woman

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Island Blog – A Man, a Horsefly and the Itch.

He came into my life like a complete surprise, as, I believe, I was for him. A random and unlinear sequence of events collided us. It was exciting and wild. For a week. He spoke of a possible future, at least while we got to know each other. A mid country meet here, a trip away there. We laughed a lot, moved easily around each other, shared many interests, and appeared to be on the first part of a journey. We are not teenagers, not fools, both with a long and, at times, uncomfortable past, a lot of which we shared. I felt a flicker of hope, the chance for a new adventure with, possibly, him. I had believed that my life with a lover died with my husband. So many years of caring, of being mummy and nurse to a man who, once, could just look at me and I would melt. I had tidied her away, that ‘on fire’ woman, that reckless abandoner of anything sensible. My body worked as she should, but she was just functioning. I had even resigned myself to a lonely old woman line of same-old, making myself rise to bright and bubbly, to being the clown around those who needed a laugh, to uplifting everyone, even though my trudge boots shouted at me to chuck them in the sea-loch, just to put them out of their misery. I didn’t dance so much, rarely sang at all, performed domestic tasks with a sigh. Who needs this getting old and lonely thing? I would ask my Marigolds, my blue hoover, the birds in my garden. I found it, at best, tiresome and quite unnecessary. We should be shot at such a stage in life and if another person tells me that I have a lot yet to give, I just might be arrested for my response.

A week of holding hands, of walking on the beach, of lunches out, coffee in the sunshine, a nice Rose at sundown; an emotional sadness at leaving. His. Then, nothing, but the odd text. Still, I knew he was working, and in areas without mobile reception. I knew that, because that is what he told me, and, the dutiful little woman understood. In fact, this dutiful little woman, on reflection, missed a lot of hints, but, with hindsight, it is often easy to join dots dismissed at the time as just dots. After work was completed and I still believed in the ‘let’s meet mid country’ or the ‘we could go away for a few days on a trip’ I was firmly dumped via a text, one I have deleted. It was so teenage, so self-absorbed, so dismissive and disrespectful and did not justify any response at all beyond a snort of laughter. However, this is a first response. I know that others will follow, anger, sadness, the confirmation that I am a complete idiot for believing at all that any man would find me attractive at 71. Etcetera.

But, and there is always one of those, all this teaches me, and teaches me well. I don’t mean the nonsense I have heard from the man haters, because I do not hate men at all. I think they are wonderful, love to be with them, hug them, laugh with them, listen to them, and the latter is how it was with this man because he only ever talked about himself and, I recall, rarely asked me a question about me, my loves, my passions, my dreams and hopes. Man is man, for sure, working very differently to women, but most men I know are strong, sensitive, and emotionally intelligent creatures, even if they cannot find the words for good communication beyond golf, boats, science, things that function with a motor and the vagiaries of spotlights, cars, politics, economics and how bluetooth works, to name but a few. And they can learn to ask questions and to listen.

Last year a horsefly bit me. That bite, as you may remember, led to danger, to cellulitis and possible sepsis, and then to the revelation of breast cancer. Had that horsefly not carelessly bitten me, I would, definitely, be growing a cancer right now, one that doesn’t show in a lump, but in a silent spread. Since then I have embarked on a fitness programme, the right food, exercise, and, most importantly, a re-understanding of how precious my life is to me. This man inspired the same, the man, the horsefly, the catalyst, a lead into more and better and, importantly, a reset of boundaries and the opening of, heretofore closed, doors. I dance again, suddenly, sing more, feel alive and beautiful. And, I am.

The horsefly and the man. Both bit me. But I grow stronger for those bites, however much they itch.

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Island Blog – Moons in her Mouth

I find that there are as many ways to respond to change as there are people. I recognise resistance, fear, exhilaration, denial and many more unspellable words describing the palaver of response. Trouble is, change is invariably frick all to do with us. Someone or something else initiates this change thing, muddying still waters and messing up picture perfect landscapes. It’s like the world without or within just shifted a whole 45 degrees whilst we, busy doing the same thing in the same way for ages, remain rooted to the spot and staring at nothing. Where did what I know and understand, go?

