A DAY OF SUDDEN SHOWERS (part 2)

Away back to the Highlands

Saturday morning I woke groggy to the world, reluctant to get out of bed and face the day.

Andy and Frances were not up, well they were, they would have been drinking tea together hours before but they weren’t in the kitchen.

I stumbled around, put the kettle on, found the homemade bread in the freezer, wondered whether I should make real coffee or instant coffee and opted to for the real version.

After a while, when I had scrolled facebook long enough to get very bored by it, and eaten my toast with the homemade marmalade, Fran and Andy appeared with the dogs. Polly and Roggie sat at my feet gazing at me, or rather my toast, adoringly, but I gave them nothing and felt slightly guilty..

While Andy and Fran ate, we talked of Dexter the cat and how he had been an accidental acquisition after Fran’s mum decided she did not want him after all. An accidental but much loved cat. I must have known him but couldn’t really remember him properly.

Andy worked on his speech, which had become a bit complicated when working out who wanted to be thanked publicly and who did not want mentioned at our event later in the day. I felt a bit guilty about my one, which was pretty much a repetition of what I had been sent by Creativity and Care.

By the time it was time for Andy to start on his physio exercises for his knee, it was time for me to go to Inverness to meet up with a friend in town who was hoping to come to the Moniack Mhor Creativity and Care celebrations.

It’s always strange coming back to the Highlands to people I once knew so well and to streets and buildings I used to pass all the time.

My friend’s house is slightly overwhelmed by a wild garden, not a deliberately wild one, more one that just developed and then developed even more. I won’t mention her name, as I think that would be difficult but I will say something about her as, in some ways, she represents many of the reasons I still speak out in mental health.

At first, she did not answer the door, which I half expected. And then, just as I was about to post an art pad as a present through her letter box; she appeared by the gate.

Life for some people is always difficult and always harsh. The young people I was going to meet later had, I hoped, maybe found a way forward through immense difficulty but some people don’t and my friend is one of those people. Well she is and she isn’t; life is a perpetual struggle for her and yet she is still very much alive so maybe she has found a way.

The weight of childhoods and care and trauma and decade after decade of more trauma weigh heavily on some people; make life incredibly difficult.

It was soon clear that we would not be going to the Creativity and Care celebration with Moniack Mhor and also clear that we would not be going inside her house, as access, to even the hallway, was blocked by bag after bag of stuff which made it almost impossible to walk or even climb into any room.

Instead, we went to the climbing wall for coffee. I had a lovely time. Some people even though they have incredibly difficult lives and shift in and out of friendships all the time but are often alone, still retain something wonderful about them. This person, even though she had not had hot water or heating in her house for over a year and even though she was worried the electricity would be cut off any moment and sometimes was in such pain that she could not even move to roll a cigarette, and even though she no longer has teeth, and could hardly walk to the shops and struggles to understand any reason to keep living; still keeps something bright and wonderful in her heart.

She is constantly bewildered by the world and the people in the world but somehow sends love to it despite that. A wonderful artist and writer; her desire seems to be to celebrate what bits of the world and the people around her that she can. To take wonder from the rain or seeing a dog in the street or noticing a cat she hasn’t seen in ages or finding a film in a charity shop that she thinks she will like. I cannot quite explain it but it constantly astonishes me.

At the climbing wall we found an event for search and rescue dogs which delayed us for a time; while Sky the dog, got petted and praised, as did the humans, well they were just praised; I stood slightly awkwardly to the side.

We watched the telly in the cafe and nattered until I found out that the thing my friend would like most would be a trip to Aviemore to pick up a book she had ordered and to see the hills and the mountains, the rivers, burns and trees.

So that is what we did. I let Moniack know I would be late and we drove away, through mile after mile of roadworks to Aviemore; past Carbridge where I lived for many years and into the town itself. The Cairngorms still had patches of snow on them but there is less and less of that year after year now.

In the bookshop; my friend was full of joy and delight, almost like a child with her excitement at hearing her book was in; oblivious to the looks of other shoppers as she wandered the small store praising what she found, with her crutches dangling behind her. She bought book and paints, a fluffy dragon and spent nearly two hundred pounds. And then spent nearly another hundred pounds in the Tesco’s.

We decided to drive up towards Loch Morlich and there, in the forest, we walked the short distance to the loch side with its river and mountains and peat brown water and there we paused in silence and wonder at the peace and stillness; the light on the water and gulls flying as bright sparks of white in the distance.

It was good to hear my friend say the beauty of the places outside of Inverness reminds her why she still loves the Highlands; even though she hates what has become of her and thinks she has repeated her mother’s journey in life and fears life will get worse and worse.

I left her at her house with her bottle of cherry liqueur and her ham sandwich and wondered what she meant when she said she did not know if she wanted me to get in touch with the Mental health team for her. I fear that, with the state of her house and her inability to manage things like bills and utilities, she might be taken away from it to somewhere safer and think she would think that the worst possible outcome. She prizes her independence so much and yet at the same time she was unsure if she would be alive when next I tried to visit her.

Back at Muir of Ord, I had a cheese sandwich before setting back to Inverness with Andy. The Wasps creative space used to be a college which I had visited in the past but not in its present incarnation. It was spectacularly lovely.

We arrived to hear the young people who had all been brought up in care, finishing a poetry reading for everyone. I had forgotten that in some venues people, show their applause by clicking their fingers or silent clapping and, for a brief moment, found it strange.

It was a moving but alien afternoon. I knew hardly anyone and am just not the sort of person to strike up conversations with random people.

