wax paper packages tied up with... stickers.

Now that I have reached a hiatus in my studying I am really pleased to announce that I am reopening my etsy shop. It is fully stocked with sets of note cards featuring both French and Hebridean photographs, the two different landscapes that have whispered to and soothed my soul in the last few years. 

I spend a lot of time doubting that I know what it is I'm supposed to do with my life but making things - actual things that people can hold and feel and treasure - is the touchstone that I always come back to. The world is messy and overwhelming and worrying and bringing together something, anything, into a small physical form that makes sense and brings calm and shares an idea or a thought or a feeling that can be held in someone's hands... that brings me unspeakable, if fleeting, peace. 

Note cards probably won't change the world (I mean they might, I feel like there's potential for a note card-based revolution. Ideas on a... note card) but they can probably change the course of someone's day. Frame them, gift them, write some words of love onto that deliciously lush card and pop them in a parcel to a friend who needs to know that you care. Also, they're just really pretty. You probably can't get yourself physically to a Hebridean island or to the south of France terribly easily but I hope that these sets will bring a little of those places to you. 

Details - each set contains five different photographs, taken be me, and printed onto the heaviest, most delicious matt card I've ever seen. They're packaged in wax paper envelopes and sealed with a kiss a nice shiny sticker. 

They are for sale in my etsy shop and will be dispatched on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays, in keeping with island postal services. 

Paths and unsettled souls.

Perhaps there are betters times and places to walk off an unsettled soul than the wilds in November, but I don't know them.

I don't know of a better place to trip and stumble and swear and cry and shout profanities into the echoing expanses of moor and sea and sky.

I don't know of a better place to crouch in the heather, seeing the universe, not in a grain of sand but in a clump of moorland, colours and layers and depths and intricacies, worlds of which you know nothing because you're just too damn big.

I don't know of a better place to follow paths you and no other human made, paths that lead through and to nowhere or maybe to the exact place you need to be.

I don't know of a better place to stare into water and see nothing but the above mirrored back to you, or the first few inches of below, swimming and rippling and distorting.

I do not know of a better place to come home to. Maybe they exist, but I do not know of them. This is the place I know.

March, a shopping trip

March; a trip to mainland that looked like the islands, trees shrouded in mist, paper leaves clinging to bare branches, moss dripping in silent forests like streamers after the party. 

An ancient valley, standing stones and chambered cairns and circles carved in stones by busy hands 5000 years dead. 

Forts long gone, the footsteps of Kings, dusty light blanketing dormant fields. 

Hillsides mirrored in frozen water, colours siding into colours, the world doubled over upon itself, the sky beckoning below our feet. 

A perfect farm, a serendipitous stay, a dog to befriend and a phone call telling us yes, the boat would be ours. 

Dreams realised, a search ended, imagination sparked, a story begun. 

Scotland, pros and cons

pro: You can buy paracetamol in the supermarket, in fact you can buy paracetamol everywhere.*

con; I have been wearing at least one pair of tights every day for six weeks, more often two. 

pro: Coffee in British cafes does not taste like burned soil. 

con; Tinned tomatoes taste more like tin than tomato.

pro; The words boak, bogging, minging. 

con; When I accidentally mutter 'Ce n'est pas bon' under my breath I no longer sound like a trier, I sound like a twat.

pro; I have 'cultural knowledge', like how to open a tube of toothpaste and what number to call in an emergency. 

con; Other than hands or faces, I haven't seen my own or my kids skin for six weeks. This will only continue. 

pro; Knowing (generally) why people are laughing in my presence

con; It costs what would once buy me a week's worth of wine to come by one bottle that is at all drinkable

pro; Weather that changes, dramatically and often. 

con;  I will have to leave the country to eat a ripe apricot.

pro; Prescriptions! They're free! Totally, completely free. 

con; When I was either my hair or my clothes it's a very real concern that they may still be wet in a week's time. 