The answer is, Not Far, in my experience, but why life has to do this irritating shift is, well, irritating, at best upsetting/confusing and scary at worst. But wait……..if I can see that in my security I was just an automaton, performing tasks in the usual way and without questioning anything, and, thus, not really alive at all, then perhaps I should take a closer look at what change has on offer. We humans have been gifted elevation above all other living creatures, and, yet, any animal, bird, reptile or fish knows more about adaptation to change that most of us two legged bright sparks will ever know. And, yet, change is wild around us, moving in on a storm, in stories, in the turbulence of extreme weather, the warning loud and clear to all others, it seems, but us. I can see that we have depended too much on a material infrastructure, trusting in impermanence, thus gradually losing our natural abilities as intelligent and sentient human beings.

Even as a young woman, well, girl really, I knew I wanted the insecurity of the traveller. It scared me, the thought of the riptide, the undertow, the wild and desolate landscape, an unpredictable sky, but the call was strong. Thankfully, I found a man who had more experience, more knowledge on such travelling whooha and who reckoned I could be a good travel mate. I learned so much from him, thirsty for the knowing of how to react when encountering danger, for example, or of what physical and mental strengths I needed to develop in order to be, not unafraid, but canny and unpanicked. I did panic, a lot, in the process, but I also learned a gazillion lessons on survival, and I don’t mean living on Mars, but more just living with constant change.

And then I learned to love becoming a dynamic part of Life with all her shifts and shouts. Sometimes she whispers, and I turn my head to hear. I know that businesses fail, that shops go bust, that hackers grow like weeds, that war is a boundary away, but I also know that I am a survivor. This is not arrogance, safe behind a locked door of smugness and control, but just one woman, spinning in harmony with the world, vigilant, always learning and with moons in her mouth.

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Island Blog – Bubbles and a Rare Bird

Sorry, been a bit distracted these past few days, and, to be honest, I never imagine anyone wondering if this frickin eejit has finally sqwarked her last, fallen off her perch, not to be discovered for days, and then feel an element of concern. I always thought that everyone is absorbed in their own lives. My blogs, and me, might be a pleasant diversion, when bored on the bus or in a tea break. I kid you not. So, when I get a nudge or two, it bubbles me. I suddenly feel seen, important, that sort of thing. And that feeling is affirming, because who feels seen, let alone heard? Not many, I think. Until we are, seen, noticed, and heard, really seen, noticed and heard, we think it only happens in stories. T’is

A rare bird.

I have a strong woman friend, and she, recently, has chosen a new path in her life, in order to be in the right place for the right people, even as it cut her heart. She has had many cuts prior to this one, and they have healed, or she has determinedly healed them. She doesn’t look broken at all, tall, beautiful, standing fast, and yet she has to adapt, once again, to new surroundings, new challenges, a. new location. I watched her leave the familiar, her eyes brimming rainbows in the capture of sudden sunlight, her focus forward to the what the hec now. She’s

A rare bird.

As for me this past week, I found bubbles everywhere, rainbow globes, in conversation, in the clouds, in the sudden and random. And I am lifted, changed, energised and a bit wild (surely not me…!) by these bubbles. I’m going to buy a bottle from the local shop tomorrow, let them fly free, watch them catch the sky, float cloudward and then disappear like rare birds, gone for ever.

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Island Blog – Radio Gaga

I thought it was Thursday. Certain, I was, and, so much so that I moved my car out of the way for the wood delivery. I also prepped for my counsellor zoom, but, as time twingled on and no lorry appeared through the frantic blur of 60mph wind plus a sideswipe of blattering rain, I did begin to question myself. Then, when I received no link from my counsellor at five to the hour, I could feel a wondering. It began in my toes. and rose up through legs, past butt, and on up through my spine. I laughed, I did. I could be in Thursday, or any day and still be completely present without having a scooby about my connection to the wotwot of days. Days just ‘day’ on. Some of them super slow, like slugs leaving a behinding slime, some cantering on like deer in rifle sight. I never know, never have any control over the wotwot. I can feel drowny, as if I am out of control, or light above the damn waters of it all, in my boat and with my oars and rollicks in place. I know I am not alone in this, met too many people who swivel from a rooted calm to a swindling gale that uproots and fells a body, one with stories yet to tell, a body still determined to ‘alive’, no matter the fall.

