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Night Journey

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Night comes, all gaping jaws, all flail and spit; I feel it; it holds it does not bite, it will run and I will cling to the thrill of it: the journey has music, a pulse, a suddenness, a storm brewing: it bursts like a bruise, flowing outwards, under tender skin: teeth press the breath from flesh, everything is shaken up; claws snick on tarmac; and I cling to the thrill of it: rain falls, glass rain; each drop shatters, makes slicing pools where the world is cut in two, is turned upside down: here in the teeth of the beast, thrown between worlds; I feel it; it holds, it presses, it could bite; I know this is how the journey goes: at the heart of this knowledge, lodged secure, a strange safety, a strange peace, keeps a steady, quiet beat.

Careless Wish

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This morning, white river mist trims the dark valley slopes: in the sky, gold sorbet cloud. My eyes follow and rise. I receive the sight like a blessing. Yesterday's yearning for a heated beach is scoffed at. Until I take myself back to our little office room and sit at my desk, then it makes more sense. I'm ready for my reward now, for a shore of cash. Up lights the laptop screen. Bing! I got blogmail: 'Can I simply say what a comfort to find someone that really knows what they are talking about on the internet. More people ought to read this and understand this side of the story. You surely have the gift. I can definitely help you to get your talent shown and recognised worldwide, visit my website: CashLoansForValium&FashionPurchase.'

Mesmer's Weather

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Slavish devotion to laptop today, obsessed by learning to format an ebook. Rather startled to find there are people talking to me. Apologies, family. And knees: I have ice knee caps. Tellingly, I have remembered to feed the dog. Feed, and walk. This morning, before my laptop pinged on and the rest of the known universe vanished, all I wanted to think of was taking a holiday; flicking lazy feet over warm sand. Me and Dog sent up a neat spray of last night's rain, there were still strawberries to be found, so I could not think why I needed ; it felt like I needed ; to skip over a tropical beach. My hand on the door handle as the heavy rain falls. The smell of refreshed earth follows me in. Up to the bedroom to find a towel, and stop, and find that I am caught in the rain, in the lush-heavy sound of it.

A Hint Of Halloween

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All day, a shroud for a sky: does it bode? I don’t wish for it to bode. It is a trick of light, only, an evocative illumination. Yesterday’s figures of mist, drift to mind; reminds me to be respectful where I tread, for the dead are many and life is finite. This land is made of their labours. Slugs in the lane are feasting on bits of their tyre-split colleagues. It is the job of a slug, this pragmatic clean up. And since they eat in the road, in the tyre-smoothed section of road, it has a macabre circle of life vibe to it. As a restaurant concept, unlikely, but then slugs are not good at PR. There are wild strawberries, in the hedge, still finding enough light to ripe, we pluck out two or three each: carefully watching for traffic. 

Hullabuloo

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You can really launch yourself into an egg, Granma. You really can. Luckily, 4am was a false start. Tucked back in, Baby remembered sleep for a few hours more. Figures of mist drift in the field, later, after toast and egg. Dog gallops through them. I watch Baby in her Wellington boots fall over the tractor tracks. Mud print hands held up: ‘Oh no!’ Her sing-song steps and words, over the embossed earth, under the faint sky. Back to the road, to pretty stomps in puddles. Back to the coffee pot: Granma is flagging. Boots discarded, just a little way before reaching dry land, she takes on tasks: wearing sideways flip-flops, dipping a cup into Dog’s delicious looking water; oh, it has hair floating in it, fascinating, heh, heh, if I turn my back on Granma she’ll never know I am dipping my cup in here for a swig ; and what are these books doing, cluttering up the shelves? Wry smiling Granma hugs the hot espresso.  Dog, if they ask, you ain't seen me.

