Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

I can hear my neighbours. I can hear radio tunes and a harmony of conversation. This morning one car has driven past, two tractors trundle between yard and field. Most amusing so far is the singing toilet: the cistern celebrates each refilling with a low twisting refrain. It has some kind of pipe hernia. Loudest are the birds. Multitudinous notes reverberate, make an outdoor opera of nesting rites. Silent in the blue sky vast clouds bask. Four horses at pasture blow through their noses, make Jurassic Park noises. A branch on the fat trunked ash plucks at our telephone wire. The house at Lawhitton bounces with these pleasant sounds. Lamentations for the old place are eased. We start to speak of the new dwelling now not by village name but by its name, Number Three.  

Arrive at the pending home before the new landlord; also a farmer, but the orderly kind that has time to tidy his hedges. It is pleasant to sit before the furniture lugging begins. Boy’s bed lies over the flattened seats in a heap of slats. Boy himself is somewhere between Rosehill and a shop, on his bicycle and a mission to obtain a bacon sandwich. Girl is travelling with Mr and a bootful of book boxes. I will hear her laughing as soon as she opens the car door. She has always loved moving furniture. It will be Girl that steers the puzzlesome chunk of our bed base down the tiny staircase. A double act of Girl and Boy hinders and helps: I will think of the time they rolled across the airport at Larnaca, engaged in a spontaneous stage fight. In this moment, though, sat alone in my car, I hear only the soft drops of rain, set my eyes on the mottling of sky, kempt lines of fields, the fat trunked ash tree. Later; several carloads later, back at the old house, when Girl has gone to col

Blaming Virginia Woolf for this outburst… describing the construction of the self as: ‘like a butterfly’s wing…clamped together with bolts of iron.’ wrote this first as a stream of consciousness exercise no punctuation just flow one word into the next it was a strong old tide indeed This morning, as my world is poised at the start of another summer storm, I broached a light rewriting, just to make it readable, and although it’s all about me (diva!) I dare to hope that the feeling of transformation in a life is familiar to all.  The urge to write comes late last night. It will not cease to pester: it fills my head with irritable fidgety creatures.  I can’t settle and neither can they.  I don’t know what they are, what strange party I am hosting here.   But there’s nothing here that is not part of my own self, even though they seem uninvited, they must be part of my mosaic, my pinterest board of butterfly wings, held with iron bolts, they cannot leave.  I make myself as a collage

(Insert drum roll of suspense here.) It may be three weeks before the internet follows us to the new address. According to the cheerful conviction of a call centre lady, we can maintain a phone line at the old address. Until the end of July we will have access to both houses: we can keep an office at Rosehill, and homely quarters at Lawhitton*. Feasibly leading to delusions of landowning grandeur, and some classic misunderstandings of who is where and why.  Rich in comedy is the practiced silver lining detector. Not so mired in positivism that I can’t admit life can be awkward, however. There is still a potential for absence, in the often incommunicative communications infrastructure, it may be that an absentminded data entry gets the Rosehill phone snipped off. I may appear to have disappeared from the blogosphere but, dear readers, do not fear. A technical hiccup, merely. A picture of affectionate tolerance   I am sat on the sofa, writing this, next to Boy, who is listening

From dreamt adventures, retrieve one line only: ‘If I were made of fire, this is where I would sleep.’ It’s good to start a day by intriguing yourself. Shower in the company of one spindly spider, which presses its face repeatedly to the wet tile surface, also intriguing: thirsty, saying spider prayers, frustrated, or trying not to look at the naked mammalian giant? Coffee is made. It is a pot of the last of the Trung Nguyen. A fine mist makes a horizon of mountainous island shapes, with squinted eyes I can just about create the illusion of Halong Bay. From intrigue to reverie, wander down to the Mekong Delta, wearing a superb hat. Today also (it is going well so far) brings more accolades for my Wishbone words; thank you Pins and Needles http://pinsandneedlesworcester.blogspot.co.uk/ (Who does sell some cute stuff on etsy, if you were wondering, have a peek: http://www.etsy.com/shop/sueavery ) The first four rules of the Versatile Blogger award are easily in my stride, the last

All day, a hot day threatens rain. Sky is cast solid in dulled silver. Next door’s bear shaped dog escapes across the fields. Next door here is across the valley, so I lug both hounds over with me to return the miscreant. The last days of rain have rebogged the turf, I tread carefully on the roots of the whip-bladed marsh grass and return with both boots. Dog has mud gloves to mid leg, gets just enough purchase to leap the gate. Longwools flounce up the path, turn to peer down at us. They appear to be made out of old frayed rope, a line of comic puppets.  Taller than the top of my head, the finely spiked Scottish thistles have rotund buds, purple dotted, they follow you like eyeballs. Taller than all the thistles, magnificent foxgloves make hypnotic sway. Wild roses have sparser flowers then the domestic kind; I catch one, to feel the cool softness of it on hot skin. Can’t help looking to see if the thistles are following us. Because it’s hot, because of the ponderous sky, beca

