work

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Island Blog – A New Beginning

I started work today, at a new venture, or an establised venture, now in new hands, which means it’s new. btw. Moving into a new place, even if the venue, the stones and location are the same as they ever were, a newness is created. There are new ideas, changes, alterations, a personal stamp stamped. I always love new beginnings, have no problem with change, mostly speaking. We greeted, checked out the lay of the land, heard the ideas, decided to be dynamic. Let us go, I thought, as we did just that. I knew it before, the way it works, the flow and rhythm of what had been the been for yonks, shifting its gaze into a new sky. This, I said to myself, is a be. Not a been…… and I am in.

We worked, and hard, and busy, fixing, trixing, laughing, sharing, sticking, unsticking, wiping, washing, tide-fighting, tide-aligning, talking, finding out about each other, watching, checking. We are creating a new dynamic. There are wonderings, doubts, fickle-twiddles, stopstarts, upskittles, solutions flying in like birds through newly sequined window panes. Tables – juxtaposition, chairs too, wall hangings yet to be wall-hanged, or not, lights to be twisted this way, that, this something to be considered, this something else to be moved, or removed, all a considering, for now. It’s like a birthing, and I am at the business end. I have no idea what I am doing, beyond the obvious, the cleaning prep work and the beyond of the dance of mischief I will always bring to anything. However, there is no fun, nor mischief (interesting word if you. break it down……mis…..chief…….just saying) if there are no-ones to work with, to laugh with, through tricky stuff, when this isn’t working well and that isn’t working either.

We had fun today. My first day. I loved it. I’m as tired as the others, but so excited to be a part of this new beginning.

I thought I was all out of those, to be honest!

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Island Blog – Risk, Wild, Adventure, Lipstick

My roses are ridonculus. This year, despite being cut down to their knees last Autumn, they have risen like blooming lamposts. They know, they have to, that wind and WIND cometh, and daily, along with slews of rain, a veritable slam-dunk with potential collapse. But, they don’t do that collapso thing, not like the beech limb, that sweet strong gone-thing that prevents my traverse in the most polite of ways in that it fell whilst I was not beneath its massive tonnage. I see the black, the ingress of rain for perhaps decades, the finite a silent given, but not to me, not to all of us who wandered beneath the bow and the beauty of this superb and wonderful spread. We, human we, didn’t think at all. We just lifted an overhang, leaf heavy, and for so many walks and talks and unthinks.

Today, returning from work, I saw something, a definite some-thing at the side of the track, and moving. A buzzard low and just above this moving thing, taunting, dunting, a significant part of the moment. I slowed my mini (she doesn’t like to slow, so there was a tussle) and looked. An otter, an OTTER, right there beside me, slid into the ditch, then paused and looked right at me. It’s face, its eyes, my face, my eyes, we collided. Then, it grabbed the hen it had pinched from……where for goodness sake? There is nothing and no-one here, not for miles. That eye connection champagnes my insides and, for a bit, whilst Mini grumbled, I could not press play. I was in the wild and I didn’t want to leave. The. otter did, lifting over ferns and rocks until all I saw was the nothing I had expected pre this sudden eye-catch, this adventure. It thought me.

Adventure, risk and the wild is not for some, but for us all. We just have to see everything and to seek something beyond and above the usual, the what we’ll have for dinner, the whose turn it is to take the kids to their groups, the grind of expectation and disappointment. I remember being there, but please don’t think that just because my kids are born and gorn that everything becomes marvellous, because that is a myth. I began being ridonculus at 21, deciding to see the wild, to risk adventure, to find connection with my people, who were not always my family. It is a choice. I ask myself, and daily, Who Am I in this Here and Now? The answer comes. You Know Who You Are. And the voice is right.

One day I drove to the harbour, knowing one of my boys had parked there. I also knew I wouldn’t see him, but that didn’t matter. I found his big ass buckie and pulled out my pink lipstick. I drew a huge heart on the driver window and wrote I LOVE YOU, right across the windscreen. No-one saw me. Chuffed, I walked back to my car, passing, oh dear, passing, his buckie, I knew it, his stuff, his order, his things and thought, oh holy shit! I just defaced an unknown’s glassware. Then, the wild in me, the adventure, laughed me and I did it all again. As I hiked my wee car up the hill and away, I did wonder what the other guy felt as he came back to such a message.

