Words

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Island Blog – Nomatters and a Skilpperdoo

I feel a bit sorry for ‘and’. Always a small letter, lower case. It thinks me. It’s important, after all. Imagine a sentence without an and? We’d be frickin lost.

Moving on. I dilly about of a sunset, lighting candles, wheeching out the old and bringing in the new yet unburned. Oh, that just jolted me, the unburned thing as opposed to unburnt which has a different meaning, or it did in my English language days. I loved those wordish contras, curious as I was about how words work, how they do, or do absolutely not work even as they sound the same or similar. To be honest, this difference is mist now and although I know so well the structure of english language, it has had its time and, most definitely, its rather judgemental control. I love the sway and shift of language, the infused grandeur of new words from other cultures, the way they absorb into mostly young culture, and then, before you know it, the after school kitchen talk with teens scoots us out of a controllingly British dictionary and thus contests the rigid structure of the pages. I do confess to the miss of that structure. It was my catwalk, my scaffolding, lifting me, never into an ‘I’m so smart’ but more into a higher level of conversation and understanding. But and, ‘and’ I love the now of bonkers grammar and too many commas and exclamation marks.

This is so not my point. I seem really good at a wide traverse. Back to candles.

No matter the day, as the sun is tired of shining, I am candling. They are everywhere, lit and loved. The dark falls fast and yet the light is such an offer. We had loads of rain, nothing new there and yet today there was enough time to quirk out there, to don boots, hats, attitude and to just go, go and go. The Nomatters matter. Sprinkled on, puddled, we walked. I lost the back of an earring, it so didn’t matter because what mattered was the conversation between us and the two beautiful blonde labradors, the mud and squelch the fire and the fry in our collective heads and minds, the sputter of candles and the proffer of a matchstick later on. I walked up the track looking for the earring back, a tiny thing, might have sparkled at me. I employed two sets of specatcles for this looking thing, one short look, one long look. To be honest I lost interest quickly, the mud, the dimming light, the chance of a gold sparkle and do I actually care? But I did have fun beyond my initial seeking thing because I met an estate worker planting trees and then a young friend bringing her little girls home from school and (and, again) these two encounters, the exchange of hallos and a few questions on the safe ‘How Are You’ level kicked my boots into a skipperdoo as I walked back home to my candles and my woodburner and the warmth of my blessed life here on this island.

I

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Island Blog – Words

I light my candles. I light them every evening, no, before evening because the light dims long before the time when someone might say ‘Good Evening’ and doff their cap. Light dims early here. The sun does a collapso thing behind the hills on the other side of the. sea-loch about half three. I know, I know, that my islander friends who live t’other side of that hill are still out there sorting chickens or digging flowerbeds or bouncing children and footballs. But my life is here and not there, and my time clock knows it. I get dawn early, ridonculously so. It thinks me. I am boiling an egg here, all dressed, showered and sharp as a new pin here, when those beyond the hill are still in the dark of sleep. I wonder what the birds think.

I spend a lot of time working my wondering muscle, always curious, always Alice. She has been my guiding light since I was knee high, although that was mostly looking up tweed skirts and hairy noses which only took me into the vast expanse of almost-white containerpants, or, almost worse, into an olfactory forest with drips. I was glad when I grew a bit, learned a lot, and determined I would only wear the skinniest of knickers, never wear tweed skirts, nor hug small people who looked up. I knew I had words even then, even though they gambolled about in my mind, refusing control. Just like me, I thought, which was in no way an okay thing. No resolution, no aha, just words, the love of words, the passion for learning new ones and with nowhere for them to go. I couldn’t just speak out a word, such as ‘evanescence’ without the warm blanket of a sentence enwrapped about it, never mind context, never mind it’s irrelevance in the tsunami of nail work comparisons.