Art by Girl, circa 1992.  Two potato waffles, toasted grids, lie on my plate. I envy their structure and boxy angles. I have served peas in a slinging motion, they are all over the place, like some swirling far off galaxy we don’t know the rules of yet. Delicious ellipses of gammon are flopped on top. I have made this meal from leftover things foraged from fridge and freezer. There is no room in my head for anything more complicated; that space is full of colliding furniture. Here, created on my plate, is a statement of deranged thought, I think. The meat represents my brain, broiled to tenderness by over thinking. I think it best not to voice this statement until after we have eaten. Have drunk enough espresso to be frightened for my health. Calmed down by access to a verdant sprawl of shushing trees, cooling spools of field. Follow the thread of greenery gratefully back to earth. One year from now, this collision of furniture, and the galaxy of peas, will be forgotten. My bra

The label is long gone, but the dress, if I remember my surprise accurately, was made from acetate. Plucked from the rail of a Wakefield charity shop, paid for with a precious £5 note. The dark silver reminded me of Great-Gran’s gunmetal broach. Made its one formal debut; ankle length old school glamour; at the college ball. Performance being an integral part of life’s creative experiment during these college years, toying with ideas of invisible theatre, I became a Sequin Sister, an impromptu dancing double act liable to pop up on any available platform and promote the joys of spontaneity. There were, it being a double act, at least two of us. Capability F Sequin, named after the landscaper, the initial F representing a family name. And me… indecisive, unnamed. Until Girl, not quite school age, holds up a new teddy, and this one, she says, is called Silver Betty. Such serendipity! I even possess a silver dress. Being limited with skills and patience, the dress is roughly cra

On this day, some years ago, Boy was born. He did not cry, only looked at the world exactly as though we had woken him up but, never mind, he had been thinking of waking up anyway. His nose resembled a strawberry and his hair was a chimney brush. He grew into the nose. The hair changed colour and texture but still grew upwards and outwards, thick enough to plait a rope to hold a battleship to a dock. He would keep it short on a regular basis had he not irregular parents who easily forget hair appointments. They like DIY hair, which has resulted in some minor injuries, which has resulted in a boycotting of home salon efforts. Mother of Boy takes the prize for Most Stupid Coiffeur, Amateur Division, having absentmindedly shaved Boy’s head bald. That day, Boy was about eight years younger, a slender little chap. Mother, Girl and Boy went on a grand day out to Castle Drogo, and everywhere people said ‘Oh, no, after you, please.’ Because they thought Boy might be having chemotherapy. Be

In residence on the couch, me and my phlegmatic cough observe the world through a square of glass. Fronds of rose and berberis gesticulate clues to the fluctuating wind speed. This is the only land in sight, the rest is sky; sky with a thick silver skin. Last night the fire was lit, the storm squall yowled, turbulence turned as flame, as lashed rain, as though we were swallowed, washed into the belly of some rumbling febrile beast. By lamp light, take up a pen, commit to feverish scrawling: the most interesting of which, in the silvery sheen of the morning, reads ‘Ego is a cute knickknack, a gift, a unique view to form part of a whole.’ Thinking of knickknacks and notebooks, look to the over stacked bookshelves. Here are references no longer referred to; and there are my pink secateurs, which should be with the gardening tools, surely? Still, lends itself to a pruning metaphor. Now the metaphors are getting over stacked. I need cough medicine and an editor. While I roll my eyes at

From the bedroom window I watch treetops churning in a storm. I love how patterns in nature repeat; how these leaves move like rough surf, how a mountain range from an aeroplane view looks like rock pools.  Sheep have lowered themselves to the grass, under cover of fleeces, away from flailing branches. The window would be open but the wind has palmed it shut. Monday’s wind chill has morphed into a frustrating Thursday illness. My temperature will not keep still. Sat in bed, with gluey brain, dangerously unoccupied. This house is exasperating, and damp and creaky and impractical, and being put to auction, we have to let it go: but it has never stopped being interesting. The picture from this window shakes with elemental life. The weather and my burning head conspire to make melancholy. Will I fit in the neat cottage, in the sanitary, well-kept interior I have only seen once in my whole life? Doubts sneak back in, like the damn rats, over a dropped guard. We live here as in a life s

