waking

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Island Blog – A Crap Day Imagined and a Good Start

Waking in the night for no good reason, I took a peek inside my head. After a few moments sorting through the dross and toss of thoughts, reminding me of my merry days when five kids lobbed their dirty washing altogether in the laundry basket leaving me to sort the blues from the lingerie, an idea for a writing exercise stepped proudly up to the lecturn and announced today’s reading. A Crap Day. Well, I said, this isn’t a crap day and I haven’t had one of them for a while now, no, for ages, because the day is never all good nor all bad but only in bits. However, the challenge was on and I am meeting it head on, feet beneath my desk and to the accompaniment of raindrops plopping through the hole I made in the ceiling with a barbecue skewer, and into a big green bucket.

‘ Yesterday was definitely a crap day. It began when one of my contact lenses took off on a round the eyeball trip. I could feel the damn thing floating behind my nose like a lost dingy at sea. I wondered if it would stay there for ever or come back around again, or if I would blow a hole in my tissue after a sneeze. It might hit someone I didn’t plan to hit, ping them in the face, a tiny frisbee. It might hurt or even damage. I apply another lens and this one is on its best behaviour, remaining more or less in position even if it proved more difficult than usual to apply make up in all the right places for all the swimming water between me and the eyeliner. Dark mornings are bad enough for such shenanigans at the best of times. I check my bedside clock. Damn, I’m going to be late. I head for the stairs, catching my bare foot on the head of a nail which, overnight, has twisted free from the boards. Blood. It drip, drip, drips as I yell abuse into the empty house and attempt to hop down the stairs holding tight to the bannister. Into the kitchen, just time for a coffee, I flick on the kettle. Nothing. Curses! I check the big fuse box on the wall. All switches up. I bang the plug further in the the kettle begins to hum. While I sip the black strong brew I apply a band aid, pull on my socks and shoes and go in search of my car keys and phone. No phone. Where is the damn phone? I dial my number from the landline and hear it ringing from the sitting room. I see the light of it from the sofa, slightly hidden beneath something, a something that turns out to be a cat which startles me as I don’t own a cat. Thomas, how the hell did you get in? My eyes go to the window. Ah, it’s open just wide enough at the very top for the slink and slide of him to relocate his favourite cosy place. My neighbour’s chuck him out at night for some daft reason as if the poor old fellow is expected to catch his weight in mouse, just so the parsimonious bastards don’t need to haul up from the sofa and go for Whiskas.

My foot is aching now but I can still drive, even if I am now a walking dead woman about to succumb to tetanus or sepsis. Will anyone bother to visit me I wonder as I pull out into the rain-soaked traffic. Nobody wants to do this driving to work thing. I can hear their fury as easily as I can hear their angry horn honks. I don’t honk. I don’t even know where my horn is. Nearly there now. I indicate into the carpark and find no space beyond the ones for The Chairman, the Director, the Manager and the yellow ones for the disabled of which there are none in this crummy office. In a fit of pique I swing into the Chairman’s space. He never comes in anyway unless there’s a board (bored) meeting or when Marian from Hair and Make-up is in with her rolling bosom and her packet of chocolate hobnobs, and that thrilling combination only occurs on a Wednesday. Today is not Wednesday. I lock the car, spin on my sore foot and swear. Running for the front door in order to avoid certain drowning in this vicious deluge of cloud water, I punch in the combination and explode into the foyer. “You’re late Miss Moneypenny.’ he says, without even looking up. I hate it when he calls me that as if he thinks he’s Bond himself. He is very far from Bond, I can tell you. ‘Sorry.’ I mutter and pelt for the cloakroom. All this rain stimulates my bladder. ‘My office for dictation!’ he barks to my disappearing back.

The morning is arduous and painful. My swimming eye makes my shorthand almost illegible and the coffee is both disgusting and cold. I have left my delicious packed lunch at home with the cat and by 2pm I am fed up and tearful with all the extra work bloody Daphne left me because she couldn’t ‘make it in today’. My time of the month, she told Reception but I reminded Reception that she had already had one of those just 2 weeks ago. Perhaps she has run out of excuses to ‘not make it in’ After all, her rabbit can’t die twice, her mother break 3 legs, nor the 7.50 from Kings Cross derail again. The rain rains on, transparent tadpoles against the windows almost wiping out the view of the park, my sanity on work days. Finally it is time to go home and I cannot get there quick enough. I head for my car and my heart sinks as I see the wheel clamp. Damn it all to hell! I scream out causing some passers by to rearrange their glum wet faces into either sympathy or smiles. I march back into the office and demand an explanation. Reception looks at me blankly but I know she will have arranged this. I march up to his office, whack open the door and, to my complete surprise, give in my resignation. I quit! I yell and then I tell him to stuff his job and his completely ridiculous Bond fetish somewhere dark and smelly.

