Uncomfortable feelings – life’s been a guddle

Guddle is a Scottish word refuring to an utter mess or confusion. Tohuwabohu is a phrase of similar meaning “formless and void” that describes the state of the Earth before the creation of Earth as we know it today. It’s chaos, disorder, and directionless speaks to a state of confusion or mess. I also think of our lives as topsy turvy but this chaos was not directionless or aimless it was born out of a decision and plan to make a new life in a new land. It was as if we threw ourselves into this state, the chaos, the guddle but we would not have thought of it that way when we set out on our new trajectory.

Before our new life was formed into what it is as we know it now it went through a state of chaos. We were in a right guddle.

I am familiar with this chaotic state when I begin my creating process so to a large extent I am comfortable with chaos. But that’s the normal type of chaos I choose to work with and have a certain amount of control over. Other times life feels completely out of one’s control like when one is informed that we have a terminal illness or of a death of a dear one. We had chosen this chaos but it was in a much larger scale than creating or crafting an object.

When we moved continents and we didn’t actually know where we would find a home, in this foreign land, we didn’t know how to keep ourselves warm in winter because we had lived in a warm environment. We thought we were all speaking English but we didn’t understand everyone and they didn’t understand us. The laws of the country are not necessarily the same nor is the medical system and no one thinks of explaining that it is different. These things one usually learns slowly from young and it becomes second nature but we had to learn what a boiler or double glazing was. It is a lesson in seeing things from a different perspective: expect the unknown to happen or to be said.

It is like having to speed read, or in our case, speed learn everything. One is bound to make mistakes along the way. And it’s okay. But it is stressful and taxing. We were somewhat fortunate that our children had moved to England and Scotland a few years prior to us and so we lent on their experience. I also had cousins who gave me good advice about buying a house in Scotland. When I found it challenging I would comfort myself by remembering that it’s good for old brains to learn new patterns and thought processes.

In this post I am going to focus on our translocation of our home and belongings, and more specifically, my art studio as a good example of one part of my life that, while being trans-located, felt like a guddle. In South Africa I had an outsize double garage (extra-long and extra wide) which I used as an art studio. I ran art workshops from it and I did all my different forms of creativity which ranged from painting in acrylic, watercolours, inks, oils and pastels; I had wax works, hand tools, lino printing, paper-making, candle making, dying, collaging, and layering materials, I also had fabrics and yarns. I work in many different mediums and a lot in mixed media. I also had student materials for classes I occasionally ran.

When we moved I had to get rid of most of it. These art materials felt like my friends whom I knew intimately and getting rid of them felt like a betrayal. It was heart wrenching but the saving grace was that I was giving it to my arty friends and to my cousin.

When I came to Scotland I had just had ankle surgery and had to be pushed about in a wheel chair when I initially went shopping. All I had with me was my mother’s knitting needles, for sentimental reasons, my journals and writing manuscripts and a shoe box of watercolour paints and brushes.

Everything was in packing boxes which other people had packed because I’d just undergone my surgery. This meant I had no clue where anything was when we arrived in Scotland. We couldn’t really unpack because we were living in a temporary apartment and it was only in April 2024 that we moved into our own home. We were officially in but our bedroom was on the one side of the lounge and Derek’s office was on the other side of our wardrobe in the lounge. The other rooms were under construction and dust for several months. June 2024 we  move our bedroom upstairs and Derek moved his office into my potential studio space. So I still couldn’t unpack my art materials and writing stuff. From September 2021 to September 2025 my creative life (and the rest of my life) has been on hold in a guddle/chaos/topsy-turvy/tohuwabohu

It is like losing a creative limb.

I also had to focus on learning the ways, the language and helping run home and I had no time to allow myself to be creative. No time or mental capacity or emotional reserve for creating.

Knitting became a lifeline for me. I had always disliked knitting but being initially stuck with nowhere to go I took to knitting as a pacifying meditation. Arriving in Scotland in autumn was a delightful adventure of the senses. The Scottish colours seem to be on steroids compared to the African colours. It’s like having a box of 120 different colours compared to 24 colours. Every week the trees changed in colour, the landscape as a whole changed dramatically, moving though greens to golds, auburns and purples and eventually to winter of sparkling whites that blushed pink in the morning sunrise. As I chose the colours for my knitting I expressed these colours. I didn’t care so much as what I was knitting but what colours I was capturing so in this sense I had a splash of creativity.

I don’t want to dwell on the negatives but I was asked what my challenges were and I think it is good to be aware that it is not all plain sailing if you are thinking of making the move, especially as we were 59 years old when we set out on our adventure. Moving countries is a momentous decision to make. My roots are in Scotland: My father was Scottish and lived Scotland for the first 21 years of his life and this was the attraction for me. Another blogger so rightly pointed out that we have been very positive minded and I think that originates from learning to be a master, rather than a victim, of our circumstances.

Now I celebrate my new creative space (headspace and floor space). I’m not a tidy person while I am creating but I love knowing where everything is when I reach for my tools and materials otherwise I literally feel tormented.  The challenge was the guddle and the uncomfortable feelings: to navigate this situation took tenacity, patience and wisdom.

In part 2 I will discuss another challenge I have faced when moving to Scotland: my health.

Have a wonderful week full of surprises!

Take care,
Morag Noffke