"Take a breath," you said: “Deep and Full", but by the end of my first morning back on the island, I realised that actually the reverse is what was occurring: a deep exhale. This trip has been a long time coming. It was booked pre-Covid and had to be postponed, delayed, put back. Getting here, the way I choose to get here, which is by train and boat, takes a couple of days. Arrival was a bit unscheduled because of tide times and taxis that won’t take advance bookings for ferry pick-ups since docking and disembarkation is so unreliable, and that made me nervous. I had forgotten just how easily everything flows here. I had forgotten that plans are superfluous.
It is a strange thing: this is only my third trip but, already, seeing the familiar streets, and scenting the salt air, it feels like coming home. Within 18 hours I’m certain that I will be back again next year…and equally certain that I don’t need any kind of a plan for this week.
On previous visits, I had a list of places to go, things to see…and found that I didn’t do it. I found that I would spend a lot of time just wandering the lanes, sitting on the beaches, walking the
cliff-tops, and trying to write, but with no real idea of what I wanted to be writing. Back then, I thought you had to know what you were trying to do before you started. In the intervening time, I’ve discovered that if we’re brave enough to start, the words will find their own rhythm, they will
decide what they want to be.
And if they don’t want to play today, the best thing we can do is put the pen down and go out to play ourselves.
The first time I came to the island I was newly widowed (if I’m allowed to, technically, mis-use the word). I was grief-stricken and in no way aware that a relationship I was about to embark upon – since christened “the mad fling” – was wrong in every way imaginable. But equally, I now believe, it was something that needed to happen. I needed reminding that I was still alive, that I was still woman, that I had a life ahead of me. And when it fell apart the way it had been destined from the outset to do, that was the reminder that I am still my own woman and with my own hopes & ambitions and ways of being in the world.
The second time I came, I was feeling very much alone, and I came with deliberate intention to “take stock” and figure out “what now, what next?” I came with a list of questions to be answered to figure out who I was and where I was headed and what I wanted. I suspect that the answers to all of those are still lurking in a file somewhere in my cloud drive.
The third time…is now. This trip should have taken place three years ago. If it had, I wonder what it would have been. If it had, I wonder if I would be back here again now. I think so. I think I’d have rocked up each on each of those missing years to grab myself a slice of island time. I’m writing this at the beginning of a week that is billed in my head as a writing retreat, but one without a formal agenda. There isn’t something that I’m working on that I want to dedicate the time to. It’s more about finding out what I write when I have a week in which to do it.
I make that sound like I don’t normally have time to write, which anyone who knows me will tell you is hogwash. I have as much time to write as I choose to claim. Pretty much all of my time is my own. I set my own priorities. Even so, being away is always a shift in gear and coming here in particular is a down-shift.
The change of scenery from urban / suburban to rural. The change of tempo. The ability to set out and walk down remembered roads, the ability to set out to rediscover beaches that I haven’t seen for a while, to look at tumble-down cottages and millionaire mansions, to know that pretty much every person I pass in the street will smile and say hello, and most of those that pass my door will stop and chat. All of these things help me come back to centre. All of these things remind me why I have been looking forward to this trip for so long, and never once thought of cancelling. All of these things, within less than 24 hours make me grateful to be here again.
Equally, there is still that thing about “taking stock”. It wasn’t an intention as such, it simply emerged through my normal journal practice. I was last here in 2019; a lot has changed since then.
Lockdowns came and went. Friendships have done likewise, some are fading, while new ones have emerged. My writing has shifted much more towards poetry. I’ve expanded this site to allow for more pictures and more poems. I have fully retired from Procurement. I have started to embrace the word “retirement” which I shied away from for so long, because of its connotations of old age and decrepitude, of gardening and slippers and early nights.
For the record, I’m often in my garden (though I guess the purists wouldn’t really call it gardening, so much as containment); slippers are a last resort as I’m much more likely to be barefoot or in hygge socks and early nights are one of the deepest blessings of living alone!
I have become a member of two writing groups, one on-line, on in-person, one completely free-form, one facilitated. I have taken a few mentored writing courses, had a couple of poems published, and found myself an accountability buddy – more accurately she found me. I have
stood up and read my work in front of strangers.
I have shed the first half-stone of unwanted baggage, and dyed my hair blonde(ish).
I have started to seriously study tai chi, and returned to the Chinese horoscopes.
I have returned to the dance floor. And discovered rope flow.
I had two vaccinations before reading enough to determine that I will decline any further involvement in that programme. I have been healthy. I have made swimming a fundamental part of my life. I have acquired a beach hut and got rid of a microwave. I have given away silverware, and ditched music I will never listen to again. I have started to sell off the model railway kit, and dispose of my old office clothes. I am back in my jeans.
I have eaten the first fruits from trees in my garden, and grown my second crop of tomatoes.
I have learned to look and listen more closely for the whispers of the universe, the synchronicities that can guide my life if I choose to let them. I have learned the value of an instinctive and deep friendship and am starting to trust the process, to allow things to happen in their own way in their own time, or not. I am learning to let go. That has also been a long time coming.
I know that this week, I will not sit and journal endless questions about who I am and what I want to do with my life, because I know. I know who I am and I am living my ideal life. I am where I want to be, doing what I want to do…and oh wow! How lucky I am for that to be so.
Instead, I will seek out the random. Shuffled picks from the prompt box, found text, unexpected views, plants, flowers, sea-light and sand and sky. I will take photographs, real and imagined. I will create a bank of scents and sounds in memory. I will smile a lot. Swim as much as possible. Walk and wander. And I will write whatever decides it would like to be caught.
It is SO GOOD to be back.
