Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

26/3/22 Saturday First adventure: Black belt training, Newton Abbott. Added on to yesterday’s logging this really hit my glutes. Second adventure: packed up for a night on the land. We decided to test the sofa bed in the stable, and light the big fire pit in the lower field. Made up the bed with blankets, air mattresses, and duvet, made up the fire with ash twigs. Made Dog a nice bed on a pile of cardboard, a blanket, and her memory foam mattress. Too achy-tired to cook on the fire so we purchased fish and chips which we ate in the van watching the day’s colours blaze out. Caught a view of the sun as we drove in, it looked close enough to grab, vivid red, a whacking great star stuck on the tops of tree silhouettes. I’m getting the order of things muddled here because I am tired, but the views were worth it. The fire kept us toasty as long as we stayed close, the night was cold. Dog curled up in the grass, also tired after trotting around following scents and even bringing sticks to c

12/3/22 Saturday Morning: coffee, sunshine, stretches in the warm light, crystal-cast rainbows on the walls. Dog walks stiffly between us and the kitchen, hoping to provoke breakfast. I drive to work, got my sunglasses on. At work: I take a lunchtime walk. As I walk the wind picks up, clouds gather purposefully, the temperature drops- did not feel cold to me as I had set a warm pace. Not as speedy as the woman who runs out of her house in slippers, leaving her front door open, clutching a bunch of flowers. She calls to a lady in a red raincoat who turns and takes the flowers. Slipper lady walks back to her house, smiles awkwardly at me as she passes, her cheeks are flushed. Back at work: YouTube beach scene on TV, about to get some novel writing done, heavy rain splatting on the windows.  13/3/22 Sunday Another lunchtime ramble, to Porthpean where I sat on a ledge and looked out: low deep cloud, green water, waves a-swooshing, seagulls edging in with their eyes on my lunch. Picked up

5/3/22 Saturday St Piran’s Day Morning: frost on the greenery as far as the eye can see. Mr gets wrapped up ready for his hedge laying course, I get coffee-ed up ready to take Grandchildren 6 & 7 to the Eden Project for the World Pasty Championships: smug as I have pre-bought our pasties to avoid queueing. Afternoon: it is sheltered in the Eden valley, cold in the shadows, warm in the sun. Me, G6, and G7 sit on a bench and eat our pasties. (We are early because Granma’s fluid intake has reached capacity. In the rush to the loos, Granma also forgot to note in which car park the car was hastily abandoned, or even in which area- is it Lime? Plum? Banana? Ah well, at least my trousers are dry, and none of us are hungry or stuck in a queue.) The little ones are fun, in spite of being entirely uninterested in the entertainments of pasty challenges or live music. We whizz around the Mediterranean Dome, and the Tropics (wow that leaf is freaking massive, says G6; maffiv! echoes G7) we queu

26/2/22 Saturday Last night we all had baths; Mr first, he likes the water hot, then me, then Dog, who protests the idea but settles in the warmth in spite of herself. Her ear fur was shampooed and conditioned, on account of all the undergrowth that needs combing out of it. She has her own towels, one for drying, one for putting on her bed to soak up the extra drips hiding in her thick coat. It’s surprising how much laundry Dog contributes to the household pile. At lunchtime, all clean and glowy, I go for a walk to Charlestown. Wave spume coats the harbour walls, the sea is stirred up, opalesque and green.   27/2/22 Sunday Coffee in bed with land plans- then up and walking the lanes- cut through the fields to see the old fallen oak down by the stream. It is bare and smooth and big, against a blue sky- a sky that is all the heavens, all the universes: infinity. The stream runs clear, noisy. Birds scoot through the scrub. It’s a close-your-eyes-and-step sort of a day, full of good faith,

5/2/22 Saturday A leisurely start. Hold my hands around the ceramic glaze of a favourite mug, breathe in coffee steam, hear the birds caw and chitter, see the soft sky all still, all pale blue and foam.  Run a shower, let the water run warm then cold. Awake! Bags packed but not for work.  Mr has hosed the car clean, it sparkles like an iceberg.  First stop on this weekend’s adventures is to drop Dog to her stopover (with Youngest Son and Daughter-in-law, to be revered and pandered to whether she maintains continence or not). Dog does not even pretend to be sad as we leave. Next stop: Newton Abbot Leisure Centre, for black belt training (achieving a black belt is one thing, maintaining it is another). Last stop: Bristol, home of my brother, my sister-in-law, my bonkers niece. We have brought them the god-food of our homeland: Cornish Pasties, raw and oven-ready; they have the oven heated and ready. 6/2/22 Sunday Coffee, no leisurely time; clothes on, bags in car, drive to venue: Hutton

22/1/22 Saturday Frostless and still, this morning. Garden stationary, like statuary. We are not: there is writing, land work, and home improvements in motion. There’s a spark, a waking up. The doomsday clock chugs, the human world sits like a frog in heating water, yet here our small world whispers hope. ‘The secret of change,’ Socrates said, ‘is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.’ Mr plans to go to the land, I will hear his tales of today when I get home. I have come to work where Saturday is hydrotherapy day, a half-hour session with the little warm salt pool to ourselves. We had a slot after the newborn class; relaxed vibe; and before a party of 8 yr olds; disco vibe.  23/1/22 Sunday Luckily I set an alarm or we might still be asleep, and after a sober night too. Blaming the cold for making our bodies hibernate. At work, a YouTube fire flickers in a stone surround: cold out, cosy in. The flat seems chilly so I put the real-life heaters on.