Once I got the hang of it being Wednesday, I kind of liked the feeling. It is, after all, Winnie the Pooh’s favourite day and I am fond of the way he takes on life, as if every moment is a foundling, one he will raise it into something wonderful. It also freed me, from wood lorry delivery and that is a thing in itself. The wood bag is crane -lifted over my fence and immediately subject to the slashing rains of the now, in our now. I have a wheelbarrow. I have me, but the me in this scenario is not the strong woman of old. Why do we say that? I want to write, The old woman of young. Anyway, it will arrive tomorrow, and I will move my car again, and will make the barrow trip from open rain-soaked bag to my wood store, and then I will be happy and chuffed and puffed and warm.

It thinks me, and I am happy that I got days wrong inside a week that doesn’t bother me, nor I it. However, soon I go for radiotherapy, just five days, a CT scan before, and I do need to note the days of travel that deliver me into the laser zone of cancer zap. I should have gone last week, but last week was a frickin wild nightmare, no ferry, huge slamdunk gales, punching way beyond their pay grade, and an earthquake that rattled my windows. 

Talking to my lad in Africa, he who knows I am Gaga to of my many grandkids, connected radiotherapy with Gaga. We laughed a lot at the connection.

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Island Blog – The Jousting Woman

Women used to joust, you know, back in the jousting days. Needless to say, they had to look like men, breasts bound. But, coated in gmail, no, chainmail, sorry, all they needed were huge biceps, strong thighs for clamping a horse, hands free, great eye-arm precision and bloody mindedness; a Boudicca sort of attitude and a kick ass determination to be a fighter, regardless of their sex. Altough jousting was fast and furious, it rarely ended in tragedy, but only in collapsed pride. Women, wiry and flexible are less rigid, less stuck in the ways of men and, more importantly, less encumbered by ego and swagger. In fact, swaggering is not what we bother with at all. Wrong shape for starters.

I will get the call tomorrow, the one from my wonderful surgeon, the one who will tell me the wotwot of my nexting. I will hear that only radiotherapy is next, after Christmas, and for one week. Or, I will hear that more surgery is required and, then, the radiotherapy. I have said I refuse chemo. I’ve seen too many of my community go for it, only to lose a year, at least, in sickness and pale-faceless and loss of self-confidence, and then, for some, to fade away anyway. No bloody thanks. However, if I was 40 (loved that birthday) I might have chosen differently, but I am not, I am 70 and that’s a fricken long life. I have lived like nobody else has lived. I have adventured every single day, dealt with chaos, damage, disaster and celebrations which everyone who came would agree were the best. Me and the old bugger were excellent party hosts. Just saying.

Not that I am going under. Whatever my results are, I am ready and peaceful. I cannot control the most of it, but I can control me and my attitude and. my thankfulness and my humour and that mischievous imp behind my eyes and in my throat. I can do that because life is the most wonderful thing. My life is the most wonderful thing. So, btw, is yours because without it, there is nothing much.

So, although I began with jousting, I still like the thought of Joan of Arc-ing myself up to meet the stranger which is Cancer. I doubt I could hold the chainmail, nor clamp the horse, hands free, but there is something about flying there, about letting go, and not just of the joust pole; like a spirited game-on thingy, the pounding of hooves, the tension, the timing, the invisibility.

Whatever I hear tomorrow will take me forward, and forward is the only way for a jousting woman.

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Island Blog – Tumbletast

I’ve had many thinks about mental wellbeing, since forever, in truth, even when I was just considered ‘difficult’ and ‘strange’. And I was. The tumbletast of me scooried my brain into a storm. What was/is wrong with me, I wondered. Well, everything, pretty much. But see this. I was a girl and young woman of my time, a time when everyone would only whisper the word ‘mental’ as if the head bore no relativity to the body, as if a good person, aka, someone who obliged themselves into a nothing, a bland beige, almost invisible, was a female accepted. Now, in these times, we know better, but I do think about all the rest of those who spent their whole young life paddling backwards, bowing and scraping, apologising through gritted teeth, teeth that spent the long hours of a troubled night grinding together until they lost the ability to bite.