Eventually, after paying a week’s wages for the unclamping of my car, I arrive back home and breathe a sigh of relief. Although I am now badly in debt, without either job or reference, I feel free in a sort of lunatic way. Perhaps, I muse, as I light the fire and sip a glass of red wine, everyone needs a crap day, that ultimately crap one that makes a person finally get up off her arse and make the change that will change everything. I can apply for jobs, any jobs. I’ll go to the job centre tomorrow and chat with Daniel. I like Daniel and haven’t seen him for weeks. Might be a good start.’

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Island Blog – Thinks and Daddy Longlegs

I have too many of them. Thinks, not Daddy Longlegs. I wonder how the name was gifted. I often wonder that. Was it something to do with the One Who Discovered? If this discovery had been made by a woman might it have spent all eternity being known and recognised as Mummy Longlegs? I wonder that about God too. I know, I know, too many thinks. My thinks might be my undoing for as often as they travel through my mind in the hours of daylight as questions begging answers, they do not sleep overnight. I feel sometimes as I did as a child, excited and bunked in Cattle Class on a sleeper from York to Inverness, so awake to every sound, every shunt, pause, toot and groan of the carriage, one more redolent of an old woman in ill-fitting stays than the sleek, spirited (and grubby) fast train of today. I barely slept and this has not changed. I don’t mind, not often, nor usually but just sometimes I wonder what it might be like to go to bed, hit the pillow and drift off into the night, waking at first light with no idea what just happened.

Inside my home for the last few days I am Daddy Longlegged out. They are everywhere and here am I marvelling at their obvious confoundment. This morning at some pre dawn hour I met one in the kitchen, just by the kettle. It flapped at me a bit and I said hallo and waited till it had done with checking me out. It landed on the wall, spread in all its fragile beauty, six legs splayed, until I filled the kettle for coffee spilling a drop of water on the counter. Immediately it lifted and landed by the water drop. I ran for my specs, my magnifying glass (no laughing please) in order to watch this extraordinary and so short-lived survivor bend for a drink. It has a snout. Yes, it does. Like a hyena only way smaller. It also has a number of eyes which makes sense considering the short lived/predator thing that is ever present. Humans swatting, birds snatching, spider webs waiting, wind slamming and so on.

I watched it drink, wondering should I put it out or should I not? I make coffee taking care to keep it out of the way of the killing steam. It finished drinking and seemed revived. It lifted all the way up to the ceiling. Should I leap about in my goonie in attempts to catch it, to set it free? Into what? Danger? I Googled. I often Google. What did we ever know before Google? I learn little.

I go through the to the conservatory and light a candle, sip my coffee and wait for the dawn. You came in, I say. Your choice. Who am I to make a decision for you? Then I slide back over my Night Thinks. I decide to set them free too. You came in. I repeat. Your choice. But here I can make a decision. And I do. I choose to move into my day, into my daylight, into the new and I leave my thinks behind me. After all, they were only thinks.

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Island Blog 143 Own Hair and Teeth

 

old woman

 

Just in case you are wondering if I’m still at sea, like half-way to Norway by now, let me tell you it’s not true.  I have just been busy with lifey things for a while and somewhat strapped for words, but as I tootled back north the other day after a lively visit to my old ma, I heard them all (the words, that is) stomping back into my brain like old and welcome rellies.  Now there’s a thing!   I captured a lot of them on paper, laying them down word by word and I swear I heard them all sigh with relief.  When your words take off like that, it may not have been entirely their fault.  If anyone, or anything feels neglected and unloved, then I don’t blame them for pulling on their stout boots in search of alternative warmth and friendship.

The down south bit was fun.  I was reminded of delays, of queues and of road rage, of warm locals filled with locals, a merry fire blazing in the grate and good hoppy beer on tap. I became re-aquainted with the red and green man who tells me when I can cross the road, saw babies in catwalk clothing being propelled along in buggies the size of small cars, of business women in heels and pencil skirts, with strident voices and sassy black ear pieces, talking to themselves, not an anorak nor a dither among them.  I wandered through supermarkets sporting foreign sounding pulses, sauces and I marvelled anew at the down south size of parsnips, pidgeons and farm machinery.  Even the brambles are huge which is why they’re called blackberries.  Down south, brambles are those sharp things that tear your stockings when you take short cuts home.

