Writing

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Island Blog – Words

I light my candles. I light them every evening, no, before evening because the light dims long before the time when someone might say ‘Good Evening’ and doff their cap. Light dims early here. The sun does a collapso thing behind the hills on the other side of the. sea-loch about half three. I know, I know, that my islander friends who live t’other side of that hill are still out there sorting chickens or digging flowerbeds or bouncing children and footballs. But my life is here and not there, and my time clock knows it. I get dawn early, ridonculously so. It thinks me. I am boiling an egg here, all dressed, showered and sharp as a new pin here, when those beyond the hill are still in the dark of sleep. I wonder what the birds think.

I spend a lot of time working my wondering muscle, always curious, always Alice. She has been my guiding light since I was knee high, although that was mostly looking up tweed skirts and hairy noses which only took me into the vast expanse of almost-white containerpants, or, almost worse, into an olfactory forest with drips. I was glad when I grew a bit, learned a lot, and determined I would only wear the skinniest of knickers, never wear tweed skirts, nor hug small people who looked up. I knew I had words even then, even though they gambolled about in my mind, refusing control. Just like me, I thought, which was in no way an okay thing. No resolution, no aha, just words, the love of words, the passion for learning new ones and with nowhere for them to go. I couldn’t just speak out a word, such as ‘evanescence’ without the warm blanket of a sentence enwrapped about it, never mind context, never mind it’s irrelevance in the tsunami of nail work comparisons.

New words got lost in committee. I can remember too much in my mouth, clenching my teeth. Sometimes words would bite out like sharks and all I got was trouble because, in my day, nice girls just didn’t. There was a whole load of ‘didn’t’ and ‘don’t. But here’s a thing. I can speak out now because I can sentence up. I can admit to being vulnerable. I can admit to mistakes and agree to any redress or accusation. I own my past. All those times I got it wrong; all. those times I wish I hadn’t and the ones when I wish i had. All of them me, all of them mine. In my olding years, still ‘with it’ I am proud of all that I have achieved, all I have overcome, taken in, all I have learned and adapted to, all the times I changed tack in a nanosecond for the greater good, all those nights wandering with troubled babies, all those plasters and icepacks I applied, all those cold nights of lonely vigil, all those times I cheered, supported, admired, drove here and there, all those meals extended for drop-ins, all those hugs and cups of tea, those hunkers by the fire at latelate as candles guttered and died.

And still words come. they drop like stars. I write them down. Revolvulence.

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Island Blog – Light in the Dark

I love the dark, the way my eyes adjust, the way I can see something of the way ahead. I love the way it prevents forward motion through the fear of it, and the way I can feel that fear whilst the my of self says, stop, stand still, look and see, and I do. I suddenly do. A terrain of black grows light just because I bring the light. Fear still lurks like a smirk but I can allow its companionship. It’s just a kiddle, a scurry, a nobody much. I can step out into the island dark, unpolluted, only stars doing their twinkly winkly thing, no threat, and pull out annuals which have, heretofore, hidden wee tulip hopefuls, their green thrust a whoop in my discoveration. Hallo you, beautiful you, wonderful powerful you, so strong, so bloody determined. You inspire me.

In my life there have been one or two whose recognition of who I am brought light to my eyes, my heart, lifting my step, giving me self-belief. I was walking in the dark, so much dark, the unfriendly kind, and then someone came, someone said something, didn’t judge, correct, didn’t try to fit me into a shape I could never fill, but oh my I was trying so hard to do that. It was like being a size 16 and being in a fitting room with a 12, longing for it to fit. But this person, this person saw me. She saw me. She didn’t do the parent thing. I wasn’t a number of many. I wasn’t an outsider. I wasn’t too loud, a showoff, an embarrassment, a girl to be kept away from gatherings of others in order to avoid the upskittle of bone china coffee cups with her quick wit and the flicksnap of her dance shoes. Nothing predictable about her, about me. Eye roll.

I think this has learned me that darkness is actually see-through. Even at an early age, there is cognition, even if the early-ager doesn’t know how to work the whole thing out. I remember well the moment when a woman, my mother’s age, said to me, stopped me with her hand on mine and looked me full bore, her eyes stars. ”You need to be who you are. I curled away, all broken and lost and 16. You are talented, beautiful, gifted, even. Take that. Own it.” I didn’t know her. I don’t remember her name, but she shifted some blockage in me and for the first time I found the light in my dark.

