SHAPES THAT MAKE ME SMILE WHEN I AM HOME WITH DASH THE DOG!

SHAPES THAT MAKE ME SMILE WHEN I AM HOME WITH DASH THE DOG!

I went to the photography club at Jean’s Bothy today. The first chance in ages to sit and witter. We did talk about photography and I did spend five minutes trying to find abstract images for next week and very much hope I will put more effort in and find more over the coming days.

There is something very, very, special about Jeans Bothy. I think partly, maybe the variety of people who go there. In the past, places like that have been almost exclusively for people with long term mental health problems and long term unemployment, living in that wasteland of poverty. They are truly precious, but in recent years have become more and more absent from our landscape and if they are there; far too often you have to enter into contracts and work to goals for recovery.

Ughh!! The very thought of recovery goals when I go to find company and pleasure and support! I think if I had to report on my targets and ambitions at Jeans Bothy I would leave it well alone. Here, although we have all suffered in some way with our wellbeing and even though most of us (like me) have serious mental illnesses or other conditions, we come from a wide variety of backgrounds. Some of us would in other circumstance work somewhere like this but in this town, we know the very real truth that even if you are working, or have been seemingly successful in some way, that you can still be lonely, still struggle, still ache for a place where you feel amongst your own. I love that Jeans Bothy is for the whole community and not just for a certain sub group of us to be looked after in and tucked away slightly out of sight.

Today I walked through the door to welcome; past a garden of flowers and benches, past the dining room area and the kitchen and into our photography space. It is as natural and routine a process as turning on my lap top on a work day but so, so, much better. On the bookshelves there were row after row of books that our book club had read; all free. Some of them have been wonderful. I have only rarely got along to the evening book meetings but intend to one day. At the far end of the room is a black lacquered cabinet that someone most have been making in the upcycling group and next to it a stool made from stripped down branches with a red twine seat that the woodland people would have made.

I am sometimes tempted to go to one of the sessions we have at the Journey; the fitness club in the town centre but feel so self-conscious of my very ample tummy that I don’t. I would like to have gone to the creative writing yesterday; one of our members who used to facilitate writing groups now runs it and I would have liked to have plucked up the courage for the art group or found the time for the peer support sessions but I just don’t often have the time as I am busy working most of the time.

The Tower, our independent cinema (Recently reopened) invited us along the other day. I am ashamed to say that I turned my nose up at Top Gun but I bet I would have loved it in the end.

I have only been to one meeting of the Bothy Blether magazine but do write a regular article for most issues and love doing so. I have also only rarely been along for one of the meals in the garden but it has been good sitting under the canvass pergola drinking coffee and nibbling on rolls; occasionally talking to people.

It is my family who keep me on an even keel, and it is walks down at Ardmore with Dash the dog that add to that sense of wellbeing. My work gives me purpose and enough of an income that we can afford treats and the occasional holiday. My regular visits to my CPN and that fortnightly injection, I don’t know. Those around me would probably say that without that I would not be here; I am less convinced of the value of that but at least they are kind there; over the road at the Jenny Deans Clinic.

But Jean’s bothy; though I am only there once a week or so and still haven’t used the veggie meal box they gave me… it is a place; no not a place; a beacon of belonging and safety.

There was a time when I was incredibly nervous even going through the door and even now I tend to clam up when meeting brand new people there for the first time, but it is my storm anchor creating smoothness in what is sometimes a rough life.

It is one of the rare places I can sit and on occasion by as silly as I have ever dared to be.

A few weeks ago I went with a group of members for a days sailing, out from Inverkip with a sailing charity for disabled people. One of the members gave us a lift for the forty minute journey across the Erskine Bridge to the marina. And then we spent the day on the water.

The thrill of seeing the sails up, the joy of being at the helm. The faint memory of what it was like when I was a skipper in the Philippines or sailing across the Atlantic. How I ached to say;

“Let me trim the sails, wander the decks, make the coffee, plot a course. Let me tell you stories of all those years when the sea was the family business!”

We saw porpoises, herons, we saw seals and drifted past wooded cliffs. We skirted submarine hangers and left them and their patrol boats at a distance. We passed and were passed by ferries. We waved at other yachts and bounced in the wake of ships. And I loved every moment of it.

Now to find some abstract shapes to take pictures of, while Charlotte paints at the easel a member of the Bothy left for me to pick up because she no longer had a use for it. Charlotte is delighted by the way!!

For me this is community. This is belonging and connection. This is where I can trust myself and trust others. This place just by being here and in the way it treats people like me means the darker parts of my life becomes just that little bit more distant.