A Perfect Moment
Posted: Tuesday, 04 March 2008 |
7 comments |
A friend sent me pictures of the snow they have where he is. Made me jealous..for I love snow, proper snow, and winter, and especially good old fashioned winters where the snow was some feet deep and of the igloo making kind, that is, not the soft mucky slush you find at the kerbside in cities.
But those are consigned to that foreign country called "The Past" and will probably not be seen again in my lifetime the way the climate is looking right now.
And I watched the news and saw the weather warnings..you know the kind..."Oh god it`s going to drop below zero tonight, eveyone panic now!" And "EEK! We`re gonna get a whole centimetre of snow today, it`ll be guaranteed to close roads/schools/council offices...."
And I looked out my window and saw fair enough, big fat snowclouds drifting by...well ok, not quite drifting..getting pushed firmly in the back by gale force winds would be more accurate....it`s as if the snow clouds were a package holiday of tourists and the guide thought Sanday was obviously beneath them....
Hee...ahem..sorry...couldn`t resist that one...*blushes*
So anyway, I was jealous of the snow everyone else had. It`s not fair. Other folks don`t want the stuff, and here`s me, one wee woman stuck on a rock in the North Sea and would a snowflake or two..or few million..be too much to ask?
But yesterday afternoon for a peedie moment, I went outside. You know that special kind of darkness you get, just before the flakes begin to gently drift down? Yes, that`s right, that kind....the horizon closes in, the sky and sea meet and marry to become a vast dark dove grey entity and there`s the most beautiful, quiet hush falls over the world, like it holds its breath waiting, just waiting.....
I believe I know the awe an eclipse in long past days must have inspired in superstitious country folks..because that darkness just makes me stand and stare with some simple kind of reverence. And it`s peaceful...
It forces quiet and stillness, it makes what worries you vanish for a peedie blink as you stand and just look at that vast sky above and around you that is ready to touch the earth with soft white kisses of snow....
There in front of me was my garden, the rose hedge now budding with little plump pale cocoons of birthing leaves, there in front of me was the field and the track stretching down to the Peedie Sea and looking out over the water to Stronsay, not really seeing it in the darkness of sea and sky.
I have a family of moorhens in the garden beside my ducks. Every bird ceased its pecking for food, it`s chattering and squabbling for space and oneupmanship, the wild birds had vanished and the whole calm scene was such a beautiful and strange thing.....and then the first flakes of snow drifted down, and THERE was my own perfect moment, watching the soft white against the deep slate and seeing my breath mist in the air and touch the snow.....
There was not a sound to be heard then. Not the sea which was glassy and mirrorlike, reflecting the darkness peppered with white. Not the wind which had stood still for a space out of respect for an old friend, an ageing winter. Not beast nor bird nor person marred that perfect moment when out of the darkness snow fell in lazy, dancing spirals to melt upon the soil.
It was as special, as beautiful, as the first moment spent with a lover in that first, breathless kiss...
And you may think I`m mad for rapturing over a tiny spattering of snow under a darkened, cold sky.
But that moment, like every other, will never come again.
And for me, it was perfect.
This morning, there`s only the barest dusting of snow on the brittle, hard ground. The winds are back and the birds are still squabbling, and the sea has an army of white horses upon her back.
The weather reporters on tv might enthuse about the milder weather and grin about the sunshine.
I`ll settle for diversity in it, with the odd perfect moment where the island holds her breath then releases it in tiny white kisses, thanks.
Posted on Hermit Life at 08:23
Lazy Weekends?
Posted: Saturday, 08 March 2008 |
10 comments |
Remember the days (of yore, of course) when weekends were a kind of lazing time, when the weeks work was done, and you either went out and had fun or just relaxed, doing nothing much?
Yup, I remember those too..so where did they go? *blank stare...*
A rather hectic week has just been and gone...and I thought, great, can relax this weekend, maybe do a bit more bellydance practice, watch a few old and favourite movies, y`know the kinda thing....
but nope..just lately I have been an electrical jinx...managed to destroy, simply by being in the vicinity, two vacuums, two kettles and a laptop, and now, a washing machine.....
and to cap it all, my lovely billygoat kept falling down in his stall and not being able to get up. First, I thought it was illness..he is getting on a bit, a touch of arthritis in his hind legs, or I thought it was maybe liver fluke which is an awful thing for beasts to get...
Well, he does have the arthritis and the liver fluke, well, will keep an eye on him for that..but the main culprit was the young and strong castrated billy I put in with him for company.....
found out he was butting the hell outta the old billy, knocking him flat and not letting him get up again....
so myself and the son went into the barn, seperated them and tried to lift the billy, now a substantial weight and with a fine, sharp spread of horns, and between the pair of us and a broom to lever his backside up with, we managed to get him, shoogly and shivering, onto his feet.