New words got lost in committee. I can remember too much in my mouth, clenching my teeth. Sometimes words would bite out like sharks and all I got was trouble because, in my day, nice girls just didn’t. There was a whole load of ‘didn’t’ and ‘don’t. But here’s a thing. I can speak out now because I can sentence up. I can admit to being vulnerable. I can admit to mistakes and agree to any redress or accusation. I own my past. All those times I got it wrong; all. those times I wish I hadn’t and the ones when I wish i had. All of them me, all of them mine. In my olding years, still ‘with it’ I am proud of all that I have achieved, all I have overcome, taken in, all I have learned and adapted to, all the times I changed tack in a nanosecond for the greater good, all those nights wandering with troubled babies, all those plasters and icepacks I applied, all those cold nights of lonely vigil, all those times I cheered, supported, admired, drove here and there, all those meals extended for drop-ins, all those hugs and cups of tea, those hunkers by the fire at latelate as candles guttered and died.

And still words come. they drop like stars. I write them down. Revolvulence.

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Island Blog – Shmoodleflampers

Words can turn into a new magic. to describe feelings or nounage within a sentence being described in a moment, arms flying, the right word not there for the grasping and suddenly a new word can swing in like a risk. This word aptly describes what, in the dictionary, might touch on a ‘melee’, but more, it brings in confusion, wild weather, an abundance of something with an authoritative ‘shhh’ finger upheld and a willingness to do nothing about anything, whilst the arse of it shows freedom, the don’t care flip of a. dolphin’s tail in the middle of a massive ocean.

Many of my made-up words come from my wordsmith son. We talk often in this language and as we curious our ways through language and the wildness of it, we find no boundaries within our conversations. We fly out there, laughing, playing with syllables and making verbs into nouns, nouns into verbs. There is no right and no wrong in this play. Dr Zeuss knew this place. It thinks us, thinks me. I can’t speak for him, but for me, I am a boundary fighter, a limit fighter, a don’t tell me where I stop and start woman. There is no aggression in me. I have no interest in what others see as confrontation. I am a peacemaker who likes to push limits and boundaries, gently, respectfully, curiously, definitely.

It rained today, and rained and rained and there’s a winglewangle for you. Cabin fever, yes, even though I had a wonderfull long walk this morning, sans cloud dump, with a friend and two gorgeous labradors, but, by afterlunch, the rain steady and proffering handcuffs, I had to get out. Local shop, loads of laugheroo, pulling out on the skinny village road, peat fires burning, lights ready for Christmas, I pulled into the pub. Twinkly winkly lights, gentle music, a glass of house red and a good chat, the exchange of info and warmth just perfect. Home now, wood burner aflame, candles lit, a meal ahead.

Not for the feint/fainthearted living here but here still lives the wild. It’s brutal, but so dellictrous.

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Island Blog – Lexicographer

We don’t ask to be born. How many times is that used as an accusation in the face of judgement? A lot, but it is true, and we didn’t, at least not necessarily into where we landed. We all want to be seen as who we are, and at every single stage of the who-we-are-ness which, I have to tell you is frickin tough for parents who are equally puzzled, and daily, at the transmogrification of what had at first, seemed like a wonderfully planned out life.

I came first, on the back of a howler. I’m sure, judging from photos in the album of me with hair tweaks and frilly frocks with matching bar shoes, all pristine and ironed to death, that I was the one, the perfect girl, top of the chart, a celebrity. That didn’t last. And why was that? Well, from what I remember, I was, well, different. I did conform, I did, and it was very wise to do so in order to avoid the slap, but what is it in a someone else, one who inhabits a ‘good girl’ even as she damn well knows she is on a slide to nowhere? I got brilliant. Please excuse the slanguage. I was best at performing, elocution (does anyone nowadays knows what that means?) English Language, Wordage, Dictionary expertise, the Study of Words, their history and their importance, once. And this was a gift? No, it was a loneliness. It felt like I was in some in-between space. I could see my ‘friends’ out there all happy with endless conversations about nails and clothes and fashions and horse riding and bejewelled parties around uplit infinity pools and I just wanted to sink into a bed of bluebells with a book and a like-minded friend. We would talk words, new ones, old ones, work out their meanings, laugh at our mistakes, be together on this lonely journey.

