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Island Blog – Judy Who?

When I don’t write a blog for over 3 days, I become Judy Who. i do. Although, and I confess this, I am miffed. It’s only been 13 years since I have become Judy Someone and just like that in 3 days I have to trawl through Judy Blue, Judy Bloom, Judy Diacticus. That stopped me. Eventually I find myself, like a snivel in the shadows of someone else’s sneeze. It thinks me. I am such a Get Real Woman that it even works for me , albeit clumsily, at such times. I need to light up, to get out there, although where ‘out there’ means nothing to me, and by default, everything. I check my neck, my collar bone, my shoulders, my arms, wrists, fingers. I still work even if the working parts are a bit wonky, definitely escarped with striations, aka wrinkles. I am like a walking mountain, standing here after a gazillion years of marriage, a mother of five extraordinary kids, alone.

But and but, life throws me skywards over and over again. As long as I go out there I meet a softening, kindness, conversation, hugs, random lights lit in my day, as if everyone knows me, and they do. We share cuttings, ideas, plans, wee catches of their lives and of mine as we salute and pass by. The wakeup for me is to decide to rise above ground, to flower, and to allow that my name may be forgotten. And to laugh at that.

I kind of like Judy Who.

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Island Blog – Cross the Street

We walk as we always do, along the paths we know. Of course we do. It’s safe and familiar and we meet the same people, the same contours, the same trees and spaces and views. We know who we are along the way and it’s comfortable, normal, uneventful. To be honest, we don’t want ‘eventful’ not as a sudden thing, not in this life we have worked hard to bring into a shape we can manage. Manage. As if life is ours to control. No surprise then when a shadow falls on our path and we are suddenly and severely compromised. Of course, there is a perception thing going on here. Most of us, hopefully, won’t meet muggers, or a pavement explosion, but we will meet rejection, taunting, something that trips us up and makes us fall hard. Could be a realisation, a thought, an encounter, a sudden eclipse wherein we see what we have avoided seeing for possiby years.

Here’s a thing. A thing I have pondered for decades. What is it that keeps us in the familiar? Think on it. I am guessing that the people we most admire have broken the chains of it, whether in a film, a book, a story, the ones who actually had the courage to cross the street, those who said no, this is not me, and who stepped out and kept going, with the wrong shoes and no money and into the unknown .

I meet teens who know who they are and it isn’t who they supposedly were. They speak out and they cross the street and I applaud them because they are bravehearts. I know I am granny and old but I glory in this. We all deserve pavement space, can work together to shift and move, to single file or to shimmy around each other. I believe in this world and it’s about bloody time. We need each other, We need the skills we all bring to the work place, to the world to the pavement.

I have crossed the street, the odd times I have been in a city, when I knew I didn’t want to encounter what was ahead. Another time I could see a blanket of threat heading my way. Youngsters yes, joshing yes, but with the louding of parental lack and that saddens me. I didn’t cross the street then, although I probably should have done. I kept walking and smiled up. 10 lads, merry, Bacchus, The ages of my own boys. Hey, I said, have fun. Thanks Missus, they all said, swerving around me.

Not need then to cross the street, and there’s a message in there there too.

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Island Blog – A New Matrix

I’m squinting at the screen with my dodgy eye. I have two, by the way, but one is dodgy and on Monday I am offski for minor surgery. All will be well, of course it will, it always is because there is a matrix for this as there is for everything. It thinks me. Matrix, from the latin ‘Mater, meaning mother/womb with the secure landing of ‘ix’ gives me confidence. Needless to say I am not concerned on behalf of the surgeon. He, and he is a ‘he’ has trained for ever and comes highly recommended. It’s the cricks in the matrix which unnerve me, the ferry not running, or running late; the potential miss of the train to Glasgow, the stranding of me. I remember, once, that all we had to do was to check the maritime weather report to know for sure that we would make the crossing. Not now #cricks.

Perfection is a rubric, a guide, a set of rules and moves and decisions that would always result in a tidy cube. Over generations this rubric slices into lives, fed wordy, initiating acceptable behaviours, cementing vows of loyalty, stultifying relationships and informing choices and, in places of power, decisions. Such a complexity and so rigid, a scoring guide with awards proffered to those who comply. And, bizarrely, I get it, even though I have lived within a rubric matrix at times in my life and fought through the cricks to escape. We do need order because disorder is unsettling, even though the ancient greeks and well before them considered Chaos as being the most powerful auger of change. I also think they were right because only from chaos does anyone, eventually, choose a new rubric, to then form a new matrix.

