Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

All day, a hot day threatens rain. Sky is cast solid in dulled silver. Next door’s bear shaped dog escapes across the fields. Next door here is across the valley, so I lug both hounds over with me to return the miscreant. The last days of rain have rebogged the turf, I tread carefully on the roots of the whip-bladed marsh grass and return with both boots. Dog has mud gloves to mid leg, gets just enough purchase to leap the gate. Longwools flounce up the path, turn to peer down at us. They appear to be made out of old frayed rope, a line of comic puppets.  Taller than the top of my head, the finely spiked Scottish thistles have rotund buds, purple dotted, they follow you like eyeballs. Taller than all the thistles, magnificent foxgloves make hypnotic sway. Wild roses have sparser flowers then the domestic kind; I catch one, to feel the cool softness of it on hot skin. Can’t help looking to see if the thistles are following us. Because it’s hot, because of the ponderous sky, ...

Art by Girl, circa 1992.  Two potato waffles, toasted grids, lie on my plate. I envy their structure and boxy angles. I have served peas in a slinging motion, they are all over the place, like some swirling far off galaxy we don’t know the rules of yet. Delicious ellipses of gammon are flopped on top. I have made this meal from leftover things foraged from fridge and freezer. There is no room in my head for anything more complicated; that space is full of colliding furniture. Here, created on my plate, is a statement of deranged thought, I think. The meat represents my brain, broiled to tenderness by over thinking. I think it best not to voice this statement until after we have eaten. Have drunk enough espresso to be frightened for my health. Calmed down by access to a verdant sprawl of shushing trees, cooling spools of field. Follow the thread of greenery gratefully back to earth. One year from now, this collision of furniture, and the galaxy of peas, will be forgotten. My...

The label is long gone, but the dress, if I remember my surprise accurately, was made from acetate. Plucked from the rail of a Wakefield charity shop, paid for with a precious £5 note. The dark silver reminded me of Great-Gran’s gunmetal broach. Made its one formal debut; ankle length old school glamour; at the college ball. Performance being an integral part of life’s creative experiment during these college years, toying with ideas of invisible theatre, I became a Sequin Sister, an impromptu dancing double act liable to pop up on any available platform and promote the joys of spontaneity. There were, it being a double act, at least two of us. Capability F Sequin, named after the landscaper, the initial F representing a family name. And me… indecisive, unnamed. Until Girl, not quite school age, holds up a new teddy, and this one, she says, is called Silver Betty. Such serendipity! I even possess a silver dress. Being limited with skills and patience, the dress is roughly cra...

On this day, some years ago, Boy was born. He did not cry, only looked at the world exactly as though we had woken him up but, never mind, he had been thinking of waking up anyway. His nose resembled a strawberry and his hair was a chimney brush. He grew into the nose. The hair changed colour and texture but still grew upwards and outwards, thick enough to plait a rope to hold a battleship to a dock. He would keep it short on a regular basis had he not irregular parents who easily forget hair appointments. They like DIY hair, which has resulted in some minor injuries, which has resulted in a boycotting of home salon efforts. Mother of Boy takes the prize for Most Stupid Coiffeur, Amateur Division, having absentmindedly shaved Boy’s head bald. That day, Boy was about eight years younger, a slender little chap. Mother, Girl and Boy went on a grand day out to Castle Drogo, and everywhere people said ‘Oh, no, after you, please.’ Because they thought Boy might be having chemotherapy. Be...

In residence on the couch, me and my phlegmatic cough observe the world through a square of glass. Fronds of rose and berberis gesticulate clues to the fluctuating wind speed. This is the only land in sight, the rest is sky; sky with a thick silver skin. Last night the fire was lit, the storm squall yowled, turbulence turned as flame, as lashed rain, as though we were swallowed, washed into the belly of some rumbling febrile beast. By lamp light, take up a pen, commit to feverish scrawling: the most interesting of which, in the silvery sheen of the morning, reads ‘Ego is a cute knickknack, a gift, a unique view to form part of a whole.’ Thinking of knickknacks and notebooks, look to the over stacked bookshelves. Here are references no longer referred to; and there are my pink secateurs, which should be with the gardening tools, surely? Still, lends itself to a pruning metaphor. Now the metaphors are getting over stacked. I need cough medicine and an editor. While I roll my eyes at...

From the bedroom window I watch treetops churning in a storm. I love how patterns in nature repeat; how these leaves move like rough surf, how a mountain range from an aeroplane view looks like rock pools.  Sheep have lowered themselves to the grass, under cover of fleeces, away from flailing branches. The window would be open but the wind has palmed it shut. Monday’s wind chill has morphed into a frustrating Thursday illness. My temperature will not keep still. Sat in bed, with gluey brain, dangerously unoccupied. This house is exasperating, and damp and creaky and impractical, and being put to auction, we have to let it go: but it has never stopped being interesting. The picture from this window shakes with elemental life. The weather and my burning head conspire to make melancholy. Will I fit in the neat cottage, in the sanitary, well-kept interior I have only seen once in my whole life? Doubts sneak back in, like the damn rats, over a dropped guard. We live here as in a li...

Venus transverses the Sun, paddles a jet coracle over an ocean of golden fire. She appears a lesser goddess, pushing across the fulsome diameter, and a brave goddess, venturing over pluming flames. This is the view from above the clouds of Cornwall this morning: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17745366 As we rumble from sleep to bicycle ride, wakeful rain rushes to us, excitable, invigorated, as though it has been witness to the planet’s rare transit, precipitates the news. Work traffic streams by, a river of routine. The supermarket car park is filling up, makes a flotilla of car roofs beneath the path. Pedals spin, wheels whir, stirs up a smile. I am not supposed to be riding a bike on the pavement but the lorries are colossal and no people are close by. They are all at a distance, looking smaller than they are. Here is one, negotiating an overloaded trolley towards the boot of her car. She is barely the size of my thumb, tacking, determined, over wet tarmac, under...