I knew one once. His name was Tom, and a bit older than me. We both worked at Lotus, watched the first run of the Elise around the track, which was right outside our big wide glass-filled office. He gave me lifts to and from work in his VW Beetle. It was the new age of seatbelts and we laughed a lot at working the whole thing out. We did spend time in the bluebells. We did talk words and their origins and it was a fire lit in me. I moved on, as did he. But I remember that glorious connection with words, with Lexography, with research, with the play on words, the way they change over time.

I’m glad I had that time. I can still see him in a stumble of trees, bluebells at his feet, laughing at some word I’d conjured from nowhere, the sundown at his back.

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Island Blog – Wording

Words are my thing. I am no worder, powerful within the pages of research books, no academic Brilliantine. But words are my thing. They fly about my head like birds, assault me, trip me up, wake me in the night, confound me in the day when I’m scrubbing the loo. I am a word vessel. So, when words bugger off, their absence is like I’m naked, which I am so not. I can walk deep into my Mother Nature, feeling my way, searching in the brush, the fallen, the ancient, the rising, and find no words at all beyond Wow, or Thankyou, or Shit I just soaked my Boots. Not enough, not good at all. And, yet, resting in the ‘how it is right now’, I consider. Perhaps i need a rest. Perhaps the wordness of words need one too. Everyone is always actively searching for a word, the right word, as if words tumble away into the vast void of everything lost, for now. Right words must be exhausted.

In my younger days, I freaked out if I couldn’t find a word, when, inside my head I had this clear and beautifully perfect one somewhere just behind the bins, behind the confusion and questioning of my life, one which refused to grace my lips. I would leave an encounter, furious at my lack. It thinks me, with a wonder. Maybe it was not for me at that moment, infuriating as that felt at the time. We humans seem to think we are in the upper echelons of pretty much everything, thus, in control. Maybe words don’t want to be controlled. I certainly don’t want to be, so, maybe I get it. Perhaps I am being taught a life lesson, because this is not the first time, and I will be wise to notice.

So, I can flounder, for now, abject myself to a considerably higher power, and wait for the words to fly back in, as the Redwings will soon, the Mistle Thrush, the Autumn visitors. There is no loss, as long as I don’t buy into loss. I know who I am, and there is no weakness in bowing down, in letting go of ego. In fact, I believe it is a strength.

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Island Blog – Lightening and Just Me, Just You

Same sound as Lightning, but with an E. It seems that just one E makes all the difference to the meaning of a word, spoken, that is. Written, all is clear. How confusing is that! When we write a text message, this can mean that, and ‘that’ can blow your pants off. We must be so careful with words. One message, meant to explain an inner drift, shift, split or maybe just inviting understanding, can send someone into a swirl of inner doubt, into childhood, when who I thought I was, wasn’t, pretty much. It thinks me.

I play with words, with wordage all the time, but I am canny, cautious, and still make mistakes. We all do, and, as we observe A. N Other living out their lives as best they bloody well can, who feel the ok enough to tell us about what they did with this, or him, or them, we might think before we text back, if we feel a judgement coming on. That damn judgement, that speaks in the voice of a long gone parent, grandparent, teacher. That is our own thing, and thus irrelevant. I always want to bring in an elephant here, I can see it, the mahout, turbaned and brown as a nut, and grinning through betel teeth, the elephant pondorous and on a steady trajectory, but that, also is irrelevant, for now.

How we did this or that, demands questioning. So many do not, question, and so the pattern continues patterning. Until someone stops it, just like that, in a lightning strike. Where does that intelligence come from, being as it is a newborn in their lives, in any life? It seems that, if we are open for change, asking for it because we are tired, so tired of living in a loop, meeting ourselves over and over and with no change in sight, and someone will just shout. SHOUT. And, as in a lightning strike, something falls.

