welcome

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Island Blog – That Cafe and Today

I see gulls flip over the ebbing tide, the copper seaweed in brazen exposure, the sea-loch quietly grey and slightly wind-skiffed. I see the sweet pea pods waggle, the old rose holding tight in its last pink shout to a greyling sky, cloudbacked. I see the grass peppered heavily with clover leaves. Perhaps the blooms will come, perhaps it’s too late now for Autumn is definitely here. I know it because the fire has been on all day and I am fast running out of wood. this running out thing comes so quick. It seems that one day it’s…. what light stuff to wear and the next there’s a shiver and an opening of sweater drawers, much to the surprise and subsequent skitter of spiders. They’ve been safe for months now after all. I pause to let them go safe. It doesn’t bother me, the change of a season. In fact I welcome it. If we never accept and adapt to change, we just get some resistance issue like bad temper or a skin condition.

The Best Cafe Ever was gey busy last week. A gazillion lunches, endless coffees and cake, teas and allergies, dogs and wee ones, rain and shine. We welcome them all. In fact, someone said to me today, someone who isn’t afraid to speak their feelings, ‘That Cafe has just got it so right.’ And it’s true. There is something about hearing laughter all around, folk feeling welcome and well fed, served with smiles and can-do, which speaks volumes about any place of hospitality. And I love being part of the small team, as do my co-workers. It tells me that, although this place is only two seasons old, the idea of it, the walking it out, the risk involved has got it ‘just right’. We are small but dynamic. We are ready for whatever comes no matter the bizarre thunderstorms, no matter the craziness of the world, no matter the rainshift, the snaggle-toothed roads, the ferry issues, the lack of parking because there just isn’t enough rock to park on. No matter any of it. Still the gulls wheel and shriek under a louring cloud bank; still there is a humbacked whale just out there; still there are hills brocaded with a turning green; still there are wild birds lifting and hovering, floating on updrafts. Still the tides ebb and flow, still the night comes and there is no pollutive light.

A dot on the map, yes, but a dot worth a visit.

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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 – 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.

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Island Blog – Skinny Dip and Washeroo

Work in the best beach cafe ever was dynamic, busy and fun today. I notice the invitation from faces, the longing for recognition and connection. I remember noticing the same whilst welcoming Colonel and Mrs Tiddleypom after their very bumpy traverse along the Tapselteerie drive. That look. It is universal, on any, no, every face. Seen it in Africa, in Glasgow, in the Edinburgh queue for opera, in airport security, in the aloneness of a bus shelter, in the face of a beggar, the face of a starlet, the face of a terribly important high-flying-big earning business man. (There never were women in those so-called elevated roles in my back-in-the-day.) There is a longing for connection, skinny as hec, yes, but the eyes win, every time, no matter the flicking away, nor the make-up. I can dip into that, you who are right in front of me, as I am in front of you.

There’s a lot of dipping around in the wee space where deliciousness is delivered. We dance well, the skinny we of the serving team. We pull back to allow a big tray of quiches, soups, cakes, coffees, teas heading for a big table and zip sideways, which makes sense. Another, incoming tray of clearings, equally requiring the zip thing, and we pull back or lead, doing it for hours. My role, one it seems I have taken over (which might not be right) is the Washeroo. Is this my mother thing, the historical one who believes she is the only one who can wash up properly? Hmmmm

In the Washeroo, I am listening, peeking out to see if there’s a human on the other side of the counter who wants, yes, to order soup, quiche, cake, but more, someone who, regardless of their worldly elevation or wish for it, or feelings of loss, despair, failure, whatever, just wants a “hallo, what can I get you? Yes of course your dog is welcome, please sit anywhere. And they do. I have noticed that folk stay long beyond their food, talking, laughing, feeling happy, welcome. A lot.

The pecan brownies are delicious, the quiche, oh yes, it comes with a fresh salad, the chocolate cake, I’m sorry it’s gone, but there are flapjacks, cinnamon buns, rhubarb crumble slice, lemon polenta, blueberry muffins, and I have to tell you, this baker knows about air in her baking because EVERYTHING is light.

So, the skinny dip in and out of our work to serve the lovely people who come, just them as themselves, and the work within this skinny dip team, is such a privilege. I honestly don’t know that I have ever been in this dynamic before. I haven’t. We are making a new thing.