Now that I am old and gay (woman of my times), I chuckle at my flat top teeth and all that turmoil of youth because I now know that I, and others ‘of that time’ are strong fighters, and those who didn’t survive, well, I grieve their demise. I certainly do. What I met, or, rather, who (or is it whom?) along my journey of madness, were one, two, three, maybe four encouragers, older women and men who really saw me and, what’s more, liked and respected what they saw. It wasn’t family members, probably never is, but random meets, sudden lifters, a connection, and I could feel myself begin to flower. I no longer felt like a big clod in frilly frocks and hefty boots, but, instead, a young woman, a beautiful young woman, with a voice, one they wanted to listen to. In short, they believed in me. In me? It was an astonishing moment, one I barely trusted at first, awaiting a put down, a ‘go away you fool’, but it never came. My questions were considered, valued, and answered with an upwards inflection, inviting continuation. It was heady. It was random, It was only now and then in my tumbletast but I could feel my inner spin slow to a confident hum, even to a stop. I didn’t have to be who this person wanted me to be, expected me to be. I was allowed to be myself, not that I had a scooby who that self was with her mental bits totally off piste. I felt enchanting, intelligent, bright and lively. When I laughed too loud or said something that completely missed the point, nobody laughed, but only smiled and explained, without being patronising, or showing their own need to diminish another in order to elevate themselves.

I know I hide my madness well. I know, even in these times, that I am mad. I rather like the title. I see it not as a label, but as a recognition of myself. I am who I am. We all are. And what we need, like water, is for someone, now and then, to tell us, through eyes, smiles, connection, that we are just the one they want to talk to, to collide with, right now. It may be random, a bus shelter, a queue in a post office, a doorway to a hotel in the rain, and, you know what? That is exactly when it happens. Life is such that she proffers the random, and it behoves us to clock that, no matter the rush of the moment, the have to get through, have to watch for the bus, have to check my phone, have to this, have to that.

I recommend just looking around. I recommend saying hallo, and sharing a smile, and then asking Where are you going? or Hey, I love your smile, frock, boots, suitcase, handbag, whatever. We, of our times, who have got through Brexit, Covid and the ripples from the Russian attack on Ukraine, know in our hearts that connection with other humans is our survival. Only through that do we learn about them, about ourselves, and, as we pull apart and go our different ways, we will be holding each other in our thoughts. And this is so powerful.

My randoms changed my thinking about me. I had about four, in a 70 year life, but the power they lit up in my ‘mental’, has carried me all this way, and I thank them. I wish you all the same, with all my heart. I really, really do.

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Island Blog – My Fabulous Friend

I fly round the switchbacks on my way to the harbour town. I do. Fly. Oneson suggested, only the once mind, that I might consider a more ‘sedate’ model of automobile. Only once. I snorted but it made me reconsider my nomorethan40 thing when traversing the skinny island roads, what with their potholes and that falling off edge, depth at least 7 inches at certain points, enough to take the belly out of a sassy mini cooper. I know how to drive. I taught my kids to DRIVE round corners, none of this hesitating and going into dipfh lock, or whatever it’s called. It’s just a hill, after all. You may see only sky for a few yards but there’s a beauty in that. Sun in your face? Enjoy it. Your biggest problem will be with the visitors who won’t let you pass, no matter the light flashing and the hooting and the almost landing inside their boot. I digress.

I used to think those 10 miles a real travail. A dull and necessary pain in the arse, but not now. Not now that I am free to go wherever I like, and whenever. I am meeting a dear friend for lunch, a strong woman, a fighter, with guts of steel and the light of a rainbow in her every move. We have history, naughty times, fun memories, shared pains and joys. We meet at the top of town, where, to which, I have flown, and take our seats in a huge conservatory overlooking the harbour. There are new owners now and the place has had a facelift and a half. Jazz and blues play from the speakers and the sun shines in like a beacon. This beautiful hoist of granite was a naval lookout base in the war years, when I very much doubt it looked as good as this. We immediately connect, my friend and I and are laughing within minutes. We are 25 again, the world our oyster, none of the ensuing troubles in our minds, none of the pain or sickness, none of the losses, no guilt, no olding fears. She became the voice for the island’s young people, the lost and abused. She did more for this island than can be imagined. We talked on this. I said ‘I could never have done what you did, what you do, don’t have the head for it.’ After 2 wonderful hours, we said farewell for now. We will meet up again, been too long, covid and dementia and death and la la la tiddleypom. All that olding shite. Her eyes are bright, her face as beautiful as it always was, her spirit strong and feisty.