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Island Blog – Transitions in an Ordinary Life

A lovely blue sky morning it is and the wee girls are being nudged and encouraged through breakfast and into the car for school. I notice their natural resistance to a Monday morning which comes like a crashbang after the easy weekend. No deadlines, no shoes required, no hurried breakfast, no questions. I get it. I also remember my own young mother days when nobody thought that going to school was a good idea, in fact, it stunk. One shoe on, the other lost, in the dog’s bed, in the bike shed, anywhere but on the other foot. Teeth to brush? You are kidding, mum, it’s about 3 days climb to relocate the bathroom, this is Tapselteerie, remember? It was undoubtedly raining so the very thought of cycling down that track of potholes and potential deviations was an anathema. We are young and lively and want to play, not sit in that bus riding the switchback under the judgemental glances of the driver. We don’t want to sit in class to learn about the life of snails or the names of body parts or the history of a world we cannot begin to imagine. In fact, best not to imagine anything much because Mr This and Miss That are ancient and boring and quite without a head full of dragons that fly with fire, or trees that tip the clouds, and who don’t have a clue as to where all the wild things are, whereas we absolutely do.

Suddenly, they are gone, the silence a gasp as the front door closes between us. I know they will move beyond the transition, their little minds open to the next thing, as always, even though they resist. I also get that, the resistance, but in adult minds, it takes mental strength to live in the moment when all past, and imagined future, moments swarm together in a buzz of chaos. It seems to me that this is the primary work for us, to let go and to keep moving, through each uncomfortable transition, allowing it, just allowing it. When I wake, my head is already in connect mode, connected to every possible aspect of my life, present, past and imagined future. It is logical, of course, to divide and separate, I know this, but the chaos can overwhelm. Will I, should I, did I, can I? I know the past is ‘another country’, just as I know the future is a mystery. I can plan wee bits of it, such as my choice of clothing, my attitude, my next forward step, but the vast expanse of any future is beyond my control.

Perhaps, even as children, we know this. Perhaps this is both exciting and terrifying. Perhaps. Although I don’t remember how I dealt with my inner chaos as a child, I do remember loving a fantasy world, living in one as much as possible until I had to find my missing shoe on a Monday morning, eat breakfast quick and head off to the school bus. Actually, I would have done anything to lose both damn shoes, so miserably hard and uncomfortable were they, so clumpy, so hideous. I wanted fairy wings and ballet pumps and a lift up to another planet where greens were optional, where trees tipped the clouds, and where nobody wore shoes at all. Now, this morning, as I write into the silence left behind, I remind myself that what lies ahead is beyond my control. I must needs float along with it, listen, keep alert, ask questions, accept and then decide my attitude, for today brings in transition, the leaving of here and the moving into the next here, which is only ‘there’ for a few more hours. Not another country, not another state, just a few steps, a few miles, a few adjustments to my thinking, that’s all it is. Not a nothing, but an ok something, an inevitable something with opportunities for laughter and conversation, observation and fun, all nestled in the folds of this new day, this Monday.

Whatever you face today, I wish you fun and laughter, no matter the circumstances. There is always, always, someone out there whose transition is troubling, scary, alarming, terrifying, someone who could do with a smile, a ‘hallo’, a kindly gesture, a reminder that they are not alone in the chaos of an ordinary life.

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Island Blog – A Rightful Name

When I ask someone how they feel about whatever is going on their lives, almost without exception, I get answers of logic. ‘It will be alright in the end,’ they say, or ‘this will heal, eventually,’ or even ‘I have nothing to complain about. I have enough food, a home, friends and work.’ Invariably, but kindly, I will round on them. I asked you how you feel, feel, FEEL about what has happened or is happening to you. Can you tell me that?

It is the toughest question, I know. Many of us ignore our feelings, so jumbled and ‘illogical’ are they, so messy and loud, so scary to name. If I say I feel afraid, I will, inevitably, be ‘fixed’. If I say I feel angry, the room goes quiet, as a room does just after lightening and just before the thunder crash. In my young days, feelings were allowed, providing they were ones of joy and delight, and even those must not be allowed to erupt. You can spin around, arms wide, in sheer delight, but don’t dislodge that vase of roses, or step on the dog or knock the musical score off the piano musical score thingy. And, this mustn’t last more than is bearable for the ears of all others in this confined space.