Right now, and for my own reasons, I want to raise a glass, a light, a life-changing Thank you to all of those who notice, care, speak out and recognise all of we who feel they are worth notalot unless they fit the shape required. You have given us the courage to step out, step up, move forward, and to pass it forward to the next darkling we find.

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Island Blog – Frippit and Thinks

I move among oldings , or those who look after oldings. I hear the talk. The formers are all still frippits, dancing out, moving dynamically, finding (and this the truth) life stuff easy. Such as……

lifting in the wood from the outside stack.

Finding a way to the outside stack.

Knowing how to jimmy the gas turn on/off thing after yonks of none of that turning threat, all rusted up.

Someone to help lift a heavy bag of compost, to cope it into a border.

The ability to bend low and then to be able to rise from that bend.

To be able to tie down the wheelies when yet another gale threatens, to notice the warning.

To have the confidence.

And then there’s us. Wondering how long we can do this. I hear the talk, watch the demise. I’ve seen this, done this, watched the slow fall of a strong man. I know nobody wants to acknowledge it, but it is here.

I remember taking hold of the dance floor, all shimmy and low-skimmed, all bright lights and the beams on me. I was incautious, I was. I had no thought on what is now the might become, the becould be. I absolutely lived that life, parties dancing on tables, right out there on the spritz of life, wild, electric, bonkers. I regret none of those times. I miss them, even as I can bring back the moments, the memories. What I am saying is that nobody wants to talk about the olding. If you ask your old ma/pa/grandma/grandpa how they are, you very likely text, Are You Ok?

A questioned contained. The answer is “yes”. What else can it be? If the question actually asked a question, then this ‘old’ person could find a way to answer, and let me say that that the “are you ok” question is not interest, not caring. It feels like I’m too busy but just checking in, thing.

Now there’s a think for you.

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Island Blog – Time after Time

I sang this at my African son’s wedding, beneath a tree and without a mike. It was hot, most of us barefoot on scorchio sandy scrub, feet tingling, so alive. I sang it a cappella , nervous, determined. All those guests looking at me. Me singing Cindi Lauper. A big ask. The tree, not a Fever tree but something stunning with a greeny peppered bark, big, twisted, old and with a handthrust of outer limbs all dizzily leafed up, dancing in the hot wind. That was a very big while ago but every time I hear the Cindi song, I’m back there in an African wildness, dancing under twinkly lights, hearing the music, the sound of cicadas,frogs and the dodgy others, the breath of the ocean in and out.

It thinks me. We do so much time after time. Boil the kettle, get through Christmas, change a nappy, do the school run, sort the tax return, go to the supermarket, pay the bills, go to work, send the birthday card, get up, go to bed, attend parent meetings, water the flowers, sweep floors, make beds, and so very on and so very so forth. Jeez it is frickin endless. Yes, it is. Always is. never stops. The beginning does not gentle on to the end. The midriff is fat and ghastly. It is. Let’s be honest. We celebrate beginnings, new love, and I am no cynic. I always hope. We all meet it, we do, the change when children arrive, money strife, the influential differentials between potential grandparents, the demands of work. So very much and time after time.

I sit here, writing, my absolut, my constant, my have to each day, after loading up five spectaculars into the world which now throws me often into a confuse. It is dark now, complete, no false light, no sound but the rickus of a feisty wind with some swear words in her mouth. I watch my old fingers. They still work.

Time after time.

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Island Blog – A Beautiful Share

It’s damn cold here, like freezeballs. A rarety for the West Coast where, to date, and over Sinkturies we have enjoyed endless rainfall, no floods thanks to upthrust rock formations and a very nearby Atlantic, happy to take on the slew and the wild of overexcited burns, rivers, swamps, bogs, lost wellies and various other waterswingles. T’was the island way. My kids made sure one wellie always got oopsed off some boat, some pier. We knew nothing of ocean plastic pollution back then in the 70’s. I wish we had because we met that problem so very often as we tracked and studied marine mammals and the unintended but immense blockages in their natural flow. I do remember the cold back then, but it was wild cold, the one you always meet out at sea when the wild is biting your face off and the swipe of waval spume would threaten your balls, if you had them. Out there, the fishers, they face a supreme cold. There is nought between their boat and the Antarctic blow, the wind snap from the East, North. A load of winds, cold, colluding, dynamic in what they decide. I’m not saying the weather chooses menace. It may sound that I do.

