Lovely Time

Sumo Baby, looks like a shoplifter. 

7.30am. A wood pigeon clatters in the oak. I look up at the tree, it’s all knees and elbows. The lane hedges are tall here, they channel vision. I see a cloud, anvil shaped; a western anvil with a curled out lip; and the parallel colours of a rainbow section. It curves from a cloud, like the leg of a cosmic lizard.

10.30am. Girl and Baby and me, we drive to Tavistock, park by the river, swim in a pool. Baby has a sumo swimsuit. She splashes my face and rubs it; there you go Granma, your face is washed, in the big sink. I put 20p in the machine to dry her hair, she leans her head into the warm airflow, looks quizzical; this is a peculiar telephone. ‘Hiya!’ She listens but no-one answers, they are just blowing air on her. She chuckles like a pan boils over.

1pm. The afternoon comes with darkening cloud and the washing on the line is a risk. I dare myself to do it. I keep a weather eye out. I forget all about it because I disappear in my writing, because I’m in Bristol and it’s 1972. Nextdoor chickens break the reverie, breaking out of their pen and raiding the garden. Never mind, the washing is blown through, nearly dry; there is a Rayburn to light, runner beans to pick, a pack of prawns to stir in a pot.

7.30pm. Steamy espresso, in the cup that sits by my desk, electric lit. Outside, crows start up, resemble flakes of night, chipping from the earth.

Sunshine in a jar