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Underdogs Happy Dogs

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The air is notably colder. It condenses, crunches into surface ice. Coffee flask rolls in the passenger foot well: glugs, reassuring. Bags are packed and loaded. The address is not difficult to find. The house is cute. Here is a child I saw last as waving white fuzz on an ultrasound. Here are the dogs I walked: three years ago over the flattened sands of Castle Rock. Here we are, eating curry and talking names for a newer baby while a blonde elf child scores the dresses on a dance show. A Staffordshire terrier curls underfoot. The other, the scruffy part Lurcher, sleeps on his cushion. You should know his story: that once my friend was having a terrible day and sat on the steps of a theatre. A neglected fur tangle snuck up to sit in comfort with her. She saw the burns on his whippy body and could only take him home. There was talk of the Dog Warden, initially. If we can't home him… the man said. He has a home, she decided. A future. Curry simmer wobbles the stovetop pan

Ice And Fire

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In the night the world is crystallised. In the distance is traffic noise: here only one human, a cat, a few chickens, a dog stirs. Sun edges a dark cloud much as flame edges a fry pan. In the field Dog wakes the wild birds, springs two roe deer. She catches nothing, cares not, exhales happy steam. In pale cloud scatters the moon is camouflaged. From the horizon a puzzling dot grows into a hot air balloon.

A Colour Wash

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Day cold bright in blue, in luminous cloud Washing scarcely dries on the rotary line Though the wind breathes all over it A day does what it does so a fire is struck A half load of t-shirts dangle in the polytunnel The grass grows overlong underneath Indoors, the wet towels and trousers of today's wash Hued inky, plum, pitch-black Drape the amber wood of the old clotheshorse Silver change gathers in a pot, for later, for the launderette.

A Candle, Creamy White

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An hour's yomp to Feather Tor and back. Mud sucks boots. Wind slaps face. Coats inflate, puff the walkers up ping-ping like popcorn. The watch is consulted. It gives seven minutes to climb the slabbed granite and wrestle the air. We are on time for Little Granddaughter, who has been playing and needs glasses and an eye test and has not drawn a picture of a cat: the very idea! But she will see the cats at Nanny's house and they have hair and she has hair but cats don't have glasses or a eye test. She relates this information to Nanny. 'Peppa Pig!' we say to each other, remembering the episode. Pedro Pony sports a fine pair of spectacles. Rain falls, heavy, smacks an acorn onto the windscreen. Cardboard is coaxed to flame. Gravy simmers on the Rayburn hob. A table candle pulses, creamy white.

Crouching Winter

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After the frost moon hail falls. Cells of ice hold tight On the weathered planks of the pallet table. The sun wakes up cold, splashes watery light. Leaf by leaf colour blows from trees. There's a perceptible breath of winter: It pads closer: a thing luxuriant Stark, sparkling, perilous.

Night Exposure

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The moon is a summoning eye All things are drawn to it. A line of hopes and fears strings From here to there; swings shakily In that peerless pearling light. There is no denial. The moon gazes on everything Serene, steadfast, startling.

Soul Blazing

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The earth turns our view out of day, into night. A deepening mottle of cloud, silk-soft, harmonious, settles low.  All is shadow in the antiqued light. Eyes adapt, ears are confused: there is music: the percussion of which is traced to water twisting in a ridged drainage pipe. Cool air on skin; scent of wet grass. A lick of dark coffee, lingering. Like the water tumbles a convergence comes. It is enough, in life, sufficient of itself, to have this sentient experience: to be delighted by it. Anything that is not part of this is superfluous. It is not what is done; not endured, adored, embraced nor denied; it is the perception of it. It is walking through this blend of evening shades, soul centred, blazing.

Steering Boots

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If I like a path I like to walk it to the end. Most often it steers to another path. Maybe I'll choose this one, maybe I won't: it's all whim, here in the park where the wind plucks trees bare under a vague sky. I like to walk where I walk, off the path prescribed in tarmac: locate fallen leaves, amble under portly old firs, stand, observant, on the concentric lines of the stump. Hands and knees are the best kind of cold: wakeful, not painful. A random taupe leaf sticks to my boot's toe.

House Of The Aptly Shambolic

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Hail strike on windowpanes wakes us before the day has begun; one of those frustrating days where simple tasks are complex traps although no crockery slips off the draining board and tea is prepared in time and there are moments where rainbows loop themselves in cloud even if Dog sighs, disappointed in a shortened walk; my phone case is easily mended and Little Granddaughter says 'So'ry Nam-ma,' unasked, sincerely. (So'ry being word ointment for situations in which, somehow, something is broken or food or beverage, somehow, makes contact with carpet.) It feels colder than the gauge reports.  The night sky is clear, in part; three quarters of a rotund moon exquisitely visible. On the way home we stop to buy milk. Car park trees, shivery in the wind chill stand isolate, planted apace. Home is warm, dishevelled; has a smell of coal smoke, wet dogs, boiled vegetables. It is, in short, a suitable mess.

Prosperous

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Frost spreads in the night and the morning arrives sparkling. The sun keeps a clear path, melts it all, it keeps the sparkle: the twink, the sense of mischief and glamour. Dog and I run through field grass kicking diamonds. Oak leaves blow down, opulent in colour: one falls into my hand, almost directly, a clear gift. At home one has wetted boots and an old brown leaf: yet the experience will not depreciate.