But that all thinks me as I shiver my way into a shower in a cold bathroom, slipping off clothes I don’t really want to slip off. My home is warm, yes. But this cold is new. I remember it and for 15 long winters on Tapselteerie, when ice frosted the insides of all windows with spectacular art and the iced carpet, about 3 feet beyond the frost catch, and when I just wanted to shout a load of abuse at the Winter King. This bit thinks me. The ones who live in places I don’t know, now I am warm. We change our levels of acceptability as we move on. I know it. I lived under a minus 3 all flipping winter. No hot water, mice everywhere, five kids, five vibrant and wild kids, not enough food, a load of making something out of nothing, their laughter, their spin, their don’t care about a lamb in the hypothermic oven, the calf in a nest around the aga, warm lamp lit. They slept through our wakening.

I remember a night, dark, no lights, no warmth. Hallo you, I said. I’d come down to make a cup of tea, sleep too cold for sticking. Me too, he said. I think I lit a candle. We toasted cups. Fuck the cold, I said, and we laughed a beautiful share.

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Island Blog – It’s All About The Hunny

I haven’t cried for decades, except that’s a lie. When Piglet almost got blown away in the Hundred Acre Wood, I did shed a few tears. It wonders me, as I watch everyone else leak a lot when shit hits. I sort of envy them that release. I know I am far from cold, feeling everything about everything and for everyone, but maybe I have some sort of cold in me, a woman in a life, one who wants no pity, no fixing, and one who has grown tendons and sinews like steel props. I just made that up. It’s probably ridiculous. But it does think me. Those of us who have pixillated themselves into another’s world out of choice, willingly at first and then through sheer stickability, find sinew and tendon strength. I don’t think it resolutes us, not all of us. Some grow bitter as old wine, vinegar, loose teeth and joy. Others choose the yellow brick road, the tricky walk towards a truth full of wonder and hope. Life is not a dream. Life is a dream. The Bothers, the Both-ers. We seek another and then that other just isn’t enough, nor are we for them. Two separates with too much of a gap for the mending, the amending. A sadling for sure, but a reality. We change, we learn differently, we choose what comes to us through a learning. And, we divide. And I know this, I see this, and I also see that the ‘stickability’ of the old pioneers has had its time, because in those times, nobody was their true self, not could ever, ever, admit to such. I lived there, so I know, albeit at the arse end of that limitation.

What we all long for is to be who we are, without fear, safe, recognised, welcomed. We may be years off that but I hope it is coming because for too long the world, often the religious world, has controlled and ruled through fear. The people believed and walked in blind deference, superiority and damning, like they had no independent thinking. Independent thinking got you hanged, subdued, dismissed. We don’t have that fear now and yet we still can’t be sure of who we are without labels. I am seriously hoping that for the next year, those with the courage to gently voice, with the courage to step out, to come out, to be who they really are, will find the strength to rise, to pioneer us into a truth which just might kill off the lies of centuries.

In all, in everything, in the daily grind, in the knocks and batters, in the sudden joys, the falls the resists, the hidings, the resists, the falters, there is choice. Always is, always, no matter the stricklies. New word. For me it is all yellow brick road and the hope and the courage and the determination and the honey. That choice is no nonsense. Try it.

