Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Words From The Start Of Lockdown Life Mr looks to the future, it looks like hedges. Saturday March 14th 2020 On the drive to work I got bored of changing the windscreen wiper settings, then a little off-white spider raced around on the steering wheel. I blew it onto the dashboard but it jumped back. Cheeky spider. At work we are bored of coronavirus restrictions and bored at the prospect of it continuing. We don’t know anyone who has it. Supermarket shelves are missing toilet roll, dried pasta, as previously, now also tins of beans and tomatoes. There are travel bans and cancelled events. Last night I had to teach a non contact TKD session - no pads, no sparring, no hand shaking. I began my class with ‘first of all, please don’t breathe because that’s dangerous now.’ All of us are ‘meh’ about these restrictions. We understand that infection control is serious for the immune-compromised, we adhere to protocol for that reason. But the paranoia and boredom: meh. Monday March...

Words On Wondering The sun appears, edging back from retirement. It has been days of rain. Is that wind that stirs the washing trusted on the line or is it sighs of relief? Both, let’s say. The air seems warmer, the mud all soft. Hot enough to get seeding in the polytunnel: tomatoes, basil, chillies, peppers, radish, carrots, pumpkin, cucumber, aubergine. Seeds flake-like, spear-shape, spherical, familiar. Journeys continued. Meanwhile we are asking questions over a piece of land, to see if we can make a connection between where we are and where we should like to be. I have repotted the lime tree, and the red palms, knowing they are getting harder to move, hoping this works like ironic magic bringing us closer to the place where they can be planted in our own ground. Clouds roll thick in the sky. For now the magic is knowing that possibility exists. Later we may settle for another story, another possibility; preparations help propagation but there are var...

Words On Storms And Hands On Heart Thursday 6th February 2020 I have found some new muscles to hurt, hurrah! Discovery due to the wheelbarrow being turned to rust lace, so I improvised with a rescued fish box, dragging it like a sled to spread compost around the garden. Have ordered a new barrow today; currently am sat in bed to write, and appease the aches. Washing blows on the line. Cold sunny day. The crows have chased a buzzard out of the alopecia pine. Monday 10th February 2020 Busy, Tae Kwon-Doing, social weekend. Stormy weather which inconvenienced others more than us. Sunday evening we came home to an electric outage: lit candles, lit woodburner, opened wine. Thankful for a quiet work day. Can’t even immerse myself in research as the weather seems to have stifled internet access. Several rounds of thunder and hail. Did some stretches, did some writing, including this. At home a new wheelbarrow is awaiting and somehow the washing has stayed pegged to the line. It w...

Words On Loving Yourself Plan was this: to go to the woods then come home and write. I had asked my clever brother to make a graphic for me, of a phrase I use and wished to share, because it is so nearly my 50th birthday it was making me feel beneficently wise. What happened was: I was watching the happy arse of my dog as she thundered towards the river when a bundle of words arrived with a ferocity equal to her velocity, as though she had tugged them into being. Writing was done awkwardly, immediately, balanced on a knee.  These words: 'Imagine a sheet of paper, imagine you have a spoonful of ink. You fling the ink at the paper; some of it will miss. You are like this ink. But you are not this ink. You can refling yourself over and over and in doing this create something more fluid, dynamic, astounding, authentic, than anything any of us can fix to paper. Please breathe and feel your breath.  Please love yourself. Whatever doubt ...

Words On Wanting A Rose Garden 11th January 2020 Merely a trace of chest plague left, so I’m back to training and now my legs and arms have the pleasant ache of effort. At work today and doing more sneaked-in writing. Another fiercely windy day: witnessed a heron in perilous flight this morning, snaking its neck like a pterodactyl. Took my favourite long commute around the back of Colliford Lake where the sky was all freckled with starlings, and white topped waves frisked, and shaggy calves skulked on verges. I am saying please let things work out well now. I have enough practice finding flowers at the roadside of doom, I say, no more with that now! Time for a rose garden, Universe. 13th January 2020 Third in a hat trick of shifts, nothing too demanding, just the having to get up early and being organised. The weather is all storm warnings - we sat at Porthpean watching seagulls in the shallow froth declining to go further out. We sat in the warm car, bellies full, with a h...

Words On Gently Beginning Anew 1st January 2020 At midweek we have begun a new year and a new decade. The page turning, blank calendar moment. Is this the beginning of pivotal stuff or merely Wednesday? One can pivot at any moment, dear hearts, whereas Wednesdays come by only every seventh day. So, what to attend to? Still ill from Round 2 of flu, I am sat in bed writing this, also drinking good coffee, also eating low carb homemade chocolate treats. I am watching the evening arrive in my garden, how it is sifting away light and colour, how the shadows darken and spill out, how still it is, paused, imbued with the night-sense of adventure. Attend to the moment. Here I am. Saying to myself: in 2020, maybe I will… brush my hair. Tidy my sock drawer. Eat apples. Jump in the sea. Have tea with a friend. I have a good feeling about these resolutions. 

For this year’s Yule Tale, being short on time due to obsessive novel writing and that lifestuff, I decided to grab outside inspiration from the www.plot-generator.org.uk website. What I got was delightful nonsense, most of which I have kept, with a tweak here and there which was a bit like when children decorate a xmas tree and their parents maybe move a bauble or two after they have gone to bed because aesthetically it is the right thing to do. Presenting Yule Tale 2019: Two Surly Uncles Laughing To The Beat Sparkle looked at the shiny cup in her hands. It was full, which felt like mockery. She walked to the window to reflect on her surroundings. She had always loved Yuletown’s bleak wintry fir trees; they encouraged her to indulge in feeling mournful. Pines, pining - there was surely a connection. Her eyes narrowed, seeing something move in the distance. Someone? That would be a rare occurrence in this unpopulated zone!  As she peered and the figure drew nearer she recog...