Today I went to visit dear friends and we talked (or I did) for ages over tea and a beautiful dog and a view across forever, had the mist allowed. There was a lightening. I have known these two for a very long time, met them here and there, now and again, and yet, today, I was there with them, in their home and I felt so connected, so happy. We talked of dementia, of caring, of the village, of our beloved island, of bees, of woods, of trees, of the times we remembered dancing in the village hall. A lightening. I drove home in a different set of thinks.

Although I have always known my place is here, my people are here, over past times, I have felt isolated, of my own doing. I look for both lightning and lightening, but it was dark. I made it dark. And, in the dark, for all its shadows and demons, an essential part of the damn process of recovery is birthing from any number of wotwots. Not one single one of us would choose to go through it again, but we have learned to believe than light exists, and more, that we are needed in that light show. Just on our own, limping, awkward, with our own broken hearts, just us, just me, just you.

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Island Blog – Diversology, Variogram and Stick with me on this and I believe in You

I love wordish, the play on words, the flux I create as I challenge old meanings, long laid down and probably long dead, but still with blow, like bubbles when you slide below the surface and lift breath after someone has gifted you a bath experience. In your blow, you create a new map. It may not last for long, but, just for that moment, as you watch the dynamic shift and slip away, you see something new.

I find words, they come to me like darts, random, and, it seems they feel arrogant enough not to explain, so I have to Dictionary them. And, I am finding, having invented at least two words, once challenged by a magazine editor, and which are now confident within the restrictions of the Oxford or the Collins, that definitions limit. Language is an endless shift, and that, for me, is how it must be.

So, these words, Diversology – understanding diversity, inclusion and equity in the classroom. I, and my peers would have loved that light in our day. We are the survivors of none of that, back in the days of England ruling half the damn world, and not very kindly.

Variogram, another word that came to me. Broken down into my simple speke made me thinkalot. ‘In spatial statistics the theoretical variogram, denoted, is a function describing the degree of spatial dependence of a spatial random field or stochastic process.’ I am engaged, big time, with the word spatial, and it is mentioned twice, as if space from another actually has a name. We all need space and it is not a given, I have learned over decades. A singular soul has to demand it.

Stochastic. How weird am I! This is my favourite and you may see why because there is a freedom here, and the stand tall of every one of us, the broken, the lost, the abused, the confused, deserves recognition, however wild, according to the dictionnaires of our life.

‘Stochastic – having a random probability distribution or pattern that may be analysed statistically…..’ aka following old patterns, old controls. (read on)

‘……but may not be predicted precisely. ‘Hallelujah! We can all rise from the old, the old ways, the old words, the old meanings. We can. We just have to have that tiny bubble lift of courage, that one glimpse of our own map, to step up and out, a heart beating like a flutterby, feet unsure, fear like a huge overwave, and say No. Or Yes.

Even as I write this, I feel the sharps of this writing privilege. I know it isn’t easy, in fact it may feel impossible, at first, but I do know some of you, many, have recognised that your one life is not ok and who have said this No, Yes, thing.

So, I would say, on this lovely summer’s evening, in my long life, if I could take away the struggle for you, I would. But I cannot. Maybe all I can do is say, hey, hallo you. I believe in you, even if you don’t.

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Island Blog – I Can Do This

I heard from the surgeon and all is gone, for now. No chemo, just radiotherapy in the new year. The three cancer buggers, all small, have been removed plus three lymph nodes, all of those free of cancer. A precautionary tale. My African son flew over to be with me for the aftermath, which wasn’t ‘math’ at all, and we were cavorted back to the island by my eldest. Prior to that I was with my sister who made me feel important and loved, as we went for pre op needlepoint and an information overload, well, for me, with my head tucked under my wings and my brain like spaghetti, but not for her.