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Island Blog – Wild Choice and I’m In

Family here, so flipping chaos and a lot of noisy fun, all twinkle girls and good champagne and hilarity. Such times give me a good peek into the lives of my children, although they aren’t. Children I mean. They’re parents, scrabbling for a way ahead, just as me and himself did a long time ago. Now that himself is up there sorting God out, no, not him but hie mummy, I have the peaceful mind they all long for. It will come, I tell them, although nothing will be gentle nor easy en route to that peaceful place. Stuff and regrets and inner failures and other ridonculous and fabricated memories will see to that. Memories, I have long learned, grow brambles. They do. Twisting and suffocating and blanking out the light, they persist like imagined dragons. They are not real, but they feel real. We all have them and especially those who say they don’t. I have gone to free a blaring sheep, entwined like a stairway in said thorns, getting too close with my bramble freeing gloves on, only to watch the wooly eejit pull away with nothing but a dump of shit left behind. It thinked me then and it thinks me now. Choice, the need for recognition, the power within an helplessness. I’ve been there, done that in my time. Not no more, not now I see the lack of efficacy in such, the damn weakness.

The thing is that nobody is going to, nor is able to, save anybody. Just me. I got that and by golly (can you say that anymore?) I learned this, that the world owes me nothing, life owes me nothing, my spouse owes me nothing, nor my kids, nor my work, nor my longings. It is up to only me. Everything is. This, plus that, equals power because I get to choose. It doesn’t matter when I finally understood this, no matter the crash and burn I had gone through, the shame, guilt, regret. Time is, so they say, an illusion. What I do now, how I live now is with choice in my always head. I can choose my morning waking, slept well or not, my progress through my day, because it is mine, my response to news, messages, invitations or lack of them. I can choose to be spiky, fun, naughty, mischievous or a grumpy shit with a gloom cloak about my skinny shoulders. I can rise or I can fall.

Today my whacko son came for a coffee. I can hear many of you asking, genuinely, ‘Which whacko son?’ and I get that and feel so very lucky. I have four of them and all whacko, and a daughter who is the only whacko with girly bits. I have no idea where they learned this spontaneity, this ‘lets go’ thing but they have and I’m still up for lets go, so we did. We drove up a bit on Tapselteerie and parked. Then we headed to the shoreline which is definitely more tumble-stumble, wrinkly and sodden than in my memory. We laughed, slipped, negotiated through obviously very high and recent tides, the sprawls of bladderwrack, and other whitey, browny greeny and yellowy seaweeds proffering a wonderful opportunity for an arse crack all along the volcanic shoreline. He held onto me, helped me over and around and through the sink bogs, over the tumps and tumbles as we embraced the freesing blast of stories from the north. The spume and wave flight was white as snow, rising with the gulls, the clouds dark but moving fast with the wind, passing like thoughts which don’t deserve to last. The sea was so alive, the hail blasting at our grinning faces. And then the sun, a momentary lapse of reason, proud fire, until the clouds regained control. We loved it all, laughed through memories of his childhood and my motherhood with five whackos and their dad who thrived in the wild, the lunatic weather, broaching the thin places of an ancient island, spouting stories every time someone who is open comes along, someone who chooses to be tough, to find a way through, to let go, to find the mischief.

Always a choice. May 2026 fire a rocket through old thoughts, old ways. May the grey clouds get bored of hovering over the wildfire of someone who has grown tough through all the whatever shit, and who has chosen to be who they are, no matter the what, the who, the which, the when, the why. I’m in.

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Island Blog – A Gallus Vocabularian

I remember those who tried to scumper me with smart wordage. Not the individuals, just the slimy snake thing about them, as if they had swallowed the dictionary and spent hours, if not days, trying to sort that confusive vomit. I despised that tactic as it was only used to put me down enough pegs as to sag my personal washing line. I was a girl and a woman of my time, I know this, and the snakes were often men in those days, but not always. It is true, or was, that the biggest judges of females are usually other females. I am not sure that’s a ‘then’ thing. It allows itself yet, this upperhandedness, as if we still haven’t exhausted the desperate need to be better than another still feels old.

I didn’t know I would be a vocabularian. All I knew was that words and their usage fascinated me, drew me in, the way they can tip and bend a sentence into an entirely new meaning, with skill and a musicality. Words change their meaning all the time, becoming elastic, fluid, non PC, redundant, just worn out. And new ones come, across continents, through engagement with new languages, cultures, and colloquialisms, and I welcome them all. New ways of saying old things, old tired things, oft repeated around parental tables, invite new landings, new lands, new opportunities for the brave Worder.

