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Cold Kitchen

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First day, last month of Spring:  Even the rain seems pretty, falling to fresh leaves, caught on bright petals; a water veil draping us. Dog has been hose-piped and rain-rinsed and still a trace of spilt wine sits on her shoulders. She cares not.  The house is cold, a little in mourning - our way of life having shifted lately, with the demise of the Rayburn. One morning at 3am the carbon monoxide alarm sent its shrill noise upstairs; at a more civilised hour the chimney man came, and it couldn’t be fixed. I thought Rayburns lived forever. Alas! So now we wait for the landlord to do sums and calculate an acceptable replacement. Most likely a wood burner will arrive, fingers crossed it will have a back boiler and heat our water too. Meanwhile we have pulled the pillow draught-catcher out of the front room flue, lit the tiny open grate each evening. Meanwhile we are using an electric oven, which ought to seem more convenient - but the Rayburn was always lit,

A Slice Of Wedding

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In the way that a wedding cake, or cheese if you prefer, is a whole, of which one has a slice, this is my version, my slice of wedding. It starts well before the day, with making syrups and painting signs, but this writing will begin the night before, with Mr and me and three little granddaughters. The littlest, Grandchild 5, is teething. Grandad is sent to the sofa, so one of us will be alert enough to drive to the venue. In-between her gnashing of bumpy gums comes adorable cuddles, like she is saying thank you, and admirable wind. At 3:30am magic exhaustion kicks in.  At 6:27am Grandchildren 2 and 3 appear, complaining that they cannot sleep. Granma says: ‘Go jump on Grandad.’ 6:35am Grandchild 2 returns to complain that Grandchild 3 has snotted on the carpet, closely followed by Grandchild 3: ‘But I’ve cleaned it up, Granma!’ Granma says: ‘Go jump on Grandad.’ Grandchild 5 opens her sparkly fresh eyes. Granma says: ‘Coffee.’ Bless her, she can’t remember where

March Lion

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Paws and claws to the door, breathing storms In it roars, the third month of this year Daffodils bow bright manes to the King of Spring. Each unfurling - leaf, petal, tadpole - belies the windchill Warmth is washing in. What is left of our snowdrops - dotted foam of an ebbed wave By night a waxing moon was pulling up tides, and we dreamt Our feet, unshod, pressing across tawny sand

At The Time Of The Snow Moon

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The moon is a frozen pond. It is The Snow Moon. The Hunter’s Moon. Someone says a lunar eclipse will happen this night. And a comet! We are like children with torches forecasting midnight feasts… But we slumber deep, lungs with cold air replete, minds a-wander. An early start. Wake to the sparsest spaced flakes - ten to a cubic furlong, perhaps. (Perhaps we dreamt this precise detail?) Blearish eyes are rubbed. Ahead, a deer, in no danger from ice-wary driving, springs across tarmac. From a canopy’s winter bones, an owl swoops, parallel. In a blink, a hedge bird breaks our reveries. Clips the car, sends feathers a-puff.

How Will We Know Where We Are?

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Without the dead ash looming, we had lost our sense of where our drive is. Each time we missed, reversed, reminded ourselves to find a stump and a grand wood pile: that’s where we live. The altered reference. We are getting used to it. Yesterday Storm Doris broke the legs of Lily Scare-the-Crow. Literally weather beaten! Was this venting frustration, now storms cannot break branches from the chopped tree? When Lily was our new scarecrow, we would reverse under precarious boughs, be startled by the  person in the rear view mirror, the flat wooden figure with the child-drawn face. Now, after remembering where we live, we are startled to not find a face. Lily has never scared a crow, nor lost her smile. She is, rakishly, propped in the lea of the lean-to. ‘What new times are these, Lily?’ I ask. ‘How will we know where we are?’ Ask your heart, she says (it’s what I hear). And I think, that’s rich, when you don’t have one: but she’s never scared a crow, nor lost her