Then, home, back to my beloved island. Not mine, of course, but this wild place homes me, grounds me, safes me. However, for over two weeks I was not alone. Africa was here, and the sharing, the kitchen dances inside his arms, loved me up. I don’t know how long it has been since I felt that warmth, enjoyed that spontaneity. In a loooooooong marriage, things get boring, disappointing and, although the light of love can spark, it is just now and then, or even just then.

So, he is gone. Back home now with his lovely wife and animals and into 35 degrees just like that. I spoke with him today. Too hot, he says. I cloak up to walk the four legs, blustering on, like Winnie the Pooh, beneath wind-creaked limbs, big enough to take out a whole mansion, the leaves flipping around my face, and with mud underfoot. And I snort at the ‘too hot’ thing.

I miss him. I miss hearing his footfall as he rises from sleep. I miss his voice, the sight of him filling a doorway, our shared laughter, the play of words between us over a scatter of candles. I miss the feeling of complete safety because he was here.

I am here. I am alone. It is winter. I am IT. And I can do this.

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Island Blog – Grammar, Flying and My Name is Judy

There is a thing about things that thing me. Now, there’s a sentence for you. I remember English Language classes, the emphasis heavy on grammar and sentence construction. Rhythm, beat, phrasing, verbs in the right place, ditto adverbs, adjectives (steady on those), spelling and please do not use made up words, slang or swear words, however covertly disguised. Blimey! Throttled from the start was I, were we. It seemed to me, and seems still, that bothering overly much about the correct words in the correct order is like wearing a whalebone corset for gym practice. I want to flow, just roll those glorious sentences out, quick and slick and without losing the storyline. I don’t want to feel verbally, rhythmically or phrasically constipated whilst I spill out the words from my, apparently, overactive imagination. This was actually penned in one school report. An overactive imagination. What my well-corseted English teacher was really saying is that I was disruptive. My challenge of her she took personally and I cannot blame her, she who seemed to have nothing much more exciting in her life than the ‘correct’ structure of sentencing with the odd thrill of a hyphen or a colon.

So I play with words. Punctuation, however, is a different thing, not that I am perfect in the way I employ the marks, but it does bother me when I read an official document with glaring errors. It’s means ‘it is’. Its denotes ownership, ‘its tail, its banana, its wings’, and so on. It’s, on the other hand would precede a sentence such as ‘It’s hard to believe that Mary had a little lamb’. ‘Their’ applies thus. Their home, their choice of venue, their problem, whereas ‘they’re would mean ‘they are’ in a squish. They’re going on a train to Bandalouche, they’re in trouble now, they’re a right pair of idiots’.

My dad, a stickler for all things Language, taught us all and corrected us when necessary. I believe one of my sisters actually had her letter to him returned, corrected. It did us no harm, but stood us in good stead as women moving into the world of men. We knew how to speak, how to phrase, how to construct a sentence. What of the girls nowadays, as the subject of grammar recedes into the background? I obviously have not a scooby as to whether this applies to all schools in the whole country, but just going by the evidence of what I see written down by young adults, it isn’t encouraging. ‘I never would of thought of that.’ Really? ‘I never would have thought of that.’ Ah, yes.

I sound like an old stick-in-the-mud, I know it and I really don’t mean to. I am the first to make up words, to play with the fold and random flow of rhythmical phrasing, but I believe that a person has to learn the basic mathematics of anything before they can fly off piste. Drumming, piano playing, singing, dancing, writing, painting, scientific exploration, mountain climbing (no flying off piste for this one, not literally), plus a zillion more disciplines, appropriately called disciplines because of their grounding in just that, discipline. I completely loathed discipline in pretty much all areas of my life, but needed them all, the gravity of them holding down my scatter feet, a springboard for any future leap.

