Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Words On Being Happy Two milestone birthdays today that I know of - of course there are more - one 70th, one 1st, to be celebrated from a distance. (70 years no longer sounds old, whereas one year of existence is a dot.) For Grandchild 7 we had sent a parcel by taxi: all the willow branch-and-twig cut down from pruning the arch (deliberately left to overgrow for this occasion) ribbon tied and rolled in an old tablecloth. A willow house kit! (Although it looked a little like I was disposing of a tall skinny body…) Which his family have assembled with pallet flooring, and I hope has survived last night’s high winds... For the 70th (Caroline Osborne-Dowle) a handmade card which dropped into the post box before I remembered that the post had already gone that day so it will be late - but I will call and give the real present, which is a pledge to spend time - to go out, to stay in, details will sort themselves out. Time is the priceless thing. We will march from dot to dusk, tra

Words From The Start Of Lockdown Life Mr looks to the future, it looks like hedges. Saturday March 14th 2020 On the drive to work I got bored of changing the windscreen wiper settings, then a little off-white spider raced around on the steering wheel. I blew it onto the dashboard but it jumped back. Cheeky spider. At work we are bored of coronavirus restrictions and bored at the prospect of it continuing. We don’t know anyone who has it. Supermarket shelves are missing toilet roll, dried pasta, as previously, now also tins of beans and tomatoes. There are travel bans and cancelled events. Last night I had to teach a non contact TKD session - no pads, no sparring, no hand shaking. I began my class with ‘first of all, please don’t breathe because that’s dangerous now.’ All of us are ‘meh’ about these restrictions. We understand that infection control is serious for the immune-compromised, we adhere to protocol for that reason. But the paranoia and boredom: meh. Monday March

Words On Storms And Hands On Heart Thursday 6th February 2020 I have found some new muscles to hurt, hurrah! Discovery due to the wheelbarrow being turned to rust lace, so I improvised with a rescued fish box, dragging it like a sled to spread compost around the garden. Have ordered a new barrow today; currently am sat in bed to write, and appease the aches. Washing blows on the line. Cold sunny day. The crows have chased a buzzard out of the alopecia pine. Monday 10th February 2020 Busy, Tae Kwon-Doing, social weekend. Stormy weather which inconvenienced others more than us. Sunday evening we came home to an electric outage: lit candles, lit woodburner, opened wine. Thankful for a quiet work day. Can’t even immerse myself in research as the weather seems to have stifled internet access. Several rounds of thunder and hail. Did some stretches, did some writing, including this. At home a new wheelbarrow is awaiting and somehow the washing has stayed pegged to the line. It w

Granma Grace has weathered five or more (the doctors are not certain) strokes; she has a confusion that thickens as the day goes on, a deepening layer of impending doom. She has a foot that twitches, even while she sleeps, with this certainty of worry. Something somewhere is wrong, or will go wrong. That’s one layer out of many though: optimism is not obliterated, gratitude abounds, the love of simplicity: draw the curtains back, she will wait for the birds to alight on well stocked feeders. She will ask that the little cat who warms on the step be fed a treat. She will check the sky for the beautiful weather about to happen. She will love to go for a walk, however brief. Sometimes she cries for the loss of independence, quiet tears. She says she does not know how to repay us for our kindness in looking after her. Mock-strict I tell her this is prepaid love, and there’s a very healthy balance on this account. She blooms into laughter - it’s so good, it gifts me a halo. Tod