Out With The Old

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Christmas or November - 2015 - a phone call came. The casual branch dropping of our dead ash tree had been acknowledged as a danger; it was scheduled for demolition. Storms came, the tree surgeon was busy. We become accustomed to vigilance at the garden’s end. No one loiters in the road there. We drag the droppage to the hedge, to rot down into good soil. January 2017 - another phone call. Tree surgeon and crane are booked, the landlord says. Uh-huh. It may storm yet, we say, we’ll see. But we park the car out by a field gate - you never can be sure. The crane is amazing. It straddles the road, reaches to the sky. Up goes the man in the yellow mesh box. Chainsaw whirs. Bit by bit, down drops our dissected tree. Dear Fat Trunked Ash, we have loved your silhouette. We have loved to run and startle off a coat of starlings. Loved to see Old Crow sat, stark black on bare branch. We witnessed the last of your leaves falling, looked for buds that didn’t bloom, changed your

In The Middle Of The Winter Feast

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On the fourth day of Christmas her true love gives to her: ‘Four German Men Three Finch Hens Toowoo Twurtle Doves And A Part Of A Pear Tree’ But to the dearth of our amusement Grandchild 2 finds a book detailing the traditional 12 gifts and begins to teach herself the proper form. Not so proper she can’t slink off with all the cherry tomatoes. If questioned, we know it was not Grandad. She says it anyway, laughing. Grandchild 5 can follow the others with her eyes, she wants to be up to mischief like the others say they are not.  Grandchild 1 kicks a football onto the grass he is not supposed to run on because… something about mud… if he asks Grandchild 3 to fetch for him he has contravened no carpet law!  It’s not his fault we were all listening. And where’s Grandchild 4? Not hitting anyone with a stick of course - that was Dog, he says. It’s not his fault we were all watching. Grandchild 3 casually drops a stick behind her back. But we’re

Yule Tale 2016

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A Slightly Parallel Cinderella Once upon a time and place, in a slightly parallel universe (for further reading on slightly parallel universe theory please refer to Dr Cod’s excellent Physics For Storytellers ) all children were hatched and raised for adoption.  They were named in themes, and Cinderella was hatched during a craze for old fashioned, gender orientated, Disney character names.  She was adopted by a spacious mansion full of fabulous toys. She ate fabulous food. She took fabulous pictures of it all and posted them on her social media. From that she made her two bestest-ever-friends-forever, Lady and Tramp. They each lived in toy packed mansions, maybe if anything a little bit more fabulous than Cinderella’s lavish life but they were good enough to apologise and repeatedly tell her that it was okay not to have the biggest and best all of the time, they would still like her pictures and she mustn’t feel bad about herself, she wasn’t unloveable or

A Candle Lit

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We live by the light of those we love, whether they are here or gone. That light is inextinguishable. To have the light and not the company is an adjustment process we call grief. Loss is a shadow, equal to the light. We adjust not to lose the shadow but to see both. Hard to bear - yet without darkness, light cannot show its full wonder. Let us look after each other, then, and value our days, our company, and live to leave vast shadows, and understand that pain is a strange gift, a tender, haunting, purposed gift. And if you are grieving: let your tears flow, let your anger shout, let yourself plead and deny and feel terrible: it is not an easy process.  Know that other people know grief.  Know that other people are hurt to see you grieve.  Know that love is a fundamental response. There is no time limit to this adjustment process. No right or wrong way to feel. One day you will stand back and see that the shadow is proof to the strength of the light, a

Celebrators

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Last night we tumbled first into wine, then sleep. We had watched fabulous things on our television, our dreams were amazing. I evolved legs to crawl from the bed.  Yesterday was a Thursday, and the first calendar day of winter. She had swept in, draped with rich mist, strong and archetypal. How could we not celebrate? This morning, the sun still sunk below an unseeable horizon, Dog goes out, crunches crystals under footpads. Our dead ash tree, scheduled to be cut down twelvemonth before, is a bold statement in a world of miniature wonders.  Do you know we don’t actually have a television? We bought a projector, we have a blank wall.  It makes watching a deliberate thing. Sometimes we drink wine on a weeknight but we are careful viewers.

The Silence On Armistice Day

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We were writing a shopping list, tapping phones to light up the time. At 10:59 we fell silent, looked out of the window. Heavy cloud, clearly defined though the sky also stood grey, the sombre limbs of our dead tree, the blur of bird wings chasing for food and territory, this we saw. The pattern of rain on panes that need cleaning. Droplets on hedge-leaves catching a light that’s rising. It’s always this that catches me: just ordinary people, trooped out, and lost so much, just ordinary people, left at home to watch for letters, to dig into the earth, tend the vegetables, the places at the table that are waiting, waiting. I sense all the ghosts, and nothing of vengeance; I am not too afraid to fight but this presence, this tide of loss, it tempers the need. Civilisation seems built on bones. So, here we are. The new bones. What will they build on us? At 11:03 we startle, we chuckle, so lost in the moment. Still - we will not forget.

