woman

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Island ~Blog – Thank you

My second fourth day in the cafe. Consecutive. It matters. It smiles me, the wondering of the whether or the not of this four day working thing at my age. I did wonder a lot, until I decided Oh to hec with this wondering flippancy. Let’s go. And I’m two weeks in. It thinks me about spontaneity, about random, about Hell yes. If I remember, and I do, those in my past, who did just jump, who did decide not to fade into beige, who, despite confines and restrictions, emerged in colour. And she is me. Now, I don’t want to say that only women do this colour-up thing, this stand alone thing, but I am a woman and cannot speak for a man.

The cafe was quiet a bit and then loud a lot, visitors coming in, all smiles and askings, and we were there. The baking and the soups are fabulous, the cakes high rise and flipping endless. I know because I am wheeching cake tins and spatulas and bake tins and whisks and bowls and scrapers and wooden spoons out from the kitchen and into the washeroo, a lot. It thought me, and this is nothing to do with the cafe, more my own life. Recognition for work in my day was not expected from a man. It isn’t now.

But now it is given. Thank you

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Island Blog – Shenanigans

It was super boiling in the Washeroo today, all that steaming water puffing steam at me as I loaded and emptied the dishwasher, one I have never met. The wash is fiery hot and quick and very effective, plates and cups too hot to touch for at least three rounds of ‘He’s a jolly good fellow’. I am so happy that, back in the 80’s, my adventurous and spontaneous culinary skills were ‘allowed’ to develop without any eye from Health and Safety, bringing in some besuited interference with a clipboard of rules, immovable rules, no matter that we live on an island with a dispirited ferry and, thus, limited deliveries of fresh anything much.

We, up here, in the thankful coolish climes, with a wind that, once November comes, can wheech a skinny old woman off her feet, we are happy it’s gentle now, warm and soft, and more than happy we are not in Englandshire nor in any other Hotshire. I thought I was hot in the Washeroo, but I can imagine, actually I cannot, the temperature in a restaurant in a confined city place, with no access to a seawind, no chance of a blast of cool.

However, this is not the thing I wanted to say. I gave a lift home to a young beautiful woman, shy, smiling, respnsive, smart, definitely in the room. I watch her head turn, saw her respond to a customer demand, watched her serve, clear tables, respond to a sudden rush. I watch from the Washeroo, where I am definitely hiding, because there is a lorry load of plates, cups, glasses, bowls, and more coming in on trays so fast I can barely keep up. But even focused inward, the dishwasher, the drying, the response to askers. More Teapots, now, This Knife, More quiche plates, that sort of dynamic. I do this dynamic all through the middle of the day which is when the everyone of everything arrives with a list. Two soups, one with bread, one with cheese scone, yes, extra cheese and Mull seaweed chutney, yes. Four quiches, no, wait, two are vegan, so no this nor that. The kids want juice, ice, no ice, baby chinos, is the banana loaf nut free, is the lemon polenta ok for vegetarians, are the blueberries safely sourced for those muffins, can I have this tea, that tea, this coffee, that coffee with oat milk, soy milk, no milk, extra water, warm, not iced?

We do it so well in the Best Cafe Ever. We duck and dive, juke and swivel, guided by the bosses. Actually I wonder if they like that title. Just wondering. We are well led. When something looks like a lack (always wanted to write that) it’s a turning, an opportunity and what I have found in that wee serving space, with goodness knows how many conversations and solutions burgeoning like new blooms every minute, we are a flipping marvellous team. The leaders, the we of us, the whole impact on this summer, this place, this dynamic. I’m so glad I’m here. The fun we. have, the shenanigans. Everyone is jealous. Work is boring after all, a thing to get through.

Not here.

