Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

I found this author via Radio 4, Desert Island Discs. Having spent so many years without the funds for new books, I am unaware of many writers whose work I would otherwise be munching up. Of course the 50p box at the second hand store has delivered me many unusual delights, no need for sympathy - but I heard Ali talk and thought, I like her, I want to read those books. So when I could, I bought a brand new paperback. I had been working long hours and the first page swam in front of me for a while. It seemed too dense, I couldn't get through it. Such disappointment! Luckily this was just tiredness - for which I will accept some sympathy because I am tired again today - this week I have clocked 97 hours!  Anyway, we should discuss the book, now I’ve told you how honest-poor and hard working and admirable I am (grins, sheepish, impish). Two stories, one of a young girl whose mother has died, and one of a renaissance artist, are told and spliced without it seeming incongr...

Just a structure, at first. A ring of metal that sits, foot-swaddled in tarred sand.  (It has a big lid, like a witch's cook pot, and here we are in the woods…) We learn how to stack logs inside, how the layers wheel out, how positioning of sizes is guided by pockets of future heat. It is good work, smelling cut wood, eyeing grain-whirls, hands on bark, the muffled drop of getting each piece in optimal place.  Even the rain is fun, a challenge.  Stacked, lidded, sealed with a slick of sand. Into the middle of our sculpture fire is set.  An effigy for burning, unseen - well, we may peek with mirrors through out-pipes, witness a glow - but should we crack the lid the fumes would ignite - we should all burn. Potential annihilation has an awe, a draw, even before the smoke seeps across our feet and the squat ring takes on a life.  Is it a portal, to a world of steam and light? It is something new, hypnotic, plumi...

Late in August warm air sunk to the ground, cooler air dropped to our shoulders. We had felt the thermal transfer - thought of skin softly clothed, cinnamon and blackberries bubbling under pastry.  We felt hot work easing, the loss of hot lazing.  Rich greens remain, and summer bright blooms. Nasturtiums flare up, like small fires.  We smelt tree bark, apple skin, damped wood smoke. Peripheral autumn. But no season just becomes.  It is a weaving. (Spring in every bud, summer in every petal, autumn in every seed, winter in every root, or however you wish to follow the thread.) In the hedge two spiders tango on a web - a match, or a meal for one? Berries drop into our cache: sloe, hip, haw, black: a heap of jewels. Harvest secured, we snuck through tall maize, to feel the leaves grab, and drop rain down our backs. We were racing, laughing, till we saw the bird sat: injured, by a jaw-snap. Too injured for us to ...

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...