Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Outside the clouds tremble with fine rain. It drops from them sparsely, clearly mocking my decision to hang the washing indoors. I have the windows open. I don’t mind. It occurs to me that I take each day as raw materials from which to construct a portrait of myself, and I like this idea. It shows me the magic of everyday things. It isn’t too grand, it allows for unassuming - it allows for all the variables. Some days are daubed in turbulence and now they are not bad days but in fact part of a series of studies; my moody phase, my this-is-overtired phase, my shadow sketches; some are gleefully oversaturated, glitter-spattered, sequinned-and-celestial. Each day is subconsciously coloured in uncountable shades, textured with everything I see, touch, hear, taste, or smell; has one or many points of interest, it is as sparse or as crowded as I choose. Today I am a kitchen maniac, cooking up coq au vin, pate, stock, lentil curry, chocolate sauce, cheese sauce, roasted and steamed vegeta

Dear Readers, Here we are! Not lost, just busy, just tired, just taking a moment to sit with our shared flask of ginger tea, wiping our snotty noses, watching winter and spring swing around in their season-switching dance. Hard frost crackles, soft petals bloom. We had been busy with the old art of hedge laying, busy sorting and tidying the felled trunks, branches, and twigs. There are heaps and stacks and bundles - these boundaries have been untouched for decades - but birds are beginning to gather materials for nests, heralding the end of our hedgework for a while. Our thoughts have turned to The Planting Plan, so we pace around measuring canopy distances before going home to pour over the map, again, again.   Two plum trees wait in pots, they have their spots marked. Everything else is a maybe. Down along the iron fence are lines and lines of daffodils, all in bud. Only one has opened, a miniature narcissus staring bravely up at the big world. We are inspired of course, thoug

‘1/1/22 Saturday Last night just before midnight, we strolled down the dark lane, wine glasses in hand; spotted constellations, watched distant fireworks. This morning Dog had done several splats of foulness on the living room carpet. HNY! Also this morning: In bed, chinking coffee cups, we say- what will this year bring? We hope it’s a track and a toilet shed.’ Well, we have a track on our land, all the way from top to bottom gate. It’s not as finely finished as we’d hoped, but it is here. We have a toilet shed, and it’s not the quality lumber we had hoped for, but it is built, and it will suffice. Everything is layering up, however slow or wonky: up! There were, too, events that we did not foresee or hope for. The van engine blew up. We can’t fix it. No one wishes to buy it, at least not yet. It will be utilised as a winter shelter on our land until a better idea/miracle arrives. A painful chunk of land fund went to buy a replacement vehicle, which is much cheaper to run so there is

On this bitter cold morning we wake, expecting the heavy frost yet no less delighted, no less surprised. Coffee and coats and boots are employed for warmth. We venture outside, we pour up and down the garden, exclaiming each treasure found- Spider webs are made of barbed crystals! The sky above is cornflower blue, the greenery bold as summer but ice edged, bejewelled. The horizon lost in mist. Only here exists. Mr and me, like two oversized children, our fingers stabbed with cold, are easing ice shapes out of containers; we are stacking the shapes into ice sculptures, making oosh noises of hurt, and ahh noises of joy: it’s beautiful! It’s alien! My poor fingers! Because ice melts, we seize the moment. See how impermanence is pain and wonder? See how it drives us into discovery? See how impermanence is the extraordinary in the ordinary? Every day there is something that you will never see again - it’s that, or never hold it in your sight at all. Every day there is something that you w

Work continues on preparing the flat areas for seeding with grass and clover. We have a new routine of stopping at County Tyres to fill the van with their cast-offs, before getting to the land, unrolling one bay’s worth of weed suppressant membrane, weighing it down with one line of stinky rubber and one line of soil dug from the stony ground. By then we are overheated, feel like we’ve been dunked in vaseline, decide that will do for the day, and snort at ourselves for thinking all of this would be done in a few hours. Usually, we head home for a nap, but sometimes we have company. On this particular day, we are hosting a family picnic- the gazebo is up, some rudimentary furniture is brought from the stable, the cold box is unpacked, salad is chopped. Grandchildren 6 & 7 are here with their Mum, they are ‘helping’ which they are surprised to discover does not include rolling the tyres down the hill. Being made to attempt to recover the tyres does dampen their enthusiasm- G7 informe

Thursday was hot like all the other days. Everyone had a warm glow like barbeque glaze. We had planned to go to the land but babysitting duties intervened. Grandchildren 6 & 7 (we have numbered our blessings) came to have garden adventures while their mother attended Grandchild 2’s Junior School Leavers’ Day Assembly. After surviving our lawn being lava, and an attack of maffive spiders (Maffive? Yeah, really big, Granma, maffive!) and this evening’s heat-hazed Tae Kwon-Do sessions (having returned Gs 6&7 to tell their tales) we, in the van, with a snoozy Dog, headed landwards, to be ready for an early start. We took a turn around the newly cut fields, soaking in the cooler evening air, serenaded by medieval music - minstrels at a nearby wedding, most likely, another celebratory moment. There were tiny bats circling a sycamore tree, there were evening primrose flowers glowing in the lowing light. Old Dog, loving the ease of the short grass, sprang into a joyful run; old limbs

