Writing

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Island Blog – I Love This

When my life get’s tricky, bad news, no news, the lonely, the what now, the what if of it all, the olding with all its tired and broken bits, the hurtings, the way my fingers gnarl and bend without my permission, I think this thing and get that think to roll through me, to take over from toes up until it lifts my mouth into a real smile, one which reaches my eyes……..

I love my home, black coffee, red wine and a wave from a passing stranger. I love the sound of giggles from a child, the feel of a dog’s wet nose against my fingers. I love sudden encounters, shared smiles, the warm voice of a friend telling me without words that I can do this living on thing. I love the birds at my feeders, the finches, gold, green, ‘common’ not in the way I learned that word from my old ma……’common’ was basically ‘trash’…….the sparrows, blackbirds, starlings, robins, the way they fly in, watching for skyborn attack, dense aflutter, then scattering, grabbing a morsel and gone into the wind. I love that when I need help I can ask for it and not feel needy. I love tweaking my geraniums, the warmth underfoot of my heated sunroom. I love doorways and windows, my faithful car, my work, my gift of writing, my ancestors, seamen and women, out here in the wilding islands, the way they handed down such inner strength to me.

I love noisy pubs, scampi and chips, Atlantic salt on my face, the bite of winter and my ability to light a good fire. I love to welcome. I love cosy. I love sharing. I love gaps in conversation, the wait, the light and the chance in that wait. I love random smiles in unexpected places. I love boots that lace well, soles that grip. I love the West Coasters, the Island folk for their humour, their strength, their ability to turn any talk of trouble into opportunity and then take action. I love my laptop, the way she works with me, the lightness of her body, the way she can go quiet for two days when I fly to Africa and never give me grief. I love my children and theirs even if I only see them now and again. I love my sisters, my brother, my memories, my lifestory.

Then, as I turn back to the tricky, which has visibly diminished, I say (and I do out loud) I say, Hey, I see you.

I also see this.

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Island Blog – Getting the Jump

Back from a busy work day, and I put on tunes, feed the birds, watch their flitter flow, the incoming of friendly. I check the something arrivals, boxes in my garage, stuff for me, for my kids who now own the houses we built, and there’s a big something in that. It was what we built, the me and the him, way back, and we sold, we had to. They decided to pull it back to the family. Even if none of them live here, even if I don’t like buy to let, somehow it feels ok because these ‘kids’ grew up here, played here, pissed everyone off here, built here and damaged here, knew it like blood. All the fun here, the wild crazy nights filled with music and fire and dreams and plans. So many youngsters came, so very many. I would come down for coffee and find a gazillion strangers stretched over dog beds, window seats, over carpeted floors, in doorways. Fuzzled, rising, discombobulated, apologetic, looking like shit, they appeared and. I was there, frying bacon,sausages, more, welcoming. They weren’t my babies, but they were that morning, and they so needed a mama without judgement. I was she, I know I was.

I remember them. They have lifted, morphed into whatever shape they chose, or didn’t. At times I see their faces. There were so very many over the ‘kid’ years, over the sealife years, so many. And I know they remember, because me and him proffered a welcome, loved a party, celebrated young people who had no idea when they’d get the jump on the old ploughed furrows or shift and squift a jinx to the left or right of parental restricts.

I honour you all, you brilliant men and women, and I thank you for the best fun days and nights.

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Island Blog – Sleeping with Myself

And Living.

In my head, there are people I want to save. I cannot. For those in my family, immediate or a bit out there. I still care. If they suffer, I feel it. But I am impotent in the streams and reams of their lives, the high rise troubles, the ways they will work their way towards a sorting of sorts. Mostly, all I can do is to send messages of support (god I hate that word). There are many words I hate now I know about ‘support’ about ‘caring’ about the nascence of new words to describe old things, and about the okay of this splendorous birthing, on paper, in the mouths of deliverers. I know it follows a remit, a new presentation, but it laughs me now. So very trite, and so not enough, and it has followers. They’re all over Facebook and all the other social mediacs, up and down lifters.

Where are we on all this?

I’ll tell you where I am. On the ground, in the grit, watching the sparrows feed, watching the fliptalk of clouds bashing, the tide high as a sassy woman rising to speak, or sing in a bar, when she hasn’t been invited, the night coming, the wind feisty as a loud 2 year old and no taxis home. That’s me on the outside. Inside I hold my family in my gut, my whole body. I can feel them in my limbs, my fingers, my toes, my everywhere. You have pain, you are waiting, you are shrunk, closed, lifting, falling.

