Steam On, Crazy Soup

Wednesday: A heat mist over the fields this morning calls up a favourite description from the diaries of Admiral Yi Sun Sin: the earth as a scalding pot of soup.

On this steaming day, sweeping and cleaning and the last of the indoor clearing is done.

We are prepared to hand over the keys of Rosehill, our former abode. I write ‘prepared’ as old Farmer Landlord is unlikely to be where he says when he says. And the moving saga isn’t over until the fruit bushes are brought to the long garden space at Number Three. And the telegraph pole.

My car holds gallons, gallons and more gallons of wine in many shapes of flagon, and a chainsaw, and a galvanised bin. Carefully driven around corners. Reversed clumsily from heat of driveway to shade of shed.

No one wants to work, we are too busy melting.

Mr drives the hot road to Plymouth. I flop in the passenger seat, hypnotised by the half popped bubble of moon. As the road cools, the moon thickens. On the home stretch, I see clearly the relief of plains and seas, so exactly halved, like a coin half pushed through a slot.

Some cosmic gambler, I wonder, trying to bring up three-in-a-row identical earths?

Is this how it is for the moon, always pushed, from one reality to another? Is it coinage, or is it cog?

Lightly poached brain comes home to a pep of coffee and a cold glass of blackcurrant port.

Thursday: Oh no! Wake up in a tomb of boxes! Relax, it’s only cardboard. Oh! In two days, the annual Tae Kwon Do Camp ensues- where is the camping kit? Aching all over from tip trip exertions, peppered with furniture bruises, the idea of training twice a day for a week, outdoors, all weathers? Away from all this pile up of stuff- I will love it. But, first, to uncover a tent…