Venus transverses the Sun, paddles a jet coracle over an ocean of golden fire. She appears a lesser goddess, pushing across the fulsome diameter, and a brave goddess, venturing over pluming flames. This is the view from above the clouds of Cornwall this morning: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17745366 As we rumble from sleep to bicycle ride, wakeful rain rushes to us, excitable, invigorated, as though it has been witness to the planet’s rare transit, precipitates the news. Work traffic streams by, a river of routine. The supermarket car park is filling up, makes a flotilla of car roofs beneath the path. Pedals spin, wheels whir, stirs up a smile. I am not supposed to be riding a bike on the pavement but the lorries are colossal and no people are close by. They are all at a distance, looking smaller than they are. Here is one, negotiating an overloaded trolley towards the boot of her car. She is barely the size of my thumb, tacking, determined, over wet tarmac, under

Dreamt a perfect piece of writing; so brilliant, it brings me out of sleep to locate my notepad, slip out of the bedroom, sit by a lamp, record the words. The words stay in sleep, they don’t follow me, even onto the shallowest shores of wakefulness. A few images drift; a wooden spoon, a metallic blue Fifties Cadillac. It’s 5am, I return to sleep. The experience repeats, at 8am, only the images differ, only I stay awake this time. We can all write perfection in our sleep. As the kettle boils, I puzzle out a connection between spoon and car. A wooden spoon stirs up butter, sugar, flour, eggs, creates a latent cake. Cake and Cadillac, both celebratory symbols, some logic is evident. Dreams, like puzzles, I regard, partly, as prompters of self-centred insularity, so I don’t tend to dwell on either too much. A reaction, maybe, to being a writer, pulling every experience through a quizzical mind: equilibrium is essential, some time in which to mend the net. Sit with coffee. Rain falls in

In the winter, you can close your eyes on Saunton Sands and run. You navigate by the sound of waves. I have never yet made the blind sprint without laughing; in spite of the cold, my shoes are off, my feet get a cold burn, I hear Dog padding nearby. My broken foot hurts, but I can’t resist, the rush is worth the hurt. In the summer, the plain of sands is peopled. They are not bothering me, I don’t resent them, I wouldn’t send them all home: it makes for a different experience, that’s all. The water is warm. I wade in with Dog till she paddles beside me. She swims around the bustle of shore craft; the short boards, the body boards, one kayak, the mini-mals and the long boards. These summer people are in wetsuits, wisely, considering the wind-chill factor. On dry sand the summer people have windbreaks, deck chairs, beach blankets, buckets. Paraphernalia. It is worth having, if you use it and if you enjoy it; for what it is not how it makes you look. This is what I decide as I am sat

Because I decide to get my daily writing practice ticked off the list in good time, go out with Dog to hunt for an idea. Along the middle path lies a cleaned up piece of bone, sheep thigh, I think, a bin forage not a kill.  Flick it into a bramble with the toe of my boot, uncertain, preoccupied. Shall I write of this? What shall I write about?  The answer to this question must come to me: if I chase it, it turns to mirage.  Surrounded by peaceful swaying greenery, I stand, listen to the leaves say ‘shhhh.’ The idea is here, it grows towards me. It is the greenery, growing, closing up the lane. Two or so years ago, Farmer Landlord borrowed back the petrol strimmer previously left for lane maintenance. He was bringing it back. Half a mile of hedgerow seems like a lot when you trim it by hand. As a rare experience, not unpleasant: as a chore, it makes your body ache. Since we know we are leaving, we have let it go. Nothing is kept in order, things disappear. The granite trough, the ro

One year ago today, out swam Baby into a pool of warm water and a room of worn-out, overwhelmed, awestruck women. It’s a baby! We are dumbfounded like we had no idea. Being at the very first breath of a life has that effect. It’s weird enough that matter reproduces matter, but that a real person appears, a formative social being? Every single time: tremulous incredulity. The baby, likewise, is astonished, having no experience yet of the potential for boredom that some people find within the spectrum of existence. This is the very beginning of learning to perceive: making a relationship between light and shade, between presence and noise, between comfort and discomfort. Baby aged one year is pleased to be in the park, with toys and cake and sandwiches and people she recognizes as part of her life. She closes her eyes when the sky is too full of light. Tips her head when the breeze lifts her hair. Folded cardboard has words and pictures, like books, so she reads them. Her interpre

[I like to pick an approach, each month, rather than a theme, for my writing to play with. Through May, I played with keeping this blog like a diary. I write everyday, so picking the day’s events as inspiration brings a constant flow of material. I write everyday, for the practice with words, and for the practice with attitude. The more I train myself to see the inimitable nature of stuff, situations and sentient beings, the more my contentedness flows. My world evolves, ever more marvelous. So, through June, I intend to make the unique view a more specific focus.] Bunting cooks in windows or is hung to cool off in the breeze. It spiders out from the War Memorial, zig-zags every street. It matches my mood in brightness, because the phone call from the letting agency was to agree a moving date. Tomorrow is Coronation Day, tomorrow is Baby’s first ever birthday, a week tomorrow is Boy’s sixteenth birthday, two weeks tomorrow we move to Lawhitton. Red, white and blue in variations of s