Feelings of pain, sadness or grief, such as the abandonment of a trusted friend in P3, is something you will get over and laugh about one day. She wasn’t such a great friend anyway now was she? Yes she damn well was, and now I go to school feeling sore and vulnerable, ashamed and brimming with self doubt. Who is there to hear my agony? Well, perhaps someone will ‘hear’ it, but who will sit with me whilst I burn and drown in this unbelievable flood of feelings? It is no surprise to me that, as ‘mature’ adults, most of us suppress what can only cause inner damage eventually, those deep feelings of rejection, abandonment, neglect, cruelty. We all know what I’m talking about, but too many of us keep burying the undead. They will rise again and again, twisted now, neglected for too many years, layered over with logic and life. The undead are not dead, not unless we dig and dig until they can finally rise into the light of our Now. Who is brave enough, I wonder, to admit (why ‘admit?) to feelings of pain and fear, shame and doubt, anger and resentment? Because we just know we will be ‘fixed’.

Feelings are the one thing we cannot, never could and never will, control. They come, unbidden, sometimes as tiny whispers, sometimes as a tidal wave, bowling us off our feet and into the gutter, upside down, knickers showing, wounded, bloody, feeling like a fool as the rest of the world checks their watch and hurries on. How we deal with our feelings, however, is completely within our control. It is not the fault of the world that it rushes on by as I lie here broken and tumbled. It’s not my fault either. It’s nobody’s fault. If I have the courage and the guidance (very critical to healing) to dig deep down for the undead feelings from childhood, from before the Now of me; to dig and to unbury, to lift into the light and to name, I am on the road to freedom. If my current pain relates to neglect, rejection, abandonment or cruelty in my past, I will overreact to the world in which I live right now, but, if my deepest longing is to be seen, acknowledged and celebrated for myself, to be valued just as I am, then I have to dig, have to unearth the undead. I can do endless goodly works in my Now, but I am kidding myself if I think this is going to eradicate my strong need to be seen, acknowledged and valued. I will meet rejection, lack of respect, careless or neglectful behaviour but it is not because I am ‘nothing’. It is, simply, complexly, the result of buried feelings as old as I am, pushed down, labelled foolish and ignored.

So, when I ask you “how do you feel about what just happened?’ might you pause a little before answering, and might you have the courage and trust to give your feeling its rightful name?

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Island Blog – The House is Singing

The noise is spectacular! Five roofers gadding about, a mile high and as if the land beneath their feet was as flat as the tundra. They have performed this task before, methinks, so confidently do they work as a team. The first day there was a lot of hammering and poking through the thatch with long poles to establish contact with the beams. Building a structure a short way above the existing roof, a skeleton of struts to hold the Harvey tiles in place whilst still allowing for air flow so the thatch doesn’t sweat is something else to watch. The men work quickly but not quietly, chatting to each other in some African language no, shouting, even if they are just a couple of feet apart. They sound as if they are here in the room with us and yet they are balancing like monkeys, effortlessly and high overhead. To work with concentration down below is something that requires patience, concentration and the odd yell out of the window asking them to please talk quietly. This, it seems, is impossible. Their natural voices are loud, and it might take an operation to change that. I notice it’s the same among the black men and women wherever they are, shopping, working, shovelling, tidying litter or sharing an office space. These people are naturally ebullient, ready to smile, always polite, always ready to share a greeting, more than ready to laugh. A far cry, indeed, from the UK where all of us are strangers to each other, heads down, avoiding eye contact, barely able to disturb the air with a wave, let alone cut it with a sentence, and as for smiling, well, there aren’t many of them around on crowded streets or inside cars, a bus, a train. It’s as if life is happy here and unhappy back home. I don’t refer to the island folk, nor the Celts, nor a lot of other folk of whom I have little experience, but mainly in the cities and towns. It’s as if they, the ones with heads down, no smiles, empty of greetings, are living in a quiet desperation (not my words) and that makes me very sad. I digress.

It rains. I have never experienced this much rain in Africa and nor has anyone else. However much Africa needs rain, the roofers do not. Add to that the regular load shedding and there is a problem, Ma’am. No power. I see that, I reply, you will need to fire up your generator. He grins and shrugs and fires up his generator. In the times of a drowning deluge, the men run for cover but in gentle rain, the work continues and I watch in trepidation as they skid across the tiles, the sky a mackerel of clouds above them. A tile falls to the ground with a crash. These tiles are long, about 4 ft, and lined with something like aluminium making them heavy. I shudder as the guillotine hits the deck, thankful I had not just walked outside at that very moment. But no man falls, of course not. They have done this job for years and, besides, men don’t fall, or so they believe. Almost 3 days later, the roof is almost completed and having watched the craftsmanship of its creation and elevation, I am very impressed. Now we will have no leaks through the thatch. Now the house looks sharp and proud and the garden looks like a war zone. Offcuts of woods, bits of thatch, bits of tiles, power tools and no-power tools, all scattered across the grass, poor grass, and just as it was gaining new life thanks to all the rain.