Wash Cycle

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All around, walls of cloud. Propped above, precarious, a blue sky. Washing on the line all day, in sun and brisk wind, is drier but not dry: holds a scent of autumn, an apple-spice, cool air smell. Each peg unclipped drops into the pot, each item lumps into the basket. Starlings make their massed flights, indistinctly edged against the pallid glare of sun. In the field behind one pheasant whirrs up, wings so mechanical. Cat is curled, sheltered, by the flowerpots. Dog pushes her nose along the grass. In the kitchen the Rayburn is lit, the washing up is regrouping, is always regrouping. Hot sticky swirls of rosehip line the big pan.

Eleventh Hour

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Boy has an alarm set. We take our two minutes reflection on the drive to Plymouth. Rain smudges sky and land together. On Royal Parade poppies decorate trees. Every memorial is adorned: bright rings under the dark lists of names, the dense squared stone. Names, listed; lives, loves, heroics, fear; compressed to this. Too many names to unfold each: too much to endure, too much to forget.

Histories

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A Sunday set aside for remembrance. Most of the day I am up in the nursery room, painting a tree for the imminent grandchild. Little Grandson sits cross-legged in the cot, asks one question for every brush stroke. Why is paint wet, for example, and where's the owl. Soup for lunch, two kinds, homemade. Baby Girl drops by to visit, chewing car keys. She brings Mum and Nan and a light up teddy. Little Grandson kisses her on the nose. Back at the paint face, the last leaf is lined. Coffee and cake to celebrate. Across the world; we see by television; a hurricane has torn up towns, wiped out homes, lives, securities. Little Grandson is tired, he drags a blanket to the sofa. A poppy wreath props on the cenotaph. A camera pans over faces: tensed, grieving, respectful faces.

Restoratives

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Shoes unlaced, socks inside out, left on a car seat. Trouser legs: one two: rolled up. Prints in pairs press soft sand. Onshore the wind blows, steals a childlike chuckle, throws it over storm bashed garden walls. Rain drives sidewards, cold as pebbles. The café is open. Soup is waiting. At night the moon crescent rests over clouds: the glimpsed belly of a genie.

Sleep Deficient

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23:32. Put the espresso mug down. Admit, relinquish. The sky, vast and soft and cold and black and silver speckled, turns slow overhead, whale-esque. How wearisome it seems, to need sleep or nutrients or basic hygiene. One would rather be as the sky: existent, encompassing. Can eyes crumple? Under-shadowed: distant as the night.

Meniscus

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We are under water. Shoals of rain flash past: deft, tiny pieces. Puddle surface breaks like mirrors. It is the nature of water to unshatter: smooth to its course. Without flow it chokes. At home chicken bones are split to broil in a steel pan. Steam jitters the lid, escapes in warmly spiced blooms.

Low-Key Festivities

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The way the wind blows is roguish today. It ties knots in loose hair, chucks tree debris, tugs at moorings. One pheasant attempting flight is held at a hover till it gives up. Clouds are pushed till they fall into one fuzzed grey spread. Indoors, a busy oven: the last of the pumpkin seeds roast, a pan of butter boils to ghee. The floors are swept and we are indecisive about the washing. Drive home from work under a dark sky, not one firework appears. There are evenings when we have stood, bundled in outdoor padding, sighing at flagrant fires in the sky: tiny against mountainous flames: writing shapes with fizzing white heat: thrilled by the tar barrels: ears crackling with luminous shrieks. Indoors, behind the Rayburn door, coals and hand-hewn logs form an orange opal underworld. The flames are lazy, magnificent, mauve-tinted.

Dragon's Farewell

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Starlings burst trees with silhouettes and prattle. Butterflies press to warmth on fence planks. Where the river ran over the field crop strands hold in neat rows, like green hair on a cheap doll. Clouds are big, the blue sky bigger. A brown deep churn of river rushes seaward. To the bend where the fallen oak branch had taken the form of a dragon we run, ungainly, over tussocks, splash puddled mud. The water looks flat. We stare for the rise of snout, the plumed tail: and keep staring. The form is freed, we know it: out of the fibrous wood somewhere under that flat wide water he has found his limbs and turned seawards and our hearts fly after him and he was ours, for one summer.

Huzzah!

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For all the stoic talk some stuck-in-traffic fidgets appear… Still, when a journey is sufficiently endured the arrival is a delectable moment. We race past the drum and sitar players to our room. One monk's habit and one Saxon warrior bodice are swiftly recovered from cases. There is bodice lacing to be done! In the lift down to reception are a nice Indian family heading to a wedding and an implausible Middle Ages duo off to banquet. 'Are you here for the wedding?' Aethelfrida The Invincible asks. 'Yes,' the nice lady says, faintly confused. 'Are you?' 'No,' Brother Mr smiles, though it crosses his mind to act surprised that they haven't joined in with the Medieval theme. Two courtly ladies, two monks, one early Tudor gent and a Saxon tribeswoman meet up in the reception area and order taxicabs to Coombe Abbey. 'Have you been before?' Our Cabby enquires. We have not. 'You'll love it,' he declares. He&#

Painting Autumn

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Love how light paints a wet road. Love the smoky breath of cloud, the greys, the pumpkin colours. Driving, singing, fill the sky with my noise. Deep in a belly is a point of universal connection, is the origin of my noise. Love the gold leaves falling. On the windscreen, where the coffee steam bloomed is clearing. The flask cup rolls loose. Other lights make starbursts, across glass, across wet road.