Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

In supermarkets Halloween summons pumpkins to the vegetable aisle. It conjures all kinds of hellish plastic in mass display - the ephemeral becoming eternal and choking our world, accompanied by organ chords and the vocals of Vincent Price.  I have been unthinkingly complicit in the past, short on cash and full of joy.  In the cupboards here still are plastic pots and a scoop for carving. A skull necklace menaces from a door knob.  There have been multiples of cardboard skeletons, paper spiders, vats and vats of pumpkin soup too; recycling into food is (maybe) my favourite kind.  Love the celebration, despair of the waste; this is Halloween, and every day - beyond the eyeless stares and trails of bony fingers there are shelves and shelves, aisles and warehouses, full of packages of things we mostly do not need; things that have travelled more than most of us, that have been churned from leaky factories, things that make 'processed' a dirty word.  Easy to fee

Not a hurricane, not a typhoon, this storm - a tree feller still, a pouncing wave maker. Through it drives my little car, my mouse-white car, half hid in leaf, scuffing wheel trim on twigs; around the clumped earth on fresh underside of oak root, bumping down a wind tunnel of branches. Out and back the little car goes, lost in rain and road spray. I too am lost: busy, distracted. Long hours, long lists. Between frost and hot, lately, the weather has wandered. Tomato plants lost to the usual dose of late blight, the cucumber vine on last days, flower rot blooming. Chillies are popping out, speedy and spicy and filling the dehydrator rack: pods of winter warmth awaiting. Earlier I had lain in the hammock, duvet wrapped, listening to bird song, to leaves quiver. They say that winter will come hard, four months without reprieve. So in the car I sit, parked away from stray roof slates, eyes closed, and the wildcat wind is not cold and I remember to love the heft o

Not my most current project, since I'm out on a Granma Grace care week and can only bring my l'il Chromebook with me, which limits projects and keeps logging me in on the wrong Google account and suchlike minor mischief. An opportunity however to work on something that could take another decade to finish but if this seems daunting I must remember that the time will pass anyway. Also I have got a little more blogging done which I have enjoyed and hope you have too. This developing chapter is written in the past tense which I struggle with, please do pick me up if I've unwittingly swapped anywhere. It is not a dramatic scene as this is a calm point, which will suit this book (but no spoilers, I want the finished article to surprise you). Any feedback is valued. Mr Longhi wiped his brow. The heat grew heavier each year, he thought, little by little, a courtesy so he could get used to it; or he was slower and that was why the ice cream seemed to melt faster. Her

This week I'm Granma Grace-sitting. We are having a fine time so far, I have only frustrated myself by attempting to get better search engine optimisation while our Grace takes pleasant naps. It isn't a silly thing to try (SEO or naps). I think I have over-tried though, and need to stop before I get reckless - there's a sort of madness in this grasping for success. Perhaps I should go back to querying, find an agent, seek the traditional publication route. What am I actually wanting from this? To get my words in front of more people; to sell books to help finance buying a field. I'm always busy, always working; out at work, working from home, relentless. I stop here and there, recharge, go.  Bringing a dream to life can be a tough gestation.  So, this dream, this field and the living we will make and do within it, why do I want that? To be living in tune with myself and the earth, to spend quality time with family and friends; a sense of achievement co

Rain today, two main kinds. Heavy: each drop has a discernible weight, the drops are close together. Light: the water barely felt. Drops fall sparsely and, where acknowledged, are perceived as a change in temperature as they touch the skin. Until you are wet the air is warm, a summer vestige. Leaves burnish, fruit drops. Blight flourishes - we watch for it, harvest, cut back, holding onto bounty; basil, tomatoes, cucumbers, physalis, aubergines, samphire. This year the lime tree has not blossomed, it may need a new pot. We’re ticking over here, though, not rushing to mend. Make do will do. Our minds champ to be on the land we will buy. Patience, the rain says. It brings the word from the sky, from the sea, from millennia of water cycles. Uh-huh, we say. We can breathe this day’s air, watch our crops, brew and chop and fill the freezer. We are here in this moment but can’t stop the fear or the thrill or the gnashing of ideas - the future that is coming, we want to meet