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Island Blog – Not Just a Woman

I never can find the source of my newly thinks, they just come. Chances are someone says something that stops me in my tracks, or I notice something, a chance glimpse of an encounter without words but with smoke rising above the both of them. Could be the times that tourists haven’t acknowledged that I have snaked my way back in a very competent reverse around at least four corners whilst they, in a big four wheel drive thing as big as a starship, sit and look at me, and, then, when the driver, the man, stares straight ahead as he zooms past and never thanks nor smiles, I. know that’s when the think rose in me. I know you, I thought. I never want you again in my life, not that I did, not in my marriage, but all around us lived out these men and, it seems, still they do and in freedom.

I am not just a woman. I am more than an excellent cook, a skill I honed and refined over years, not just because I wanted to please, because I did, but more, because, when I gave up my dreams, being the centre of the need, the giver and lover, the supplier of nourishment, the one to bring smiles and full bellies and gentle sleep, my skills meant everything.

As children grew, as a community dynamic shifts, I got it. I moved with the viable, with the awkward, the times when my man hid away. I got my role. Never signed up for it, had no clue, but there I was, all young body, long hair, still with a dream whispy in my head. It dies. No, it doesn’t. I still have it, still believe in my dream.

A man. My choice. However, and in my experience, there were only about 3 who ever asked me, and listened, about what I wanted in life. I told them. I am a fiery, terrified, strong, weak, beautiful, ugly, competent, useless, woman. I am not my body, and I am my body. I am gentle and very strong. I am wild, spontaneous, awkward, bloody-minded, but not fixed in any of those. I am rainbow coloured and I am soft shell beach colours. I am the storm, the sunrise, the set, the pull of a tide, the stop of boats, the lift of cloud, the sunshift, the turning of the world. I am the moon as she wakes, loud in a starry sky, pulsing power. I am unsleep, I am warm cuddles, I am immediate, I am distant.

I am not just a woman.

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Island Blog – A Puckered Life

We all live one of those, times when the material beneath our feet is straight, taught as Oliver before Fagan. Others when the ripples and concrete risers trip us up until, despite our best intentions, we fall, smack, face down, bruised and bloody. Some pretend they didn’t fall, tending towards a fluff of tissue, many dabs, a flappy hand, I’m fine. I don’t buy into that flappy thing, the ‘fine’ thing, not when the fall is mahousive, even as I do get it when the fall is a nothing much. In which case, why bother mentioning it at all?……hallo old age. Back to the point.

I witnessed last week a tsunami of grief, was there, stood beside it, kept close. This is a real fall. Standing witness to such a mahousive time-blast was like standing in a storm on a cliff with no clothes on, the tilt-wind pushing overness into a done thing. I could feel the fall, smell it, touch it, even hear the music of it, the angst singing through every moment. I am glad I was there. (I’m currently looking for an alternative to the word ‘glad’. It’s so slamdunk, so, well, concrete.)

There was a big crowd, There were singers, solo and choir, readers, vicars with spice and pink hair. There was line after pew line of those who valued this woman’s life. In short, there was a tribute which blew me away. Today, at a very happy meet of friends around a table, all of us crafting something or other over coffee and cake, we talked of what we might like to be said at our own funeral. We spoke of where and how we might be buried. We laughed, obviously (gallows humour) about what we might want to wear once our spirit had left us like a butterfly. We also shared times in our long lives which had tried to trip us up, and failed.

Life is beautiful, and I just took it for granted. Oh, I’ve met the puckers a lot, and often, but I had the feet to run, the body to lift over any ruts, the strong arms to gather up my children, the mind to accommodate, and the resilience to, not just survive, but to make magic in the present for those I love. One big life is gone. What do I owe her?

To live on. To bring magic, as she did. To welcome everyone, to lift when I can, any stumbler over this puckered life.