They say knowledge is everything, which is a tad sweeping for me even as I can taste the truth in the cliche. If I am unsure about any area of my life, anxious, perhaps, I know it is simply because I don’t ‘know’ enough about it. My imagination takes me into a future that doesn’t, and probably will never, exist. I must needs investigate the subject, thus imbibing knowledge which, in turn, grows my confidence, shifts my perspective and stabilises the chaos within. I am anxious about my journey back home. What is it about said journey back home that feels me this way? 1. Getting lost in the airport for weeks. Follow the signs and ask someone. 2. I will miss my connection. Catch the next plane. 3. I won’t get through security. Check hand luggage and remove all weapons. 4. I am frightened of travelling alone. Ah, now we get to the nitty gritty. Well you won’t be alone, not with 300 other hot and bothered travellers and the pilot will be fully trained, plenty stewards on board, you can ask them for anything. There will be food and a movie of your choice and when you land you will be in London where everyone speaks in a tongue you understand. The fact that you aren’t on speaking terms with any of those 300 other people is entirely up to you my dear. Hallo, my name is Judy. that’s all you have to say and in that sweet and simple introduction, you are no longer alone, as you perceive it.

It seems so easy, once a fear or anxiety is questioned and gentled apart all the way down to its core. I can spend weeks with my knickers in a knot of anxiety, but now I have learned to notice, question and then find solutions to each individual aspect. It’s freeing. Its hold on me lessens, loosens and, eventually, lets go. I can still feel a frisson of fear but can quickly refer back to my solution list and breathe in the adventure, fill my lungs with it, fly with it, curious as a child.

Hallo, my name is Judy.

(Oh lord, she’s going to talk the whole flight) Hallo, I’m Simon, Mary, Lord Fauntleroy.

Do you like flying?

(Here she comes) Not much.

Oh I love it.

Good.

And if that’s all there is, it’s enough for me not to feel alone.

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Island Blog – Ordinary Fun

Up with the sun, we are and ready for action. The task this day is to de-grease the deck and then to oil it for when my younglings let out the house. So much to do, so little time, but I am always game on for physical work, never having been good at sitting on my butt for very long. It always takes time, as a guest, to find out what ordinary tasks I can take on. There’s the washing up, of course, and the floor sweeps etcetera, but I find there’s often a lot of ‘You’re on holiday’ responses at first, when I offer to help, which is a caring sort of thing to say. I counter that now with a reminder to them that my butt is expanding with all this being on holiday stuff, and my legs need a cartwheel or two to flex them up again. I don’t notice how much flexing I do back home, lugging or stacking wood, lifting heavies out the way or into it, gardening, climbing steps, scrubbing out cupboards or hoovering black spider webs in the ghastly loft. Just ordinary stuff, as I say.

The deck is covered with furniture, big plant pots, heavy tables and the big basket of dog toys. We clear, sweep, shift and heft, de-grease, hose down and wait for the sun to dry it all off. Yesterday we went to the store in search of the recommended oils plus brushes and spoke to Yolande who has a real wealth of knowledge on all things hardware. She is also an Afrikaner. After some discussion on the right and best oils for the task in hand, she asked a question that would have sounded like this in the UK, a perfectly ordinary question for sure. ‘How big is your deck?’ She, obviously needed to know that in order to establish how many gallons of oil we might need to comfortably cover all that wood, and for two or more coats. However, the way an Afrikaner would ask that question is “How big is your dick?’ My son, with a twinkle in his eye, replied “Now, Yolande, that is a very personal question!’ I watched her face, first confused and then what she had asked and how we heard it dawned on her face. First, a wide smile and then a burst of giggles that lifted us all into the air, astonishing passers by with a barrowload of hammers and planks, screws and very grumpy faces.

Such fun can be had if the fun bones and muscles are flexed and ready for the chance to out. A simple exchange of words, twinkly eyes and a dancing sense of humour can bring the sunshine into any day, can put the spring into a step, can turn an ordinary task into a story. We were still chuckling as we left, as was Yolande.