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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.

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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.

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Island Blog – Extra the Ordinary

Although I live my life according to the rules, most of the time, my heart and soul are pure Paris. As a girl, as a young woman, I could feel the inconvenient wild in me, this fire blaze that burned no matter how politely I crossed my ankles or demurred to the authority of a man. The confusion of living with the two opposing women inside came with a great deal of trouble, most of it unseen by anyone but me. The trouble was my lack of enough experiential wisdom to accept both the Paris and the Quiet Suburbs and to love them both. How can I, how can anyone, hold two contradictories in one head at the same time? Well, practice, and a lot of self-love. En route to this acceptance brought tantrums, a smouldering silence, spots, ridiculous clothes, lost friendships, poor decisions, all of which came with legacy, one only I was forced to live with and through. Those in ‘authority’ over me called me names; deluded, hysterical, rebellious, ornery, bloody difficult #needsprofessionalhelp, possessed, reckless and so on. I was, in short, impossible and would never fit in. Until one day I overheard my French teacher, whom I adored, saying to my mother #headinhands that I had a lot of the Paris in me. I suspect that was the beginning of my quest, one that has led me over the bumps, into walls, off chasmic edges and on and on to many wonderful places and times.

At this age of ripeness and with a completely marvellous and exciting past, I smile at my journey. Even now I can meet good women of my age who, on recognising the rebel in me, say that they were never wild; that they never felt anything like an incendiary bomb. I always question that. Did you ever fall head over heels in love, I ask, when your whole world is thrown up into the air like a beach ball, and do you remember hoping it would never come down again? I usually get them on that one. Okay they didn’t lock matron in the phone cupboard and go back to bed, nor set fire to the school shed (didn’t burn), nor did they get back home at 10pm, check in with parents and then climb out of the window to rejoin the party. But I did, and that wildness is still here, still within, now honoured and loved, appreciated and respected. Paris is part of me.

I have never been to Paris and may never go there. I call her Paris because of what I have read, since my French teacher said what she said, and I have learned about that city of bohemian rebellion and energy. I will have added my own imagination, naturally, and together we have got me all the way up to this morning in a lively and unpredictable way. Living as I now do inside my own structure of discipline is just where I want to be. I have no desire to travel in order to find myself. Myself is right here with me and we are an excellent team. Rebelling against my own rules of engagement would be foolish. Rebelling against other people’s rules of engagement was exhilarating, terrifying and often self destructive, but I could not have avoided one minute of it. It is in my DNA and that is irrefutable.

My message in all this is to encourage you all to remember who you really are, not to fanny about with who someone else decides you are. This would be like trying to fit politely and tidily into an empty Weetabix box. So don’t. And, if any of this touches you in any way, there is work to be done. We can die with our song unsung or we can take a risk, open our mouths and sing it out, at any age or stage of our lives.

We can make an ordinary life extraordinary just by living half in, half out of the box, our own box.

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Island Blog – What if…..

Take a whole day in your hands and look at it. Inside there is disparity. There are lifts and shifts, downs and frowns, light and gloom, noise and silence, thought and unthought, time and no time. Colours swing from rainbow to mud and back to rainbow. Words spin like hornets or flit butterfly bright, soft edged, fragile, all around you. Views are wide or through a lens darkly, moods yoyo, news is good, news is bad. It is a day and we all have them, inhabit them, cannot avoid them, if we are the fortunate ones. What we might need to be reminded of is our part within each day. We, just for the record, are the lead. We are the main character, the one who can lift an audience to hurrahs and shouts for more, or who can send them all home at half time. The way we engage on stage is critical to what happens next, the hornets or the butterflies, the rainbows or the mud and the impact we have on our audience will affect them more than we can ever imagine.

If you inspire me I will leave all inspired, not to be a part in your play but to play the lead in my own. I will be planning rainbows and butterflies all the way home in the rain with the wrong shoes on. It won’t matter because you have inspired me, elevated me to my higher self, the one who doesn’t blame or shame, moan or grumble, lean back into the fat and greedy arms of inevitability and hopelessness. Whatever I may think of my lack of talent requires a re-think. We all have talent, we all have gifts, even if we were never encouraged to develop them as children, even then. I must look long and hard at myself to find this little seedling of talent and cosset it until even I believe it’s really there, inside little un-influential me. And I mustn’t stop there. I must work, daily, on that self-trust and belief. Nobody else is going to do this for me, only me, in the quiet of my heart, in the silence of my mind, in an ordinary day, the one I hold right now in my hands.