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Island Blog – The Joy of It

I swam today, not, as I would like, in the Atlantic, but after a long and sunshine drive to the pool, I clock in. This pool is affixed to ground control mid island, as is right, accessible to all of us who live sprachled over hillsides, down tiny access roads, and with posties confused for miles and many many miles apart. Like last time, after two lengths I loathed the whole thing, my neck aching with all that looking up required from a breastroke. Two other women were there, early doors, pre lessons and wotwot, the pool calm and the sunlight fluttering against the walls, in our eyes, a sunshine mosaic, fractal, beautiful. I pushed on. Last week I managed 20 lengths, this week 25 and helped big time by the chat in the shallow end. I learned of other women who live here, have done so for frickin ages, just like me.

I didn’t lock my mini. It was a choice. I thought this think. This is an island. People are good. I abandon my control panic la-di-da and I lift, like Bouddicca from this sprightly mini and into my swimwear and onward. Always onward, to hec with, well, pretty much everything. I watched a coach welcome folk from the hotel, off on a voyage somewhere on this beautiful rise of rock, and I waved a smile.

Home again and you’d think I’d been gone for a century for all the welcome I got. The dog was watching through the fence rail, waiting, waiting, but trusting. I always tell her to stay and that I won’t be long, and, knowing that she has no idea of time, I won’t be. But she waits, and she watches. I am it for her, and she is the it for me. We walk, slowly, and, thankfully, into the shade. I clocked 26 degrees pre leaving, but, once into the fairy woods and then to the shore, it will cool. I notice there are no conkers on the horse chestnuts. I wonder why. I have no answer, nor do I need one. The turning of the world over millennia has shown loss, failure, rise and ebullience, over and over and over again.

We walk to the shore, me and the wee dog. She always wants to go there. When I am tired, I divert her. Home, I say, feeling guilty. I always regret it, that slope to the shore, where grand girls dived in wetsuits, lofted onto dinghies, crab fished, scrambled the ancient rocks with bare feet, light and easy. Today we went there. She was a scoot on the green download of the earth, all the way to the crunch of sundried kelp, still there, wild flowers, holding on, some canoes, kayaks, tied tied to hazels. The blue moon tides have been, well, luscious. Over the top. Well over. Boats need to be secured. I walk by them, remembering their launches, remembering my family, not here anymore. And it thinks me.

I sit on a wonky rock. My arse slideyways, my feet ditto. I hear an irritation of herons across the sealoch, watch diver birds dive, rise with a splash that laughs me, then dive again, I see an otter flip a fish, the rainbow flash an indent in my mind. As we wander home, as the crunch of new life supports my feet, as everything I have never known begins to unfold in the now, I smile for the joy of it.

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Island Blog – It Is Enough

I am awake, early, before the sun is fully up, and I have slept enough. This day is my last in Africa and there is much to do. First off, I must needs park the panics, those fussy itchy thoughts as spikey as porcupines, the ones that demand an active hands-on riffle through and a smart shove into perspective. Will my hold luggage weigh too much? Should I find a tote bag for my hand luggage? How many underlayers should I have ready and about me for my arrival into a 30 degree temperature drop? What about liquids and such, which do I pack and which do I have ready for inspection in a clear plastic bag? And there are many more such flapdoodles to un-flap about, all easily sorted. I clear my mind of the swirling chaos, remind myself to inhabit the present moment and make coffee. I sit outside on the stoep and watch the sky, the rising of the sun, a warm pink backlight for a silhouette of trees. Birds call out, sounds I will not hear back on the island, African birds, coloured up like rainbows and speaking a language I don’t understand. A flash of electric blue, a wide span of ruby tail feathers, a butter yellow head, they cut the sky in two, these glorious creatures, an imprint on my memory.

I will love the change of things as I will remember the colours of Africa. Returning home to the island with its skinny roads and warm people almost happens without me. I step on a plane, three in fact, although not all at the same time, take my seat and up I go to cut other skies in two, many skies and one sky, crossing over continents and oceans, countries, deserts, mountains and rivers. A magical thought indeed. Someone might look up to watch the metal bird, heavy laden with precious cargo and, hopefully, my un-heavy hold luggage, as sunlight flashes off its belly, a pink contrail weaving a cloudline. As I doze or eat or read way up in the sky, life continues way down there, families together and apart, discussions on what to do or where to go. Dogs bark away the night or bark it back in again. Meals are prepared, lists are made, fights are fought, losses are grieved and new life is welcomed in. So much life everywhere, so much living to be lived.