When one of the last above does speak out new words, perhaps faltering and definitely feeling like Gulliver in Lilliput, there’s a big element of risk. But, and here’s my challenge, because if we don’t speak out just because we believe we sound ridonculous, what does anybody learn? I say my word. I am immediately corrected. What now? A sink back in my chair in defeat? Or, do I rise up and correct the Corrector. No, not that word but the one I already said. See, the thing about rebellion is about numbers. My Thesaurus is a tatterley old man, the wordage good enough, has been for decades but as I dive into the pages of it these days I find a lack, flack. I may be, as I indeed am, a Gallus vocabularian, t’is blood in my veins, but I am still wide open, wider, to listen to and to learn from new wordage, new words, new meanings to old words and to be okay watching the beginnings and endings of the longest words falling off the edge of the world. They need to go.

When I meet the arrogance of word ‘control’ the uppernance of entitled supremacy, I do two things. One is the overnaturally dissolution of self, that’s me in this, sinking back, folding, giving in, and then I remember who I am. I am not aggressive, no antagonist. But, if you’re asking, I’m holding my place right here, and peacefully. I won’t try to climb the ladder to your command of language. No. I am down here in the welcomes of new lands, new people, not having a clue what they’re saying, just knowing they hurt, they’re here, fearful and have lost everything and are bringing me a light into a new language. By goodness, we need it.

As a gallus vocabularian, I can almost feel my rebellion red beret.

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Island Blog – Inspiradiater

I watched the cloudal shift, the way a lemony sun blasted out at every chance, and it laughed me. I tipped my head towards it, and it was gone. I felt like a photograph. Is the sun looking at us as we look at him? As nobody can answer that, I’ll take it as a definite possibility. We know so little of everything beyond the acceptable colour of baby spinach and the fact that we are certain we will recognise our own children as they barrel through the door after school. Thing is I love the Mystery of life. Yes, there. are many givens, but also a continginous load of give-ins. One extra vowel, not by chance an ‘I’. Now there’s a think. Hyphens, just to say, arise like diving boards, differenting over Timelines and Thesauruses, and for one who does the best leap from the side of anywhere, that hyphen proves oftentimes to be an irritating restriction. I think I wanted me as an English Language tutor. What fun we would have had with all we angry, curious, unlimiters who just wanted to fly with words like birds, lifting sense and fixtures into a cloudal shift.

Visiting a beloved friend this morning, bursting in, flumping onto the sofa (so good) I settled to talk my head off and then to ask about her. We are 47 year old friends. Together we have gone through babies, teen angsty shite, hurts, losses, births, sadness and joy. We are easy with each other. When I left to drive through 400 potholes, aka half a mile if that, I remembered old times, the terror of being ‘Christmas’ for a big family plus blow ins. Everything had to be perfect and that meant I had to be perfect with timing, precisional cooking, a massive weight in itself, and never mind the arrival of the inlaw grandfolks who hosted grandventures effortlessly, or so it seemed in the telling. I was all itch. None of my clothes fit me as if I had morphed into Morph overnight, although it wasn’t overnight because I had been shapeshifting for weeks. I was so tense you could have lit a candle off my skin. I was the inspiradiater. Someone had to do the heavy lifting as those around felt fine about shuffling the slow waltz just because the cloudal shift means more rain and the ferry isn’t running and the turkey isn’t dead enough and arthritis has flared up again and it’s dark and cold and so bloody on.

But when you are born with more mischief in your veins than blood, there is a calling, and never more so than at Christmas. I am certain I was birthed in Faerie. Now that my mum is dead, I wish I could talk to her about that. Ach, she would have batted me away and said,….You were always weird, I have no idea where you came from, and many many more appearingly dismissive things, but she loved being with me, chuckled a lot. My beloved friend today talked of her. She was full of mischief, she said, and I stood a moment, laughed, yessed in my heart. For all the difficult times, she was an inspiradiater. And so am I. It’s a choice, tell you why. Many come to a Christmas gather, bring a wrapped gift or many, but once the wine flows and more, the welcome, warmth, the sharing thing, out comes the reality of a life yet unlived. It takes an inspiradiater to work that one. Not to dismiss nor deny but to hear and to listen. There are too many who feel unheard, unlistened to. It takes no study, no qualifications. It is just sitting with another, saying nothing, being there.

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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.