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Island Blog – Woman Gone, Pineapple Chunk

It’s weird. I eat, sleep, rise, clean the loo, sort the wood burner, fill the bird feeders, puddle through the rain, buy veg and cheese and a toothbrush at the local shop. I play online scrabble with friends, drink coffee, wonder when, if ever, the dream cleaner will come to crush the dust with some poisonous spray in a schmancy bottle, a load of squirts rising into the corners of my spidery home. I wake to find hours and hours ahead of me, even though I love the waking thing, the morning offer of opportunity and chance. I decide to make a coffee and walnut cake. Lord nose why. I don’t eat cake, any cake. It’s a thing to fill the hours, and this one proffers me 45 minutes plus another 60 of baking. It helps, the thought of it. The cake, once retrieved from the oven, is beyond help. I fling it, as my darling Granny would say, in the bucket.

I have only connected with the Woman Gone, now and again over the decades. I married as a teenager, birthed my beautiful first born son at 20. She, the She of this, was already rising into the world of music, and she soared. Her voice. More than that. She, and I remember this, was good at her piano practice. She stuck when I wanted to build fireballs and to run. She stuck, she held, when I lost myself in the running thing, going pretty much nowhere. And then one man held me safe. I had no longing for a career, unlike her. I just wasn’t steady enough, I know that. If the running is in you, in your feet, you probably need someone to, not stop you, no fricking way, but in a gentle hold, breathe, wait, let’s talk, thing.

I have known death, watched it come, and often. But this, this woman, too sudden, too fast, too much. I know how well she was loved, how shocked those who thought, as I did, that there was no chance Death would softly take her. There will be a funeral, memorial, of some sort. And, to be honest, I am glad I will be there. The confusion of this whole frickin awfulness may, just may, find solace in a gathering.

I remember us at the bus stop right outside her house. I walked to it. I’m a primary girl, 6/7/8/9 and on. It was bloody freezing, the frost thick, the snow holding the cold, pushing it into anyone who passed, and particularly into feet and fingers. She laughed at me as I trudged towards her. As I moved closer, I noticed her fur-lined boots. How did she manage that? My mother had read the rules (always), and my shoes were regimen. No fur. My toes were threatening gangrene even then. We boarded the bus for the 25 minute ride to a school I hated, in a uniform that didn’t fit, was grey and puckered in all the wrong places,for me. We moved to the back, as we always did, being early birds on the pickup list. She dug in her lovely schoolbag, coloured and soft, whereas mine, of course, was a hideously rigid satchel, and pulled out a pineapple chunk.

I will never forget that.

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Island Blog – Drifting, White Teeth and a Cobra

I have been wondering, to be honest, why I sort of float through the days In Africa. Heretofore, I would not have defined myself as ‘floaty’, although I definitely can be at times, as if I have momentarily lost my way, looking about me in the hopes that my way will de-mist itself and reveal. Those times might have occurred in vast, and, as yet, unvisited, railway stations or when I walk up to the woods behind my home and can’t remember why until I do. The former is understandable. I am a very small and lost old woman in what feels like a panic zone and the only way to remain upright and in control of my luggage is to stand well back whilst I mind the gaps. The latter is considerably more pleasant. After all, I am at home (ish) and it is a simple task for me to turn, return to where I was when i chose to go up into the woods, relocate my purpose which is always on the other side of a doorway, and begin the process again.

There is no such logic in Africa, not for me. I believe it is because I am constantly awed, by the people, the languages and their percussive melodic phrasing, by the build of summer colours, smells, sounds and the suddenness of encounters on pavements, beaches, everywhere. Let us say we are travelling somewhere to get something. A perfectly normal thing. In the passenger seat I observe that very few drivers indicate. In fact, I wonder why the car manufacturers bother with the expense of indicators, so infrequently are they employed by the driver. A car, truck, fire engine, police car, woman, man, black, white, just drift left or right as if there were’nt another 450 vehicles swapping lanes all around them. There seems to be no car rage at all, if you don’t count the swearing within the vehicle nor the swerving and a lengthy comment by the car horn.