Beat Yourself Up

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Venue of: The TAGB Southern Championships For a competition morning, it’s not too early. Step to the car with the sun raising an orange eyebrow at us, like we’ve disturbed it. A pelt of cloud is slung above the road. I drink thermos coffee, think of this as a travelling café. The cloud won’t fool me: inevitably, if I have chosen to spend my spare day in the maxi-sized box of a leisure centre hall, the sun will rise and stretch and shine. Fire doors are chinked open, to draw some fresh calm in, to release some steam and fear. I see the light outside: I know. But we have our own world in here, our own glorious perturbing friendly  fist-and-foot fast wielding world, propelled by lists, protocol, courtesy, the audacious desire to win.  The opportunities of losing aren’t always overlooked; a dinked ego can let some good in. (Treat with a sting of honesty, or a balm of the knowledge that you tried the best you knew how. If you’re unsure, you can ask one of our medics.) The

Gestational Metaphors

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Two of my old poems; circa 1995; which I am musing over: both use gestation as a metaphor for creative approaches. The idea of giving birth to stones came from how little people care that you make art, that it is seen as pretentious, indulgent, sullen and stubborn. But if you make art, you do it anyway. The second poem seems more content, though it is still quite insular.  I wrote them, so obviously they strike a chord for me, maybe I am posting them to see if anyone else can catch a note? I would like to read the male version of these verses, if anyone fancies drafting something? It needn’t be poetry, opinions are welcome. Barricade  She loves them But they do not move Her silence, dense with grief She washes them and searches For fingers, her tears come Hot in the cold stone night She has a wall of them A sturdy morbid construction The home of shadows Ring She lays down her carving knife Flexes clay hands Rubs the finger of her we

Feral

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Coffee cup basks, sits on my desk, idly steaming. Clouds are lit up, rolling past, processional. Over the river, white birds with sun struck feathers fly. I walked Dog up to the cut wheat field, which is part dug over, which is becoming the field where the wheat was. Followed the turned earth, the stark chopped hedge that looks like winter, sharp bladed winter. I heard something; I could believe it was the sound of birds, or I could believe, there, the air warbles. Breathed deep; damp earth fresh sky. Under booted feet a soft soil thump. Three blackberries squish, tangy, in a chomp of molars. Back to my desk, to think, to quiver at lists, all the snarly details that aren’t so bad if you just pick through them. Sigh deep: desultory picking follows. I long to lounge and read a book. Naughty eyes sneak to the window. I fidget for more coffee. Hours are slippery, tiredness glutinous. At the end of a dark drive homewards, reverse clumsily up to our front door. Rain fal

Sequel

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This morning, three stems from the pampas clump rest at the back of the car, all bunched up and fluffy: a car with a bunny tail. Six wild strawberries, each, are foraged from the hedge. This is all we pause for on the stride to Treniffle and back. This is Trolley Bay Day 2: this time, time gets tighter… We have pushed pennies from jars for a half-day’s van rental. The objective is for one more trolley bay to be in bits in our garden by early afternoon. The cloud cover fails to keep us dry. At noon, the workmen are dragging any unclaimed shelters to the skip, via an angle grinder. Also I must collect Baby from her Nana’s house. Which is why there is a small child in a car seat waving keys and a mobile phone at grandparents who are wet to their undergarments and grimly wrestling twine around unwillingly rolled Perspex sheets. Flecks of blood from minor flesh wounds catch in raindrops. Such loveliness to be at home in dry clothes not shivering. To drink warm tea an

Faery Story

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Sticky mud lives up to its name, coats my boots till my feet are near hobbled. Step into long grass just in time; it licks the mud off with soft bladed tongues. Wind my wide-eyed way up to the flank of the corn crop. Here, no human sight can spy me. This is not a people place. The nettles bite. It takes two hands to break a spider thread. The ground lurches. Dog is drunk on scents, running jagged. Low-bellied badgers have been here, dragging paths through the crop rows, waistcoat pockets full of cobs. Fox prints ford the stream. For all its fine feathers, a pheasant has a slattern’s shriek. I daydream a house woven from the plants in the centre of the tallest deepest rows, a secret house that sways with the wayward breeze, where I sit with my legs dangling and my hair all tangles and wild sparks in my wide wide eyes. 