Home again, I walk the fluffy dog who (or is it which?) will be a baldicoot tomorrow after a wash, cut and blow dry with Heather, and a load cooler and with that dark stripe down her spine as if she was a tiger, once. I wander beneath the louring trees, heavy now in a way I see as tired. We are tired of this heavy leaf cover summer thing. Look at the bracken all flopping and brown and can we go that way please? But, much as I am loving the surprise, the sun, the strange late weather, it is holding them in stasis, requiring more leafness and more standing up and wotwot. I remember, in Tapselteerie days, feeling just like that. I am so, so tired of holding up my leaves, husband, children, guests, visitors and even though I smelled autumn on the morning breeze, it’s as if summer is refusing to ungrip her grip. I tell the trees this, and they remember. I will have said the same thing to them all those years ago, and, bless them, they absorbed it and probably waved at me in recognition. We feel the same, they said.

Much like my fabulous olding friend today.

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Island Blog – Olding, Big Pants and So What

Blimey, life in the city is crazy! I watch the people go by, push by, wander by heading for a collision either with a lamppost or me, busy as they are in multiple worlds, connected to a mobile phone. But everyone seems to know about both lampposts and the folk like me who dither and dance along wide pavements, all rushing us along like those moving floors in airports. Colours brighten the morning, some barely covering bodies, others caping older skeletons, tent-like. And, still an amazement to me, no two people look alike. We have two eyes, two ears, one face with a mouth and a nose and yet, and yet, we are all different. I notice when life has bowed, bent, twisted and sometimes collapsed a face, a body. I notice the focus of traverse and in the shortest possible time. And then, there’s a woman, a man, moving slow as a snail, every footstep considered and, possibly, doubted, the young dividing by like a rush of water around a big old stone. I notice bags and dogs and sticks among the careless swing of young bodies, showing midriffs taut and flat, feet holding the ground as if they believe they always will.

Perhaps I see these images more as I consider what is happening to me, the slow (I am reliably informed) growth of an invader within, an invader with intentions. Not a welcome guest, but one that is here, just the same. My sister and I wander past and through endless shops, all promoting the Beautiful, the Perfect. Faces of models, as my daughter in law was once, teeth white as snow, body perfect, full of a life taken for granted, one without end. After all, old people are not us, they seem to say. We are miles from the collapse of skin, the way a bottom slinks down legs, the way breasts, if you have them, plummet into a waistband, the way feet become unsure on steps or pavements. I was she once. Not the model, no, but nonetheless certain I would never grow old. It just wouldn’t happen. What did actually happen to me was something I gave no thought to. Olding comes suddenly and it came to me after my husband chose to leave this world. Not immediately, not when I experienced the euphoria of my own space, the way I could play music louder than a whisper, when I could crash plates, clatter cutlery, talk on the phone in my own sitting room. But that euphoria didn’t last. Its aftermath was the realisation of Olding. Now, I don’t mind growing old at all, but I wanted to do it without aches or insecurities or self doubts, without pavement angst, without cancer, tiredness, confusion and the faffing. Oh god the faffing. Do I have my specs, where are they, they were here just a minute ago? Do I know my PIN number, the code to unlock my phone (who locked the damn thing anyway?). Did I lock the car? Where IS the car? Did I pay the chimney sweep, the gardener, the window cleaner? I did? Twice? Seriously?

