Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Two things in particular caught my attention this morning, right before lunch. Firstly, I had an interview published in Martial Arts Illustrated magazine, which was done a while back and had almost been forgotten. I thought 'next edition' might the editorial version of 'manyana.' I knew it was actually in print after a tag on Facebook, so today I bought a copy and there is me and Mr (thank you Layla for the photos, very natural shots) not squashed in a half page (which I was prepared for) but splashed over three. I had to keep looking at it in case I had miscounted or the pictures were moving and this was dreaming. (It's national in the UK, but if you are further away and want to track down a copy, try www.maionline.co.uk. It was not a dream, the pages are there!) Strolls I, stunned in the sunshine, to my car and off to meet Boy and we buy a cherry pie because it's a celebrating sort of day. (Yesterday Mr put on his dark suit and went to the...

The field by the river is cut, the cuttings baled, the bales lifted out. It seems quiet without the ripe crop whispering. The water lightly prattles. Surprised ducks make intermittent noises of extreme indignation. Dog appears on each occasion, feigns ignorance. She is slick with river mud: a coincidence, of course. Ripe fruits plop into my wide bag: bobbles of blackberry, early rosy hips, beads of elderberry, firmly purple sloes. At the far corner we turn up from the water. Dog runs over the broad earth: runs and runs for no seeming reason but the love of it.

The ninth month, fields are in harvest, apples yield on trees. Mr heaves the barrow up, he mixes and hefts and his sweat pours onto the ground, it is turning into a shed. It is one of life's simple secrets: that a dream gets fed by sweat, by push, by work. And sometimes you will see the work and decide the dream weighs lighter in your estimation than you thought, and you will let it go. And sometimes you will acknowledge the ache, the injurious frustration, the exhaustion, the painful mistakes, the re-takes and decide that this has the weight of a path that you long to follow.

It's morning. Pigeons chatter. Window open to sunlit breeze, to a pleasing chill that wafts over bared legs lying wryly on a guest bed. We are in Plymouth. Briefly one has dreamt of a pigeon teaching golf. It advises wiggling one's bottom and aiming into the sun: and be sure to squint, it says. Golf? Legs do not want to move. Everything is post-party dehydrated, aches from overindulgence. I had misjudged my tolerance for something; alcohol, buffet food, dancing, heat; a stamina of some kind has been undermined. Poor stomach, all pressed with that purging heat. Tentative toast and water begins the restoration process. Happy 40th Birthday Samantha Redmond! Another glass of water, sip by sip, held up to the light in the kitchen and it glints like sequins. I have brushed my teeth, am enlivened by the mint. I am able to put my day clothes on, the right way around, in the right order. Things bode better. Here are sunglasses, a car window that winds all the way down...

Grandparent Pack Mules, hungry children, pregnant Mrs Mac, and Mr Mac; in charge of dogs; are veering from sharing a pleasant trail to enduring a march. One picnic area bans dogs, and the other demonstrates why dogs would be omitted from food sharing areas. Grandad is the first one to see the potential in the old railway bridge: the wide girder edge is a buffet table. The old sleepers slanting are almost benches. If we gather to one side the cyclists have plenty of room to whizz by, and spout little phrases of envy for our proper plates and superior olives. Little Grandson, Little Granddaughter both: they take this dining arrangement as they take all things: in chunks of awe and acceptance. Of course one sits on a slanty plank and eats ham with bike wheels whooshing where the condiments would normally be: of course Granma says not to climb on the table or you'll fall in the river. One must interrupt this feast however to point out the miracle of being able to hide a...

Written myself into a fug, though the windows are pushed so far open it's a dangerous reach to close them. I have notes everywhere, things barely legible smudged on paper in blotches of biro ink. I have notes scrawled over several areas of brain and circles and arrows and optimism. I have skin that tingles with possible things: this, one can imagine, is how a cephalopod feels when it changes colour. Like a firework swallowed. Like chemistry in motion. Sensible enough, the day starts with a run but then breakfast has a look of impossibility and that's how the day runs on. In dazed intervals, venture out to the sweep of lawn. Mr is digging feverish holes: the shed begins. Oh! More mind-body shivers! Whichever universe this is, I like it, I choose to stay. I plant my flip-flops firmly in this magnificently cut grass. Breakfast takes three sittings. Well done, tenacious us!

Morning: A small convoy of Nam-ma, Little Granddaughter and Dog greet the ghosts of horses through morning mist. They tread their dew-proof boots: 'You boots, me boots, one two boots!' up the side track in the ploughed field. 'One boot, five boots, one moon, round and round.' Moon in the blue sky, halved, ends like froth, is somewhere between broken egg and breaking wave. 'Go sleep, moontime!' She has an expression of a person who is pretending to be cross for comic reasons. Then she clips Dog's lead onto Nam-ma's shorts and this is very funny. From here, those rubber booted steps are set towards honey and toast. Afternoon: It develops into the sort of hot, blue, shiny day where plans such as finishing the accounts are bypassed in favour of more scenic things, such as fixing a stable door to a polytunnel project, such as a fever pitch of writing by a wide open window, such as walking over the beach into the sea: whe...