something I had heard in my youth, an opinion I then adopted. ‘That colour does not suit you at all!’ This just as we are leaving for an evening out. Or, ‘Your bottom is getting fat.’ These cruel comments can lead to a lifetime’s self-obsession, turning a grown woman into a jibbering wreck at the very thought of an evening out with her burgeoning bottom and her wardrobe full of unsuitable colours.

Now I laugh at all of it, now that I can see that my thoughts are under my control and not one other soul, living or dead, can take command. I wonder what life might have been had I noticed all this before, as a younger woman. Might I have laughed such comments away and said ‘I’m driving tonight; move over, my fat bottom needs more room and, just for the record, I am going out to buy another dress in this exact colour. Ready to go now?’ What might the response have been had I disarmed the attack without aggression? I have tried it, as an older woman, being assertive, and it absolutely works a treat. There is no winner because there is no fight. When himself told me, in anger, “You are just like your mother!” thinking to confound me, I responded with a big smile. ‘What a compliment!’ I said. He was silenced.

This morning I woke to an eerie light. Moonglow on the mist, the sunrise red gold through the pines. I watched this moving landscape, this ever changing masterpiece, unframed, free to move, year by year, month by month, day by day and my mind filled with thoughts. One was that I must call the plumber because the thermostat is set too high on the water tank, followed by various others. I noticed, made a list to remind me, set them free and turned back to the morning. Stags bellow, birds sing, the golden kelp floats up and down with the tides, and the moon, circled by a rainbow ring is lingering yet. Blue sky pushes away the clouds, and off they fly to other lands, just memories.

I have many frocks in the colour that doesn’t suit me. It isn’t rebellion. There is no fight. I just love it, that’s all, and now my bottom can fit comfortably in a high chair. I did no work on it at all. I simply began to notice my thoughts, work out the ancient connection to the past, separate and release. I recommend the work. It frees me from anxious fretting, lack of self-confidence, control by another (kept alive by me) and the chance to really live the way I choose to live.

‘If I could start again a million miles away, I would keep myself. I would find a way. ‘ Johnny Cash

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Island Blog- Rule of Thumb

The dawn turned the far hills blood red. Although Father Sun rises behind my home, he makes his presence known in casts of colour, short-lived but marvellous to see. The sky, flat and brushed with Payne’s grey, Rose Madder and Ultramarine looks like it is unsure about what to do next. Threatened storms may roar around us as they often do, we who stick out into the Atlantic like a determined finger, independent of any weather forecast. It thinks me.

In a few days I will have been married for 48 years. We both will. A lot of what happened over those years were not as I had dreamt, nor planned. My ideal of a marriage is not so unusual. White knight, independence, the freedom to make my own choices, take my own actions, sing my own song and all under the loving and approving smile of a benign king. I would share the throne, choose my own frocks, laugh loudly when I wanted, speak out my truth and be heard. I’m not saying this never happened because it did, but where I thought this would be a rule of thumb, I found, at times, that I was under said thumb and unable to rise to my full stature.

Did it damage me, this thumb thing? It did not. Instead I have learned that on many of those remembered and unremembered times, I had a lesson to learn. I would have been, and can still be, too quick to respond, to act, to speak out. My vivid and often unrealistic imagination could have launched me into trouble without that thumb. I thank the thumb owner, that’s what I do, now that I can look back and join up the dots. I married a man 10 years my senior for a very good reason, even though I didn’t do so consciously. Somehow, my sub conscious knew what was best for me, what or who would keep me safe from danger, from myself.

I would never, even in my wildest dreams, have lived the live I have lived, the one I shared with my king. I would never have known the exciting highs nor experienced the awful lows without him and his thumb. In balance, and this is where the dot joining comes in, my life, our life together has been extraordinary from the beginning and all the way up to the now. When I recall our adventures, the spontaneity of them, the sudden Let’s Go thing, the way we led our children into independent thought, creative action, kindness towards all living people and things; the way we laughed and partied, invited and welcomed, shared and made ourselves known in the work we collectively undertook. The way we steadfastly marched on through bad times, poor times, times when our inventive strengths pulled us through. And the way we made a difference, made memories that so many others share and still remember with fondness and a chuckle.

It was never plain sailing, not for either of us. I doubt that marriage ever is, for anyone. But, to survive and thrive through such a vast ocean of years is to have made many sail corrections. Thousands. Millions. And we have, and we still are making those corrections, working with the winds of time, rising over and over again, no matter how big the waves, how fickle the chop, how far away the next peaceful harbour.

I feel honoured and proud. We did it. We got through. And we are still here, still breathing, still sailing towards a new horizon. Together.

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Island Blog – Other Days and Puddles

I know I always sound positive, but I don’t always ‘feel’ this. I make the decision to be hit with shit and then to choose my next action. If someone, anyone, asks me how I am, I say… ….I. Am. Good. I don’t know why I say Good, considering my ma’s response, should she hear me reflect and deflect the question this way. She said…..You Were Never Good. And she was right. I wisnae.

But, it was dinted into me, the upbeat return. And I am glad of that core training. However, it is often not the truth when I am in the thick of being yelled at for the pitch/sound/volume of my voice. My. Voice. When a tiny carolling granddaughter hurtles into the sacred space where all is kept calm, headphones on, next Netflix film running. Where the fire is just right, logs (hauled by me) are plentiful and the tea urn is groaning and wheezing in the next room ready for the endless spout of Tetley. I spin (quietly) from task to task, making not much fuss about the electric wheelchair parked in such a way that to deliver another load of logs would require an athletic leap without spillage. When the fret about which way the headphones fit (having gently guided and explained at least ten times) I may turn and ignore, or respond with a snap and a raised voice, repeating what I said the last time and the time before that and that. I want to twist those headphones into a hair band. But I don’t. When the signing in of yet another new phone is called for just as I have sat myself down to an audible book and my tapestry and I just cannot be youknowwhat to respond kindly/ly.

It must be awful beyond awfulness to be inhibited in the way himself is inhibited. All those things he did without even turning a hair for decades are now a massive frustration. It must be, well, appalling. I cannot imagine it. However, living with such a demise challenges my own sense of self, my values, my modus operandi. And that, too, is a good thing, but all this challenging, all this rethinking of how I must respond, of who I am in this thixotropic gloop is exhausting.

I am exhaustinged. But there are breaks afoot. I leave for a snow holiday in France with one of my lads and his family on Friday. I know I will love it and will hopefully return intact. They all ski but I am a buffoon around snow and hills. I will be staring at the sky, noticing the individual snow flakes, skidding down the path to the cafe, reading, resting, reviving.

I write this in honour and with a salut to any of you who fight daily with what is right versus how you feel. It is an upward battle for sure. The way I mostly cope is involving myself in Nature and even that is a challenge here with weeks and weeks of endless blattering rain. But, today, I walked out with my fireheaded granddaughter and we jumped in every single puddle. But, and here’s the thing, only once we had bent down to check our reflections in every single one. There must have been 50, easy, on a short half mile toddle. Every puddle was recognised and affirmed. Less without our bent heads, whole once we were in there, reflected. It thinked me.

I come home with this. Everyone should come back home with something like this.