I sleep alone, but I don’t. My bed is my own, warm, safe, mine. And in the soft and gloriously uninterrupted dark of the night, in they come. My beloveds. They wake me. I can hear curlews, oystercatchers, always up too late, or too early. I turn for the light. There’s none. I turn back to the recognition of ‘not enough sleep’. and then I think this……you came to me in this moment, woke me and I thank you for that. Let’s meet here. Of course, it’s only me, but maybe not, maybe we just connected, you in your awful pain and me opening that door on connection.

Maybe.

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Island Blog – The Dancing

They used to say that here, way back in the day, as a question. ‘Are you going to the dancing?’ possibly without a ‘g’ at the end. There were many dances here, fiddles playing, easily once a month and just for the fun of it. When I think about those times, no television, no mobiles nor computers and when Wifi meant the wife, the food provider and the marching ferocious woman storming the pub, intent on the removal of her husband. I saw it often, laughed as he, the Big Provider was dragged out and pushed into the fishbox at the arse of a tractor, whilst she, the Wifi, carted him home for a dry out, till the next time he managed to escape. And he would, and did, many many times over, always with the same result. I recall one evening in the pub when someone came in saying, She’s on her way and I watched him falter, this Big Provider. Never underestimate a determinedly powerful woman. Those days are gone, as have all those spicy, fun, naughty, brilliant characters and we have no regular dances these days because the whole frickin world has chosen to stay home, to watch screens, to scroll nonsense, and, worse, to believe it’s all true. To feel ok about not interacting with other humans. There’s no longevity in that state. Evidence proves that, the escalation of mental troubles and so on and so on.

To the dance. We don’t have them here as we once did. I’ve already said that, so I think wide, not forward, not back, but wide. If we were taught, really taught to think wide, I believe we would evolve from this cocoon state, one which our teens are thinking means ‘butterfly’ at the end, but which means nothing of the sort, into a determined breakout. Punch the walls. Don’t accept the dark. You know who and how you want to be, but you/we all have been duped. The way forward is community, other people, a conjoining in something, anything, because, and this is fact, AI can be very helpful, but it has no heart, no mind, no touch, no cuddles, isn’t there when you slip in the rain, can’t help you lift wood in for the fire, won’t hold you when you cry, make tea for you, sit with you in the dark hours when you cannot sleep and which will reach out, a genuine care in its eyes, and say ‘I am here for you.’

Nor can it partner you in a tango. Just saying.

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Island Blog – Look like Ballet

Another busy week in the Best Cafe Ever, and it isn’t just me who says this. In between the days, family stuff, although ‘stuff’ is the wrong word come to think of it. In other’s lives, there are happenings, not great ones, in fact not great at all, but wait. See that ‘wait’ word? Always bugged me. What is immediate and all consuming spirals a mind, every time. The encouragement to wait is, from my experience, very Buddha, and I like it, just don’t always know how to buy into it. The urge to run, to travel, to support, is strong, very strong. But……wait. It thinks me. As I’m faffing about with thinks, all blind in the clouds of it all, I do get it. There is a time to go and a time to not go, although not going sits like a burr under my arse. Ah, bless the olding times. We seem to get better at knee jerk, even if we can knee jerk like the best when required. So I feed the birds, tend the plants, scoot off to to the Washeroo and work, notice my thinks, notice how my team mates are dealing with their own lives, retain a strong hold on the present whilst sending prayers and great visuals to those who can do with them, big time.

I am open, wide open, and I know it. It has taken many decades to arrive at this point. I believe in equality, in inclusivity, in compassion, kindness, friendship, in action. And the last is important to me. It is wonderful to spout the prior beliefs, but without action, they’re just pointless words. Would I stand against injustice, my voice clear? Would I move forward, or against, something or someone who didn’t? Do I remember old Sally’s needs as she pines for her long dead husband, her dog, her cat, her rabbit? Am I so busy with my own agenda that it’s as if these ‘poor’ people are as of nothing? Or have I trained my mind to be aware, way beyond my own thixotropic ‘stuff’? As I notice something that bothers me, in any situation, do I shake my head and continue my dash for last minute food and the bus, or the train, or the whatever that consumes my thinking? Do I?

