Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

H ere’s the introduction to the book I have almost succeeded in reading this month: ‘We live, we love. We laugh and grieve and learn and grow. Life is a forge that burns away the surface, strengthens the core, and reveals the soul. This collection of essays and memories plunges through more than a decade of the beautiful struggle that is marriage and parenthood and finding one’s self amidst the tangle of both. This journey weaves joy and sorrow, passion as well as isolation, into a tapestry that makes such an ordinary life, more splendid than its solitary threads.’ Note especially: ‘collection of essays and memories.’ Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Season-C-Clickett/dp/1536876828/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8 where there is no mystery about the publisher: Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (October 3, 2016) I bought it because I very much liked the blog it sprang from, Splendour In A Plastic World. Plus the author bought my

I was driving, at night, down a country road into a lit street; the dashboard lights had broken so I was keen to check fuel levels and such: when I saw the rain, the uncountable droplets, the illusion of steadiness - had I never seen this before?  It seemed not. Silver streams hitting tarmac, splintering, glittering. The light, the liquidity together formed something like a living jewel.  And this merely part of a cycle, rain, surface water, evaporation, cloud, just how our planet pours with resources. If you are chasing beauty, I think you will get lost.  If your wealth can be scraped into a heap, made a throne of, I think you will be alone. This is my status symbol - me in the rain being amazed - anyone can be here. We can be amazed together. All the way home I was driving, rapturous, a little bit cautious with the blanked out dash, in need of nothing.  In need of nothing, but thinking still – of every sacrifice that it took to build this

No scariness in here, this story is inspired by the Samhain festival, and the time of year when one may meet with the dead. No zombies, no ghosts, not even a black cat in here! Contains melancholy only. Read without fear! Sula In The Garden When you feel the pull, you'll know. The first time she heard of this she was an eavesdropping child, not supposed to know anything, wanting to know everything, not able to sit still under the table where it was dim and cramped and toast crumbs stuck to her legs. Her aunts and her mother would hiss, 'Little ears!' A warning to each other that a child was in earshot. Sula smiles. They knew she was there, of course; she can see the memory on a wider screen now, she can stand where the women are gathered, the tea cups and toast plates dotting the tablecloth, the crumbs speckling random and correlated, like constellations. They would change topic, ask decoy questions: when shall we go to the park, sister? And she would kno

Here I am, a writer in civilisation, in a coffee shop of course.  Almond croissant, no regrets. A coffee shop in a shopping mall, it isn’t where I’d planned to be, it is One of Those Days. I am dressed for chainsawing, in fact, and looking as out of place as I feel.  Embracing the stares.  Observing the flash of advertising, reading the message: you should look like this, to be yourself, but you knew that because you shop here so you’re cool, we’re just telling the rest of the conformists how cool you are. We are advertising you! I don’t hate all commerce, just the soulless lies. And if you look there are people here doing real human interaction, without phones, they are talking and holding hands, and a child has a shoulder ride, stares up happy at a fake palm tree.  I like this, and there’s fun in frippery.  I like sparkle, and colours, and the feel of fabrics.  I like this, but I don’t want it in place of my wild world. Yesterday by the river I went wal