Fearing the worst, we had no choice but to leave him propped up til we could sort out straw bales to kind of encase him in, then lie him down, hind legs tucked under him, with food and water within reach.
In the meantime, the younger billy we had seperated him from battered down the dividing door and started bullying the other goats and sheep, just to keep the food to himself.
He is going into the freezer soon.
The old billy is now recovering, still shaky but heaps better than he was, and I think it had a lot to do with being bullied by the younger one.
There`s a pagan myth about the demise of the old stag when the young stag is grown...and it is nature`s way, the young grow, take on the old in many ways, and supplant them in life.
Thus, in the bleak cruelty of nature, pragmatic though it is, the old are unvalued.
I have a feeling, looking around, that it`s often like that with humans too....
Survival of the fittest is well and good and ensures the thriving of any group. It`s blunt and to the point, and the most efficient way of making progress with any species.
But y`know, people are hardly endangered..quite the opposite in fact...
so maybe it should occur to younger folks now that there IS, and always has been, value in their elders. Older folks shouldn`t automatically earn respect...I hate that attitude some of them get where they think that age grants them the right to be obnoxious and have no manners or courtesy....
but to disregard anyone past thirty as worth nothing in todays world, as seems to be the case, is just tremendously sad.............
The world is, now, for the young, and they never cease to let us know it. The media pays only lip service to age and experience, either dwelling on the infirmities of age or making figures of fun of the old.
And youth and beauty are praised far and above experience and wisdom and good down to earth values.
What a screwed up world we live in.....
The billy, today, is much happier, still a little shaky but getting back on his feet again. I look at him, on his bed of fresh straw, munching quietly on hay, looking lazily out the slats of his stall at his harem, content now, and feel a strange kind of sadness for the speck of time that each individual exists in life. Because it always seems too short.
I have a growing list of `to-do`s` for outdoors, to try and fit it all in between Orkney gales and the continuous rain which has turned my place into the worlds biggest mud bath. The seasons wheel is turning again and there will soon be no time for maudlin thoughts of age and mortality as the growing things pick up and the garden cries out for planting and the ducks and hens and hopefully this year, the geese, go broody and look to hatch young, always a little later here than elsewhere though....
If all else fails I will hire performers and if the rain doesn`t stop, will set up mud wrestling matches.
But for now I`m trying to fit some laziness into my weekend, and resisting the urge to be `out and doing` ......
not sure I`ll make it though.....
Posted on Hermit Life at 11:34
Girly Stuff
Posted: Sunday, 16 March 2008 |
19 comments |
As some o` ye might remember, I`ve been bellydancing. Been enjoying it enormously and all. :-D
Usually I practice wearing tracky bottoms and a vest top, but been working on a couple of costumes, one based on a bought black skirt for which I made a black chiffon underskirt, embellished bra top, sleevelets and a face veil, the other with a choli style top in green and gold which I think I prefer best.
Anyways, for any folks interested in girly clothes, bellydancing or just wanting a giggle, here`s a couple of pics. :-D
I would have done a flippy gallery thingy but don`t know how...sorry..so they`re just plonked onto the end of this blog.
That`s my technical ability to the hilt, am afraid.
Posted on Hermit Life at 14:00
Yup....
Posted: Monday, 24 March 2008 |
14 comments |
Short version of the past week....I nearly kicked the bucket, thanks to a blockage in the lum (chimney for any Sassenachs reading :-)) but oops, getting ahead of myself there....got a mild case of food poisoning so was sleeping..or trying to..on the livingroom couch. Took a sleeping pill. Fell asleep. Woke..kinda..around two am to find the room filled with smoke but because I`d been inhaling it wasn`t feeling to bright so only managed to stagger to the door, open it and then fall down again. That made the rest of the house fill with smoke, but it woke son up who found me, took me outside and made me breathe deep for two hours at least, in the freezing cold, til I was compost mental again...;-)
In the meantime, he`d to spend two more hours pouring water on the reeking stove, for it had all melded into one smouldering clinkerish lump.
So, wasn`t too well after all that.
Then the auld sheep died. Well, he was near on twentyish, not bad for a sheep, and the size of a small Shetland pony. I`ll miss him though, until the past week he would bound around like he still thought he was a lamb. Had a deep rumbling Baaahh..
Oh, did I mention the washing machine also died on me? Now it`s the turn of the pc, lucky I have the laptop or no internet connection again and been there, done that, fairly recently after lightning took out the modem, not wanting to do that again.