Yesterday I sat here at the kitchen table working away on my laptop when a shower of thatch landed on my head. It was a shock and then it was funny. I walked carefully, like I was top of the deportment class, to the bathroom mirror and there it was, a neat round birds nest on top of my head. I do admit, as the holding poles stabbed through the thatch, to a frisson of fear at the thought of a beam collapsing down or a holding pole or a whole man crushing me to a splodge, and I did have to move around the house to avoid more birds nests, but all has gone smoothly. Beyond a lot of clearing up, sweeping and dusting and coughing and spitting, we have all survived the process. And, today, as the sun shines merrily and the generators gurgle and chunter with life giving power, it will be finished, completed and done. All the rubble, the offcuts, the tools and the men will be cleared away, allowing us to put the garden furniture back into place and to enjoy an evening, a braai perhaps, a shared sundowner, laughter and conversation beneath what promises to be a starry starry night. You hear that? I will say. The house, she’s singing. And she will be.

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Island Blog – A Crap Day Imagined and a Good Start

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

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

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

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

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

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Island Blog – Dynamic Fire

I love to learn new things. Being naturally curious and a once highly involved member of a debate group, I am never happier than when picking apart a so called truth or absolute. I am no academic but I can sniff out someone stuck inside their own pages and the match girl in me begins to itch. However, this itch thingy doesn’t mean I want to put anyone down, far from it, but I do want that ‘whoever’ to relax and to consider another perspective. It doesn’t always work I find. Learned absolutes and truths become a part of whoever’s infrastructure and my fiddling about with questions rattles the legs that hold them up. How many times have you heard “Well, I always do it this way, thought this way.’? Or said it yourself. I certainly have but the second I hear that stuck phrase slip through my lips, I pull in for a rethink. Where the hell did you come from? I ask the words that now founder embarrassed at my reaction, bumping into each other and changing places, skidding to an ungainly halt. I brush them onto the floor. Rearrange yourselves, I say, dismissively.

In the questioning of what others say and believe to be truths I must needs attend to my own truths and what I have discovered is that truths are truths for a while and then they need to rearrange themselves. The words Always and Never are goal posts in the life game of football or rugby or netball or whatever your game might be. They are not the field. The field is wide open, a space where anything can happen and everything can change. The players on that field are wild or half asleep, strong or weak, ready or not. The players are our everyday thoughts and feelings. However, scoring goal does not mean we win the game but only achieve a short term full stop with an accolade, and a roaring crowd and bells and whistles because everyone loves a winner. Apparently.

However, I am with the players, hot, tired, stretched, hopeful and most important of all, ready to change tactic or direction in a nanosecond. If one on that field is focussed on something that doesn’t demand an open mind then the whole team is compromised. It is no different inside a mind. There isn’t just one of us. There are many and each member of us is of value and importance. I get fed up with the noise inside my head, all of me talking at once and nobody letting a.n.other space to speak. Hush you eejits! I hissed at 3.45 am as they woke me to such a hullabaloo that even the wee dog lifted from her snores with a puzzled bark. It’s ok, darling, I soothed. It’s just me and me and me and me and me and me and so flipping on. But, once the daylight decided to become daylight, eventually, I could see that in my so called sleeping moments, my friends inside the head of this match girl, are sorting out latent thinks as yet unresolved. I could ask them to work only in the light but I know they are cathemeral and so my pleas would be pointless.

Back to conversations, to debates. I remember them, around a bar table, height and heighty, fun and fractious, confrontational when someone was losing the power to defend their ‘stuck’, because this whoever thought they were only strong within the old pages, pages that burn easy. In this crazy time, in this ‘stuckness’ we might remember we are field players; we might remember we are many others of ourself; we might think dynamically out of our own troubles, remembering that they are not nothing. They are visibly and actively something. They are not bad, nor wrong. They are real. However, with a little shimmy to the right or to the left of left, we will find ourself mid field, or way out there in the whatever it’s called and with a new perspective on the game, even perhaps with an eagle eye and a match girl with an itch at the ready.