I leave early for work, to get to the beach. I start each shift tacky with salt, and my head full of sea pictures; the green weed wafting, the crab shell rolling, the sand eels flicker-flicker. If we trek to the land we do that early too. I dunked Old Dog in a bath of rainwater which she calmly tolerated. The next time we brought her, she stood by the bath waiting to be cooled off; not excited by the new trick, just forbearing. Afternoons are for naps and ice cream. If we get it right our brains don’t boil over, they simmer and ferment. Days and nights are like the sand eels, they flicker-flicker. The moon rises tiger-orange, while the sun oozes down. Travelling homewards, sunlight stripes a tree tunnel, lights up trunks like embers like I’m driving down the throat of a fire-breathing beast.  Sleep pulls heavy, stealthy, sneaking in. We dream in silver we dream in gold. Morning arrives in birdsong, settles into a mug of coffee. I leave early for work. I swim. I write: Diamonds are ten

30/6/22, A Thursday. Yesterday’s forecast suggested ‘light rain’ but the clouds clearly had not paid that much attention. Yesterday’s washing is sagging on the line, dripping like it's been dropped in a pond. We did not check the weather this morning; we drank our coffee, listened to the birds shrill, and lest this sound too much of a rural idyll, also scrolled our phones for emails and social media whatevers. We speak to each other too, Mr and I. This morning’s chat ruled out repurposing old carpets for suppressing weeds on the bare-earth areas on our land, due to possible contamination of the soil and transportation cost. We chose terram, a geotextile fabric, instead, which we will buy new but be able to reuse. We tog up for a land trip (which for me includes flower earrings, a pretty hair tie, maybe a polka-dot scarf; this is part of my fun-on-the-land policy, which in turn is part of preventing burnout), taking a tape measure to check how much terram to purchase. At the land

Theft: At first we thought: we have moved them and forgotten. We went home from the land and looked- we doubted ourselves and went back to the land. The stable was all locked up as expected, so how our Mitsubishi strimmer (fitted with a scrub cutting blade) and our long poled Tanaka hedge trimmer had been stolen was a mystery until our contractor told us he’d found a latch on the floor- he thought it had fallen out and had pushed it back into place. (That’s the downside of honest people, they don’t expect dishonesty.) On closer inspection the marks of it being prised off were visible. From now on we will be noting all serial numbers, indelibly marking all articles of worth, photographing things, and remembering to complete our insurance documents. While we work on upgrading security we have moved all the expensive things to a secure lock-up. Obviously, it’s not an actual tragic occurrence. No life or limbs lost, and we will purposely look to the bright side: how much we’ve learned abou

  The grass track was supposed to be a fairly straight run from the top gate to the bottom gate. It had additional wiggles where the muddy spots had snagged a wheel. I will not miss digging the van out of muddy trouble, or pushing it. We rarely dared to drive uphill. The stone track gently curves to follow the land. It will need compacting before we call it a job done- but here we are, driving uphill, downhill, hearing the stone crunch, not quite believing what our ears and eyes are confirming. It’s a silly-hot day, we barely get any work done, and every job we do wanders back to the stone line and rechecks: yep, it’s here. We did dream it, but then we ordered all this stone and now it’s real. So, what next? Of course, there’s a list we can refer to, and subdivisions of lists depending on which segment of our project we deem to be the next practical step. So..? It’s easy to write lists. The first item usually starts ‘research…’ because we are edging along a tightrope here, a couple

June’s weather has been issued in short spells: sunny-dry, sunny-drizzle, cloudy, downpour, rainbows, humid, might-rain-might-be-blowy. Washing is on the line to dry or to get an extra rinse. Roses bloom, and when I get a chance to check the polytunnel there are tomato plants rising, the strawberries and nasturtiums are zooming over the path, the lovage has doubled. When I get to the land, with Mr, Old Dog, and grandchildren 6 & 7 (aged 4 and 3 respectively) there are tracks through it. This is magic to all of us: we, the adults who instructed this progress and fully expected to see it, and the children to whom this is pure surprise. Knowledge is no impediment to murmuring ‘wow’ and savouring the press of our boots into bare earth as we wander up through the fickle mizzle. I see the levelled area which will become an outdoor kitchen: it’s mud and scraped nettle root and it makes my heart boom YES THIS IS IT! We walk to the top field to admire the yellow digger, the huge blue tra