Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

We are in the car, driving; the landscape, the daylight, the season, everything is in flow. The mysteriously attentive corner of my eye catches a shimmy of tree, like they are dancing when they think I cannot see; the fat evergreens and the austere deciduous celebrating the spring tide, while daylight is turning down on a dimmer switch, is dissipating into the edgeless suffusion of sky, and the stars come on automatically in blinks. I have bought a new wash bag today, thinking through spring, all the way to summer. I am thinking of watching the night gather outside my tent, while I sit with a brandy and sun blushed skin, breathing in the fresh dark air. My new wash bag hangs from a tent pole.  

I read out the date; Ten Two Twelve, it sounds like a time check, nearly noon, or nearly midnight. It is midmorning. The sky is a blur of wet grey. There’s no amazement from anyone that cloud covers the whole of the visible earth, it’s merely a bland layer. People are mentioning that the weather has warmed, to balance rain disappointment. I wonder if our reluctant daffodils will open some buds. I can see wet naked hazel branches from the window, sat with my notebook while Baby sleeps. A rose in a single stem vase has not run out of water but the heated indoor air has dried the flower petals. The clock here does not tick, it makes a subdued rhythmic rattle, like a heart monitor picking up an unborn beat. I am doing that dangerous thing, picking up my pen and deliberately thinking of what to write, when I write the date and read it out loud. 

Sun is sleepy this morning and won’t get out of the cloud cover. While light slumbers the ice is matte white, and the landscape appears as a cold haze, like I’m not awake either. Dog is not sleeping, therefore she is running, she will not mind if I am dreaming, as long as she can run. In the midst of my uncertainty concerning wakefulness, I find the bonfire Mr was constructing yesterday. Some people merely place wood in a pile, but Mr has made a precise and clever structure. I admire the central twists, twigs curved around and splaying out like a nervous system, and the slender branch exoskeleton. If the winter white represents a laboratory, here is a new species, if it is an art gallery, here is a new exhibit. The fields boundaries, in spite of Mr tidying the hedgerows, remain vague. 

As soon as the curtains are drawn back, light dives in, splashing the walls and the chest of drawers and the horrible carpet. Swirls of light push through the star shaped crystal that dangles by the window, and they burst themselves into three oval splats of rainbow. I think of having a curtain of cut-glass baubles, filling the room up with bright gradients of colour, and promptly dismiss this thought, as it would need dusting. In the fields, ice stripes decorate the grass and Dog fights the silvered reeds to retrieve her ball. Mrs Pheasant is disturbed and rises, kite shaped and complaining, over the copper beech. She sounds so annoyed, Dog seems to be laughing. When she runs past me I can feel the heat steaming off her fur. Dog does not know if she is the happiest dog in the world, she does not compare herself to others, unless they have food and her bowl is empty. 

If I go walking in my fields looking for inspirations, they hide. I can make a habit of being inspired, but wild inspirations are skittish. The way to catch one is to not be thinking of anything in particular, which leaves my mind open, the permeable membranes of my imagination inviting and mysterious. Wild inspirations are curious things, they will swoop by, and the more I ignore them and chase about the grass, finding that the sun has not warmed the air enough to evaporate the morning’s dewdrops, the closer an intrigued inspiration will weave, till it weaves into my consciousness. I never trap them, I always let them fly. I see how the sun has set a prism in every drop of water, see how I am running over transient gems. I swoop up the slope, head full of natural, fleeting riches. 

Just two relevant entries for this year, I was quite busy doing teaching practices and writing essays and reading one million books, or thereabouts. I was in the library a lot. Both of these diary notes were written at holiday points.  ‘January 1993 A sad New Year’s Day.  Great-grandfather died suddenly of heart failure. He was nearly 93, never had to suffer, lose his senses or be bedridden, so for him the lack of fuss would have been a great relief. I still miss him. Went to say goodbye at the Chapel of Rest: the body was there but he had gone, it was strange. At the funeral I didn’t want them to take his coffin away, it didn’t seem right, he was ours and we didn’t want him to leave. October 1993 Leaving behind Granny’s sheep to go to the abattoir. Feel like I’ve been in a different land all summer. I’ve swum in the Cornish sea, clung to warm granite, felt a kinetic happiness, a physically recollectable restoring of the soul. The very blood in my veins is transmuted into a ti

