Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

I wrote a novel, then I published it. Then Mr bought me a strimmer, just at nettle harvest time. And the tomatoes were red, grapes purple-black, runner beans rough green - our garden, a bounteous mess - I don’t mind, nor do I mind the work. Time squeezed can also be savoured. How the novel was finished is a mystery. I have started the next one, equally baffled. This day is sewn in with summer birds, silky light, a fat twine of pigeon, edged in cloud. Rustling green shadows, one escaped Next Door chicken pecks and is wary. I can’t manage to publicise my own novel, chook, recapture is unlikely. I can’t even get in the hammock, I’m lying on the ground under a broken sun umbrella, watching it rotate like a snapped flowerhead. Dog is slunk into shade. Chook and me in sun. Mr is noises in the shed. Birds drop flight for a noon rest. The next days, our weather is changeable.  Between rain and sun, machines stand in half cut fields.  Some bales ...

I see there are too many ants.  In themselves of no harm, but a propensity to farm aphids which leach sap. I worry for my basil harvest. I see hedge sparrows hop in, peck up ants.  They bend a tomato branch, knock a lime fruit to the ground - but they are organic pest control. Homegrown too, born in our own hedges. Ants don’t like peppermint or bay leaves, so there’s some of that scattered also. They pull back in haste - I picture their faces contorted in revulsion. If you could see the big picture, ants, I say… but then - I’m sat looking down the polytunnel. Maybe it’s a microcosm, maybe it’s just artificial. Either way, I cut back the rocket and nasturtiums, uncrowd cucumbers. (I made a raw ketchup from this: Mr not keen: me, green teeth.) Grapes are pouring from the vine this year. A bee skirts them, busy in a thick coat, in this heat! He ignores the bee drink station, too busy. I fear he will spark fur with kinetic frenzy, burn up, sparkly at first...

All the legal requirements were signed off in a minimal office.  A stationery cupboard, Daughter 2 reported, laughing. Next order of business was a wedding breakfast: except for the groom, he had to fit a medical into his day (work related, not for marital purposes, in spite of our teasing). People who asked what the plan was were given times and places - more guideline than fact, and even the invites had a wrong postcode but only a few guests were lost. Eventually most of us were there, contented and emotional in the field by the pub, with a wedding arch and an aisle of tin-potted flowers. With a traditionally nervous groom (who is all ready just married to the bride, this is How Much Will I Cry nervi-ness). (Passed the medical too, in case you were worried.) With a traditionally blooming bride (rocking the satin, sweetie) a proud father, a cornflower bouquet, a gaggle of girls dropping petals. And no one to officiate. Which was part of the plan ...

We were waiting for a storm, it was so hot.  No one had patience for waiting.  We knew the correct way to break a heatwave - one needs a storm, preferably heavy. We were luring the cloud, the wind, the rain, like this: Stand, hold the heat in your baked head, feel it drum. Feel it slide into your eyes, down each limb till you are slick with it. Till you are salt-squinty, agitated, percussional storm bait. The storm will sense you. It is drawn to heat, to throb, to windows open, to sighs and brow wiping and dogs flopped in shade. It had seemed to be working: a tongue of mist sneaked out from the sea. It took the salt, the desperation. Night came and the windows stayed open for the bliss of cooling down. As the curtains bellied out, we dropped to sleep. The storm had broken elsewhere. We watched the sky anyway, in the morning, holding cold brewed coffee, feeling rested. And I found myself thinking about the deer again; sad, profound. Too sad, perha...

Dear Friends, Today I tidied the unfathomable shed. Under rusting shelves a bag was malingering, clinking, but in a way that seems more like muttering, as I dragged it out. Contents: six forgotten bottles of six year old homemade cider. It would be vinegar by now, useful for a weed suppressant or wood preserver.  Taking the precaution of being outside - having summoned Mr also, should I be in need of first aid - grimacing for glass splinters, the first bottle catch was flipped - and out burst foam that smelled of cider, good dry cider. I dipped a finger, then a tongue - good dry cider it was! So we took a glass each. Shortly after this I fell asleep in my hammock, later to be woken by a heavy bee resting on my cheek. I went to look at the shed, and the bottles, now lined in the fridge to tame down the fizz, and none of it was a dream. There were many more jobs to do, of course, and many of them done. On hanging up the washing I found a slug in a trouser pocket (they come...

This day someone had turned the technicolour on.  We lift our sunglasses to check, and quickly put them down again. It is hard to tell colour from fire, flower from lava.  Grandchild 2 is home with us, too poorly for school, and I too am feverish, though it is hard to measure when everywhere is hot.  We need a sea breeze. At the beach Grandad has good sandals for walking on low tide rocks; we do not, us Wild Girls, we put bare feet down on every surface, retract some, retry; then know the fullest joy in wet sand, in sea water swirling to our knees, all skirts tucked up.  (Although on the roughest terrain, to get here, Grandad’s was the best hand to hold.) The sea breeze is exactly as we had needed it.  We paddle back, drink droves of fresh water; we drive home, windows downwardly wound, the little one sleeps and sleeps. Later we go to work. The heat has seemed to dissipate. We come home, sit under stars to eat supper.  Mr sa...

First day, last month of Spring:  Even the rain seems pretty, falling to fresh leaves, caught on bright petals; a water veil draping us. Dog has been hose-piped and rain-rinsed and still a trace of spilt wine sits on her shoulders. She cares not.  The house is cold, a little in mourning - our way of life having shifted lately, with the demise of the Rayburn. One morning at 3am the carbon monoxide alarm sent its shrill noise upstairs; at a more civilised hour the chimney man came, and it couldn’t be fixed. I thought Rayburns lived forever. Alas! So now we wait for the landlord to do sums and calculate an acceptable replacement. Most likely a wood burner will arrive, fingers crossed it will have a back boiler and heat our water too. Meanwhile we have pulled the pillow draught-catcher out of the front room flue, lit the tiny open grate each evening. Meanwhile we are using an electric oven, which ought to seem more convenient - but the Rayburn was al...