I wandered the exhibition, looked at a wonderful book of poetry and at pots and photos and posters. I looked at the young people with their green lanyards and admired them. I found chairs in a corner and sat in one and for a while felt content. I phoned a relative and found out that another relative is about to go into rehab and that it looks really good and for a while I felt some quiet joy at this news and the possibility of something better for someone I care about.

I found Andy talking to lots of the young people. That was lovely, the rapport, the jokes and tenderness, the history so many of them have together. I sat in a nature workshop under a cherry tree and then left it as I had no children to bang the colour of the leaves onto white paper with. I sat in the lee of another tree that mainly grew sideways along the ground. I looked at the blue sky and listened to a music event from a few streets away and it felt pretty good.

I was shown the Creativity and Care offices which will soon close and I joined the queue at the buffet where I ate too many tiny donuts. I spoke to Susan from Abriachan and told her of a conversation I had had with my friend earlier, when we remembered being given a lift around the woods up there by her and how my friend had good memories of that.

I sat down for the final music event of the evening , which had been organised by someone from the Magic Numbers, which even I have heard of. I looked at Rachel, who seemed almost overwhelmed with emotion and I looked at the young people who hugged and cuddled and high fived each other when they came off stage and though I couldn’t hear all the words, I listened to the songs about power and about belonging and berated myself for comparing my past to that of these young people, wondered at the offence it would cause if I tried to make the link and wow! I loved their spirit as they spoke and wrote and chanted their challenge to the world. So beautiful and so tender was it.

But much as I tried to say that my childhood was different and that my family paid for the privilege of sending me away; I couldn’t avoid the memory of every day and every hour and every week being dictated by bells that told us when to get up, when to get washed, when to go to class, when to go for meals and when to go to sleep. I couldn’t release myself from those loveless places I went, where there was not an ounce of privacy, even when we were sleeping. I couldn’t forget that we cuddle Wendy’s children all the time and say we love them and there, the best of physical contact, was a fight or a game of football but mainly we went uncuddled and unhugged and untreasured or even noticed.

I remembered how our beds were crowded against each other in those dormitories when I was away between the age of nine to sixteen. The letters home we were forced to write, which had to be positive, the exeats where maybe a dozen of us out of the whole school remained there because we were not going to get taken home.

I couldn’t forget that we had no power; that we had no way of speaking out when things were done that shouldn’t have been. I couldn’t forget the fear and the loneliness and the blankness of trying to understand why we had been sent away from home and family and friends to those bleak places.

And I got a bit lost in my thoughts but the music brought me back, the clicking fingers brought me back, the young people celebrating each other, hugging each other. They made me think slightly jealously of those days when I was a young adult and likewise, setting out to change the world and not remain silent and ignored and I loved that memory; the sense of camaraderie and friendship and shared lives when we just said;

‘Forget them; the powerful, the leaders. We will create our own world!’

and in a way, for a short time, we did.

I really, really, liked the loud music followed by the silence of the clicking fingers and the smiles on everyone’s faces.

Finally, I gave a speech on behalf of Moniack Mhor and got clicked in turn and then Andy gave his much more real, much more powerful and funnier talk and we had finished.

The granddad of one of the young people came up to me afterwards to thank me for what I had done and though I thanked him for his thanks, I knew he was thanking the wrong person. I turn up occasionally at a Board meeting and take some notes; I hardly contribute. It is funny being thanked as a symbol of something you aren’t really. But at the same time quite good.

When the chairs were stacked and Andy had said goodbye to all the people he needed to say goodbye to, we went home; back to Frances and a house empty of dogs now that they had been picked up by the other Rachel, their daughter.

We ate lasagne just because I am greedy and Fran had made some just in case and I loved it.

We sat in the sitting room and drank wine and whisky and told stories.

I had a whole sofa to lie along. I hadn’t known that Frances and Andy had met at University in Northern Ireland. I always think I can repeat the stories people tell me but I can’t really; I can maybe tell this one in part though. That story of how their friends spent ages trying to pair them off and how they resisted because they loved their friendship so much that they didn’t want to risk it by becoming lovers and how they became a couple when Andy saw Fran’s red shoes (attached to her) poking out of a bush she had fallen under when trying to get back into a party. That was beautiful and so wonderful to hear and of course it did work out, just as their friends knew it would, because friendship is the such a fine base to build love on.

And at some stage, slightly later than the night before, Fran’s eyes drooped and her wine glass showed every sign of falling to the ground and Andy took her to bed and I went to bed and thought of my family and thought I remembered it was father’s day the next day but I think it turned out that it was actually another countries father’s day. I thought that, as usual, I would have spent another year without seeing my son.

I find it strange that I don’t know what he looks like anymore. I find it strange that I am no longer wild in my heart with the loss; it just is. A dull ache if that.

People say I need to hold on to the fact that he said ‘Happy Christmas Dad’ in a message on facebook last Christmas but I don’t want to. I want more somehow. I want to know who his friends are, what he does when he gets up in the morning, what he believes in, what his favourite meal is; anything really. I would treasure any tit bit about his life, even if it is just what colour of socks he likes or whether he prefers baths or showers, or likes to sleep late or get up early.

Luckily sleep can take that particular sadness away from me and in the morning I can wake, forgetful of the thoughts of the night before.

It was raining again when I fell asleep. I woke to the lambs in the fields but that particular story finishes next Wednesday!

If you found reading this interesting, do think of reading more in my memoirs START and Blackbird Singing. If you want to find out more about Moniack Mhor Writing Centre do have a look here.

https://www.moniackmhor.org.uk/