Writing

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Island Blog – Shmoodleflampers

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

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

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

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

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Island Blog – All About Light and Laughter

There’s a thing about the old year heading into our past, what with Christmas excess and access just a week or so away. It dillies us. Many are considering big things, big changes, altered thinking, all of those tiddleypoms. I don’t mean to minimise the intent behind them, not at all, but it does wonder me because in my long experience of a gazillion changes in a long marriage, long life and an absolute whammy of inventive children, nothing big happens overnight. Not sustainably so. It thinks me. Do we imagine we can transform as happens in lovely but completely unbelievable films? I think we might. Because we have this deep longing to be who we aren’t, with all our mistakes, even as we may happily allow them in others, proffering encouragement and even support to bring them up and out of those clutching chains. So what holds us in brackets, a definite halt in a sentence, one which might have developed on and on with the odd comma? It wonders me, even though I flipping know every graphic on this hoodlum nonsense. It’s not grammar that holds us in chains, but people, awkward relations, expectations, fixations, and not one of those bring light, nor laughter.

I stood on heights today, affixing twinkly winkly lights as the afternoon took hold of a bright morning and brought in a shroud of cloud, a darkling rain. I growled. I did. It’s as if the old year hasn’t peed for months. I look up as I go fo fill my bird feeders, the goldfinches, blackbirds, dunnocks, sparrow, tits all cheeping and swinging like gymnasts on wires and through skinny branches, and I say, quite loudly, Well Damn You! There is, as you might imagine, no immediate response. The birds still fly, even as the wind buffets them awkward. It lights me and I laugh. I know that they can live without getting their knickers in a knot, because they work with what meets them each morning. I want to live that way. I do live that way. I didn’t always, not with all the youngstress of kids and work and business and what-the-hell- is-happening thing.

But what I did know was that I was always going to be about light and laughter. It was a choice. I had seen too many others go into the dark. I knew about the dark, of course I did but when I met it or it met me, I pulled back eventually, recoiled. You are not for me. You have no power over me. My favourite people? Those who have found the light, through endless searches, looking for help, guiding lights, those who were broken and who decided to rebuild from, sometimes, nothing. I look at them and it definitely thinks me because I have everything, I have enough, I have it all, and there’s a new year coming after the gorgeous Christmas hooha, a new chance to be who I am with light and laughter, for anyone to be who they are with confidence and the right to write their own name across 2026 with a big fucking pen.

With light and laughter, of course.

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Island Blog – A Fellow Human Being

I profess to being absolutely disinterested in any written rants, particularly on social media, although in my day I would have said by letter. I am almost as disinterested when standing a few feet away from a verbal rant. Now why is this? I have many thinks, but the one that sticks up like a pole in the desert is that this ranty person wasn’t listened to in childhood and the subsequent frustrational decades have taken root, like a tumour. Only one person can heal that deep wound.

A rant is a speech, really, and it goes on until the end. The ranter is fixed in his or her opinion, no matter any reasoning voice traversing the few feet. There is no solution, no turning, but only escalation if rebutted or at the suggestion of any level of understanding. It’s basically Don’t Bother. However, being completely in love with all people, I cannot just redact nor dismiss what someone is obviously in a right stooshie about. Conversational tactics are learned, usually as a result of noticing, observing through a singular and silent thought process. As I wander around the world, sorry, Island, reading books, hearing real life stories and really hearing them, eventually returning to the gentle tick tick of my wood burner munching old trees and the bashing crash of yet another night of an angry wind, I carry the arias of questions like a swirl of songbirds in my mind. (Way too long a sentence). I do wonder about my mind because it never rests, not even at night. It never did, so chances are we are stuck with each other at this late stage. I can wake amidships of the darkness, tossed and turned in some bajonkers seacrowd of sky-wipeout waves with a thought, an Aha, as if something wonderful happened whilst I sort of slept and I must needs grab my goonie and spiral down the stairs into the glorious pitch dark only wild places enjoy, and write it down. When dawn finally manages to push up the night, the heavyweight that she is, I read what I wrote and laugh out loud. It makes no sense at all and here’s why. This mind of mine, this extraordinary muscle, if that is what it is, has already moved on to another sphere and that means I got left behind. I remember this feeling as a young girl. A very high IQ is not necessarily helpful in life because unless it is gentled and respected and very carefully cared for, some ambitious parent will start pushing. Moving on……

