Look deeper

Tuesday 15th December, 2020

I woke to a perfect day. I had three mugs of superb coffee before anyone else was up. So I could appreciate it in silence as I looked over the Tay. The silence and stillness were compounded by the fabulous clear and blue sky. The sun was its winter low but powerful and glimmering on the water. The usual heron and his water loving mates were in abundance.

I decided to walk the Fife Coastal path toward Tentsmuir Forest and St Andrews. I set off at 10.30 and took a Tesco carrier bag with two things in mind. I picked up the detritus along the way hoping to make a little difference to the environment. I am ever upset by what people just throw aside from cans to plastic bottles to dog pooh bags to face wipes and cigarette packets and sweet wrappers. By Tayport about a 35 minute walk I had a bulging Tesco bag. I dumped it in a waste paper bin. Then my day of memories really began. I popped in to the Charity shop in which I helped and volunteered before the pandemic came. I would do so still but my house holder has a fear of possible infection so I have given all that up. Two fellow workers were there, masked, distanced and gelled! Happy conversation but some sad news at deaths of old companions. I bought two long handled back scratchers, a whole range of the bizarrest culinary tools including an instrument that looked as if used by the Inquisition. About two foot long, mainly straight like a long handle, probably pine wood, with three circular wire style encrustations at the end. No one knew what it could be but it was new so I bought it and know exactly to whom to give it. Also bizarre was the onion steamer...a small round heated onion shaped plugable in to electrics dome made of enamel and what looks like formica. Then specialist tin openers not just for the ordinary round tin but for the elongated shaped ones also...it has adjustable knobs. Such fun discussing them and I recalled the great times we used to have working in the shop.

Then a walk through the village passed the cottage pub, the local ironmongery with smoked and dirt encrusted Windows, the hardware store next to it, the funeral parlour, the shut library, the grocer store with a fish counter, then the butcher with home grown vegetables, mainly leeks and potatoes and then the pharmacy with big coloured glass bottles with 'poison' written on them, probably worth a fortune on eBay. Some of the small cottages and renovated hovels looked as if goblins and smurfs and little men lived in them. It was wonderful, almost a reminiscence of the village my Grand Mother lived in. And there was the equivalent of ' fag ash Lil ' as she was called in 1921 on the doorstep of her home in slippers and smoking a cigarette while talking to her hair netted neighbour. Thank goodness we are as we should be in this part of Scotland.

A bus trundled by and I hopped on. Back home I picked up my post. Three of the cards had Christians names only in them which I did not recognise. I have no idea who they are from. One had ' love Joy, Sarah, Paul, Evie, Johnathan, Cecilia and Lucy '. The others had no surnames or addresses either. So I decided to look to my address book. That was when I started a reverie which lasted over three hours. I did not notice the time pass but almost every page brought back memories, instances, faces, times and seasons and, thankfully, all, without exception, truly happy. Yes, some had died and yet I felt an overwhelming gratitude to them and prayer flowed out of me. How blessed I have been.

I am not a writer of Christmas cards but today I wondered if that was just silly for the season has made me go back. I am now who I am partly because of the people who have populated my life. Wonderful people. So whatever the pandemic I feel a real deep joy and I feel blessed. It has been a truly educational day.