I made friends on the trains.  I say ‘trains’ because to get to Norfolk is not for the faint-hearted, not on public transport. Four trains to get down and four to get back and by the time it was over I was well-practised in minding the gap and in avoiding those delightful old darlings who hump their suitcases onto the platform and then stop dead to pull on gloves or to re-arrange their scarves, causing a massive pile up and not a little tutting.

Annie and Damien were (and probably still are) a delightful young couple on their way to a relative’s wedding plus a few family visits.  I knew Annie was going to be fun when she said, as she reached up to the luggage rack, and her flat, firm midriff was revealed, that her granny used to warn her that her kidneys would fall out.  I told her that’s exactly what I was going to say and we were firm mates for 3 hours from that first chuckle.  Of course I gave her the lowdown on island Wife and of course she said she would Google me.  Ten years ago that would have sounded insulting.  Now it’s something to be proud of, the fact that you are Google material at all.  I was sad when we said goodbye in Peterborough.

My next new friend was on the journey north, two fine young men (everyone’s young to me) en route for a presentation in Stirling.  At first, they sat opposite each other, squashing me and a very charismatic pastor against the window, until we established between us that they were going to have to keep whizzing the laptop round in order to complete their work, which would drive me and the charismatic pastor nuts long before Ely.  I swapped seats and then started chatting, which wasn’t all that kind or sensitive, as they had work to do, but they were gracious enough to indulge me as we swapped life histories, zip folder sized.  One of them South African John was most intrigued about the Island Wife bit and instructed his wife, via text or whatsapp or something, to Google me too and then to buy the book.  I hope their presentation went well.  I was rather sad to see them go too, even if it did allow me and the charismatic pastor to spread out a bit.

Growing older is not always fun.  My old ma is pretty tired of waking up every day to the same number of hours alone.  Most of her friends have sailed heavenwards already and those that haven’t might do any day, even if they do still drive and play scrabble like champions right up to the cocktail hour.  However mum still jokes with the postman, milkman, paper boy, delivery man, etc and they all adore her.  There she is, this silver fox, with a ready chuckle in her mouth and smart as you like when off to see a movie (only she calls them films of course).

What I love about the little train from Glasgow to Oban is that I know all the guards and trolley dollies.  I also find most endearing (and seek it) the station announcements that are always a station out.  As we pull into Crianlarich (where this train divides) the nice woman tells us we are now arriving at Gairlochhead, astounding anew the visitors who look around a lot and stare hard at the station sign just to be sure.  She, the nice woman, has been getting it wrong for months now and nobody official seems to mind or notice.  The trolley runs out of sandwiches in the summer, ever single summer, long before 2pm and those who lingered over a glass of French red regret it for miles.  Those of us in the know purchase our baguette or our meal deal in the station and some of the older ones (including me) get up early to make our own. What I don’t like about our little train is the state of the WC (I refuse to call it a toilet, having rebelled against the word somewhere in my teens as it sounded way too grownup and proper), although WC is pretty ridiculous if you think about it.  Water Closets date back to Victoria Regina and she’s long gone.  On trains down south some eager official sorts out the loo at regular intervals, but this is obviously deemed unimportant or ‘not my job’ on the west highland line.  On a friday evening, it is actually dangerous to need a pee beyond Taynuilt, going either way.

Going back to the growing older thing, I find I rather like it, even if I do have to remind myself when leaving this train, with all my belongings, not to stop as soon as my feet hit the platform.  People are getting heavier these days and a collision might land me in A& E – or them, but either way, it would, or could, be messy.  When someone hears my age, they always tell me how young I look, and I don’t want to hear that.  I know I am an OHAT woman (own hair and teeth) for now, but I am proud of all those years at the back of me and if everything is about looking young, then does this mean I am more seriously OTH (over the hill) than I already thought?  Is being older a bad thing?  I hear so many folk say they don’t want to grow old, but they are saying this through pert lips and still with the ability to run for cover, whereas many of us need to bring our own because the chances of finding it (cover) let alone being able to run for it, is way in our past.

In Sainsburys, that massive animal with every conceivable foodstuff couched in its belly, I bought, without specs, a seed mix.  When I sprinkled it on my morning muesli and poured on the half fat milk it turned brown.  On further investigation (specs on) I discovered the seeds had been roasted in soy sauce.  I laughed and laughed and ate it all.  This is the fun of growing older.  Let not this cup be taken from me as it has so many others, for I will cause mayhem for as long as I possibly can, whether I intend it, or not.