* I can't believe I've been blogging here for almost 9 years and I've never told you my favourite joke. . . Why are there no painkillers in the jungle? Because the parrots ate 'em all. My husband thinks it's terrible but he's wrong. 


*image from Fornasetti, it's a plate that I really want but I can't spend £125 on a plate because I'm not allowed nice things that can't withstand being dropped, banged, accidentally hurled across the room etc, etc.

postcards from an island

(I wrote this three weeks ago. I have cycled through loving being here, hating being here, wondering where the hell else I could possibly go, swearing I'll never ever leave since then. Sometimes several times a day.)

Sitting in the cafe I remember when it used to be downstairs, in the tiny-windowed basement. I remember going to a workshop to print our names and designs onto the ceramic tiles that would decorate the original cafe's walls and I remember my disappointment that they couldn't be moved along with the cafe into the new building with its high roof, pale wooden beams and picture windows looking out over the bay. I remember art classes as a child in the gallery upstairs and then later in the newly built studio, when I was preparing my portfolio for art school. I remember artists who lived here, ones who left, ones who are still here and who were once my teachers but are now my friends, their kids only a few years older than my own.

There are so many memories, an accordion book spanning childhood holidays to moving here as a twelve year old, adolescent school days to long summers home once I had started university and finally holidays of recent years, this time grown and married and with children.

All of those memories are currently mixing and blending, colliding and dancing with life as I have been experiencing it these last few weeks and in a lot of cases they just don't match. I guess it's no mystery that life as a teenager doesn't look the same as it does when you are thirty years old, that the picture changes with time but if you aren't here to watch it happen then it comes as a bit of a surprise to look out of old windows and see a new view, similar but definitely not the same.

In almost every case it's a better view and with every day that we spend here those memories that were so vivid and clear - that I would have staked money on being True and Real - are dissipating, clearing like mist over the hills. People who I didn't think would remember my name let alone care that I was here greet me with warm smiles, marvel at the size of my children, ask how long I'm home for. Happiness and surprise greet me when I tell them that we have moved here, that the answer is 'Forever, hopefully'. Parents express delight that there are new children at the tiny local school, that the P1 class of four will now be six and look thoughtful when we say that we are looking for work and a house to rent. People help, or they try to. Suggestions come, facebook messages and promises to let us know if they hear of anything, not just once but over and over.

Neighbours phone to wish the girls a good first day at school and the following week to remind us that today is the day the bin goes out, the black bin, not the blue one. It goes out every fortnight but alternates between a Tuesday and a Thursday so it can be tricky to remember. Old teachers extol me to never, ever call them 'mister' again, introduce themselves to my husband by their first name and insist that we must call in the next time we're passing, if we don't then we'll find them on our doorstep. For now at least, it is lovely.

I can see that it might grate in time, the constant interaction, the impossibility of going to the supermarket without stopping to have the same conversation every week; 'yes, we're back... the girls are well... yes, five!... yes, they love school.... ' It reminds me somewhat of having newborn twins, when you would have to stop at least five times per outing to answer the same questions; 'yes, twins. No, two girls. No, they don't run in the family. Yes, I had a natural delivery. It was at 38 weeks... 5lb 7 and 6lb 2... No, we don't get a lot of sleep.' I wanted to have cards printed, or a sign made for the front of the pushchair. It wasn't that I resented people's interest, it was just that I was tired, and had somewhere to be, and it was the seventh time that day.

This is different though, I know these people and have known some of them since I first came here at seven years old. They grew up with my Granny, I went to school with them, or with their children or grandchildren. Their niece drove the school bus or their son was my high school teacher. They were my neighbour in one of the many houses we rented when we lived here or they are my mother's cousin's partner's brother in law. There are threads and links and connections running back for generations and after a life in city after city and then seven months in a country where interest in my well being (where knowing my name) was limited to the four adults living within 100m of my door, it is a really lovely thing to feel connected again, to feel part of a picture, to be cared about.