I did digress there, I know. Back to where I began. Understanding people with different views to my own, with opinions and agonies and childhood wounds when in the shape of an adult is never easy. We like, we don’t like. We love, we hate. We want to be with this one but would run miles to avoid that one. Division. Exclusion. Judgement. Don’t like any of those. Saying Hallo and being open without bias, without sussing someone out from the way they present, isn’t easy. Our culture nowadays is so invasively critical, so knowledgeable on body language, on verbal dynamics, on fear and suspicion, thus not honest with ourselves, that we come to any new meet dressed in Kevlar.

I know we are fortunate here, despite the endless gales, because life is real. Rural places all over the two countries know what I mean. We learn to live with each other, even though, yes, we may tattle and maybe rant a bit, but so does any living creature who resides in a collective. Sparrows are a great example. If we want the end of war, we need to live that way. We know it even as we expect not to have to pay it forward ourselves. It takes one, two, consistently refusing to unfriend, to be open, welcoming in the spite of rejection, over and over and over again, listening to the angry, the ranters, those who are pinned to the wall of pain, just sharing time, gifting it, not as a fixer but as a fellow faltering human.

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Island Blog – Fly Now and Thank you

Just before the possibility of a power outage, I will write of today, the funeral of my very first friend here on the island, she who seemed always calm, always positive, mischief in her eyes, her welcome absolute. It’s very wild here, very wild, with sideslash rain and a torment in the air, all clouds blown into a flat grey nothing. The gusts are blowovers, unless, like me you have a lot of attitude.

I set off early, unsure what to wear. On ordinary funeral days, it’s not so hard. Something waterproof, yes, always that, but beneath something clean, jeans or warm leggings because nobody politely dies in Summer, the rest never sees the light of day anyway, a scarf perhaps. But this one was a challenge because this beautiful lady, and I use the word knowing its full meaning, lived her life on a flipping hilltop high and on the determined jut of land which sticks, full upper thrust, into the wild Atlantic. I chose layers, tried to do the matching thing that she and I so often laughed about, and managed a few greens. I remember so many meetings together, when she lived in the castle and then when she moved to her own place/s, when we would talk in a more honest way than I had ever known before. If you had looked at us, you would have been right to see her as the queen and I as the court jester. We made a grand pair. Where she was gracious, hardly swore, I met her with a load of swearing and attitude and rebellion and, I can see her face light up, her eyes sparkle, her smile wide as honesty when we met as true life companions. I loved who she was and she loved who I was. Her husband, Phillipe talked about how she loved rebels, was one in her own heart, but chose to show herself as not-one, even though, having heard of her feminist passions and activities over her years, I do wonder how she managed to keep that control. However, having listened to the poignant words from her children, her grandchildren, I believe that she did reveal her wild heart to them, and. that is a powerful legacy which they all acknowledged.

We left the castle with her coffin affixed to a sheep trailer pulled by a quad. The pipers, already drenched stood in place. We walked into the battering rain, following, followers of her. Umbrellas blew inside out, walking was threatened and. the puddle I had parked in an hour before had become a lake, the mud. slidey and defo collapso. I didn’t go to see her put in the ground. I don’t need that. I didn’t stay for the wake, the stories and the drinks. I just wanted to be alone with my rememberings of the most beautiful of women, the strongest, the survivor, the one who came from privelege and who stood strong against any challenge; the one who chose this island and loved it and all its people with all her heart, who welcomed everyone, no matter who, who paused before issues, thought a bit and then presented opportunity and the invite for conversation; the one who gave someone a chance, who suggested something new, who just made things happen, dealt with the consequences as if she knew they were coming, even if she didn’t; the one who would say ‘It will be fine. It always is.’