Steel Yourself

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This morning, three stems of fluffed blonde pampas grass were flicked over the car roof. A car looks preposterous with a wig. Mr collects some extra eyebrows on the lane walk, in threads of spider silk. ‘Is it fake hair day?’ I ask but he only laughs. We have four wild strawberries each and clear sight of the river mist. This is the prequel, but not to fake hair day. It’s trolley bay day. Mr has been clever, asking the supermarket refit manager what will happen to the old trolley bays. We are allocated two. He has put his budget greenhouse plan into action by hiring a van, and then we have panicked. We love the plan, a sublime blend of sensible, imaginative and ratchet spanners, and then there’s that dredging background static, the wearisome fear, the miserable part of a low end income: we can’t afford it, we will be caught too short, in desperation, sink in debt . We’ve done it, though, we’ve hired the van, we’re in the car park, wrestling nuts and bolts and several

Low Water Lie In

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Sleep is a tide and the moon is full. Eyelids slip, disappear under the swell, swept deep. Travels, toils, triumphs pass; the languid limbs move, quieted, under the liquid weight. On dry land, covers are kicked, bodies shift, sprawl, knock pillows to the floor. As the light turns, so does the tide. Minds shiver up from the lunacy of dreams. They come up in silvery pieces, in a shoal of bubbles, up to the shallows, to bump the shore, to nestle into rock pools where the remnants of dream are caught. When this mermaid finds her legs, she makes coffee, remembers only the emotive rapidity, the cogent force of it. 

Interplanetary Seaside

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Feels like distant memories, like we’ve been stuffed in cryogenic suspension and travelled half a galaxy since we last came to the beach. And since an outpost of family is camping near Woolacombe, that’s the side of the sea we drive towards. It would be easy to never leave home. We live in a beautiful place, have lots to do, are not bored. Who could feel sorry for us, stuck in our beautiful rut? And yet, it surprises me, always, the change in a change of scene: no matter how good I am at looking, new things open my eyes wider. Mr takes his mini-mal into the pitch and trough of white-topped ocean, me and Boy take a handful of dogs, walk, ogle, untangle leads. A landscape of textured craters rolls out flat, rolls into a lunar haze. At the water’s edge bumps an alien pod of jellyfish. Boy catches digital images. My mind shutters click, over and over; look, the pools are sky mirrors, see the clarity of that cloud shadow, the turning angles of waves, the reptilian

A Surprise At Treniffle

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Dog and me, jogging in the lane; no other human or canine in sight. In through the window of Luccombe Cottage a television screen is filled with talking face. Two horses play in a field, spin like dizzy kids. A bullock somewhere is making a cow-trumpet noise; me and Dog exchange a look; such a fuss. We peek in through the gate. They are running around, pelting helter-skelter: as they see us, they stand still. Then, eyebrows already twitched, still pondering this mystery, we are at a place where the lane is deeper than the field level, a few paces from Treniffle. Ten feet above, a steam of breath, a line of bullish hair flanked by soft black bovine ears; this is all we can see of the creature. Stand in the pit of the lane: yes, this could be a labyrinth. And even without a minotaur, clouds are of a shade mostly described as ominous. 

Extract

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Been etching at the novel today.  Protagonist Anya, throughout the book, tells her story mostly in retrospect but also in the present tense, because of how the past clings. She takes us to relive directly, using italics to denote her own direct thoughts, and indirectly by allowing a third party narrator. Today's big scene happens around 1973, although the events could have happened any other year. The next novel I might have a go at has more period detail. (I love how this makes it seem; that I just slap and dash my keyboard, throw a couple of hundred pages together.) This is what I edited and wrote and edited today, with the odd pause to discuss sheds and eat.   Anya stares harder at the horizon. In her chest, a cold heaviness presses, as though she is turning to stone, like one of the granite maidens in the old stories, cursed for dancing on the Sabbath, and the little flecks of silver mica will be her frozen tears.  Frank drives on. The road shrinks, twists, the sk