For now, for today, I will take in every moment. I will pack, unpack and repack. This is irritating but a part of the procedure, a sort of resistance to change, to leaving what has become the familiar. However, I know of old that we people can quickly establish a new familiar in a surprisingly short time, so capable are we, so adaptable, despite all those hours of flapdoodle. Imagining the worst always first. Lord knows why we do this but I decide it is a perfectly natural amygdala thing, a sorting service provided by our big brains, processing fearful stimuli, a nudge to encourage intelligent preparation before entering a state of change. From there we decide whether or not the fear is real, such as a truck or a leopard coming at us fast. Needless to say, my fear is a bundle of nonsense – do I have the right clothes, yes, adequate sustenance, yes, the right footwear, mindset, passport etc. The way we can muddle ourselves with fear is daft but we all do it at times. I chuckle at myself. All is well you flappy old woman. Just prepare, calmly, and then set your sights on the moment ahead because you are playing a vital and important part in that moment, and the next, and the next and the next. All you have to do is show up. And I will do just that but not today. Today will be itself and I will be entirely and wholly present as the gift of living lights me up like sunshine. And it is enough.

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Island Blog – Let Go and Welcome

After a few days of wondering who the hellikins I am and what to do next and then the next next, I awaken with eyes rolling. I have done this often in my long life, this eye rolling thingy. It’s as if I run, run, run for days in my own strength until that strength runs out, as it always does. Reaching that place, be it a crossroads, a wall or a chasm, something wiser than me yet in me stops my feets. And there is a relief in that, an eye rolling, a letting go. If I pull back from that image, I might see failure, but I am learned enough not to do that because I know that the moment of lift comes straight after it. Every time. After each letting go, new paths appear. I cannot explain it nor do I attempt to. I just know the pattern.

I think we imagine we can decide something and then everything will fall into place. When it doesn’t work that way, we take it personally. We think we, or others, or things, or the weather or the neighbourhood we live in or our job at work etc are to blame. No matter our age, circumstance, knowledge of loss or the place we currently inhabit, we believe it. And it is IT. So we make new decisions based on that, on IT.

But what if we thought beyond that IT? No, not thought, because anything ‘beyond’ is obviously beyond our thinking. What if we just trusted that the world is a wonderful place, that those angry people we might meet in shopping queues are just like us only hurting, that there is hope for the millions starving, lost, abused, silenced, living in dreadful poverty? How might we consider ourselves in such encounters?

I walked today and met Finneas. I have seen him a zillion times before but today, in this wind, in this soft face rain, he called to me. A fine pine, a tall one, right up to the clouds, no branches, just his pine dreadlocks meeting the sky. I watched him sway, from his roots to his dreadlocks. Miles of trunk just moved gently with the wind. He stands in a beech wood. He will be kind to them. Beech mothers are feisty. An oak would not survive here but the mothers accept pines, maybe because the pines are grandfathers to them and they, like goodly women, are happy to cohabit. (slight joke). I say “met Finneas’ because he has never told me his name until today. I felt emotion, tears at the beauty of such long term survival, the bending, the allowance of beech mothers, the way the wood works together and for so very long, longer than any of us will ever live.

In the woods of our lives, we might fight for space, enough room to understand our place and to speak it out. Or, we might let go and welcome.

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Island Blog – Call them by their Names

This island night, I hear of another name, suddenly moved into the past. Just like that. She was a woman I met now and again, and one I always saw as strong. Strong, hmm, means something else up here in island life. It means tough against pretty much everything. Atlantic slice winds, sudden have-tos in the middle of something else, like baking or feeding a babe or just sweeping the floor. As woman here you need toes on your toes, ready at any moment for the ice swipe of out there to save a cow from the bog in mid February when the hail is ready to take you out, when you can barely stand on a rock face that doesn’t give a monkey’s about whether you succeed or fail, but you are always ready. She was.

She was, and is, Jeannie. Others who I remember this night also need naming. So, here I go. Jessie, her twin sister, Donnie her husband and Angus her son; Kirsty, Katy, Helen, Kathy, Amy, Willie, John, Mouse, Jonnie, Belle, Blind Katy, David, Hughie, Eck, Katy, Bert, Chrissie, Sonny,and so many more; folk I met when I moved here as a complete idiot and who became my kindly guides. As an incomer, back then, a welcome was not expected. I get it, now. However, island west coast folk have big old hearts and I met those hearts. They may have laughed at us but they didn’t block us out.

Hey Jeannie. I am so glad I met you. I saw, in you and Jessie, strong women with attitude. From my protected life, women like you stood out, literally. Tall and booted up, in the ring, in the field, in among the shit of stock farming in sometimes cruel conditions. You showed me that being woman is not a thing to be taken lightly, nor restricted to domestic duties. I smile as a I write this, because without knowing you changed me, you did. Thank you.