Well, between that and various other things, personal things, happening lately, you`ll forgive me for feeling picked on a little. :-)
So far in the past year I was bitten four times by spiders and am so glad we have no poisonous ones here. Electrocuted thrice, once quite seriously, it set fire to the plug and lead into the twin tub that did it (had been bought with bad wiring, unknowingly) and gave me a jolt that threw me across the room and into a workbench, and made my entire arm numb and useless and very sore for a week....
had food poisoning, and nearly pegged out thanks to smoke inhalation.
Let`s see now...all I need is another lightning strike a peedie bit closer than the modem and that`ll be it, the Afterlife here I come, where I fully intend to go to a heathen afterlife, replete with feasting, merrymaking, drinking and fighting, with maybe some looting, raiding and pillaging as a diversion.
Not for me a mild heaven or overly warm hell. ;-)
But, as son pointed out, instead of seeing myself as particularly unlucky, I am in fact, very lucky indeed. Because I didn`t die. Sure, being electrocuted hurts. Food poisoning is potentially fatal and decidedly unpleasant...and having your hearth try to take you out isn`t all that nice either thanks..still coughing....
but I`m still alive and kicking. So that, according to the son, makes me lucky.
Yours truly keeps walking round the house singing Elton John`s "I`m Still Standing" which is unfortunate for son, as I sing like a scaled cat really...
Now, what I would consider REALLY lucky is winning the Lotto.
of course, I think you`re supposed to buy a ticket to help matters along there...
So here I am, still going strong, enjoying the short burst of late winter weather we`re having, cos I do love the snow. :D
Now if we could just have some feet of it instead of an inch or two, that`d be fun. I have a sledge.................
Posted on Hermit Life at 14:56
`Sno(w) Joke...
Posted: Tuesday, 25 March 2008 |
18 comments |
Here are some pics of the smooring of snow we had and still have on Sanday. :-)
Not enough to go sledging, but still bonny enough to look at and enjoy.
Sorry that some of them were taken through what looks like grimy windows..I DO wash them, but the wind blows so much garden soil and sand and grit into them (and how DO birds manage to poop on a vertical surface btw?) that they look quickly, grimy.
Over the weekend I potted up herbs and tomato plants, all of which will be grown indoors. They sit, now, in peedie pots on the windowledges, peeping out at the bleak, icy landscape, brave above the soil.
The rhubarb is also starting to green and poke its head above ground, despite the chancy weather, so soon enough there`ll be another batch of rhubarb wine, to go with the maturing bottles of last years mead.
Got visitors coming again this year, you see, and the `laws` of hospitality ensure they are well fed and watered even if that means making sure they`re too tiddly to notice they`re eating goat meat when they swore they`d never touch the stuff cos you forgot which casserole in the freezer it was in....*note to self, label things better*....
Note to Dag, if he reads the blogs still, please could you resend your email addy so I can say thank you to you and your lovely wife? Thanks. :-)
Posted on Hermit Life at 10:45
Life.
Posted: Sunday, 30 March 2008 |
11 comments |
My billygoat didn`t make it. To spare folks the gorier details, will just say he had internal injuries due to the bullying goat, and he wasn`t able to fight them off and get better, though at least he died peacefully.
I`ll miss him, because he was a character.
There are plenty folks who sneer at grief over animals. I eat mine, y`know...they give me eggs and meat and skins, it`s what I`m used to doing but doesn`t mean I have no feelings for the beasts.
And the billy was a fine animal, gentler than most billygoats, and a fine looking beast too, with a spread of horns that looked ferocious but a kind eye. He never headbutted me, or tried to drag me across the lawn when staked out to grass.
The day I become unaffected by the loss of an animal, especially one that`s been with me for years, is the day I`ll give up keeping them.
Coming so soon after auld sheep dying, is pretty hard though.
.
Posted on Hermit Life at 23:32
A Story, and A Peedie Cheerio For Noo...
Posted: Monday, 31 March 2008 |
8 comments |
Every day, before she put peat on the fire, hauled the big black kettle over on it`s chain above it, and set up the breakfast cups for tea, she had the wee ritual of looking out the bedroom window, through the four tiny panes of bubbled, warped glass, at the tiny patch of garden she had below the window. It was just a strip, some ten foot wide, and she`d had to build a fence to keep the goats out of it, and to discourage the dozen or so hens from scratching the life out of it.
It wasn`t like the rest of the place, with neat rows of carefully tended vegetables, laboriously weeded, raked and hoed and crammed full of kale, cabbage and neep, leeks, onions and of course, tatties, which took up most of the space.