A Suburban Walk In Autumn

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Rain - an ocean of it Pavements, gardens, us, under this Aquatic. All colours deepen The music of it - a song of falling, of flood: red-gold the leaves that settle in gutters Cold, the windfall apple Cupped in a palm The fragrance of it: spiced Musked, humus: What falls now, nurtures next year’s fruit.

Halloween 2016: Miss Olivia Shoreditch Twice Wrestles A Bear

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[Photo credit: Tim Flach, via Pinterest] Miss Olivia Shoreditch had been in her bed for three days straight. She had her reasons, though reason itself had deserted her. There was nothing about it she could recall through any medium but her gut instinct. A terrible thing had occurred, she knew, though not what; she was attempting to recover, and she must get up slowly as there was an angry bear in the corner of her room.  I will describe to you the bear.  If it were in front of us now the first attribute to draw our attention would be the phenomenal size of it. It was standing upright, its head curved along the ceiling, hunched from the shoulders. Darkly purplish fur, thick and warm looking, the texture attractive, imbued with an aroma of stale blood, rank and coppery. Claws, lacquered black - hiding any sort of dirt - light slid along the curve of them. Teeth in dark gums were creamy coloured, stained in rusty blotches. Saliva hung pendulous, a burgundy tongue loiter

Around The Time Of The First Frost

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Eight days in, October settles as a backdrop. It has been easy to find every warm moment a June/July sort of day, to greet cooling with a ‘perhaps September?’ To wonder if I had seen August at all. Some years are like this, impervious to months. No less imbued. One need not drift closed. But here I am, taking note of the date, coal dust wiped absently across face, bellyful of rich stew, heavy eyed, snuggled in wool, bare footed. House is a mess, of course, of course: bustling life, not all of it human. Here we are, at a time when blackberries begin an ebb, haws and hips glow bold-red, fennel seed dries, marigolds, nasturtiums bloom: yellow to orange, orange to red. First swathes of bronze foliage, first drop of leaf. House spiders return to roost. Ten days in, first frost. First defrosting dance around the car in the demi-dark, feet in winter boots. Sky spreads red-orange-yellow, opens up blue; at midday we cast off jumpers. In shops vast boxes of pumpkins have arrived, sup

Portraits, Post Summer

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Through thick warm air fly globules of delight for field foraging birds: free range slug stuffed with organic homegrown tomatoes, freshly plucked from my polytunnel, and hand flung over a blackthorn hedge. Served with a shout: ‘It’s the circle of life!’ This is a rare day off, but I’m useless at slacking. An assembly of grandchildren would assist. They would love slug hurling and interrupt every other thing.  I’ve put the last of the lavender to dry, and a batch of rosemary, and calendula. Chives are cut, bagged, frozen. Tomatoes salvaged from predators and blight. Raspberries picked. The washing pile eradicated, for a day. And so, and such until the clouds pink and the sky darkens and a fuzzy moon loiters. Then I sit in my hammock and listen. I hear a mollusc munching. Birds lullaby. Owl. No further action is required. No bedtime-stalling supper, no stories to read, no stinky nappy, no ailments or shrieking laughter. Think of the culprits instead, a little inventory, a list o

Early Autumn: An Absurdist, Berry Picking

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In my mind the seasons have been separate gods. Spring, a maiden, moving ice to melt; summer, a predator, hot, basking, growly; autumn, a russeted stag, richly coloured, rarely frivolous; winter, a skeletal beast, empathetic, stoic, truthfully harsh. This year’s transition differs. Summer, gently, in the thick of mist, becomes Autumn. It’s not that time has existed in seasonal boxes, rather I had thought of each year-quarter as a thing outside of time; eternal, revisiting. Time was something we viewed them through. This year, something in my mind steps though the window. One thing becomes; replaces, supersedes; another thing, an evolution, and more precious for its brevity. I have run with gods for years and years, I have knelt to marvel, not unseeing, not unmoved. But this year? It is only I, feeling heat soothe out of earth, observing leaves slowly gilded, reaching my fingers to a ripened blackberry; yet more amazed, more alive to the miracle than I ever remember. The