Think on it. In a war zone, when bombs take your everything and the street is a heavy landing of rubble and dust, there will be a voice, a someone who rises and who gathers in the broken. In a family when disaster hits there will be one who rises, takes control. In a troubled mind, full of ferrets and snipers, a voice. These voices don’t dismiss the situation as so many humans do. There are no platitudes, no empty words, no sugar coating. They are simply there and vocal. Just saying I am here. I can keep you safe. Here’s a new matrix.

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Island Blog – Faith

I wake into a ‘meh’. Most unlike me, but I can feel it trail my feet, sludge my steps, halt me in my walk to the bathroom. Actually, no, stop, it bothered my sleep too, waking me with anxious nonsense. Anxiety is always nonsense, I know this, because the images are those of fear, of what hasn’t, and probably will never, happen. I do remember, inside one of those nonsense moments, actively rising in the very dark, and walking around my bed like some circling eejit in the hope that I would lose the damn thing. I didn’t. These things are sticky. I also remember lying there, staring up at nothing, seeing nothing and wondering why it isn’t possible to take off a head, mine, lay it on a chair, preferably in another room and behind closed doors, maybe even locked, and then sleep headless, just body resting without the interminable nonsense of a rollocking mind. I don’t know about you, nor your mind, but mine is a terrorist, or can be, a rebel with no specific cause, a vandal, a schemer, a troublemaker. I do not recall requesting this as a child. Is it a punishment? And yet, the other side of this grubby coin is a brilliant thinker and I am she. It seems, she sighs inwardly, that the light requires a similar dosage of darkness.

And so, and so, I am living still as one who must (never should, never ought) work with the palaver of my mind because this damn thing is of use to me in a million ways. I can write. I can speak. I can influence. I can encourage, facilitate, lead. I am fearless on behalf of others. I can stop to sit on pavements without embarrassment, to talk with someone else held in that place. I do not bother about comments, will not judge, will sing in a toy shop if a song comes to mind, even dance with an ambulance driver out for a smoke when someone begins a fiddle tune. My mind is my friend, and my not friend. I remember ‘not friends’, at school, at work (although I only lasted a few weeks in that job) and I took myself off. I did. But when my ‘not friend’ is my own mind, without heading (sorry) into the impossible, I am stuck with her.

We moved through the day, me distracting with music, an audio book, a load of looking out, even more ‘noticing’ until we were all exhausted with the whole thing, me, my mind, my body. There are three of us in this thing. We shopped, snoozed ready for the four day work shift ahead, listened to a story, moved a few cobwebs aside, cautiously, checking for the mama house spiders (I won’t hurt) and felt alternately shit and okay. But I think my bonus ball is that I have faith. That tomorrow will show me a difference, that my eejit mind is exhausted and will shut the eff up tonight, that the roses still bloom, that day will dawn, that the sun will rise and dip, that my children will continue to fly.

T’is more than many can say.

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Island Blog – Equinoctial

When you find yourself, suddenly, as an author, as if you’ve suddenly elevated to some level above everyone else, with the looking down puff up that comes with so called fame, albeit momentary, it is not what you originally thought it might be. Told, as I was, that I need to blog to engage with Facebook, to put myself out there, no matter how much I might hate being the focus, how much I still hate my body, how little confidence I have when everyone is looking at me and waiting for something. For what? Oh I got that bit. People, my people, my could be friends are looking up at me and I don’t like it. I was down there with you, but yesterday, playing on the streets, hooling the hoop, laughing in the lunch queue, swapping stories of how frickin awful the weather was on wash day, and how much we hate Mondays. I remember, deciding, I had to move back home. Now, let me be clear. I did not, and never will, elevate myself because of what I have achieved. What I have achieved, what any other person has achieved, tells me absolutely nothing about who they are, who I am. Are we good to our partner, kids, family? Are we kind, always, understanding, always? Are we able to forget self in moments of stricture and irritation. Are we? That is how we are, in truth.

I felt the cold today, the nudge of Autumn. I have a few jerseys (jumpers in American) and I required a more substantial one today. And that, jumper, jersey thing brings me to a point. As I write, a blog, or read other stories, or listen to them, I hear a word I thought I knew well being ‘wrongly’ presented. I check it out. The Brits have one way of spelling this word and omg the Americans have moved a whole consonant. My musical mind, the heretofore understood mathematics of language rising up in me like Mozart in a mood, fights this. It was spelled this way, for ever! But not now. Now we flex, those of us who will. We become equinoctial even when being that close to any change is, at best, a right pain in the mental arse, at worst, a tsunami.