This wee patch was hers alone, for her man had wanted nothing to do with such foolish and useless things as flowers.
She`d never grown flowers before...this was her first year at them, always before, to satisfy her wanting of them, she scoured the hedgerows, coming home to the crofthouse with armfuls of ox eye daisies, or foxgloves, honeysuckle, dog rose or some of the creamy white meadowseet....
they were put into an old cracked vase she had found at the back of a cupboard, something that had once belonged to his mother, another `foolish woman` who, according to her man, had seen soon enough the folly of wasting time on profitless flowers when the soil was better put to producing food, provision that should be put by against the lean, mean months of winter.....
But they cheered the tiny scullery, glowing soft in the sunlight that padded in through the small window on a silken river in the late evenings, for the scullery window faces west, and the whole room lit like fire sometimes with the setting of the sun beneath the nearby hills, with their dark trees, old pagan stone circles and thorned, overgown paths that only the poachers knew intimately.
Her man would walk in after the days work, the kye bedded down, the few sheep tended to, and unknowingly, cast a quick sneer at the wild flowers. And at the look, her heart would cramp, almost, wishing he could see the value in such wildness, in the difference that wasn`t as tamed as he liked nature to be, but still of worth, with beauty that pleased eye and soul and senses, with the heady smell of outdoors.
And stubbornly, she kept bringing them into the house, whenever she found them, never taking too much, but just enough for the old cracked vase, just enough for the scant days they lasted, to brighten the homely scullery, to glow in the setting sunlight, to soothe her eyes when the days toil sometimes looked bleak and unending to her.
So when she thought to grow flowers of her own self`s doing, she took up the courage from her backbone and broached the subject with her man, who at first laughed, thinking she joked, then tried to dissuade her, pointing out that flowers can`t be eaten, that they took toil and graft and gave nothing back, for no great time....
but she persisted, in her soft and quiet highland voice, and in the end he shrugged, told her if she could sow the seeds in the soil under the bedroom window...and nowhere else, mind you!...she could grow her blessed flowers...
So each day she rose, and it was the first thing she did, look out of the window and down, watching the soil for signs of life, hoping the earth had warmed enough to birth the seeds, hoping they had the energy to fight through the thin dark soil to reach the light, hoping for flowers, grown by her own hands so she needn`t thieve them from the wild any more....
And came the morning she thought she saw, through the warped and uneven glass panes, a few pinpricks of green above the black, so that, excited, she forewent tending the fire and the kettle, and walked swiftly past the stacked breakfast cups and plates, out to the garden, kneeling down in front and lowering her gaze to the ground....
and there, right enough, were the seedlings, a rich scattering of tiny wee green jewels, like elven children, coming up above the ground.
So it was with a grin on her face she worked the day`s tasks, often stopping what she did to go back, kneel down and look again, just making sure....
The first handfuls of flowers she picked were simple pansies, and she brought them into the scullery cradling them like a babe...the old cracked vase was no use, too tall, and she worried over what to do with the flowers, where could she put them now?
Taking up her own broth bowl, she half filled it with water, and arranged, unthinkingly, with simple grace, the pansies in it.
And put them on the windowsill, and allowed herself a cup of hot black tea, sitting by the peat fire, listening to it burn soft and quiet, listening to the low tick of her clock, a wedding present from her mother, on the mantelpiece, hearing the lowing of the kye in the byres as her man saw to them, watching the flowers, grown by her own hands, glow in the light, like jewels, like something wildly exotic and strange.
A single tear rolled, unnoticed, down one cheek. She wouldn`t have even known, quite, why she was crying....
Her man came in by, asking for supper, not noticing the flowers, even to throw a scornful glance. She said nothing but did her wifely duties, feeding him, making sure his boots were cleaned and dry for the morning, folding the laundry as he relaxed by the fireside, pipe lit and the perfume of tobacco mingling with the scent of pansies....
The warm, red light faded from the scullery, and she told her man she`d be off to bed, and kissed his brow lightly and took herself into the bedroom, lighting the oil lamp on the dresser.
Turning back the sheets, a flash of colour and scent met her gaze. Upon the thin worn pillowcase, a single pansy glowed.
Turning to the doorway, she smiled as she held it to her nose. And her man smiled back at her.....
Taking a peedie break from blogging for a while, got work to do and a lot of it is graft so won`t have much time to write or be online, as I`d like. Hope everyone has a bonny week, and that the sun shines for you all.
To shamelessly steal TWS`s phrase, Cheery....:D
Posted on Hermit Life at 13:02
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