Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Oct 30: Some call the weather mild, some ‘unseasonably warm.’  A midday sun can catch the treetops all tropical; such parrot-yellows, such paradise-reds!  Wild strawberries vivid in the cut hedge, plucked, nestle in a warm palm.  Even where the mud has fallen from farm traffic the lane is bouncing light. Later but not so late the dark gathers in. Soft focus and sepia in mist, the trees are rusting, flake by flake. The dark gathers in, closer in, to breathe damp-earth air, to breathe the woodsmoke. Oct 31: Most of what we meant to do was done, though it was jumbled up: a box with all the bones in it, not a wired up skeleton model. All the time one is thinking that those bones need sorting: can’t quite relax: one itches, like a broken bone that’s mending.  In the afternoon it is warm and calm and Little Granddaughter favours vampire attire. She dresses up our faces with thick paint. She cheats at apple bobbing, all the children ...

Scariness level: beginner Posting my Halloween Story early this year... it is a full story with beginning, middle and end, and in the conventional order too.  The ending is left open, and if you are an imaginative sort you might like to supply a scenario for the sequel. Writing (boo hoo) can be a lonely sport, so a bit of holiday collaboration will be greatly appreciated.                                                                                             [With thanks to  Mary Shelly  and her Monster] Gardener Fred’s Monster Gardener Fred had ideas. Ideas and dreams. Ideas, dreams and ambitions. Ideas, dreams and ambitions that he worked for; he dug for them, he weeded for them, he pruned and raked and was out in...

Vocal are the geese at their interruption. They are not easily flapped, these birds. They are the same birds that sat watchfully unruffled in a cropped field, while Dog and I ran by, one energetic, lightly misted cross-country morning. Under the overhead honking is the whir of a blade wielding tractor: not a goose killer, a hedge cutter. It is cutting the hedge in the field we had hoped to be picking rosehips in. Huff. It is the sort of greyish dampish day best fitted to introspective thoughts, not suitable for noise or interruption. We drag our heels and then an off the usual track open gate to an undisturbed field is what we find. Like an answer when you weren’t sure of what your question needed to be. Here the overgrown hedge reaches out, it hands us a bag of ripe red hips and a pocketful of dark sloeberries. Dog runs routes circular, angular and out of the field flees three deer, two rabbits, one fox. There are so many pheasants Dog can’t fit them all into her sched...

Dog's enthusiasm for housework is infectious. We open the door, drop our jaw. A curtain of rain hides the world.  We must swap the faux suede for rubber boots: me, my hands, my feet, for reasons as yet unfathomed I feel like a collective today. A theory promptly appears that it may be the result of an uncharacteristic cleaning spree. It is unfamiliar work and yet hands, feet, brain all pull together. A combination of the unknown and the known makes one reappraise how a being is collected together, perhaps. Like an identity crisis only pleasant. Hands, feet and brain have done well, although the discovery of damp in the living room corner is a vexment. Contrariness over not using the word vexation is a distraction technique. The landlord’s phone is answered by a voice saying service unavailable, try again later. Further distractions involve looking for the culprit who put bird poo on the mantelpiece (Mr suggests it might be bat in origin) and venturing out to borrow a vacu...

Outside there is a storm: if you put your hands over your ears and hear the blood inside rush, it sounds like this storm. Wheel spray splays like the tails of white peacocks, every car wings by. From the car to the house several unexpected steps sidewards explain the wind strength. The tenacity of things is considered. How many tempests will the deadwood in the ash tree survive, for example, and how if one builds a wall there is some knowledge available that will give guidelines to its longevity. This is why we use bricks or stone not straw, not sand. These thoughts proceed to enquire how we can know what material our words are made of? All this writing that may or may not endure? But it does not matter. One should link words oblivious, obsessed, absorbed, delirious, tempestuous. It is Friday, the evening. A glass of wine arrives and sits next to the Dettol which is a testament to the bad manners of our elderly cat. Outside the wind roars as though laughing. Oblivious, obsess...

Limbs are flung, indenting squishy underlay. A bed of cushions, to defeat gravity. A cradle from which to dream: escaping in a soft coracle. Nothing to flee but weariness, but the weight of one’s own limbs. A book halfway read represents another path unwinding, the mind absconding on its own. Sometimes it likes to be alone. In space, can one lie on the air (the not-air?) Questions pop out of scenarios, not entirely formed, not entirely awake. Dog huffs from her sprawl, recalling perhaps some moment when a previous sprawl had been interrupted. A fine steam rises from a glazed mug. Off-white with a flower painted and the scuffs of frequent usage. Steam is made of dots, of impermanent ink. A metaphor.  

This year’s tenth month is filled with wanderings. We add a string of small village names and the town of Dartmouth to our October map. Here we wallow in the last of summer’s residual warmth: it is dark, we are standing at the harbour edge observing small fish crowd submerged steps. All the boats have duplicates. It is impossible to understand that the water could be cold. We are outside the restaurant, hot with digesting. All the night is filled with human noise. At home the heat disperses into storms, is spilt and lost in precipitation. Foxes yip: the young ones are sounding out new territories. We see them often, walking intent at the roadside. One last thunder roll shakes the river valley and the rain pools deepen. (When not wandering this writer squints and squints over print proofs until her headaches drown out the thunder and the weather complains at the disruption.)