I felt the chill today. Actually, that is pants. I felt it a wee while ago, but did the whole pretend thing, and amn’t I great at that! It isn’t that I don’t want the equinoctial change, I love it, but there is a difference when we get older. I think of all those who are terrified of the long winter months without support, without food. I have never been there, but I see it and, as I write from a place of stone-build, a fire burning and food in my fridge, choices even, my humble stumbles. If writing could change anything, I would write it. Even as I say that, I know that brave journalists, brave writers have done exactly that. I bow to them.

We allow ourselves to become so caught up in our own stuff. I do it myself. But, but, and but again, when I notice I am all caught up in the sludge of ME, and it sickens me enough to march up the stairs, to dress myself, to pull on my boots and to step out even though that judge inside my head is urging Rest, Don’t Bother, Stay Home, Do Nothing, I push through and it is a push. Once outside the door, I breathe in the cold, hear the Robin, see the rain, feel it, watch the bowing of roses in the wind. I get in my car and I go. I’m not sure where, but the where of where I was is not the where I want. I want to embrace a change, not as a watcher, but as an integral part. I want to be equinoctial.

I have no idea how to do this, have no plans, but I reckon, am sure, that there are gazillions of people who will be right there, clueless, like me, wanting change, scared stiff, stuck, fed up, lonely.

Hallo You.

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Island Blog – Thinksmith. She

Been thinking about thinking. We all have a gazillion thinks every day, but it’s the sorting of them that fascinates me, draws me in to the frickin web of itself. I can get stuck. Did you know that a spider web is the strongest of all ‘materials”? It can hold a floating astronaut, once duly bigged up, or so I read. So, these thinks, these random trollops (can I still pen that word?) invade a brain, invited or not, and, mostly so NOT. Howeversoever, they come from the moment we wake. The What To Do List is immediately available, the flat surface visible, and, in theory, doable. Doable? Is that a word now?

Back to Thinks. I wake with all of them and I watch them fly about my mind, then, on lifting into the morning light, into a new day. It’s noisy, the think party, yes, but as my body moves from the dream world, where everything is transient, falling, scary, I grab my huge man-jumper, a gift from an old and gone friend for whom I cooked and cleaned. sling it on and take my legs to the floor. Oh, pause on that. There are those, many thoses who can not do this, and never will. I take the stairs down for coffee, knowing there is warmth and power for the kettle. I flick on the fairy lights because it is so not dawn, yet, but the moon is owning the sky and she smiles me. Salut, Lady Moon. May you live long and prosper.

But, and there is always one of those, or, if not, it’s a bloody However. Another think. How else can a writer break from one statement to another, without a but or a however, or a coach or counsellor, or a friend who cares? We don’t talk right these days. We fire statements like rockets. We don’t invite and accept, on the streets of our lives. Now, I know I am an old island woman, so am not in the hub or hug of today’s thinks, but it seems to me that there is almost more fight for survival in the world of greed and success over others, than ever there was. And that thinks me more, even though I have no inside information on how the hellikins this world works now. Just this very day, I heard a young man tell me he no longer seeks money as his goal. Yes, he wants money for his own lifestyle but not for its own sake. He wants wealth in order to share it, to help someone else, to be random, to be wild with it. It thinked me good.

I can play with words, phrases, terminology, wordology, big thinks, random tiddleypom, the thinksmith, always, she.

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Island Blog – Wordage, Fun and Mischief

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

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

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

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

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

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Island Blog – We had it all

I write what is real, for me, and at the time of that reality, although I did hesitate before writing this one. Why is that? Because, when I consider who might be reading, it is only I in charge of continuity and yesterday’s blog was all about other people, other’s pain, otherness. So, it matters to me, still, what people think and that, I decide is a good thing, in balance. It takes a lifetime to find that balance. I know it. But this day has turned into many many hours of thoughts a-tumble, birthing many words, many thoughts and, if I am to ‘be real’ I must needs spew all that out when the edges of myself turn on me.

I woke early, about 4 am, thanks to a squeaking dog that wanted out. Pitch, out there, no street lights, no neon flash, nothing, like being inside a huge forest without a torch. A stumble ground. I knew it as soon as my eyes opened, as soon as I turned on the light and groaned at the unwelcome 4 am thing. I rose and smiled. I keep smiles all around the house, as many keep spectacles, pulled on my dressing gown and headed downstairs. I flicked on the kettle, made strong coffee, let out the dog. The wind was warm, bizarrely so for this time of year, pummelling up from the South, blustery, irritable, pushy. I breathed it in, caught bits of Southern stories, let the fist punches of wind ruffle my scalp, play curveball around my bare legs. I looked to the sky. Nothing. No moon, no stars, no light at all. Another day of this, I muttered, rain, punchwind and the sky locked down with clouds. Then I found another smile. They are, as I have already said, everywhere in my home, on tables, my desk, beside the door, inside pots, pans, dishes and drawers. They are my friends, and yours too, should you ever visit. I will never succumb to the blues, or not for more than a few minutes, occasionally a day.