And so on. To be honest, the self-doubt that comes with ‘Olding’ is pants. Big Pants. And it isn’t just me. Others of my age, particularly those widowed after a generation of marital years, compromise, security and dependence to whatever degree, tell me the same story. It is as if we have no idea who the hell we are at this wobbly point in our lives, we who were so certain, so confident, bringing up children or not, working, holding down chaos, fighting fires minute by minute. We could cater for sudden add-ons, taxi every which where, and were still able to dress up for an occasion. Now we just hope no occasion will arise, ever again. We want, or think we want, empty days, a blank calendar, but we don’t really. We probably say NO to everything because we haven’t been outside of the house for weeks, or maybe we just can’t remember how to Small Talk anymore. We think we have nothing to say of interest because our time is in the past. We apologise for ourselves, for our Olding years. We watch young things dance by, remember (vaguely) our own young thing dance, and we turn away.

I think that is a big shame. So what to do? Who can say, who can tell? I take my inspiration from other silver foxes I notice walking by the window, determined to move, regardless of pavement angst, their emptiness in life, their Big Pants questions, all of them coated, booted and sharp looking as if they know just where they are going and are excited about getting there. So, when I breathe deep and set forth of an early morning to visit the swans on the pond, I decide to look the same way as them. I smile, I walk, I greet, I cross roads about 3 times as wide as any road back home with my heart in my mouth, but I feel better about everything once I return. Perhaps this is how to live in the Olding years. Just one thing at a time. Then another.Blimey, life in the city is crazy! I watch the people go by, push by, wander by heading for a collision either with a lamppost or me, busy as they are in multiple worlds, connected to a mobile phone. But everyone seems to know about both lampposts and the folk like me who dither and dance along wide pavements, all rushing us along like those moving floors in airports. Colours brighten the morning, some barely covering bodies, others caping older skeletons, tent-like. And, still an amazement to me, no two people look alike. We have two eyes, two ears, one face with a mouth and a nose and yet, and yet, we are all different. I notice when life has bowed, bent, twisted and sometimes collapsed a face, a body. I notice the focus of traverse and in the shortest possible time. And then, there’s a woman, a man, moving slow as a snail, every footstep considered and, possibly, doubted, the young dividing by like a rush of water around a big old stone. I notice bags and dogs and sticks among the careless swing of young bodies, showing midriffs taut and flat, feet holding the ground as if they believe they always will.

Perhaps I see these images more as I consider what is happening to me, the slow (I am reliably informed) growth of an invader within, an invader with intentions. Not a welcome guest, but one that is here, just the same. My sister and I wander past and through endless shops, all promoting the Beautiful, the Perfect. Faces of models, as my daughter in law was once, teeth white as snow, body perfect, full of a life taken for granted, one without end. After all, old people are not us, they seem to say. We are miles from the collapse of skin, the way a bottom slinks down legs, the way breasts, if you have them, plummet into a waistband, the way feet become unsure on steps or pavements. I was she once. Not the model, no, but nonetheless certain I would never grow old. It just wouldn’t happen. What did actually happen to me was something I gave no thought to. Olding comes suddenly and it came to me after my husband chose to leave this world. Not immediately, not when I experienced the euphoria of my own space, the way I could play music louder than a whisper, when I could crash plates, clatter cutlery, talk on the phone in my own sitting room. But that euphoria didn’t last. Its aftermath was the realisation of Olding. Now, I don’t mind growing old at all, but I wanted to do it without aches or insecurities or self doubts, without pavement angst, without cancer, tiredness, confusion and the faffing. Oh god the faffing. Do I have my specs, where are they, they were here just a minute ago? Do I know my PIN number, the code to unlock my phone (who locked the damn thing anyway?). Did I lock the car? Where IS the car? Did I pay the chimney sweep, the gardener, the window cleaner? I did? Twice? Seriously?

And so on. To be honest, the self-doubt that comes with ‘Olding’ is pants. Big Pants. And it isn’t just me. Others of my age, particularly those widowed after a generation of marital years, compromise, security and dependence to whatever degree, tell me the same story. It is as if we have no idea who the hell we are at this wobbly point in our lives, we who were so certain, so confident, bringing up children or not, working, holding down chaos, fighting fires minute by minute. We could cater for sudden add-ons, taxi every which where, and were still able to dress up for an occasion. Now we just hope no occasion will arise, ever again. We want, or think we want, empty days, a blank calendar, but we don’t really. We probably say NO to everything because we haven’t been outside of the house for weeks, or maybe we just can’t remember how to Small Talk anymore. We think we have nothing to say of interest because our time is in the past. We apologise for ourselves, for our Olding years. We watch young things dance by, remember (vaguely) our own young thing dance, and we turn away.