Rest now Janet Nelson Rigal. Trust me, you did a bloody good job. You taught your young and they will teach theirs and so it goes on, and not just them but me too. Remember that book you gave me, the ways you saw me, the rebel, as someone of value? I won’t ever forget those gifts, the times we laughed over coffee, wine, lunch, so so many times. Your beautiful. face, even at 80 something, stuck in my head. Fly now with the wild. And, thank you.

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Island Blog – To Disturb Gravity

There’s still a hooligan outside which is a damn sight better than one inside. At Tapselteerie one was the other but making different sounds. Outside it was all crashes and bangs and thumps, whumps and with a refusal to own up to any of them, whereas inside the whistles and toots, the rattles and shakes seemed quite happy to locate themselves. Many newspapers gave their lives for a gap filling, holes in the walls, gaps in the window panes, cavernous splits in outer doors, the underneath of which had never touched ground for decades. Rain found its way in, under, through and over. Even my children were damp of a morning, wondering, as they did, if they had wet the bed. Even I wondered that.

Nowadays, as the hooligan refuses to let go of it’s fury, my home is better protected, even though it is as old as Tapselteerie. Yes, there is the odd leak, and it isn’t wise to open a wind facing door to greet the exhausted postie unless I close it smartly behind me. The ferry didn’t run so. he had to wait for the possible next one, which wasn’t possible, thus demanding another two hour wait. Hey ho, island life. The disturbing of gravity is quite the thing up here. Lord knows what it must be like further north. Today I returned 8 wheelies to their upstandment, wheeched over and obviously nauseous judging from the mouthal eruptions littering the track. Interesting, nonetheless to see the food choices and waste of others. A load of plastic wrapped somethings, dog poo bags and a ton of wine bottles. Moving on.

Disturbing gravity, according to my ancient Thesaurus, refers to ‘being ridiculous’. I immediately jumped on that one as a brilliant interpretation. It thinks me, as I was talking just this lovely morning with a very dear friend about the importance of fun, of being, I suppose, ridiculous. We take too much seriously, especially ourselves when all we really want is to have fun. And it is entirely possible. In me it is natural. I can be in the most ‘serious’ situation, with everyone being ‘serious’ all I want to do is to play the fool because I can see the ridiculous. Not to hurt anyone, of course, but just to remind these wonderful doing-their-best humans that it is so much easier to let go of pretence and to be honest and thus, individual. I remember this in my younger days, but, like most, keen to be accepted as one-of-the Ones, I spent hours dressing myself up as someone who would fit. In short, it was not good enough to be who I was.

Now, over 70 I will be who I am and give diddly squat about trying to be someone else. However, I do acknowledge the young now, the ones still stiffing themselves into the wrong clothing, employing an almost alien language, a new shape, just to fit in. I. look, hopefully, towards the wise parents who probably suffered those restrictive chains themselves and who will now look carefully at the young of our future and get to understand them, to listen and to learn and to ask them the questions most of us have never been asked.

Who do you want to be?

What would you like your life to look like?

And then, and then, to sit and listen.

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Island Blog – The Fly, the Mouse, the Rat and School the Next Day

An eclectic combo, I’ll give you that. They all arrived today, slotting neatly into my log. I should, perhaps, give some background. It begins with the mouse. For decades I have dealt with mice indoors, scrabbling through the scuts of plaster behind the walls, making innapropriate homesteads in my halloween of a loft, helping themselves to lagging, which no respectful neighbour would ever consider, and diddling through and over my frypan cupboard. The last is unacceptable. However, I am no killer and that’s the tricky bit, but there is also in me a refusal against invasion. I have seen myself, in my wild pioneer dream, as a woman who would stand against invaders. They weren’t mice, of course, but big fighty men with bludgeons, no compassion and with a determination to take over the homestead, one fixed lightly down in a rickety space where wolves and bears, snakes and marauders were as regular as clockwork and the neighbours 20 miles away on horseback.