Back home from work and a pecan coriander pesto to make. A shower to be had. A list for tomorrow to be made. A twisty cloud sky to watch. From full moon, the half moon is sudden. In the full, there is turbulence, big winds, huge tides, a load of show-off in my opinion, not to mention all those who get no sleep while this showing off is going on. Talking to my African son, suddenly, and jerkily, a red deer hind and her very young calf walked by my window, all unsure, alert, their skins healthy and their legs long and strong. They looked at me, I looked at them. Go safe you beauties. Go safe. You look like ballet.

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Island Blog – Lucky

What is Luck, beyond being a word oft wrongly understood? In my ancient thesaurus, the word has many and diverse meanings. These days I meet those who consider ‘luck’ to be a chance happenstance, a random beneficence and they have reason to fix on that belief. However, in my study of words and wordage, I discover more. ‘Luck’ can mean opportunity, a new chance to shift something, to make it anew. Well, not anew, because there’s nought new in this world apparently, although I disagree with that too. What the writer meant was that all humans are humans, after all and after all, as if we are all either robots or born from the same womb.

So, when I say I feel lucky, I can just hear the triproad of rocks in my path with all this analytical tiddleypom, all rising into mountains only they can see. My through road is clear. I feel lucky. I can see. I can freely walk around a rip-tidal Atlantic coastline any time I want. I can smell the sea, watch her stories rush in, pull out, rush in again, and I catch some of them. I can see a hover of gulls, hear their screeching, watch the lift and luff of their agile wings. I can taste the clean rain on my tongue, feel its healing on my skin. I can walk. I have wonderful caring friends. None of my children died, nor theirs. I can buy the food I want to buy. I can travel. I live in my own home with a view (I will never say ‘to die for’) that others envy. I live in a warm encompassing community. I belong. I have shoes and boots, warm clothing, a comfortable home. I am not belittled, marginalised, racially attacked, afraid of any walk on the streets. I have not lost my voice.

So many right now have none of this. It disgusts me.

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Island Blog – The Longtime

The rain is so loud I can’t hear Mark Knopfler. I have to turn him up and it takes me out of my chair, my finger pointy. I want to hear the lyrics. The rain challenges me. It thinks me. Well, actually it doesn’t. I’ve had a lifetime on the island meeting those two. The weather and me. The dynamic I know so well. Nature, storms, heavy rains, wild days and nights, so very many, the irritations, at first, then the fears. My husband heading out into the thing I want to silence and deaden, my boys too. Now, with a husband gone and my boys wise, seasoned and knowlegeable seamen, never sure about any sea nor ocean, and so far, securious, I can find some peace, althought a mother never does that well.

Everything is waggling, the overgrowth at this time of year, and I watch it. The louring sky is dank, empty, wondering what to do next. Sky white paused me coming back from a busy work day at the best cafe ever. So many lunches, bit voices, gentle askings, queues building, the Washeroo going like a dingbat, whatever that is. I was behind a learner driver coming home, wipers on speed. I clocked this and held back. I thought about the learner, and on these roads and at this time of year when most (it seems to me) tourists don’t reverse for whatever reasons. Here, just let me say, most single tracks follow the sheep tracks, and that’s flipping obvious. There are rocks and troubled grounds, bog and spill off. So, we, the islanders know this. Visitors don’t, and how would they? It can still piss me off, not that I’m proud of that. You head for a corner, one of 4, and you just know it’s clearthrough on island days. Not now. The reverse manoeuvre feels like a snake recoiling, and in this rain, unclear. I do it a few times as an oncoming vehicle stops dead and flicks on emergency lights. Oh dear.

I do care, I really do.

I also welcome winter. And that thinks me again (god help my thinks) Because and what Because? The time to rest, the pause of voices, requests, little roads with everyone pulling in because we know, the settle, the unwind, the emptiness, the wildness wide open, the longtime.

I love the longtime. I hate the longtime. T’is how it is.

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Island Blog – Just a Belief Away

You know that thing, when some thing happens about which you feel you can do no thing? The ordinary path, walked each day, a surety underfoot, possibly a foolish surety, suddenly twists into a knot you can’t undo and you’re down there looking up at the frickin hooha of it, with only the sky as guidance and in the wrong boots for a tricky climb. It can appear as if the world has got herself into that now because this situation (a peelywally name for it) means I can’t see beyond the knot. It’s huge and a definite halt in the skinny path, a blocking out of light, an earthly gasp.

