Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

The Wishbone Alphabet – an experiment, of course, with attitude, life and the eponymous soup. Deliberating misusing the word ‘miracle’ to describe the acknowledgment of a unique or universal quality of a particular moment is my gentle protest against the way such moments are undervalued. Simple, ordinary things, if acknowledged, increase appreciation, make life happier, encourage a centred happiness over the chasing of unsustainable euphoria, although it makes exhilaration easier to acknowledge too, bringing a reflective quality to high and low points. People don’t necessarily choose to overlook the meaningful, only too often the definition of success centres on the external stuff. You may have been asked to describe a sunset, for example, but have you been asked to marvel at it, to be transformed by the universal beauty of it? Would that get you a better standing in society- please take a minute here to imagine a society in which your ability to love a s...

Tired, caught out. Topics for L lie in a list, crossed out. I know I can write about ladles, for example; they are shiny and silver and good for soup; but being tired….  I never admit to writer’s block. Then I remembered this little bespoke project:

The Wishbone Alphabet – an experiment, of course, with attitude, life and the eponymous soup. I have been strolling the fields with Dog. The weather swirls from hot to cold, an assortment of fattened clouds are dumped across the sky, humidity fluctuates from one step to the next, like the dial has broken. It reminds me of when I’m tired and trying to cook. The weather is trying to remember how to knock up a thunderstorm, but keeps putting the cumulonimbus down somewhere in the troposphere, and promptly losing it . Then it forgets the dewpoint of water. And how much turbulence to add? Tiredness is a great friend to forgetfulness. I’m tired now, and in the mood for a mug of red bush tea. We have a new red kettle, it looks super-pop-fresh after the years-of-grime abstracted colour of its predecessor. If we wish for a cup of tea we simply turn on a tap; at worst, the cold tap sticks a bit; and fill the device up to an appropriate marker. Flick a switch, the electric eleme...

The Wishbone Alphabet – an experiment, of course, with attitude, life and the eponymous soup. I think I was five, maybe five and a half, because it was summer time when we trooped to the circus to chortle at clowns and be brought to trepidation by the snarls of lions; in those days animals worked the ring, it seemed natural to us; and when the trapeze artists spun in the air time must have stopped. If I was five years six months four days ten hours forty minutes and three seconds old, that’s how I stayed for the duration of the act. Not a clock ticked, not a heart dare beat. Resplendent in spangled fringing, like birds made of jewellery, with make-up so huge we could see their red smiles, even miles and miles up in the domed tent roof, they jumped without fear so I loved them. I dreamt of them. I woke up, I thought of them. At home there was a swing in the concrete yard. Seagulls spread refective white wings above me in clear blue sky, the ground was sharp with hot afterno...

Rain falls, heavy silver drops from a lead sky. Not gold, or the clouds would be truly skilful alchemists. The windscreen wipers slosh, the traffic ahead disappears into dense water.  Our vehicle is squashed into the road with all the vehicles of the people who have looked at the downpour and decided the camping trip must end.  We bypass backed up queues, sneaking into the old city of Exeter on an old single-track road, past the ancient twisted oak, past the wall the Romans built, when the oak was a slip of a sapling.  There is one last parking space waiting.  Run through the rain into Great-Granma’s flat and a row of hugs. Little grandson, aged two and one quarter, leans on his Uncle’s lap, listening to our chatter. We pile up our plates with two kinds of quiche and watch him drift to a standing sleep. 

The Wishbone Alphabet – an experiment, of course, with attitude, life and the eponymous soup. There are several ‘Happy Cartographer’ postings on this blog, which form a chronological revisiting of old diary entries, an attempt to work out how I manage to be happy most of the time- not in a skippy clappy sickly way, more kindly calmly lightly eccentric. A natural inclination that I have purposefully sought to develop (see the Happy Cartographer page above for more explanation, if you like, or look up previous Happy Cartographer postings.) Misery worked for Philip Larkin, but I prefer the daffodils.  Here I am, in 1994, thinking I’ve got it sorted, buzzing with some youthful enthusiasm, blooming into adulthood. This is not a random outburst, I had been deliberately working on choosing to be happy. I think it was around this time that I wrote my first ‘Happy Things List,’ just a simple compilation of things that cheer me up- going for a walk, climbing a tree (yes, grown ups...

It feels like all weekend we have visited friends, in their exciting new not quite converted barns. If we count it up, it probably wasn’t quite 24 hours, from yesterday tea time-ish, to today, high tea time-ish, but nobody needs to look at a clock or reach for a calculator, it’s not about time or numbers, not even the fortuitous fortune cookie kind.  It’s about four hung over people looking up at the giant sky, watching miles of clouds swathe by. There are grey whale clouds, lumberously turning. There is a layer of snowy fuzz that looks as though it must be soft and comfortable, a dream hammock. The lathery white cloud, whose bubbles and peaks best make identifiable shapes, moves swift in a high breeze. I lay in the sun chair, and the clouds pass over, and my friends make coffee, food and fun of me for falling abruptly asleep on the sofa last night. We spin jokes between us, a whole tapestry of them. Their dogs sleep, ours hustles for a thrown stone. Some kind of providenc...