Baby rolls across the floor, wrestling a pink plastic bus. She is laughing as though she understands the hilarity of scale and babbling in sound effects; the story of the gargantuan baby and the alphabet bus. And just when she thinks life is as amazing as it could possibly be, baby is plucked from the carpet to the bouncer and the washing machine is switched on.  All babies adore washing machines, the blur and the buzz and the centrifuging water provoking the innate capacity for celebration. And just when she thinks life is as amazing as it could possibly be, baby is plucked from the bouncer to the high chair to discover lumps of carrot.

The edge of winter flirts with spring. Snowdrops, always bashfully regarding the ground, nod their bonnety heads in a sunny breeze. In the broad-bladed green grass, a fresh kill site; one of our clumsy wood pigeons has become fox food. The feather pile is white and concentrated, like a small pillow has burst, and a few drops of blood remain, still red and wet. Fox has had a late breakfast. Soft pink flesh fastens together some wing tip quills, just a tiny blob of pale pink. I think of pigeon pie, and how I’ve never tried smoked pigeon. I think, poor pigeon, but that’s how the food chain works. You are now part of the fox. The sun is slipping in and out of clouds, deciding what to wear. Streams of warm and cold catch my ungloved fingers, mostly cold, biting like invisible piranhas. Maybe it was the wind that ate the pigeon and not the fox at all. It brushes at my cheeks, and I think of feathers. 

The icicles are a surprise. I make a literal jump, in the passenger seat. If the roads were icy that expression of delight might have skidded us into a tree. Mr saw them first, glancing up as he drives by. Where the road is cut into the steep hillside, where the water drips down, seeking the river level, there are solid spindly rows of frozen teeth, so many rows, maybe it is more like icy fur, or prickles, like a hill sized ice porcupine. ‘It’s like we’ve been on holiday!’ Mr enjoys my mini-whoop. ‘We’ve just toured the fjords,’ I tell him, exaggerating our travels. We are driving from Launceston to Plymouth on a cold morning. This snow, a crochet blanket, lies on the fields. Little brown fox runs from its cover, across the road in front of us, it runs from the field to a row of cottages, like it is ready to put the kettle on.

Rabbit runs out this morning, invigorated by -8 centigrade. He has intrepidly thick fur. Dog sleeps on the sofa in the room with the glowing wood burner. Cat strolls in, getting underfoot in the kitchen. Her fridge stalking skills are clumsy. I put her on a chair safe from grumpy morning feet and grouchy milk hunting. The faerie tale landscape of clearest sky, sparkling ground and cut out trees continues to exist.  Practicalities of living here are good; frozen mud doesn’t make soggy steps across the laminate floor; and bad. My car doors have frozen open. It’s undriveable.  Mr has a car with doors that open and close, and, after we have cleared a viewing hole for the windscreen, it is driveable. 

Everything that ice has touched has changed. The long mud puddles in front of the house are ice bridges over trapped water, the water presses bubbles up, the structure of the bridge is compromised. There are heel shaped holes where Boy has tested it earlier, on his way to school. He has prised an ice circle from the top of a wide bucket, there is a plastic bowl full of ice trapped in the circle of ice, it’s beautiful and quickly vandalised by the jealous sun.  But the sun on the ice in the fields lights each crystal up, I walk, Dog runs, the ground beneath sparkles like precious stuff. Over the frosted leaves her paws make a crunch like the sound of a giant eating a bowl of cereal. I see snow on the moor peaks, the mysterious towers of granite, and the sky is heart-liftingly clear. Two aeroplanes draw lines in it. I am not dreaming of faraway places this morning, I am living in one.

