Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Words From The Start Of Lockdown Life Mr looks to the future, it looks like hedges. Saturday March 14th 2020 On the drive to work I got bored of changing the windscreen wiper settings, then a little off-white spider raced around on the steering wheel. I blew it onto the dashboard but it jumped back. Cheeky spider. At work we are bored of coronavirus restrictions and bored at the prospect of it continuing. We don’t know anyone who has it. Supermarket shelves are missing toilet roll, dried pasta, as previously, now also tins of beans and tomatoes. There are travel bans and cancelled events. Last night I had to teach a non contact TKD session - no pads, no sparring, no hand shaking. I began my class with ‘first of all, please don’t breathe because that’s dangerous now.’ All of us are ‘meh’ about these restrictions. We understand that infection control is serious for the immune-compromised, we adhere to protocol for that reason. But the paranoia and boredom: meh. Monday March...

Words On Wondering The sun appears, edging back from retirement. It has been days of rain. Is that wind that stirs the washing trusted on the line or is it sighs of relief? Both, let’s say. The air seems warmer, the mud all soft. Hot enough to get seeding in the polytunnel: tomatoes, basil, chillies, peppers, radish, carrots, pumpkin, cucumber, aubergine. Seeds flake-like, spear-shape, spherical, familiar. Journeys continued. Meanwhile we are asking questions over a piece of land, to see if we can make a connection between where we are and where we should like to be. I have repotted the lime tree, and the red palms, knowing they are getting harder to move, hoping this works like ironic magic bringing us closer to the place where they can be planted in our own ground. Clouds roll thick in the sky. For now the magic is knowing that possibility exists. Later we may settle for another story, another possibility; preparations help propagation but there are var...