Many settle for less when unless would elevate, would fly them. What if I fail? Ah…..but what if you fly? Many complain and grumble about the state of the world this very day, how hopeless it all seems, how poorly managed, how clearly they can see disaster looming for us all. And do nothing about it. Who am I to change the world? Who are you not to? This day will never come again. This day, regardless of the state of the world, is a huge opportunity for change. It could be a change inside the home, a change of habit, a decision to begin something. It could be the rearrangement of furniture, a garden re think, a kindness offered, a new book ordered, it could be anything. But to moan and rant about the out there is to lose this day in pointlessness. Turn in, my friends, Look long and hard at this new morning and decide something, anything. Let a new wild begin. What if, what if, what if I could do something to effect change?

What if, indeed.

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Island Blog – Three Keys in My Hand

I have one, no, two meetings this week. One on Tuesday, a zoom with a writer friend, and one on Wednesday with my counsellor. In my opinion, many of us need to find someone just a bit more above things than we are. I have always found that a hand reaching down is a huge help, despite the initial shame I felt at asking for it. And there’s a thing. As this lockdown keeps us stuck/imprisoned/safe, there are many who are finding it super tough, whose mental stability is being seriously challenged. I get it. As one who has always been mentally turmoiled to a degree, and who sees that last week was Mental Health Week (as if one week would ever be enough) I am more than happy that the world is getting it, or, at least, the slowmovingrulemakers are thinking wider, perhaps. In my life I have met many who could flower but cannot flower within the confines of stigmatism and of what is socially acceptable. Hence the hidden pain. And the most destructive judge of all lives within. We are all flawed, broken to varying degrees, doing out very best to fit in without sticking out in ways that might draw attention to our faults.

Looking out upon the natural world is key, but we must also look within. As I have been a student of self-improvement for decades, I have absorbed a million positive phrases and still found myself not quite at home with myself, no matter how bright the epiphany. However, I am finally beginning to understand that time holds the second key and time requires my patience, my faith in the strength of a human spirit and my trust that the goodly gods are working for me, and not against me. When the world demands something I do not want or cannot give, I need this trust. If we were all meant to be the same we would be mere automatons. We are far from that, thank goodness. Although we are currently required to live as such, it will pass eventually. Confined to home, required to wash our hands a hundred times a day, separated from loved ones, stuck in the wrong country and so on, we have this time to reflect on who we are and on the life we want for ourselves once we are freed from the chains that bind. Think on that.

I watch the young birds fly through my little garden, feathers awry, all ruffly spot and unsure of where to land. New life learning old ways. For them, survival is the teacher. They cannot suddenly square up to a cat or challenge the dive of a sparrow hawk without almost certainly turning into lunch. But we can. If we consider our predators, our demons, our self-doubts and our fears to be in control of our lives, then they will be. Noticing every thought and questioning it is key number three. Even if I am uncertain of my path, my voice, the strength, or lack of it, of my own human spirit, if I decide to turn this thing around, to turn myself around, then wonderful things begin to happen. I don’t need to run from my doubts and fears, my thoughts and worries, I just need to about face and question. Do I really think this or is this thought thinking me? Then, if it isn’t useful, I say cheerio. I don’t need you. Every time I do this, I empower my true self. I am not controlled by my thoughts. I control them, and in this uncertain life when a single day can throw a tidal wave over my carefully constructed sandcastle, my thoughts are the only thing I can control.

I know what it is like to be in the darkness of depression. I know how overwhelming life can be. I also know how to rebuild my spirit and I am thankful for all my guides over the years. Not everyone finds their way. Some souls are lost. Most of our illnesses come from inner stress, manifesting in the physical body, sometimes destroying it. This time of reflection is a gift to us all, not only to make new ways to live for ourselves by taking a long hard look at our core values, our life choices, our work and our families, but to look and to see others who may need our clear and open friendship. Those, whom we might have dismissed before as misery guts or gloomy or bad tempered. Nobody wants to live like that. Nobody. But everybody needs somebody to lift them at some point in their lives.

There are less of us still breathing in the world today. This virus is greedy and it isn’t done with us yet. Let us make sure that the ones who will emerge back into the light of ‘normality’ even more broken, even more damaged and even more fearful of their futures, do not have to walk alone.

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Island Blog – Fun

So, yesterday was all about love and cards and flowers and romantic dates. For some. Me……..? Well, I busied myself with the craft of housekeeping and caring right up to the evening, my favourite time of day (or is it night?) when the northern hemisphere teeters on the cusp of transition. It’s time for a shower, to put the tatties on to boil, to gee up the woodburner and to check the garage door is shut against Dennis. He could flip that old thing into matchsticks, taking out several solid things in passing, the way he is growling behind the sky.