The day drags on. I consider this, now dressed and ready for the dawn which is still hours away. I think of others still asleep this weekend, a Saturday lie-in, a different routine, time to play a bit, to family-up, maybe to wash the car or other exciting adventures that never get a chance Monday to Friday. To laze the morning, share late breakfast, read the papers at leisure, do everything at leisure. Shared stuff. I remember it. I also remember taking it all for granted, no question, no doubt. At times it drove me crazy, made me mad and stompy and sort of lost. I wanted to be on my own, longed for it and often. Now I have it and it isn’t as I hoped it would be. I am now CEO of my own company and the only person in this ‘company’ is me. There are no more opportunities for sharing, for the fight for independence within marriage, the spar and jar and tar throwing from one side of a shared road to the other. There is nobody there, nobody. Shall we play Scrabble? I ask the air. Or take a picnic to the Alpha Beta pier? Would you like tea? Oh, I think I’ll make jam tarts. Et Cetera.

Oh, it isn’t that I don’t have wonderful friends, children, family, neighbours and opportunities but at the weekend, they will coorie in to each other, inhabit their own homes and families, just as we did once. I can feel, at weekends, like the end of a joint of meat abandoned for the resident dog, the tough bit, the bit that is important in order to keep the whole juicy and moist, but useless at the meal. I stare out of my windows to a view that most would give anything to enjoy on a daily basis. I wave at the local weekend walkers, always in pairs or as family groups. I watch them laugh, move on. And here I sit, already 10 hours upright and find myself longing for the night to come. I have walked – slowly, slowly, s l o w e l y to fill in time. I have listened to the stories of the pine trees, the hazels as they sigh relief at a break from the punching gales. I see the beech leaves, sodden and mulched into the track and still copper sunlight beautiful. I stand awhile…….I stand awhile…. at the point where I can see the inlet and out to the skerry. I hear my children laughing, watch them cavort across the old stone pier, hear their shrieks of delight as they catch green-back crabs with bacon, a safety pin and a pole. I tend their scratches and bloodied knees, smell the seaweed, the salt, as the Atlantic swell pulls and punches ad infinitum, the spray cobwebbing our faces, gasping our breaths, making us laugh. I see the old boat, old Nina, the first, bobbing on her mooring. I remember.

Home now and the day is pulling t’wards night and I am glad of it. It is said that memories are everything. I incline my nod to that and then I challenge. Not everything, I say. We may get used to the not everything of things over time but we are never the same as we were when we ran in the sun, fought like cats, argued about silly things, took everything for granted and deluded ourselves into thinking that we wanted more than we had. We had it all, had we but known it.

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Island Blog – upper, Lower case

I love to mess with the way things ‘should’ be. Accordion to whom, is what I want to ask? Although I do recall, clearly, the easy hours of English Literature at A level, the rule book the size of a small country and berating my errors like a crowd of elders blocking any off roading. It isn’t that I don’t respect the construction of a good sentence. I absolutely do. In fact, I am the very first to throw a badly written book out the window. However, the essence of good writing is not a perfection of grammar. But, wait. This may not reflect my own truth. As a student of the language, of the best way to construct a sentence with noun and verb, avoiding adjectives, adverbs and other ads and coming into land on the line to say something remarkable, I appreciate that the only time anyone can play with a structure is when they know it very well. Perhaps this is why, when I read bad spelling in an official piece of writing, I cringe and throw. There is no excuse, these days with every help available online. Grammar check, spell check, information check, all is there. It is a case of not bothering and not bothering is, well, cringe and throw.

But, and this is key, the person who dreams about writing a book, essay, short story or children’s book, should never ever and ever again bother with whether or not they have a diploma in the complete labyrinth of English language, and it is. A labryinth. You can get lost in it for weeks and nobody is looking for you. You have to get up, dust off and keep going with your eyes crossed. and your brain a bucket of worms. It is important, nonetheless, to gain understanding of how language works and this is why. We have softened the borders of our language and let in some ghastlies. We have allowed in the complete change of a single word’s meaning, losing, on the way, a g or an h and this does matter, not necessarily to hold on to the old, onto what was, but just to know it was there, once, a part of the scaffold that lifted a writer higher. We, the Brits, are still celebrated world wide for our writing, our films, plays and tv series. We are strong with our understanding of our language, and its structure. And sometimes that confines us, especially if we did not do ‘well’ at English in school or have been ridiculed and mocked for our ‘wrong’ use of words in a sentence.

