Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Happy Independence Day American cousins: we had a different sort of emancipation going on here today :-)  We walk the hill from crest to trough, then swing left to follow the fertile edges of the drainage ditch. Along here stands a cluster of elder trees. In the summer the trees flower behind a thicket of weeds that grows over boggy ground, weeds that sting, scratch, wrap around limbs. Mr frowns like Ahab at those foam white blossoms. Sometimes the boggish earth will swallow your legs, even before the greenery bites. It's my folly to strike out first, wedging each wellied foot into rootballs of reed. No machete: though we carry a hook pole in a harpoonish manner: a pair of craft scissors snips out the worst of the thorn attackers. We use the pole to slide ourselves off the drainage bank, and sneak along the water path till we can climb up right inside the elusive bounty. Three carrier bags of blossom carried up the hill, from trough to crest, triumphant. 

Pinball weather: bouncing from hot to chill. Under the construction of the polytunnel, jumpers are off, regardless. A scarf lollops, gently, in the breeze, the fringe of it slumped from a garden chair. Close by, the rotary line flouts its load, from fast drying fleece to saggy cotton, on poles of a jaunty angle. A sort of mud dust drifts over us. We pull melodrama faces: anyone watching would immediately identify this difficult level of effort. Three bays of awkward Perspex curve up and over inside the frame. It is not rain but time that ends the work. A quick brush of teeth and we are out of the door, armed with kick pads, ready to teach.

Rain patters the leaves over our heads. Dog runs, on scent based urges, round my general position. Brambles are closing up the path: cotton leggings were a mistake. Everything smells freshly damped, even the river, even the stale quarry pools. On a shale beach a feathered jewel waits for me to admire it. A duck's gift, I think, and carry it home, and it is tucked behind the Buddha figure that lives in my car. Later, after work, instead of driving back through the main street, me, Buddha, the feather, we take the snaky single track under the willow, over the bridge, along the side of the crooked castle. Windscreen wipers clear the view: the day's light stoops under the blanketing night: I couldn't sing any louder no matter how I may try.

Braving a steely humid sky, myself and my neighbour hang out washing. Dog and I go walking, sans coat, through the lanes where the hedges are uncut and they whisper at us all the way round the block. I do not know what they are saying: it seems gossipy. At home a fresh rose opens and is plucked for the teapot. My rose-brewing teapot has a cracked handle from Saturday's shelf disaster. It's not quite broken yet though, it stays in use. I stare at it, to get the most from its presence. Seems like an ordinary day. An ordinary, hot day: in the shower I look for soap and find instead one smallish centipede. Outside, the wind stirs up the clouds, the vegetation, the pegged out washing: and my hair, which dries all unruly.

At the end of the sixth month, the year is half done, or half undone. The first phrase invokes either a mild panic- is everything planned achieved? Or a smugness: everything planned is achieved. I do love to tick off a good list: satisfying, yes: but a life with no room for surprise is tourniquet-ed. Yesterday we came home late from a birthday party and the kitchen was dangerously pebbled with broken glass. The shelf above the Rayburn had lurched from its moorings. It was not planned, nor convenient, but we rose to the clearing challenge. Leaking over the floor was sterilizing fluid, not three gallons of lovingly crafted home brewed wine. Under the striking range of the shelf was one gold teacup, one bowl sized coffee cup and a floor: not any of us. The shelf will be re-pinned, its security re-planned, to be ready for the rest of the undone year.

Little Granddaughter says: 'What's that noise?' Last week she said only: 'Noise!' Language grows like shining mystical bindweed, crawls around everything, confines, illuminates, defines, shadows. (She still makes those silent movie star faces though.) 'It's the A30,' Grandad says. 'Cars, brmmm brmmmm.' 'Oh, cars.' Cars are soon forgotten. She finds a feather, and Dog has hair. 'Doggle got hair,' she informs. 'Hair.' She pulls her own strands, to demonstrate a connection. 'Dog has hair all over. It's called fur.' Granma can be pedantic too. 'Doggle fur. Teddy!' Weeds are flowers that grow in places where they are not wanted. These words are not weeds: I think, language is a bindflower . At the end of the green path, she launches the feather into a tree. 'Wheeee feather! Bye!' And having released it back into the wild, walks away up the stony path with the poise

The kitchen smelt of elderflower, until the grill warmed to cook sausages, until the boiled water hit the coffee grounds. Outside we ate breakfast, seated over new mown grass. A pink rose, open, bowed a stem. Later, where there is a shallowing over the brown shaded rocks, the river was forded. An elder bouquet, plucked and fetched home. A bucketful of perfumed, foamy flower heads stands ready for brewing. Now, rose tea steams in the pot. Sweet spiced vegetables simmer on a slow cook. Under the petal scents, too, mouthwatering fat-blobs linger in the grill pan. Somewhere in the sky an aeroplane carries Boy away, from Heathrow to New Delhi. Ten days to wait before we hear those stories. I can't help but think of the market in Singapore, where the smeech of deep-frying ducks made his eyes water. We went to a café for breakfast then instead, went busily about our day. When we walked from an air conditioned shopping centre past a sizzle of food stalls he said in s