Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Thursday : After so much rain, the clouds lay flat out, from corner to corner of a washed out sky. Tyres in swathes of water spray out wings either side of every car. We travel, a line of neckless swans, on the dark wet road, wondering where the summer is hiding. Everyone sighs. Back at the old house, clothes flopping in the tumble dryer, I heat a kettle on a blue gas flame till it whistles. Make hot chocolate, a mugful. Friday : I am trying to set the router up. At this point I a person who does not care about weather, or chocolate. Boy is brave enough to help. Mr says he loves me. I say I will love everyone when the internet works. The instructions for accessing the connection are on an email. Which I can’t access. It is time to walk away from all things electrical, taking deep breaths. It’s only another little tribulation, on a sense of scale distorted by frustration. Baby gleams, playing hide and seek under a duvet. She wears a toilet roll inner tube as a bracelet. ...

Not having money is on us like a clamp, uncomfortable, unwelcome. Mr has made a kitchen lampshade from a colander, clever chap. We have remeasured both the sofa and the space it has to be dexterously persuaded into the house; it doesn’t seem workable but the maths say otherwise. The sofa is the only thing we decidedly can’t strap to the car, there must be van hire. The expense of van hire is broachable; a sofa exchange takes time to organize, and, besides, we like the one we’ve got. It represents welcome comfort. It articulates to me, this is exactly how you were: uncertain that you could fit in here; that this house and this life would meld. It further reveals, this is how you can be: a little squeezed for space, a bit scuffed from the journey, but settled, rested, raring for subsequent escapade. 

['Printing isn't quite as mechanical as people think. The people who take a little more time with machines print something better... There is love and craft in it, which means that a person with a better heart can do it better.' David Hockney.] Yesterday: Pick Up The List By the clang of the plumber’s spanner and the lightness of his humming, it is not too crazy to believe the burst pipe joint can be mended. Dare I hope that the whining pitch of the singing toilet also be soothed? I think about this, then dismiss my feelings; it will happen or not happen, hope and worry have no part in play here. I make mugs of tea and prepare to mop. Meanwhile Dog runs out, chases her ball the long length of the garden. The air is the kind of damp which can gather in raindrops or disperse into heat. The nextdoor chickens are slow clucking. The nextdoor chickens are great fence breechers: consequently chicken wrangling is a new hobby of ours. Tasks and chores for the day li...

Posting in haste, while the connection is working! Playing catch up is driving me bananas- why are bananas the crazy analogy fruit?  July 6, 2012 The Rabbit, the Wizard and the Bed Base. Yesterday’s highlight was beheld on the return visit from collecting a rabbit hutch. This in itself contained the excitement of the hutch being bigger than the space in the car, and having great faith in the strength of string. As I guided my vehicle gently to a roundabout, waiting to cross the road was a man in navy blue wizard robes, long hair wafting wisely in communion with a soft breeze, staff in hand and stout leather sandals on feet. Today we strapped the bed base to the top of my car with binder twine and reef knots. If an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered, getting the bed base up the spiralled stairwell was definitely an adventure. Especially the part where, in spite of removing some banister rail and carpet, the puzzlesome chunk became firmly wedged. I was...

Despite my intermittent access to blogtime recently, a triple whammy of awards has accumulated. I hope to accept them all without doing too much work (which laziness I can thankfully blame on a protracted house moving experience) or compromising humility. Thank you very much for sharing these with me, Unikorna and Carolyn, you are both most splendidly generous and appreciated. Please find them here: http://unikorna.blogspot.com/ http://franklycreative.blogspot.com/ Two of my cache come from Unikorna: "The Fabulous Blog Ribbon" and the "Lovely Blog Award". Both awards require an honorable mention of the one who bestowed the award, followed by 7 nominations of bloggers suitable for the distinction. The Fabulous Blog Ribbon also compels to disclose 5 fabulous moments of your life. And for the Liebster Award from Carolyn: The rules: 1. Each person must post 10 facts about themselves 2. Answer 10 questions the tagger has g...

Lost in a crowd of thorns and stings, a rose pined for the sun. Last year I chopped the competition down: the sweet pink flowers hurled open unshadowed petals in clear day. I plucked blooms at leisure then, with red and white beads of blood and stung weals striping my arms. This year the path I hacked is grown in, but the stems of rose still reach higher. Before I can really work out why, here I am, diving through the nettles and the brambles, pulling secateurs from my pocket, snipping every stem I can reach, armfuls of fragrant pink, the hooked spikes catching in my sleeves. This bounty is brought to my new, unprepared kitchen, a selection of mugs and old bottles stand in for vases. As each flower drops, the petals are stuffed in a teapot for fresh rose tea. Only the buds are left now, snakelike heads: Medusa’s wedding hair. I’m thinking I might dry them, preserve some rose tea for winter time. Then I will sit in the short day, laughing at the impetuous dive. If I wanted to, I cou...