Death By Midnight Espresso

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I recall a quote from Girl: ‘having my child is like having a liquidiser, only I don’t have a lid for it:’ I am following a trail of cat litter, shampoo and odd shoes to where Baby is feeding Dog an envelope. Baby gets all her work done, but mine gets neglected today. When Baby is gone, I’m tired, I register fully how tired I am, but it’s not the liquidiser effect, it’s really the coffee I drink too late at night and my brain bounces in my skull and wakes me up well before the alarm. I have three optimum writing times and late is one of them, the only one today I will be taking advantage of. I love the cloistered dark; a throw back to the intrigue of impressionable youth, to the image of The Poet: the cold, hungry soul alone in a garret, nourished only by words, inking intensity by the flicker of a goose-fat candle. Poor Poet, too romantic to sustain a life; the blood flecks of tuberculosis have ruined your cravat. I can poke fun at the appeal, you see, just not quit

Lovely Time

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Sumo Baby, looks like a shoplifter.  7.30am . A wood pigeon clatters in the oak. I look up at the tree, it’s all knees and elbows. The lane hedges are tall here, they channel vision. I see a cloud, anvil shaped; a western anvil with a curled out lip; and the parallel colours of a rainbow section. It curves from a cloud, like the leg of a cosmic lizard. 10.30am . Girl and Baby and me, we drive to Tavistock, park by the river, swim in a pool. Baby has a sumo swimsuit. She splashes my face and rubs it; there you go Granma, your face is washed, in the big sink. I put 20p in the machine to dry her hair, she leans her head into the warm airflow, looks quizzical; this is a peculiar telephone. ‘Hiya!’ She listens but no-one answers, they are just blowing air on her. She chuckles like a pan boils over. 1pm. The afternoon comes with darkening cloud and the washing on the line is a risk. I dare myself to do it. I keep a weather eye out. I forget all about it because I disappear in

Skin

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(A picture of Girl in a wig- doing her 50s starlet face but not wearing mink.) Soft cloud this evening, the sort that I want to pull down and wear as a cloud fur coat. This image bumps into another, swings it from shadow to conscious surprise. 1981: the full length beaver skin coat arrives in our house; the way I remember it, almost like it had come to stay, like it had brought its own monogrammed suitcase, arrived straight from the funeral of a relative. We couldn’t turn it away, because we were related, because it was bereaved. Fur was a huge taboo. To kill something you don’t eat, to plunder nature for callous profit? It definitely arrived with baggage. Inevitably, it was an object of wonder. When the house was empty, I took it from the wardrobe; it had a fine hanger, carved wood, maybe cedar wood. The lining was satin, smooth as a liquid. I put my hands on the rich opulent decadent fur. I understood why my Gran always said ‘fur coat no knickers.’ You would want to feel th

Socks

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No sight of the sun in the mist on this morning. Day is a spillage of grey light. Mist separates into cloud and rain. I would be almost in Bristol, by now, I calculate, if I could have afforded to take my Second Dan grading. Offset disappointment with a cozy bedside coffee. I’ll just keep training, I think, the money will turn up. Sigh, because my cup is empty. With reluctance, add a waterproof layer. From the moment I have put on socks, Dog has bustled between me and the door- socks means boots means a walk means happy Dog. ‘Well, if I was in Bristol, I wouldn’t be here with you in the rain, would I?’  Dog takes this entirely positively, and we tread out to the wet world. The coffee was lovely, but not much of a breakfast. Realise I am hungry just as my boots leak. Okay, I say, the hedgerow will give me breakfast. And can I find a single blackberry? Hmm… Okay, I say, I think it goes like this: the universe is made of energy. Energy that flows is energy that works. A gr

Discovery

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Fine mist opaques, obscures. On the fat trunked ash there are several stark dead branches. Silhouettes like this are where ogres come from. On the lane, a soft carpet of plop. The risen sun, a concentration of brightness in the white sky, has heat, but the ground is a drop colder than yesterday. On the thick slate chunk of the pantry windowsill there is the skull of a light brown fox, maybe the oddest thing we have cropped from these hedges. At our old house, we famously found a whole Land Rover in the undergrowth; that has been the most surprising thing. A 1964 model. The mist sneaks back to the river line while I’m making coffee, while I set the washing machine singing. Its song is rumbly and full of pauses, very modern stuff. I have a well documented adoration of the machine that washes my clothes. When its song spins to a finale, I slither out the wet cloth, lump it in a trug, lug it to the line. A transformation need only be simple. Wet cloth, pegged to line, under the s