If the storm had a body, this was one jab from one fingertip, no more; elsewhere the hurricanes tore, here the road was lost under mulch, here light branches fell. We felt the roar, the joyous power, we were safe in our home. In the morning the sun rose, an orange fire caught in grey cloud, sparks that lit tree tops - copper and iron. Images of a weather god, hammer swinging, forging - a ploughshare, I think. To turn over earth and plant a green crop, to keep our soil safe through winter. Day and night draw even. Nights will start to stretch. We must think of winter stores; hunkering down, shoring up. I feel like we will have enough, we will get the work done. Often when contentment loomed I had feared it. It seemed a dulling of my senses, of this edge to edge living. This time I am plumping cushions, setting the wood burner. And yes the house is full of boxes and bottles and things to be done, we have not reached the still point of cosy - but I am ready to be comfortab

September, mid afternoon; we hear the constant fluctuation of wasps in the willow arch, hungry and heedless of the hornets that are raiding wasp-grubs. Leaves are drying, edging into new colour, whispering. Indoors, every hour is backgrounded in blips. Apple wine, timing its own fermentation, a liquid metronome. September, first autumn month, the ninth month, the evening: against the dark, logs crackle fierce in the fire pit. Wine sloshes into glasses; a soothing mesmer made. Eyes droop. We stoop to bed hearing ourselves list jobs to be done, plans that slide into dreams of us on our land, and there is music playing and we are laughing (but this is us snoring, by now.) September dawn, birds’ chorus bursting bright. Later in the morning, coffee softly drops into a pot.

Summer signs out on the calendar, maybe distractedly: it leaves a trail of warm days. In these days we can find a body of water appealing, strip impromptu, dip and swim; strike out limbs, put trepidous feet into murk, thrilled by the press of weed. We can be merfolk, pirates, explorers, in our storied dialogues; jumping from rocks, invading an island of boggy grass. Then we put coats on, walk brisk, eat a pot of good olives. We can run down a beach into shallow waves for miles, till the dog gets tired and swims back. We can slither back through rock pools, joining a gull tribe. Hear the kittiwake's call. Days are busy busy - too much needs doing - but nothing more than this. Out of the water when we are wet and the breeze finds us we recall that summer has signed out, that we are in the remnants. Clothed again skin has a buzz of circulation, a flush of warmth.

There’s a geography of warmth - the land and water holding a summer range - there’s winter in the edge of the wind. We go walking where traffic from copper and tin once rolled. Old mines tumbled in, and a sort of emptiness ringing. Barb wire keeps us from the mined earth. Strange holes underneath, gored rock, and the steep hills are made of innards dug and dumped. I have a shiver of nostalgia for the people that braved this, a repulsion for the scarring. Above this lonely place is the last of the summer sky. Under foot wildflowers and grasses take hold, fat with sun, bold, healing. Water rushes out of sight, beyond the wire. Dragonflies are in the trees, in and out the willow leaves, they draw our amazement for skill and colour. Sun on skin. Ice in the breeze. Blackberries weighty clumps - not too sweet, just right - stain fingers purple. Summer is bowing out, just right.

So after the ear infection cleared up the shoulder injury happened – I don’t know how, might be tendonitis, but that was almost under control and then plantar fasciitis (painful foot thing) made an appearance and then the shoulder thing came back worse and the pain robbed my sleep and everything is a disaster without the respite of sleep. Yes, undeniably, this was the scenario. Yet also one does not wish to be defeated by this, it’s one layer of reality only. Reasons to be cheerful is a nice long list too. Family, friends, garden, van, beach, moors, rivers, woods, an actual sunny summer!  So I was tired when I drove to Bristol, had to stop at Taunton Deane services to attempt a power nap; compromised with a fresh walk and a punch of coffee. Finding Temple Gate car park took an additional travel round a busy block, but I made it, I met my friend Jen and sometime over the last 27 years her hugging skills have improved. Jen loves an itinerary so we went t

We took Granma Grace for a garrulous walk around Pince’s Gardens. To get there we went over the river on the busy bridge, under the road through chirpy subway graffiti, along dusty Alphington (which Dog did not like) under a railway bridge of rough red stone, through quieter streets which once was all grand houses and some survived the bombs of the Second World War, and in the gaps modern boxes were built, and pretty trees grow, and hydrangeas and fuschias make appealing hedges. There was a boy lived this way once, his name was Gordan, his house was called Kingsley, number 38, it backed to the allotments where his father grew vegetables of many kinds. Grace smiles. This is where Grandad Gordan lived when they first met. They would walk around Pince’s Park (which was built in 1912 and also survived bombs) and that was, she thinks, 70 years ago, at least. We are, at this point in her tale, in the Gardens, coming out from under a magnolia tree, about to step under the wisteria ar