Then, as hours go slowly by, each day like a foot-dragging teenager who doesn’t want to return to school, each night a tumble of sheets, the unwelcome dreams flensing skin, infecting thoughts which, so they tell me, just want a rest from this whole thinking thing, a little hope pirouettes in. Then a little more. Never have hours felt so bloody minded. They trudge like prisoners in chains, exhausted. I watch the raindrops, listen to the soft wind, walk through it, bat away sluggish flies, see the windburn on our trees, smell Autumn and there’s a welcome in this place and a lift. Autumn is here, a bit early, yes, but here nonetheless. The swing between that knot and the open sky proffering a higher view uplifts me, even if I am well stuck on the ground of it all.

I know all the platitudes. In my opinion, the lot of them should be removed from every voice. When disaster slam-dunks a person, any platitude, bar none, is offensive, and why? because the one who delivers has not taken time to think before speaking. Just saying.

So, although we are in the thicktwist of the thing, there is always the power of choice, and choice is a power. to decide to focus on hope, on a positive outcome, to visualise it, every damn minute. All a choice. I have met too many sinking souls who decide to sink. No matter the matter, no old creed residing, no matter the odds, nor the ends, Hope, God bless her, is just a belief away. Always.

And she is mine.

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Island Blog – When a Big Thing and the Oldish

Happens, in a family, suddenly, all are thrown into outer space. For a bit. It’s a few days in, now. And all of us are coming back down, thanking the whoevers for parachutes…..and they were there. It all suddened me, although I was on the outside of it all, as in not right there, but the shock waves on, way on, and not just throwing me into a right spin, but all of us, many of us, and we are many.

Once we land back down into the ordinary of our own lives, all we can do is think, wonder, pray, hope, and keep getting up, getting dressed, emptying the bins, cooking something for supper, make soup, walk the dog, clean the bathroom, that sort of ordinary, as we imagine, pushing unhelpful thoughts away.

In the trying to sort out some sort of regulation in our thoughts, which, by the way, still haven’t landed, we can founder on the rocks of the thing. It is a strange time. I know that I come back downstairs and then realise I am unclothed, not that it matters here in this wild place, but nonetheless, t’is an oops. I have to think before driving out in my wee mini, bless her fearless and loyal heart, who now, since the bump, is showing more signs of trouble. It thinks me.

An initial shock, a crash, a bump, a stopping, will not just be itself, or, at least, its first self. The future of the first smack has a voice. In the immediacy of our culture these days, I’m not sure this is fully understood, nor allowed. I know about the throwaway now. But I also know of the oldish, the way they could sit back after a massive crisis, eventually and obviously, and let go. We have done what we can, what we ever could, and now, we have no control. I like that way of being, of thinking.

Thank you, Oldish.

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Island Blog – A Speluncar Paradox

Blimey it’s hot. Even the stoics are wilting, including me, although I rarely confess to any such thing. And that thinks me, a lot. What is this inborn choice/need to always present upbeat no matter what the what or the whom? I spent this non work day with my thinks. We played think tennis together, the ball whacking over the net and back again. We both did a load of sweaty running about. The ball, the answer, said damn all, and no surprise there. Had I been that ball, that question, in this heat and being arse-whipped again and again, never mind the bouncing thing, I would probably have remained silent. Did we come to a conclusion? Well, no, although the match may have brought in a synergy because what I (we) realised is that I choose to be upbeat and also that I need my cave. There’s another also. I do not need to explain nor justify either, particularly the cave bit. I am human, chancing into weak, rising into brilliance. No, not weak. Bin that. If I always bring in the light, my choice, my need if you like, and my pleasure, then this cave choice is my safe hideout. Equally vital.

So, when I mourn for the lost children, for the wars which devastate ordinary lives, when corruption in high places decide the way the streets will or won’t move safely, when social media desecrates young trusting children, when lies are told in high places and those of us is ‘low’ places hear of them too late; when huge companies hide their truths, when weapons trade across oceans, hidden and politically permitted, when news comes too late, when everyone knows what’s coming, but if the sun shines and there’s a barbecue, a dance, a chance, a band playing, then everything’s ok. Isn’t it?

I am ready for my cave, my paradox, because tomorrow I will leap into the light I bring and spread it blooming everywhere.