I’m watching bougainvillea scoot by on a high wall, crisped up with very sharp, security, knife blades, hibiscus the width and breadth of a small Scottish cottage, palm trees holding fragile bird nests, black faces, white faces, sun-burned skin, half naked tourists, the flash of white teeth in black faces: pavements too sizzly for dog paws, boats floating, ocean waves rising all turquoise and white-topped to crash down on laughing swimmers. Endless big homes, gated, locked, secured, beautified with spectacular colours; dwellings of tin and plastic, bunched together, a community. A seaside town, brightly painted, quirky, vibrant, offering fabulous food so cheap, everything fresh, great service, tiny bill. Colourful clothing. Africa. We arrive to buy the thing and I drift into the Exit until called back. I was watching the people, the movement, the whatever. I’m ok with it.

It isn’t the same as it was last time, up in Kruger Park with the definite chance of meeting a giraffe on the walk to dinner, and the absolute…….no walking after dark #leopard. Do I miss that? At first I did, but then I remind myself how completely terrificated I was just taking the puppy out for a pee in the morning. I could have met snakes of all varieties, warthogs (grumpy shits with big tusks and barely a brain between them) giraffes (don’t mess with that neck of steel). But, to be honest, none of that happened. My imagination has always got me into trouble. I can make a tiny thing into the end of the world as we know it, in a nanosecond. It isn’t a gift. So when my son called out, in this Capetown garden, whilst we played a gentle game of scrabble with no rules……oh look, a Cobra! I leaped onto the stoep, my heart playing jambells and dissonance.

Then I heard the throaty roar and saw the damn thing shoot by. Told you my imagination was trouble.

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Island Blog – A Third Chance

Been absent from my desk a while. I chuckle at that, remembering my young days when that absent thing would have heralded a whole bucketload of shit, when the Rulers ruled and the whole western world was caught up in a Hyancinth Bucket capitulation to Appearances. Omg I am so damn thankful for the leaving of this, even if it just a beginning. The more young folk rebel, the happier I am. So many of the rules are ridiculous, as so many others are wonderful. It seems to me that Someone decided to take ‘ruling’ a stick or two beyond acceptable, and we cowed. Not now. Not now. Or so I hope.

However, this not now thing can bring in an overload of rejection. It has always been that way, over manifold times, when the initial reject becomes a loudy and damaging rebellion. I see it happen, and know, having lived this long, that, hopefully, the damage to those who don’t need it, don’t want it, flowers into a new and peaceful growth. I’m no fool. Just aware of this troubled world, the changes within her protective shell, and hopeful, always that.

I didn’t want to write all that, not at my outfirst. I. wanted to write about the week. past, the funeral of a young woman, too young. It thinks me, has thought me for a few days. It is said, and often, through the young pert lips of my young friends, and laughingly, that they never want to grow old. I suspect this young dead woman might have liked the idea, her daughter, ditto. But I get it. I said the same, and often, as I watched my oldings go through all the tests and shit that seems to come with olding. They, my folks, accepted, fought, smiled and left the planet, and it is sort of ok when the person you see heading off has no teeth and forgets to wash for days. But, but and but, before any of that stilling whacks the bejabers out of what everyone thought was ok, let me tell you a thing or two, now that I am in the Oldie Zone. Listen up.

I will dance you off the floor. I know I had cancer and might again. I know that every single day i have to crank myself upright (laughingly), that I can find friends to laugh with, that I adore tunes, and have a great playlist, that I so so want young folk to see that being ‘old’ is not what it once was, or sometimes is. Being old is a third chance at dance. Some never get there. Lucky me.

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Island Blog – One Young Woman RIP

A few days, nothing much, just days, either legging it or dragging. Rain falls, wind blows, stories exchange somewhere near the vegetable aisle in the supermarket. Routines are kept or challenged, food is consumed, gardens tweaked, walks walked, admin attended to. A well known and familiar huddle of days, divided by weekends, as weekends always do. Routines dither, mealtimes shift, demands lessen, perhaps, whilst others march in like soldiers with bayonets at the ready. Clothes need washing for skool on Monday, hockey, horses, football, choir, athletics, etc. Freedom beckons for some and it is heady. Folk gather, celebrate community, a shared meal. Fun is out there.