On this cusp, after delivering a meal to himself as he sits encased in his pyjamas, his ears clamped shut inside the headphones, some TV series playing out on his screen, silent mouths moving in a dialogue to which I am not privy, I return to the kitchen, light myself a candle or two and pour a glass of wine. Happy Valentine’s I told myself and myself smiled. I love myself enough not to bother about such lovey dovey nonsense. I could clean the faces of the kitchen units; I could have another shower; I could sweep up the crumbs or I could go to the pub. Which is what I did. The kitchen unit cleaning thing almost got me. I had tunes playing and candles flickering shadows up the walls and it all looked rather pretty until I put on my specs and noticed that there was more to cleaning the units than I had thought heretofore. Some reddish blobs had the chutzpa to stick themselves right across one door and there was much dust along the horizontals. Blow that. This is not evening work. It was a quick shift into a jacket and boots and off I toddled, giving Growling Dennis a quick and filthy look en route.

It was fun. Fun is what I love best and the one thing that isn’t always available here unless I fun the flames of it all by myself. I’m pretty good at it, though I say so myself. By the time I left, I had hugged old mates, commiserated, reassured, discussed the excitement of historical geology and understood better the palaver involved in building a new house on an island already drunk on rain. Conversation and communication in a life that has lost so very much of both are as welcome as 12 red roses any day.

When I was a recalcitrant and bloody-minded teenager I sent myself valentine cards. It saved anyone else the bother, after all, and guaranteed that I wasn’t the sad girl without a boyfriend, horribly visible in the school playground, awash with shame and certain that she has terrible breath. Nowadays I believe boyfriends are highly overrated. It all starts out rosy but mostly that’s where it begins to stop. I heard of someone who was incandescent about not getting a card from her husband. I held in a smile because if that is how he feels about her then its better out in the open. Others keep the flame burning, I know that. I met a couple of them last night, still dancing and planning to dance right up to the end of love.

And I smiled at that too.

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Island Blog – Snow Angels

This very day I set sail, winds permitting, for the mainland. Destination the French Alps. I travel with family, kiddies and adults and am away for a week. In theory I will don ski boots and give the slopes a chance to delight and excite me, but my last efforts at maintaining the vertical in such conditions warn me that I may not continue with my lessons. Back in the day when I was a tricky teenager I really hated ski lessons. In fact, I only had one and that was enough. I am a walker by nature, taking my time, gathering no speed and certainly not at the mercy of those long Turkish slippers. In walking, I control myself.

It thinks me. Although I am not interested in gathering unnecessary speed either grounded or in elevated position, such as on the back of a horse, or inside a car, or, even, on skis, I always like to give something my best shot before saying this is not for me. It is the same with anything I do in life. To say ‘this is not for me’ without experiential knowledge of that to which I say No, is just plain foolish. How can I possibly know from the outside of anything? Of course, there are many things in this life, in any life, to which saying No is just not an option. But there are ways around that too.

Say I am stuck in a job I dislike, that doesn’t float my boat. I may dread stepping into another day of this arduous drudgery, among these people who aren’t of my tribe, who don’t respect and value my work, and yet it seems I have no choice if the bread is to be earned. There are two ways to change how this goes. Either I tell myself that these people do not define me, that I know my work is of value and that I wholly respect myself, leading me to research new work and to give in my notice, or I take a good look at my perception of the situation and work on changing it. I know, from experience that this is entirely possible when giving in notice is a million miles from possible.

Snow is both cold and exciting. If I don’t continue with my lessons there is a vast array of alternative pleasures. I could walk over it, listening to the scrunch of it beneath my feet, look back on my footprints alongside all the others of those who have walked this way before me. I could consider their lives, their size and weight, their choice of boot. I could look up to where the mountains point into the sky, imagine the cold up there, wonder who climbed so high and how it might have changed their view on life. I could see the flowers in Springtime, now sleeping beneath their winter blanket, careless of the weight of human trudge. I could hear the laughter, ride on the chairlift, laugh and play with snowballs, breathe in the ice and feel it freeze my face. I could watch the skiers and marvel at their skill, my heart in my mouth as they hurtle down the breast of this huge majestic mountain. I could even see Hannibal and his elephants and wonder at his courage.

In ordinary times, as the West Coast rain rains and rains without ceasing, it is hard to imagine that in a few hours I will be in a very different landscape. I have my writing pad, my books, my waterproof kit and, most important of all, I have me. How this holiday goes for me is down to me, no matter how many others I may share it with. In order to really ‘see’ it all, I must clear my misperceptions and step out naked, obviously not literally or I may not get home at all, and be as a child, ready for any mystery to open out before me. It is no different at home, just much harder to believe in, but it is the key to life and I have proved it over and over again. The drudge is inside a mind, not out there, as is my definition of myself, my love and respect of self, my childlike sense of mystery ahead. And, although it could be hard to make a snow angel from rain, I will give it my best shot when I get home.