Scrawling compulsively everyday, not enough time to tweak and primp these words, but I've grown accustomed to sharing and these are busy house moving days- this is like me saying, here, step over the cardboard boxes and let's drink coffee out of plastic wine glasses.  June 29, 2012 Unfinished Family Day. After lunch, two dead palm trees are cut down. Baby sits naked in a bowl of pasta. Dog runs her rope around the bench and any other available legs. Boy is up the tree, bow-saw brandishing. Grampa Jim directs. There are pak choi flowers in the salad- edible flowers, my best kind. Scattered family gathers, comfortable on a selection of garden furniture, the six year gap is nothing. June 30 th 2012 Unfinished Family Wedding Day. Children we have seen brand new to the world; crumpled, tiny; they surprise us: hand us their children; walk down aisles in beautiful costumes; grow taller than us. Cousins at play on the bouncy castle here, while we say, o...

Boy leaves school. He wears a three piece suit and pocket watch, that’s the kind of Boy he is. After school, finery is returned to wardrobe, walking boots get some exercise. We explore all the way to the stirred mud of river. Clouds have a sense of lurk. Wind drives loud and fast in the narrow lanes. Dog sports some dapper mud trousers. I take her picture. I take generic hedgerow pictures, to illustrate things that I haven’t thought of writing about yet. Boy wonders why not start with the image, would that not be the easier way? Yes, possibly, I concur, but the adventure of it is important, that’s part of the exercise. That’s the difference, I opine, between making soup from a packet mix and creating soup from foraged foodstuffs. No less love in either preparation, necessarily, but the latter has more art. 

In the eleventh day of Operation Relocate Domicile. In another 29 days it actually might be over, bar the fruit garden, but we will approach that as a separate manoeuvre. Tomorrow, new home chimneys are to be swept and the Rayburn lit. New Farmer Landlord says we can have wood from his shed, if we don’t mind cutting it down; do we have a chainsaw? Of course we do, it’s one of the few things that has set us aside from medieval peasants. We have been used to cutting down our own wood, in branches or by whole tree; chopping and dragging it by bits up the steep slippery stony thorny thistle strewn fields of Rosehill. Visceral, close to nature: also tiresome, time consuming. Mr can drive down to the shed in New Farmer Landlord’s yard, bring back all the wood on one trip. My grin is so huge it curves off the earth like buffalo horns. In honour of the hours spent, in celebration of the hours freed, here are eleven verses from a paused project, a poem of 1,000 ‘miracles,’ which I w...

Another streak of day flashes past too fast for me to write. These days do happen. We have a home forming with furniture almost where it needs to be and pans on shelves and coat hooks put up in the hallway, this is my compensation for the inability to catch any writing time. Also, just as I think I might sneak off with a biro and notebook, Boy needs someone to beat at chess. I play a random game, he engages strategically, hence the inevitability of outcome. We sit at the table; it has a tablecloth. I drink coffee from a cup and saucer, from my vintage gold tea set. We are civilised. We no longer wear muddy boots in the house. Sip, chink, smug smile, checkmate: marvellous. I study the new abode, I think my mouth is gaping. Look, there’s a place to hang coats! A shelf for the muddy boots! Behold, the gold china is not lost at the back of a greasy shelf! How many times shall I count the shelves in the pantry? I will never stop! This morning is for exploring: me and Dog f...

Last night: Rain on glass panes keeps me entertained, in pattern, in percussion. The view is dissolving in drops and the descent of darkness. An awareness flares, catches the heart of me in a healing flame: I picture it like a Christmas pudding, safe and warm under a dome of ignited rum. Maybe it is merely sleep hormones, maybe not; thoughts and feelings flicker in a balanced performance of shadow and light. This morning: Baby brushes my hair with the wooden hairbrush. I have a bruised temple to prove it. Reminds me of the phrase ‘that will knock some sense into you.’ We harness Dog to the pram and walk around the block of fields. Here the hedgerows are magical habitats, winding with wild rose, tumbling vetch of many colours: so many flowers I have not time to name them all. I note how the rose expands: a shoot reaches up, flails in breezes until the weight of leaves and buds arc it back to earth, to pop open flowers, circlets of sparking colour: like the world’s slowes...