Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Poorly me sat in bed, looking through a window: I see the grey-stone shed has chartreuse lichen and one tawny leaf stuck in the centre of a wobbly tile: all the roof looks like the teeth of a doddery monster. There's a job to be done before winter storms in and floods out the dodgy electrics. Roof dentist. I see drab olive clouding the polytunnel - it needs washing, so what there is of winter's light can filter through, keep our greens growing. Later, when my cold-head clears, none of that will trouble me; nor the rat burrow newly appeared under the compost bins, nor the pruning or the planned adventures with miscible oils, or setting out the fruit cage frame which should have been done months ago. So I will not fret. Patience for resting is a new skill. I shan't say I've mastered it. The dusting got done, and the carpets swept, rosehips brewed, and maybe I did flavour some sugars, and wring the juice from an orange. And one load of laundr...

H ere’s the introduction to the book I have almost succeeded in reading this month: ‘We live, we love. We laugh and grieve and learn and grow. Life is a forge that burns away the surface, strengthens the core, and reveals the soul. This collection of essays and memories plunges through more than a decade of the beautiful struggle that is marriage and parenthood and finding one’s self amidst the tangle of both. This journey weaves joy and sorrow, passion as well as isolation, into a tapestry that makes such an ordinary life, more splendid than its solitary threads.’ Note especially: ‘collection of essays and memories.’ Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Season-C-Clickett/dp/1536876828/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8 where there is no mystery about the publisher: Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (October 3, 2016) I bought it because I very much liked the blog it sprang from, Splendour In A Plastic World. Plus the author bought my ...

I was driving, at night, down a country road into a lit street; the dashboard lights had broken so I was keen to check fuel levels and such: when I saw the rain, the uncountable droplets, the illusion of steadiness - had I never seen this before?  It seemed not. Silver streams hitting tarmac, splintering, glittering. The light, the liquidity together formed something like a living jewel.  And this merely part of a cycle, rain, surface water, evaporation, cloud, just how our planet pours with resources. If you are chasing beauty, I think you will get lost.  If your wealth can be scraped into a heap, made a throne of, I think you will be alone. This is my status symbol - me in the rain being amazed - anyone can be here. We can be amazed together. All the way home I was driving, rapturous, a little bit cautious with the blanked out dash, in need of nothing.  In need of nothing, but thinking still – of every sacrifice that it ...

No scariness in here, this story is inspired by the Samhain festival, and the time of year when one may meet with the dead. No zombies, no ghosts, not even a black cat in here! Contains melancholy only. Read without fear! Sula In The Garden When you feel the pull, you'll know. The first time she heard of this she was an eavesdropping child, not supposed to know anything, wanting to know everything, not able to sit still under the table where it was dim and cramped and toast crumbs stuck to her legs. Her aunts and her mother would hiss, 'Little ears!' A warning to each other that a child was in earshot. Sula smiles. They knew she was there, of course; she can see the memory on a wider screen now, she can stand where the women are gathered, the tea cups and toast plates dotting the tablecloth, the crumbs speckling random and correlated, like constellations. They would change topic, ask decoy questions: when shall we go to the park, sister? And she would kno...