There was a housefly, no, two, on my window, and they aren’t the only ones to get stuck against glass, banging themselves into failure and refusing to be caught and freed. It’s late for them, so they are slow, but a slow fly is not slow at all. the gymnastics are impressive. I know they will die out there in the torrent of cold rain, the freeze of the night, but, if I can, I will ding about with a tea towel, catch them soft and let them go. Not so the mice. Oh, I have done, in the past, long past, humane traps and they are a laugh because unless you take the sweating and terrified mouse at least 3 miles away from your home, their home, they just return. Poison is not an option, although I tried it once when the mouse invasion was so alarming as to be overwhelming, and the way it takes them is slow and horrific. So, I set a trap in my frypan cupboard.

The first morning, I can barely look. It takes hours before I can brace my pioneer self, she who has seen dead everything, including humans in this wild place, and check. Clean, gone. I am no killer but and but again. This is my space, not yours. The next check was a little easier, the one after, ok and now it is normal. I am not immune to it, to finding a life gone, but I am easier in my skin. It will go on because they are hungry and it is winter beginnings. And I know this place. I know that creatures will come in to the warmth. I remember it when we lived wilder, on Tapselteerie, when it was normal for me, for my kids, to welcome in the coldings. We couldn’t save them, but we gave food and warmth for a while. We didn’t have rats in the house, and. I am thankful, but they were in the byre and the barns. I have only met one once and its confidence terrified me.

I was staying overnight with a schoolfriend on her parents farm. I was under 12 and not a good guest in that I had no experience of country life at that point and had yet to connect with the wild in me. In short, I was scared of it all, the confidence of my friend, the way she swung from ropes in the barn, danced among the pigs, marched confidently into a map of cows, pushing at their flanks when they growled at her, shouting words and laughter. I was put to bed in a cold room with damp sheets and the dark was immediate when the light was turned off, although I had my wee torch. I lay there, tried to sleep and it took ages. I felt something heavy move over my feet, jerked up awake, flicked on my torch and the movement stopped. Two bright eyes clocked mine. A big rat looked at me from the end of my bed, I felt it’s weight on my feet. A second, and it was gone. I yelled. People say they scream, but they don’t. They yell. Someone adult came. I wan’t to go home, I sobbed. Insisted, despite reassurances that the rat had gone. My dad came. We drove the miles home. It was almost morning. I was never asked about my trauma, only told, in a kindly way, that I was over reacting.

School on Monday was interesting.

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Island Blog – Bend or Break

I’m watching my candles, the flames going sideways, even in a triple-glazed home, for which I am so very thankful. At Tapselteerie there was more winter and wind inside that huge house than was absolutely necessary. We felt that wind shooting up our pyjama bottoms, even under six duvets, and outside, well, the outside would try to strip the skin of us, as it did the tiles, roofs, guttering, even uplifting trees, flagstones, sheds and more. I am thankful I don’t live there any more, even as I love it, the estate, with my heart in agreement because of all the memories. My time there was. then, and I was the right woman to live with those situations. I was bendy, like a candle flame, still burning, like a tree dancing in a gale and still able to survive the demands of that dance floor, no falling.

It thinks me. How bendy we are, or aren’t. If life is easy, there is no learning, no chance to discover what we can survive. Actually I don’t like that word. It is over-used and it still isn’t enough in the celebration of those who actually made use of the thing they moved through in a proactive decision to make a change, to live better. If someone has met a horror and who has got through it, yes, as best they could, battling through the explosion of it, and who has then, once the shock reaction has been made into a new road ahead, has stepped out, stronger and wiser. It might be ‘I’m not going through this again.’ It might be ‘I will have to go through this again, but next time I will respond as a different person because you can’t stand in the same river twice.’ The waters move on, the days, weeks, months move on. I have moved on.