Bin all of that. We need writers and not just those who have gained degrees or diplomas and (often) done little with that stored knowledge. We need enthusiastic passionate writers who don’t even believe they are writers. The works, the classics, the honoured novelists, I revere and respect. But, people, these times are new. We are living in a conundrum (look that up!). An anomaly, a confusion, a splitting of the ways, a confoundment on boundaries and with a big hole in that wall which offers an opening into something new and scary. If you have that drive, do not die with your song still in you. Do not accommodate old rules, confinements, mockings or perceived prison bars. Fly. Do it. Write. The experiences each one of us have tucked under our belts over this past year are fuel for Talk, for Story, for Ideas that break boundaries of space, time and language.

Come on people. I know there are many out there and I will tell you why. We have so very much to say now. We have gone through loss, grief and struggle, pain, abandonment, sleepless nights, eating up, eating down, evasion, confusion, anxiety and identity crises. In the old days (I remember them) we knew who we were, where and when we met. We collided, avoided or we came together. We knew parameters and levels and the land on which we stood. We knew the way forward and the way back. This all came from the ‘elders’. They spoke and we believed, well, not me, but I went with it anyway because there was no other direction on offer. Now we are spinning like tops. Circling each other, unsure. And it is a writer’s perfect space. Use it. Talk about it, write about it. Let the pain rise and the sky fall. Let the anger out and watch it turn into rocket boosters. Let it out. ‘out’. because it if doesn’t ‘out’ we, as dynamically creative individuals, will just join the ranks of those with mental health issues who have gone beyond inspiration, inventive creativity and a Sunday dinner with pavlova instead of tinned custard; those who will bury this year of troubles and sink down into a permanent Lower case.

Just saying.

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Island Blog – Lift

Some days awaken me dark. I never know why nor when. All mornings are dark on the other side of window but on the inside there can always be light. It doesn’t seem to be up to me. My days are ordinary and samey. I do my chores, eat, sew, write, clean and wash. There is almost nothing in the diary beyond reminders to call someone or to write a thank you letter to all those who sent condolences to me and the kids.

On mornings when the dark permeates through my skin tissue to bury itself deep in my interior being, I just know that, day long, I will need to work hard; not at tasks but on myself. In fact, tasks can take a running jump on mornings such as these. I had one yesterday, closed down the phone, hid from passers by, and barely managed a stitch or a word. I didn’t speak out loud and my walk was a trudge.

What I know is that these days are random and could be lethal if I believed in them, if I thought, for just one minute, that this is IT. It isn’t. All I need to do is to open my eyes to the outside world, to see, to feel the enormity of eternity, of nature, of circles, of life living herself on, no matter what my piddling day is like. It isn’t easy, not for any of us. But, if I engage with the dark, I spend all day blind and I refuse to go that way. Just because I am a sexagenarian and counting, just because I am disillusioned, doubting, noticing aches and pains, feeling old and stupid and hasbeen does not mean it is all over. I may have found my way through a long and complex marital relationship with a less than uxorious husband; I may feel anger at thoughtless words and unkind acts of dominance, but I survived it did I not? Better, I am still dancing, albeit slowly nowadays. Inside my heart I am Winnie the Pooh, Piglet and Tigger, Owl and Kanga with a touch of Eeyore and Rabbit on dark days. And it is ok. It is all ok.

This morning woke me at 5 am, as usual, and I felt light and bright and ready for anything. This is how life is, at least for me. I sat with a strong black coffee and watched a tawny owl on the telegraph pole. I heard it mew and then shriek and fluff its magnificent feathers before silently flying away to rest. I considered the day before and the other such days. If I didn’t ever experience them, might I believe that life is always easy to live? I might. Thus, these dark days are of immense value because they teach me resilience, patience, humility and more. I know that my core strength grows with me and 67 years of core strength sounds pretty good. Instead of weakening, that power is still mine to wield and wield it I will. If all it does for me as I grind my way through the uncomfortable process of bereavement is to show me that, although I am a small ordinary woman, I have power, tremendous power, power I choose to use for the good of all of us. If I can lift from the bog of eternal stench with a chirrup and a good measure of Tigga then I can, perhaps, lift others up too. I can reassure, show the way out and up. I can tell them it is ok to feel dark. It will pass. It is, obviously, better to feel light and bright but that will pass too, and it is a mistake to expect the world or other people to keep that light shining for us. The key is to accept we can feel dreadful without dumping it on anyone else; without blaming someone else for it, as I have definitely been guilty of; without giving it any power at all.

And on dark days, I recommend looking out. If the dark is not getting our attention, it gets bored pretty damn quick.