I think that is a big shame. So what to do? Who can say, who can tell? I take my inspiration from other silver foxes I notice walking by the window, determined to move, regardless of pavement angst, their emptiness in life, their Big Pants questions, all of them coated, booted and sharp looking as if they know just where they are going and are excited about getting there. So, when I breathe deep and set forth of an early morning to visit the swans on the pond, I decide to look the same way as them. I smile, I walk, I greet, I cross roads about 3 times as wide as any road back home with my heart in my mouth, but I feel better about everything once I return. Perhaps this is how to live in the Olding years. Just one thing at a time. Then another.

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Island Blog – Dreams

We all have them, dreams, the night ones, disconnected to morning sensibilities, the ones in which we fly with Pan or save a child or fall off a cliff or battle with rats. I have had them all. Then there are the dreams we deem realistic. What I want to do, to achieve, to move away from or towards; the impossible ones given present circumstances, the ones folk say we can never achieve considering our history, financial situation, lack of experience, or of our hare lip, our stumble foot, our size, our faces our lack of voice, confidence, location.

In our night dreams nothing and everything keeps us from our goal. We are omnipotent, invincible, or we are weak and warbling as we cascade the cliff. It might seem as if we have no choice over our night revels in a dream state, but I would countenance that with the face of what our life feels like to us right now. There is so so so much talk on how it is up to us to alter state, of mind and of body, so much, as if we are students in school and all we have to do is to learn the lesson taught. A night dream is an overflow, if you like, of the feelings of the day, the week, the life we lead. Yes, in the perfection of theory, if we have the courage, the means, the help to change our life, the one we don’t like and possibly haven’t for years, we have the power. But what is power faced with decades of supposed weakness, compliance and acceptance? It is a flimsy thing, a spent balloon, a scribble on a wall.

To rise like Joan of Arc is not for most of us, besides which, armour is hard to find in a shopping centre and horses are for those who can afford them, not to mention gathering an army. I might be hard pressed to gather men together for a bowls game, never mind an army of crack marksmen. I realise I say men. For now, allow me. Men are physically stronger after all. But I am not really talking about a woman leading men, more a person leading themselves. I know that just to lead myself is a frickin pain in the ass a whole load of days, and not least because of the conflict between my dreams and my ‘supposed’ realities. Back then I could not see one inch outside of my confinements. Had I challenged with my Joan of Arcness these confinements, well who knows? But I didn’t, not like her. And now, in my thinking years, the quieter days of soft reflection and occasional muddlement, of guilt assuaged and more soft landings than I ever knew before, I consider my dreams. The night ones come, and go, but I still have the daytime ones, full of ideas, aspirations and wide open thinking. However I am no fool. My time is less, my mobility less, my brain a little slower to catch up and I am okay with all of that. So I retune my myself as I might a guitar and know that I can still play a tune.

As a younger and foolisher woman, I aspired to the stars, to impossibilities given my situation. I ached to fly, to run, to be myself in a world of my choosing. Now, I am glad I failed myself on that one. Dreams are wonderful things, the daytime ones, and powerful too, but they need reigning in, cautioning with a big fat reality check. If you are going to be Joan of Arc, plan every single step and be very prepared for the ghastly. Dreaming into a dream is where the lost children are, those whose lives are just beginning, those who thought it was enough just to dream.

It isn’t, but then again, it is.

‘Saddle your dreams before you ride ’em’. Mary Webb. 1881-1927

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Island Blog – Wordage, Fun and Mischief

