Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

A Work In Progress:  There's a book that is demanding to be written. All my work is bossy like that, but this one more than any previous endeavours. It is kicking its way out, then throwing itself like a possessed jigsaw. All I have to do is put it together.  This particular piece of it is from the point of view of a person with a profound congenital disability, and hopefully gives a voice where a voice would not easily be found. I don't know where it will fit in the big picture. Anyway, feedback appreciated...  UPDATE: this piece no longer fits as a chapter/character, but I like it, I will have to find it a home.  The ‘I’ that is writing this does not exist. No one can know what I can or cannot articulate, what it is that I know, even if I know myself at all: as you could not articulate the difference as you passed from unborn to born, but only react, involuntary. So this ‘I’ is a supposition. There are sheets of medical words to explain this conditio...

Granma Grace has weathered five or more (the doctors are not certain) strokes; she has a confusion that thickens as the day goes on, a deepening layer of impending doom. She has a foot that twitches, even while she sleeps, with this certainty of worry. Something somewhere is wrong, or will go wrong. That’s one layer out of many though: optimism is not obliterated, gratitude abounds, the love of simplicity: draw the curtains back, she will wait for the birds to alight on well stocked feeders. She will ask that the little cat who warms on the step be fed a treat. She will check the sky for the beautiful weather about to happen. She will love to go for a walk, however brief. Sometimes she cries for the loss of independence, quiet tears. She says she does not know how to repay us for our kindness in looking after her. Mock-strict I tell her this is prepaid love, and there’s a very healthy balance on this account. She blooms into laughter - it’s so good, it gifts me a halo. Tod...

Once we were on the beach, though not planned, swimming was obvious. Wellies off, socks off; just having a paddle in this clear water, it's not so cold, we should go out deeper... Leggings off, wade out oops, a wave rises. Now me and Dog are swimming, not walking. Floating fur blurs her edges. My dress darkens, green-black, moves like kelp-fronds. We are lost to the elements awhile. After this dip I wrap up, skin a-tingle, pinked, glowy. No one is surprised, except the owner of the spaniel that peed on the wet clothing I dumped on the shore. Oops! Back at Granny’s house I am peppered in sand, laughing. If I take off my socks there'll be a dune in here. We all warm up with tea, and more laughing. Me and little niece use fuzzy felt to create a goat headed farmer, a horse headed pig, a pig headed cow: then we name the imaginary objects we are throwing at each other. Spider-bellies! Phone-children! Haha! Slice of panettone. Tea. Tired from laughing, tired from a long shif...

Naturally the idea that wouldn’t leave me be this morning while I needed to get ready for work has gone off in a sulk somewhere. It will return when it needs to be written. I will drink coffee. Coffee with a rich silty aftertaste. Coffee that gives me that moment of pause, which when I’m busy maybe I neglect? The warmth of it welcome too, as I’m letting any old words wander out, as the rain pools under a cold push of wind and the sky is so dull and flat it’s like no sky at all. I’m sat by a wall’s length of glass, drafty, good view of the greenery flailing, chewing up my coffee dregs, thinking about lunch not because I’m hungry but because there’s no food. There’s pennies in my pocket, lunch can happen, an improvement on previous days. Fair to say I have bemoaned and embraced low income life - only first world poverty after all - and am loving moving on. Car, chromebook, a lit fire, lunch, a long list of things I am happy to have. Soon we can start to look for land ...

Shelf-Elf Barry And The Ugly Christmas Jumper Situation Shelf-Elf Barry wished he worked on the Christmas production line. Okay the hours were long - September through to December, and you had to be ambidextrous to avoid serious repetitive strain injury, but once you got to that Christmas Eve deadline it was sherry and mince pies and eight months holiday. And no thinking required! Most production elves would look at the shelf-elf hours and scoff, of course. A mere 25 days! But they never once had to think about work, they could just do it. Barry worked all year to storyboard 25 unique scenarios, and how to get in and out of each one without being seen, and then there were the incessant training drills and fitness routines that were a core part of being on special forces shelf-elf detail. He felt like he was getting too old for this nonsense. Retirement, alas, was hundreds of years away, and Santa never sacked an elf without also turning them into stuffed toys, which wa...

On Monday the first thing I take note of is a waning gibbous moon. A blue-silver bloom floating in pale morning sky. Two cloud tufts make eyes, the moon makes a button nose, a face more awake than mine. Cold takes hold of my fingertips, brings attention to frosted car windows. A visible sigh in the beautiful air. It’s Monday and I need to drive. Blow a kiss to the mouthless moonface, grab the ice scraper. (Call yourself petal out loud, no else is awake to know about it. List the things to be done: do this, do the next thing. Get it done, petal.) Yesterday we trailed to Exmouth, piled the little car high with boys and dogs, took them to the beach. Grandchild 1, Grandchild 4. Two of our counted blessings. One football, a few squabbles: the usual brother-banter. A slimmed down Fat Beagle, a springy Dog who would ache later. A dog’s ball for throw and fetch. (For spaniel Dog, for this is her vital work. Beagle is more about the scents and the schmooze.) No sooner do we ...