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Island Blog – All About Henry

I awaken into a beautiful crisp morning, all blue sky and Wolf Moon shining enough light to afford me a greenish wander from kitchen door to kettle. Barefoot, I encounter what I already knew was there, even if I have been keeping my eyes above floor level for a few days. Dust. Bits of dropped food. Fluff. Well Dammit, I mutter. I will need to take action today. Knowing, as I do, my excellent ability to distract myself from housework, I decide to add another dull task as a sort of punishment. The bathroom needs cleaning. These days I can ignore the bathroom-needing-cleaning thingy for days. When Himself was still above ground, it needed cleaning daily and I accepted the work as a part of my morning routine without question. Even before that I would clean it just in case the Bathroom Police dropped in to check. But, now there is no Himself and absolutely no chance of anyone dropping in, let alone the BP, I have grown indolent and Henry mutters away to himself in the dark of the cupboard below stairs. He is bored, I know it, but I also know that precisely because I have neglected him, he will take full advantage of today’s outing for he is mischievous and resourceful.

I can hear him now, as if he is reading my thoughts, or maybe I spoke out loud. He has perfect hearing and I know this as he knows I know this. I move towards the door and open it a glimpse. I hear rustling. It could be him or it might be a scuttle of mice who have enjoyed a long period of quiet, undisturbed. Hallo Henry, I say, my moon face peering into the darkness. Are you where I left you or have you relocated? Are you hiding? I know he is shy. My hands find him and I begin to tell him where we will work this morning. He grins. It’s quite an area of carpet I plan to let him loose upon and he is full of anticipation.

First we climb the stairs and I thank him for being light. My previous carpet sucker, a very expensive Miele, weighed a flipping ton and refused to recover on stair work after I pulled too hard on her trunk, thus sending her into a series of backflips thus landing her, most undignifiedly, on her back, her belly exposed to the world. At that point I recall sitting down for a think. Perhaps, I thought, I should buy myself a male hoover this time and one that weighs less than an SUV, one with a very long and hand-winding flex, no electric one that almost but not quite draws in the cable, one with bags I can bin instead of having to wash out the catacomb of Miss Miele every time in order to get rid of the smell and the bits.

When I first met Henry, I thought everything would now be easy and un-smelly. I was wrong on the second count. It was so depressing because now I had no chance of washing out the innards. I was hardly going to bin a bag after every hoovering session after all. Once I had risen from my depression, I decided to seek some fragrant oil, one that could be dripped onto the filter, and one that just might do the trick. It did. But for Henry’s shyness there seems to be no cure. He snags in every doorway. I encourage, wheedle, soothe, beg even, but nothing overcomes this unfortunate trait. I try empathetic questions. Is it because you are embarrassed to be cleaning? Is this a Macho Man thing? Are you afraid the Bathroom Police are in the next room just waiting to laugh at you, to mock and deride? To say, This is Women’s Work, in that idiot man sort of way? Henry just grins and keeps schtum.

In the bathroom, quite alone with me, Henry sucks bravely, intent on his work. I wheech off the brush and point the nozzle at the corners and the edges. We move behind and under everything that isn’t stuck down and I feel quite jaunty at the difference we are making. Hoover/Woman synergy, a sort of bond between us and I turn to tell him so. My mistake. Never trust the smile of a man who says nothing, for there is a deal of control planning going on behind that face. In that moment of complacence Henry sucks up a cleaning sponge and a cloth. Just like that, straight into his belly, no chewing. Henry! I admonish, and here he turns to the skirt of my frock. It takes me a few seconds to reclaim myself even if I do realise there is no chance said frock would disappear in the same way up that proboscis, affixed as it is to other parts of my body which would need surgical removal in order to allow such a snatch. After I have a word with him about respect for a co-worker, the engine silenced, we continue across the landing and down the stairs. He only backflips once and I right him with abject apology. Now we are cruising and, apart from two further attempts to pull my frock off, eliciting a raised eyebrow from me, we lift the dirt from all floors, up and down.

I thank him and return him to the mice and the dark. The house smells lovely and I tell him so. I thank him for his help and say magnanimously, as an afterthought, that he can keep the cloth and the cleaning sponge. As I close the door, I can hear him chuckle.

