Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Going With The Flow Isn't Always Bumpy After work - no swimming. Just stopped by Porthpean to breathe the wild air, to drive home to a powercut, candlelit house where a glass of wine was waiting.  The next day more s torm winds blew, rolling apples down the lawn. Fruit boules? I was in the blackberry hedge, untangling thorny whips and gathering fruit. Dots of blood on fingers, nettle-stung buzz on my shins.  Ideas swirling about plotlines adding to the happiness. Pegged towels on the rotary line which may be a mistake but maybe (definitely, overcome with the exuberant purchase of our not yet delivered kayak) I lied when I said I wouldn’t replace it. I should re-use it, obviously; grow sweet peas on it, perhaps. Sweet peas, and ivy for the evergreen. Meanwhile the line has stretched like cheap elastic and I’m hoping the towels don’t land in the gooseberry prickles. Later I am sat writing, and hiding from the mess downstairs which will turn out fine because there’s a plu...

How Side Tracking Can Add Adventure To Your Life: a non cautionary tale. We were supposed to buy a washing line, but the shopping cart contains a kayak. How did this side tracking take off? It was the wet towels that did it: but first, some recent history: Sunday 9th August 2020 Home from work, straight home, skipping the beach in spite of the day’s heat because our garden has been populated with tents and family. Gathered at the top firepit, where tea was cooked, grabbed a sausage and a glass of house red, lay back to chat and watch for shooting stars - this being the time of the Persiad meteor showers. We forget how lucky it is to lack light pollution though we do not fail to appreciate the view. Every sparkling streak strikes wonder. It is 1am before Mr and me go to bed. Monday 10th August 2020 A 5am thunderstorm had woken us after the 1am bedtime, and now it was stifling hot. After work the fuel light in the car sent me to a garage where I stared at the pump making sure the word I...

Words On Blips And Kindness On A Life Journey

Words on Self Care in a Shifting World [Diary extract] Continuing to feel calm with undercurrents of dread. This is the new normal. I have had plenty of after work dips at Carlyon Bay, easily picking spots away from the gathered youths and the lone figures a-fishing for sea bass. The bar there is open now, neither busy nor empty. I can’t hear the music from the sea, only the waves. Last time I swam a school of sand eels swarmed me, leaping out of velvety turquoise water in little flexes of silver under a sky smudged from mauve to orange. Gaudy in a good way. I floated back and berated myself for such luck, though I have put intention and action into curating this, because this is how I honour life. It is important sometimes to chastise oneself, to shake out the demons of laziness and complacency. But when the dread seeps in it is necessary to change this tactic, to follow the sage routine: allow it, see it, know it as part of the flow of change. Give yourself the love you need. Smal...

Words On Facing A Leap Of Faith  Saturday 27th June, 2020 Heat has rolled us flat for a day or so, we are glad of the wind that is whipping clouds around, glad of the sudden dense showers.  When I left for work, Mr was sat picking stalks off currants, outside under the gazebo. In between showers he is constructing a tarpaulin roof that will make an outdoor dojang (Tae Kwon-Do training venue) in our garden. [UPDATE: this design is back on the drawing board.] We are making enquiries about how to get water and power to a field we saw - which is scaring both of us because it is jumping into the unknown. Not love at first sight, this bit of land, but a realisation that this could be the one. If we don’t have a reason to veto, we are going to make an offer… Have another lot of land to view, meanwhile, keeping options open. [UPDATE: that land was another faerie-world bit of impractical loveliness, to which we are currently immune.] We are afraid but we are also saying, what els...

Words On Uncertainty, Social Change, and Weird Weather On New Years Day we started a project we are calling The 365. Poured a large bottle of vodka into a glass barrel and everyday put something into it, mostly from our garden, some foraged stuff. The idea being to make a unique spirit, a spirit of the year. We are a little afraid of it. (We keep feeding it.) 20/20 vision now means anything you didn’t imagine could happen. Fear of the unknown is pandemically viral. There’s a swell- if you don’t know the ocean maybe this word has less meaning. Can you close your eyes? Feel your skin touch the air that touches the sky that merges to space? A universal heft, dear friend. On a Friday (June 5th) Walked round the lanes, through a gate, through a field of cut grass which curved up and open to a playful breeze, over a stile, over a stream on a trip-trap bridge flanked by old trees, wading in thigh-high grass to the tipped over oak. Dog conquered the undergrowth while I climbed as high as I ...

Words On Patience Yesterday afternoon when the rain had paused; it had been the kind of precipitation with bucket sized drops; the air was warm, washed, smelling of earth (petrichor, that beautiful word) I pushed a window open. A bluebottle that had been sat on the windowsill flew up into the angled glass. I put my hand out to guide it but it dodged. I meant no harm. I wanted it to be able to fly out; it’s a rare fly that finds fulfilment in captivity. To this bluebottle, the glass was sky, over and over. The sound of it, a mini-thud, made me wonder what sort of velocity and whether flies get brain damage. I wanted it to be free of the barrier it refused to comprehend. The window was pushed wide open. Thud-thud. Was there a natural rhythm that struck, that finally changed the plan that wasn’t working? I hope for that. What happened to the insect after that, whatever happened, it was living as it should. I watched it go, let my frustration go. It is the right thing to do, to open the wi...