When storms come, without or within, they are mostly a shock, a gasp, but we learn, those of us who want to, the whos of us who refuse to be defined, declined; the ones who just know they can difference a situation next time, whether through attitude, if no structural nor physical change is possible, or through the invitation of change. It doesn’t matter which. Either is power. I live with this as a strength, a personal strength. Everyone has angst, problems, issues, troubles, border flops in certain conditions and with certain others, in lifestyles gone into big question marks, in work choices, in bloody everything. Either we bend, or we break. That’s it, pretty much.

I know about this. Perhaps it’s an olding thing, a curveball thrown at the break, the angst, the La La of the whatever of whatever. It comes back to me, and it could, if it would, fix me in chains I will not accept. I will bend, not break. There is no ageing in living beyond the year count. There is only the choice to frick it all and to learn, and to choose again.

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Island Blog – The Twirligation

We have one now, well, not just us, but all other Everyones who are currently trying to stand upright whilst refilling a water can, or on a walk to the village pub or just to maintain some modicum of dignified taking of the few steps to and from the car, holding on to bloody anything fixed firmly to the ground. Not that being firmly fixed means much, not after Amy, when hundreds of ancient trees fell politely to the ground, killing nobody. I always wondered about this politely falling thing. I have known it for over 40 decades and it still trues itself. Trees fall respectfully, politely, and kill nobody, huge ancients with girths I could never wrap around, 200 years old, old friends which supported bird nests, held whispered secrets in their inner core, absorbed insults, the derilection of duty overheard, and the magic, the imagination swifting from spoken to hopeful whispers late into the absolute dark of an island night.

I have candles, am ready for blackout as the gustpunches elevate and will continue overnight. I know that power (so called) will drop like a bomb. I have what I need. Neighbours, a community, candles, a range to warm food, gas to boil a kettle, a woodburner and wood. Nonetheless, I confess, even after all these years, the gales afear me, a bit, no matter my ready to twirl mentality. It is fierce black out there, no lamplights, no false lights at all and there’ll be nae stars tonight. But, you know what, and just let me get the know what thing for myself before I continue……I have been called out into the darkest of the dark nights, all Twiddlesticks and Fallover to find an ewe struggling to deliver, with torches and clever hands, to the outer edges of Tapselteerie when a canoeist was missing, when the dark was twirly and confusing, the rain all focus and drenching, the night an endless black.

Not any more, although my body memory remembers all of it. So, when gales, hooligans, barrel in like a takeover, you might forgive me for an overreaction because such of this, or these, take me back to being out there, out there in the wild, in the dead of night, half asleep on the back of a quad, bumping into darkness, over trackspit, my face rearranged by the gale, to help deliver a calf, the mother to be a growling, twizzlestick of fury. We could hardly see each other, no stars, just another bloody shut down gale. She was black as soot. Follow her eyes, he said, and moved in. I stuck to the quad, knew he needed help, fuck………legs jelly, follow instructions, I told myself. It was almost morning on a frissball February night and right on the edge of the world. I could hear the thrash of waves, the wild of the night. Something moved me. I know me. I will always answer the call, no. matter the fear. The mother was grinding, growling, fighting, but he moved on. She would not lay down, the wrong hooves showing through her, the wrong birthing. I watched her growl, turn, eyeball him, he a minuscule in her eyes, so huge and ferocious was she. I watched her allow, I saw it, and finally I moved from the quad. The cow sank to the ground and in moments he clocked one front hoof, one back, no good, and gently pushed back, pulled forward and delivered. Immediately the mother grunted, turned, licked the babe into life. It was hailing, big ping pong balls, so cold. As he rose to leave the cow turned, rose and bumped him. He almost fell, but didn’t. She didn’t want that.