But not for one young woman, for her daughter, her family. Her weekend was her last on this earth. Cancer is ferocious, or can be. She wasn’t even 40. When I think of that time in my life, I was strong, bonkers and never thought about dying, not at all. Death did not stalk me. Oh, I was aware of the Ferryman, for sure, but only for an old granny, or others who topped me by at least the same again. It is still almost impossible, no, impossible, to accept such a young life just stopped. Just. Like. That. But it happened and the village is quiet. There is little chat near the vegetable aisle today. We are in stasis. It isn’t about any of us, no matter if we knew her well or not, but there is a big Something about a well known someone leaving the earth, us, for ever. It makes no sense. None.

There are plenty funerals here. Small community, everyone knows everyone. But not a young life, not a young mum, not her. We will gather and mourn, but, eventually, we will all get on with our own lives, our own stuff. Not her daughter, though, not her mum and dad, her brother, her grandparents, no. They will live with the death of this young woman for, probably, ever.

I am glad I knew her, a bit. I loved her strong lively spirit, even in the early stages of this all-consuming killer. She was always upbeat. I have no idea what went on in her mind in the scary hours, but she presented a typical island woman strength when ‘out there’. I aspire to that.

RIP Sweet Girl.

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Island Blog – Macaroni and a Hag Stone

I hear calls, here, inside my ordinary life. Birds in trouble, a catch of a mew from a feral kitten, lost and hungry. I hear the rumble of boats way out at sea, the whirr of a coastguard helicopter, the call of a lamb being an eejit, even the high-pitched squeak of a mouse in my drystane wall. I hear it all, even, and above the noisy interior of a home on Radio Two. I don’t think my ears do the hearing. Can’t be. I think I hear because I care so much about them out there, fighting for their lives, every single minute of the day. I remember, in that short spell of living on the Glasgow streets…..well, not ON the streets, I was super aware of the timbre of passing conversations, recognising trouble. It caused problems, as you may guess, as I launched myself towards a young woman lying on the pavement and crying out. I heard her pain and that was enough for me. I just held her hand for a moment, and she looked up at me and I don’t regret that one bit, as her eyes said many things. Thank you for caring, no hope here, please move on. And I did.

My kids liked to eat three dishes. Macaroni Cheese, Shepherds Pie, Sausages and Mash. The End. Now, I may have bored myself to death preparing the same old in a weird triage, but it happied them and all plates were cleared in seconds. Life was ordinary then, as it is now, but I know something, something I had no idea I was teaching them….the ability to listen beyond the noise of Def Leppard, of Super Mario, of the shite and spite of secondary school, because, even if they don’t all admit to it, they do listen, they are aware, they do hear. So many times I can walk with someone who just talks all the time, listens to nothing, hears nothing, unless I arrest progress and say, Stop. Listen.

I can hear mice in the undergrowth, the chatter of baby tits inside a drystane wall. I know the call of a young buzzard, the way a mother woodcock reassures her chicks, hidden inside a stone uprise inside the woods. I can hear when a huge beech limb is about to give up and fall due to water ingress. It isn’t magic, just practise and an open mind. There is a wonderful place in-between the sensible worldly science and the Otherness and I can embrace both, and I like that very much. I think being stuck is a choice. Not mine.

Still, in my days of the now of me, I can be cooking something, dancing to something, listening to something, and the ‘else’ calls from outside, lifting me there, taking me out, barefoot, with a cheese-coated spoon in my hand, to hear more. Living between two worlds, if that is what it is, is for me. And, I have a hag stone. Oh, I don’t believe I can see faeries, or even through them. I don’t believe looking through the hole will give me illumination. I am no fool. My feets are firmly grounded. But I am open.

Always.

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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.