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Island Blog – Twister

03.30. I wake, come downstairs, make tea. I flick lights on. It’s cold down here. The rain makes the conservatory roof sound like it’s a floor for a troupe of small tap dancers. I stopped the oil flow for the kitchen range, ready for a Monday flue clean. I stopped smoking, something that made sense a few days ago and one that now wonders me. I turn Bon Iver, Holocene up loud. There is nobody here, now, to disturb, and the last line, ‘I can see for miles and miles and miles’ is both a taunt and an excellent description of my husband. He always saw for miles, oft missing the trudging en route to that distant dream. That was my work, Judy, Jude, Wife, Woman, Worker, married to Popz, Topz, the Admiral, Estate owner, Whale Father, Recording Engineer, Fairbs. The Dreamer.

Richard. He didn’t like his name. I thought that weird until I realised I didn’t like mine either, or didn’t relate to it. When I spoke his name he always said Uh Oh……am I in trouble? So, ok, can I call you darling? Honey? No. It was a minefield for years until he finally landed on Popz. Relief, for sure, but also a distancing for me, his wife, a shift he didn’t notice but one that estranged me. He was a complex man, warm around titles, cold around himself.

All this doesn’t stop the missing. Yes, I have the house back, my choice of music to play up loud, the chance to crunch celery anywhere I like but he’s been irritating me for decades and now I wouldn’t mind an irritation or two. What does a person do when there is no chance of that again? Move easily through the days? I never did ‘easy’. Life was never easy. Life was a twister. Life with Popz, Topz, the Admiral was a twister.

I will be glad to light the range again. Somehow the cold outside of me makes the cold inside of me colder. I guess this is grieving. A new housemate.

by

Island Blog – To Fathers

I am not a father. Never will be and there’s somewhat of a relief in that secure bit of knowledge. I don’t think I realised just how much of a weight a wife and children were, and still are, on a father’s shoulders. He mustn’t cry, of course, no matter how lost or useless he might feel. At least, not in public and most of his life is in public, wife demanding, children requiring clothing, adequate food, toys, space, tuition, guidance and a massive Christmas gift. Never mind that there are five all expecting a massive Christmas gift, whilst taking all the rest for granted. I did too. I took him for granted and that is what we do until we notice something, or look back and join the dots because unless you have experienced living life as a father, you, like me, haven’t a scooby. Not a clue.

On raising children in the most humanly perfect of ways, which, naturally, was our plan, fathers have to take the buck, one that always stops with them. Fathers, if they are the main breadwinner, must leap out of bed every morning for decades in order to be whoever they are required to be on any given day. If it is an off-to-work day, then the mental suit is on and the tie tied right. All the way there, he must leave behind the father role for a few hours and immerse himself in whatever business or job lies ahead of him with all its associated demands. Then, knackered and possibly fed up, he must come through that front door and become husband and father with enthusiasm and wisdom. Blimey. That is quite a lot of requiring.

If, like me, a mother is exhausted herself by end of day, she may nip and criticise, demand and wheedle. She may offload her worries, fears and reports on the children as she might empty a dumper truck full of multiple flotsam, jetsam and other random things right into his lap. He may have only just sat down, but she hasn’t had that pleasure since he left at 07.30 so why should he be allowed now, now that she has to cook dinner, clear toys, bath the unwashed, read stories and all in the secure knowledge that Groundhog Day will come tomorrow and all the tomorrows until the children become adults and fledge? Blimey. That is quite a thixotropic thought.

Good fathers are often judged by the memories they make. Bad fathers, ditto. Of course, the same applies to mothers but this blog is not about them. I doubt there is a single father anywhere in the world, one that wants to be one, that is, who doesn’t take great care to be the best he can be, all the way up to the end. Then Life kicks in, a rogue player on the field, one with tremendous tackling skills and a complete disregard for empathy. Demands overwhelm, families get noisier, cost more money every year and never seem quite as happy as this father saw in his mind’s eye. The happy toddler becomes the door-slamming child who refuses broccoli and ignores all pleas for a stable conversation. Blimey. This is the truth and then some.

So, please raise a toast to all fathers, to yourself if you are one, to your dad, your work colleagues, your neighbours, your friends and your extended family. Consider, and remind yourself of the sacrifices these fathers have had to make in their lives. Fathers…..remember the times when everything swam along like happy fish and then remember the times when storms lashed your shores and terrified you. I salute and celebrate you. All of you excellent, strong and resilient men.

To Fathers.