I am noticing the words that leap from my mouth sans aforethought. What I am recognising is that we women seem to feel that details are always needed, descriptions the concise and careful constructivation of a picture. This, to men, in my observation, is enough to fall them asleep where they stand, or, if they can internally justify escape, they escape. We allow it without question. It thinks me. If the question is ‘Did Sally actually meet up with Melanie that day?’ A man might respond with a Yes or a No, then sit back in his chair because his job is done. If a woman is asked that question, you are going to know what both women were wearing, what perfume they do or don’t use, the state of their nails, hair, choice of clothing, their lipstick colour, the quality of their home life, the names of all 15 kids, oh, and grandkids, the colour of their hair, teeth, front room curtains etc, their relationship with their neighbours, mother-in-law, where they live, their diet, the colour of their car if they drive one, the weather, and finally coming into land with many opinions on all of the above. Meanwhile the listener has missed the shop, her birthday and is busting for the loo. It seems we can’t help it. In fact, without we women, there would be a minimalistic view of the world. It is raining or not raining. There are sausages or not, for supper. The radio is on or off. The mother-in-law is dead or alive. The people of the world, in short, are naked, mindless and quite without character, sometimes even a name.

However, to be a member of the woman clan can mean she is drowning in words, the need to tell it all a cumbersome weight. Unless she notices and refines her innate need to ‘babble’, she is unlikely to feel silent and deadly and I am keen to learn silent and deadly. But this learning thingy takes considerable mental work and a honed focus on the lips and teeth. It also begs something we women might find tricky, the pause for thought. I was not born with that particular talent but nor was I born with piano fingers. I had to learn and I am curious enough to become a student in wordage. Although it might take me the rest of my days to answer a simple yes or simple no, I do love to refine and hone. Breath is of essential value in this refine and hone palaver. Just one or two slow breaths when someone asks if Sally did actually meet up with Melanie that day can result, not in a simple yes or no because I am a newbie in this study course, but it does give me time to slough off the fact that I know Melanie can barely breathe in those support knickers or that Sally’s secret passion is to work with elephants in South Africa, or that those two women have loathed each other since primary school. All irrelephant. However, it does seem to me that the less I explain, or justify or whatever, the more powerful I feel, not over another but over my own babbling self and I like that feeling a lot.

Saying sorry is another loose lipped load of tiddleypom. Not when there is a definite culpability but all those other times, like when someone bumps into us. There is no sense in that but we do it endlessly, such as stepping into a taxi with a suitcase too heavy, in the rain and without assistance, thus keeping the lazy arse of a taxi driver waiting; asking a waiter for more water in a busy restaurant; changing an order in a bakery when the queue behind us is champing to be served; taking too long to pull out a pound coin or 3 for a bus trip with cold arthritic fingers. I have even watched a woman lift herself from a park bench with a sorry on her lips because she knew a whole family were eyeing that very bench, her own need for the whole of it a nothing much and clearly stating that she is a downright sinner for lowering her butt onto said bench in the first place.

Suspecting, as I do, that in my new land of weirdohood I think a lot more about things that never crossed my mind before, when external demands yelled for immediate attention. I am curious about behaviour, choices, patterns of old and the fractal un-patterns of the new, my creation of self now un-boundaried or even influenced by a.n.other. Sometimes questions arise that might have come from the mouth of a babe, questions deep and wandering as if I am just a little outside of everything I thought was a fact. In fact, I will question facts the most and there is a skip of mischief in my doing so. Someone says something that comes with a backdrop of irrefutable evidence. It’s even printed in a book as words are printed within the dense pages of a dictionary, their definitions set in ancient stone. And that, my friends, is where mischief finds her playground because language is always changing, developing or falling off the edge altogether. Basically I am having fun and at no-one’s expense. I am Mrs Malaprop intentionally and playing with words, turning a verb into a noun or talking like Yoda whilst still communicating the sense of my words. I am only sorry there isn’t an online course on imaginative speaking, on having fun with sentences or of finding new ways to illustrate what I want to say. Perhaps I’ll constructicate one. Sentences have rhythm, a beat, phrasing just like music and there is a wonderful freedom in playing games with what is supposedly the Right Way to Speak. The other good thing about jumbling up sentences is that my mind must be very quick indeed, well ahead in the race with my mouth, and one of the first lessons I wish to mistress is ‘Don’t say ‘sorry’ for every damn thing’. Instead I might say ‘oopsadaisy’ thus immediately bringing flowers into the situation and that is always a good thing.

I guess those diehards will be rolling their eyes at such subversion but taking life and language and a million other challengeable and changeable things too seriously just ends a face up in wrinkles. Laughter and a light touch lift mountains.