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Island Blog – I hold the balance

I watch the rain. A constant, a steadying. I am not overly fond of endless rain but there is little I can do about that. There is also little I can do about long evening darkness, one that holds on like a black fist for way too long, well into what laughingly is called My Morning. Sleep is a friend, yes, but fickle. She soothes me for a few short hours but she allows in dreams, nightmares, startlements that shock me into waking and leave me still shocked even as the dream evaporates. I am not good at ‘still shocked’, won’t stand for it, get up, go downstairs to watch the darkness, try to love it at 4 am. I remember trying to love something when it defies the rules and it was never easy, my skin prickling, my mouth empty of words, my body longing to run, but if I could do it once, I can do it again. Let it be.

But. When someone who has no idea about widowness, my widowness, says something that doesn’t even come close to the depth of my feelings, I snort. I hear all the advice, the platitudinal fiction that spills from lips and eyes and I want to roar like Aslan. I don’t, naturally, but that roar held in my small body is wild and dangerous. I smile and thank them, the grief counsellors, the Facebook lovers, the ‘friends’ who write another supportive line pinched from a book they’ve read, but the within of me belies the without. Thank God for skin and good manners! Deep down I am grateful for kindness, nonetheless and all those words of uplift and encouragement come from good warm hearts. I know this and it thinks me into a questioning.

What is it that bothers me when I hear or read words that are just birds around my head? I consider the question and it comes to me as a flash of light. It is my inner speke that needs my attention, not the words I hear, the intention behind them. Oh dear, that can feel so impossible at times when I am busy doubting and fearing and self punishing, even as I know the truth of mind control. I decide to step into my own head and there they are, standing like sentry guards at the door. We can’t let any positive stuff in, they tell me as I confront them, not when you are busy nourishing us in our negative space. I sit down to consider the situation. Ah, so it is up to me to select my thinks? They nod. Are you telling me, I continue, that I am not at the mercy of negativity, regardless of my loneliness, my fears around Covid, my lack of confidence without my husband around to confidence me up? Again they nod. So, I fake it, pretend, kid myself on? Yes, they say. You keep feeding the uplifting words, the light bright beautiful birds. You receive all of them both from outside and those of your own making and you catch every one, lifting them gently into your mind and your heart. They are all light and flight. They lift your spirits into a positive orbit. They are all true and they are so much stronger than the loneliness, the fears and the self doubt. They are your true power, and we are tired of sentry duty. It’s time to change the guard.

I begin with ‘I am strong, happy, powerful and all light.’ I hold back the guffaw and the candle burns bright. The sentries fall, one by one and the door opens wide. Welcome holds out her hands, pulling me into a warm, light room, one I recognise. What on earth made me walk away from this! Well, says Welcome, life is not a straight path. The path winds every which way and everyone can get lost from time to time. I make a list so that every time the negative looms, I can hold it back with my own light. I might feel I am at the mercy of negative thoughts but it takes just one candle to illuminate a darkened room. Just one. It doesn’t matter that the doubts are there, the fears and the regrets. They are there to guide me, I know that.

But it is I who hold the balance.

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Island Blog – Agape

We have wind. Not personal wind but an agape wind, one that loves all, right across the nation and then way down into Englandshire and way beyond. Actually, that thinks me. I know, I know that there is a divide tween Scotland and England, one that was defended and attacked for decades with all sorts of big gallant men, wearing armour or tights, wielding swords way too heavy to hold, lunkering across fields in armour that took hours to affix and moments to penetrate. Horses were a by product, their faithful lives given without permission, and in their thousands.

Moving on. Back to the wind. It rages as I write. The last blooms are like old women I have met, old men too, only men never tell you how it is for them, which, by the way, is infuriating for we women. Just saying. Wind, on the other hand is wild and without care for what anyone thinks about it. It just fires, flows, rants, throws hail and alarming gusts and thinks it’s ok. I am kind of envious of that.

So, this agape wind. Let me elucidate. Agape is wide love without judgement or the need to control. As we watch the new storms coming, and the ferocity, we are allowed fear. Allowed? I cannot believe I wrote that. What I mean is nothing to do with permission. Why do I think Agape? Well I just do. We all know, or are aware of what is happening to our world, the one we had so much confidence in. We still should, for it is not gone, no way, but our eyes need to be on it.

Stories speak the truth. From Grimms (ouch) Tales, to the memories of a grandmother who is happy to speak out, when welcomed. They get lost, stories, buried with the teller. But they are the roots that root us, the ties that bind, the interweaving of agape love. In our island lives, our personal island lives, inside a non stop city noise, our new lonely flat, our new digs, a new school, a retreat, a safe house, a scary landscape. We land like an albatross in Piccadilly.

The storm rages on, but it will fade soon, after a last night of crocodile teeth and the pounding of a prize bull against the triple glazing. It’s just a night or two. So nothing. I think of those out there in the wild raw of life, this cold, the sleet, the judgement, the aggression. And I wish I could send out Agape.

Maybe I can.