You want to. drive? I asked. No, he said, you go. and I did.

So, a gale means something, and a very big something else to others.

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Island Blog – Shambles

Rhymes with brambles. They’re all gone now, obviously, blackbirds, robins, mice, people, sharp still. You don’t mess with brambles, not here. Sheep can die in the twist-hold of brambles, thorn sharp and clutching. However this is not about brambles. The rhyming thing just a rhyming thing, even as it thinks me about life, about lives, because a bramble sharp and clutch can hesitate, at best, a life. Or, it could lead to shambles, chaos, confusion, as if a dense wood just marched around a person, those huge darkening trees, stealing all the light, predatory.

I know this place well, although the darkening trees change. It’s still dark and the consistent thing is me, alone, cold, lost in the forest. Been there, seen the nowhere, got caught in the brambles but I am no sheep, and that’s the change in this, the invitation to freedom. Me. You. In the dark, it is compelling, stay here, stay here. You can’t see anything. It’s so very capsulate, almost safe. We need light, even unlight, any light. And what we need is recognition from someone we respect. that may sound frivolous, as it did in my young days when no man would/could ever say more than Well Done with a shoulder slap, moving on quickquick in case he was questioned. They needed it, and we thought we needed it. However, in the we, the we of the long ago, when men took liberties most of us will never talk about, it felt like we had to be ok with the falsehood. But now, in this open age, when what I accepted through fear is no longer acceptable, I, who allowed am still looking for a someone who just gets me, who recognises what I have done, who I am with no skimming, no polite flapping of hands, but someone who says something that makes me stop dead. Someone saw me today. Someone recognised my talent. Someone who really knows, beyond my mum, my sister, my friend, not that I dismiss them, not at all, but this is a Someone in my climb out of the brambles, who smiles at my courage and bravery, who recognises my talent, my gift, my light, and that stops me. Not stuck in the thorns now, not confined but fired up, strong, actually believing in myself.

Just a few words of recognition that really land. Now, there’s a power.

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Island Blog – A Winter and the Unlight

It wasn’t at first, this morning, raining I mean. In fact it was light and brightish, although not the bright of summer. the sky an upload of smurr and cloud blobs looking depressed, buildings braced somehow on hilltops already a slipstick, for me anyway, the grass an already skid. The track potholes, recently filled with nasty grey sharps set the labradors a-shimmie as they navigated safe passage around them to avoid cut pads. We crunch on in protective boots, talking, checking the labs, looking out, looking up. This dimlight of winter, when skies proffer less, we humans miss the light of light. Although many talk of hibernation, we are not hedgehogs. Light is precious, not just a bit of it, but all of it and the intensity matters. It thinks me.

The thing about a lack of light, the rightlight over time, is that we don’t notice the happening of it. One morning, let’s say, we suddenly notice wrinkles, or sunken cheeks, and we astound. What on earth is this me looking back at me, she who for many months looked just fine? Winter is a baring. Winter isn’t the whole truth so don’t believe that. I, without makeup am a lizard right now, a cave dweller. It will pass. Ok, so that given, what do we do with the now of now? As the cold or the rain or both attempt to pound us into sludge creatures, we have a choice. We always do. And, by the way, anyone who says they don’t care about how they look in winter is lying.

I went out today to a Community Orchard Advent Thing. It was marvellous, everyone dressed, not for the Arctic, but for the Wet. Stalls proffering ideas and help on how to make natural decorations, pans frying bacon and sausage for rolls, hot punch provided, so many inventive ideas. I stayed a while, as many more arrived. Community brings a light to the unlight, and it matters. I forget how I look. Turning up, showing up is what matters and, as I left, passing others walking or driving in, umbrellas, waterproofs, it thought me this. Who gives a shit how I look? Answer? Nobody, because I came, and so did all the others living in the Unlight. That’s the way to navigate Winter.