(This post follows on from The day M and I met Alfie.)
“There’s a ship that’s sailing
out in the night
There’s a heart that’s breaking,
I think it’s mine
There’s a storm a-comin’,
you’d better run boy run.”
Richard Hawley1
There’s a storm a’coming lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Ltd.
Sunday 21 January 2024.
Outside, it is black as can be. Ninth storm of the UK and Republic of Ireland winter season. Isha.
And there are words I remember from long ago and far away, as if I still possessed the diary that held them. I am writing this in candlelight in the Smuggler’s Hideout with a pigeon feather that Ava Marie Muddimer gave me dipped into Grandpa’s Quink. I am seven years, nine months and eighteen days old …
(The year was 1972. Weren’t there power cuts then, too?)
Met Éireann2, the Irish Meteorological Service, named this storm Isha. Otherwise, the UK Met Office3 names storms, and, since 2019, the KNMI, Koninkliijk Nederlands Meteorologisch Instituut4 names them too.
Before the power cut, I’d been reading about Arabic, Hebrew and Sanskrit forms of the name Isha. According to Islamic Rationalism, the time of Isha Prayer (evening prayer) starts “after civil dusk, when darkness spreads across the sky.5” Isha is the Hebrew word for woman, and “does double-duty as the word for ‘wife’. While in English an officiant pronounces a couple man and wife, in Hebrew the couple would be referred to as ‘husband and woman’, ba’al ve-isha.6” Then, there’s Isha Kriya, a form of meditation. “Daily practice of Isha Kriya helps brings health, dynamism, peace and wellbeing. It is a powerful tool to cope with the hectic pace of modern life.7” Reader, I want to throw a rock at the burglar alarm across the road. Were it not for the screeching, life here in the cottage would feel serene and far away from modern life right now.
We don’t have an open fire or wood-burning stove, but we’ve jumpers and blankets. Best of all, though, I hold dear the pleasure of writing in my diary by candlelight:
“As I listen to the rain stotting down, how many will name their newborns Isha on this night?”
Alfie, meanwhile, is lying under the table on his blue mat. He’s close to the oil-fired range which will keep its heat for a few hours; he can see each of the two doors in and out of the kitchen and he can see the larder where we store his food.
What’s not to like? he says, when I pop my head around the door to check on the kitchen candles.
Alfie is is ten years, six months and twenty-eight days old. According to the latest science around canine genetics8 that equates to around sixty-two and a half dog years. Anyhow, he doesn’t have any grey on his muzzle yet, and has recently learnt some new directives from his humans, as well as giving a few of his own.
“I’m so sorry to tell you he won’t live a long life,” said the veterinary at Alfie’s first consultation, which, by and by, I’ll recount. Not now though, I’m still writing about that day.
There’s a bucket on the kitchen floor underneath a hole in the ceiling. Alfie looks at the bucket, looks back at me, unfazed by the drip, drip, drip. To date, he’s experienced fifty eight of the sixty-two named storms that have battered Cumbria since named storms became a thing in 2015.
The hours between Storm Isha and Storm Jocelyn. I open my 2018 diary, try to read in between the lines.
Five years, four months and fourteen days since I left Tangy Mill. I remember peering into the distance from the beach, Northern Ireland on the far horizon. On my way back to Cumbria, I took a wee detour to Tarbert on Loch Fyne but before that, the gift of a stunning, far-reaching day: I’d stood on the beach in Tayinloan, could see Gigha, Jura, Islay.
Back in the car I’d written in my diary.
“That feeling again, when you want to keep on driving. It’s the solitude and the freedom and the space, I suppose. I can breathe. Unlike our cottage, patchwork of horrors, gypsum plaster, cement, bitumen tanking, plastic paint …”
It wasn’t thoughts of going home to a dilapidated cottage, though. That wasn’t why I didn’t want to go home. I was hopeful M and I would restore the cottage one day. I’m still hopeful. We’ve made progress.
When I reached Loch Lomond I had coffee, lunch, went for a walk. I took up my diary once more.
“… Gathering thoughts, meaning accumulated over this past week.
That first full day in Tangy, sitting by the burn looking at the photos I’d taken of the mill, looking at all the photos I’ve taken this summer. Ez and Etta at Friar’s Crag. Jay’s wedding, Ez looking so handsome and quite the social butterfly. But something about Ez, in the sunshine on the grass on that honeyed, dreamlike day. His confidence, talkativeness. A moment looking into his eyes, his dilated pupils. That moment felt like an enormous loss, also like I’d been living under an illusion.”
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Richard Hawley’s website at <https://richardhawley.co.uk/>; accessed Friday 26 January 2024
The Irish Meteorological Service online at <https://www.met.ie/>; accessed Sunday 21 January 2024
The UK Met Office online at: <https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/>; accessed: Sunday 21 January 2024
The KNMI online at <https://www.knmi.nl/home>; accessed: Sunday 21 January 2024
Isha Prayer. “The Isha prayer (Arabic: صلاة العشاء ṣalāt al-ʿišāʾ, "night prayer") is one of the five mandatory salah (Islamic prayer).” online at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isha_prayer>; accessed Sunday 21 January 2024
Languages of the World. “This website is a discussion forum dedicated by Asya Perelsvaig to exploring the rich diversity of human languages and the peoples who speak them.” Online at <https://www.languagesoftheworld.info/semantics-and-pragmatics/a-man-and-a-woman.html>; accessed: Monday 22 January 2024
At <https://isha.sadhguru.org/uk/en/yoga-meditation/yoga-program-for-beginners/isha-kriya-meditation>; accessed: Monday 22 January 2024
”Scientists Use Genetics to Develop Better Formula to Calculate Dog Age in “Human Years” At <https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-use-genetics-to-develop-better-formula-to-calculate-dog-age-in-human-years/>; accessed Saturday 20 January 2024