darkness

almost seventeen hours of it each day. I am wrung out from over much driving with the low slanted sun blinding me and the window washer not working - six hours of that - ah poor me. But all this way to be a mentee and for that I am delighted. This writing needs guidance - others to show us the way. Living almost in the artic archipeligo long drives are necessary for most things. Take not the local Pilates class for granted yea who live where others live also! While in Inverness today, enjoying cappuccino(she doesn't get out much!) prior to meeting my mentor I longingly perused a brochure on a Pilates class. Next to writing and running and a bit of therapy thrown in now and again nothing does it quite like Pilates. I was even considering driving 100 miles to suck in the core and pull up my pelvis floor but after the strain of driving and peering hunched up through a dirty windscreen I probably won't.
now home after the dirty window trip and partner wants to go out - another fifty miles or so and I can't quite face it. I see his disappointment and I feel old and I know sometimes the renewing comes in the saying yes, having now learnt to say no. And I find myself at almost fifty years of age having just bought (not intentionally, it just happened to have the extras) a little zooped up car with alloys, spoiler, and four very throaty exhausts and a gear stick that twinkles red! The car is green and too noisy but I didn't say no. Did I say I have learnt that no lesson? Ha-ha! Listen as I pass, somewhere far north of Inverness, roaring the single track roads in search of cappucino and pilates! The dirty windscreen - that was old car - that was Audi on her last day out. A life in the banger derby awaits her then crushed to a sheet.
I have a wonderful blog friend who describes her life as being in the slow lane. I veer; sometimes it is sea and sky and beach and dog and writing and fresh air and the speed is as fast as feet move. At other times it is over taking every slow coach on the A9 and doing many things and juggling coloured balls high in the air. And on those days, where the windscreen makes the world a place of muck, the lure of the slow lane is calling.

have been round the world. in a short space of time. in paradise in sunnyside guest farm in south Africa near Lesotho where baboons bark at you in the early dawn and where, because you have travelled so far for so short a time, you get up at five and climb that golden rock, yes, the one called face rock because of the shape of the wise ancient one, where the dangerous baboons live and sit and swing and pull up roots and snakes and make a right racket, and walking through the valley before the sun has come up you hear a crack resonate like gun fire but it's not gun fire, it's a bull whip and a man on horse back is encouraging the cows to pasture - crack, crack and its echo is still in my imagination, the way the sun did come up from behind the rocks is also there and the way twenty of us met together under this mighty rock to tell stories and bring to our work and our lives the food of story. And to it the rhythm of good food, of people of walk slow and bend close, and to the stories we shared - some in the workshop, some over breakfast. Here's a breakfast story.

A man called Roland runs a hotel. There is a staff member he values highly called Thomas. Thomas is perhaps sixty now and has never gone to school. Thomas though, can speak thirteen languages and Thomas will remember you. If you come to the hotel and order a drink then return a year of two later, he'll remember what drink you ordered and he'll bring it to you on a tray, without you having to ask for it. Recently Roland found Thomas in great distress, crying in a cupboard, sobbing his heart out. Roland couldn't console him. He tried to ask him what was the matter but Thomas couldn't stop the tears. It was only after his tears had run dry he was able to turn to his manager and say - it's my daughter - she's passed her matric with 13 honours.

After Roland told me the story over breakfast both of us had tears in our eyes. We too cried for the black girl who had what her father never got.

And many more such stories.

I went via Dubai. There's a melting pot of a place - in some ways like a brave new world where racism is an ugly fact of history.

and back to Scotland where Hamish Henderson wrote -

roch the wind in the clear day's dawing

blaws the cloods heilster gaudy o'er the bay

but there's mair nor a roch wind blawing

through the great glen o the world the day

.....broken faimlies in lands we've harried

will curse Scotland the brave nae mair nae mair

black and white ane tae l'ither mairried