Month: April 2022

In my dream, I am walking along the side of the croft house, holding the white washed wall with my right hand to both steady myself on the uneven ground and to touch the old dwelling, built an unknown number of years ago, but recognised as being almost 200 years old.   The white wash paint, cheaply thrown in a thick running coat painted over the wall just before I bought the house, by the previous owner’s husband – a stoic man a very few words, is/was beginning to flake and grow a frill of green mould around the edges of each flake, a little like lichen, created by the harsh southerly storm whipping winds and lashing rains.

It, having stood for almost 200 years, defiantly, strongly, needing nothing but paint to protect it, had seen and heard generations of families who lived here/there before me, is/was my protection against the fierce elemental swirling world. 

Every second of living in that beautiful house, I knew from which direction the wind was blowing.  I felt it, heard it, saw it even, the ever-present wind.  The house, picture perfect, faces/faced the sea to the east but I had already begun to look Southward to distant thoughts of friends and son and daughter. Threads of invisible people pulling me back through lack of regular contact and communication. It was then that I recognised a deeper loneliness than I had ever before in my life – the loneliness of self-imposed isolation that would not change over time but become more heart wrenching.

In my dream, I walk/ walked along the side of my beautiful croft house to the roofless byre, to sieve the soil to grow things but nothing really grows/ grew outside in Shetland without a great deal of protection from the elemental sea salt burning winds and harsh rains. The time-heavy extra labour to protect growing outdoor plants that grow horizontally below the storms, takes its toll on body and soul and does not always pay off in fruitful crops or a feeling of personal value or reward but becomes at best, a learning curve and at worst, exhausting.   I began to dream of having a polycrub but that was out of my reach financially and with land space.  I then began to realise the value of land on that island. Land struggled for by many for many generations and still held as priority.

In my dream this morning, here in the city, there was a brief and fleeting, but very real walk along the south side of a house I once bought and loved.  I heard the crunch and shuffle of endless rocks and stones beneath my unsteady feet to walk ten steps in my memory of a place that was home and felt completely right, for a while.

April 14^th 2022.

It arrived at my most sad moment.

returning, walking back from work, having cried openly all the way to my temporary home, along the roads, with all the bags, on opening the door, the parcel wrapped in brown paper rested on the hall table in my friend’s house.

I knew exactly what it was and whom had sent it.

the generous kindness of Françoise Delot-Rolando, an artist that I have long followed for her beautiful paintings of fragments of clothes. beautiful clothes. She had contacted me a few weeks before asking if she could share the painting she had done of an old cardigan I had knitted some years ago.

on seeing her message to me, i thought she was joking but she was not. I was honoured by her connection. her equisite, detailed, expression in paint of my expression in yarn took my breath away, so you see, i knew what was in the squared parcel wrapped in brown paper. a gem, a gift, a rare thing.

i stupidly opened it whilst on the phone to a service that i thought might listen to my deepest sad moment, a moment that surfaced so strongly that the flood gates couldn’t hold it back – a result of analysing my current housing situation. six months without home, constantly moving from pillar to post, searching, getting one, losing one, then another, and another loss but i began to learn from the losses. all the hours of searching online, phoning for viewings before all the viewing spaces are gone within 2 hours of the property going live on the market, no slowing down of the cruel speed within which hiked-up house prices rise by the week to be bid upon by people paying 20% above the asking price with their hard earned money to be in a ‘best and final’ bidding war where we all offer more over the most we can offer and we are in a whirl wind of houses going for a ridiculous price whatever their state.

i hear of people going to painting residencies labelled, Loss and Renewal, painting into being. everyone has loss and renewal but loss pours from me and i yearn for renewal. in my deep sadness in not finding a home, i am becoming a shell, a husk of what i was – functioning well at work, but not any place else.

BUT – then, there the little orange tin glowed on the floor, sent from France, to remind me of kindness and good. from a good woman who does not know me but for some kind and beautiful reason connected.

Françoise has a keen eye for detail, painting something more than a knitted pattern in a cardigan, more than a fragment of clothing expressed in paint and marks but the nuance of telling the story of a life in a garment.

but this perfectly formed, generous, gift arrives and i cannot take my eyes of its form until finally, i stop blethering about my situation and see a thing in front of me to be most grateful for.

when finally i get a home, and i will, shabby or broken or not, with its high price tag and cost of living in energy and worry, take this painting and it will hang in pride of place and i will be removed from this sad day of mine.

grateful thanks to Françoise Delot-Rolando, for lifting me on this grey evening. Please take a look at her beautiful work on the website or on instagram mentioned below.

https://lamenagereenvrac.tumblr.com

instagram @lamenagereenvrac