During February, I am attempting to blog a description everyday, with prose and pictures, although I will let myself lapse into poetry if I really feel the urge. My blog, my rules! This is a lead up to the A-Z April blog challenge which I have just signed up for. The 1,000 Miracles In One Day will continue, maybe offline for a while, but they are there and I will find them. Meanwhile, here's the story of February.  The second month of this year arrives, in late winter style, on a coating of fine ice and chilled mist. There will only ever be one February First 2012, and if that is not impressive, this year the month is trailing an extra day, a magic day that appears on our calendars once every four years. Things we don’t see every year we can remember to hold in higher regard.  This, the first day of the second month, calls for our attention with sharp air and soft horizons, a low pinkish sun lighting the cloud line behind the intricate lace of leafless trees. All da

One verse of something notable- my little miracle moments- everyday for a month. This is how January 2012 worked out. These experiments are good for my writing practice and my perception of how lovely life is.  The grass blades are sharp Cauterised in ice, where The earth surface is grazed Open mud coagulates Sun disc foams in pink mist A mere soap-sliver in a cosmic bath Dog catches frost on her belly fur Tracking a tennis ball over ice-spiked grass Enthralled dog chases her ball I pursue the mysterious object That slices up light between trees Slide over mud to discover a plastic bag Conditions are neither warm nor bitter Air is cold humid, sky pale in blues and greys Horizon soft focused, smooth mud underfoot An echo of sun absorbed in wispy cloud Hand sized bird with yellow ribs Lights on a branch for good scavenging A tin of fat and seed hangs in the holly Yellow flashes in the dark gloss of leaf Car lurche

Our amateur tree surgery efforts are quite addictive, because it's so utterly satisfying to see the wood pile stack up and know that there will be fires this winter. We are gathering our own comfort and the exercise endorphins give the task some swift returns. We often combine the hedge forages with some coppicing for extra gratification.  441 Mr climbs the boundary of dry wall Steadies himself with booted feet Planted firmly down against granite Stones, against ungainly trunk of tree 442 Chainsaw rattles. Mr tests the elected angle It is uncomplicatedly reachable. Serrated Blade rotates slickly through the branch Drops it down onto the old buckled roof 443 I drag the cut wood clear Admire the twist of it Solid muscular against soft Textured fuzzes of field grass 444 Tangible overhead, a block Of solid-blue sky. The branch Is a compact mass, is weight Pressed against the ground 445 I trace the strain in my leg

With a little bit of ’91 back story in which I definitely underplay how stressed I was, not so much lying to myself as determined to make it all okay. The effort is a bit too much, and after a year I do get miserable, and then I dislike my miserable self, and I dislike the self-loathing too. But it’s a learning curve, and it helps me understand the pile up of negative feelings that other people suffer. All the best artists have empathy. ‘November 1991 Daughter very ill with virus all week, so I am sitting in the college launderette cleaning sheets and missing lectures. My girl is more important. I did also spend a whole afternoon in Leeds looking for a Christmas Ball outfit. Depressed at myself for wasting time. January 1992 The virus has turned into a lactose intolerance so my daughter is on a special diet and putting some weight back on but we have to go for more tests (sweat on Tuesday, apparently.) I’m behind in my work and feel I’ve got a mou

Getting up too early and bravely doing the washing up has the distinct advantage of allowing the mid morning slump to be thoroughly exploited. Both Mr and me get fidgety though, we like doing stuff best of all. I love aquariums. Fish are always doing stuff, and they mostly look relaxed.  431 Since reluctant waking broke me From my agreeable bed, a lengthy time Has lapsed, seems like it’s not lazy to snooze Here in the shade of this blaze, it’s earned 432 Kicked back to full recline I do not slide all the way into sleep My eyes rest. I hear dog panting From the shelter of the pallet table 433 Mr talks to the cat; he gets bored Being prone. He takes his rest pottering About, looking things over, checking if He should water the tub plants, indecisive 434 It transpires that the hosepipe is handy Mr will bring a shower to the tub flowers And the damp earth will smell Delicious to me, like a forest floor 435 I am averse but r

The cardboard spider was splendid indeed. Halloween and Christmas are the two festivals that promote decorating the house, so maybe that’s why they are my favourites. The sparkles, lights in trees and candles in pumpkins, caught my imagination early. Actually, as children, we were given turnips to carve, pumpkins were too exotic for our household. For safety, we carved with spoons not knives. Carving a turnip with a blunt spoon is not easy, but the end result was proportionately satisfying.  ‘Halloween 1991 Put our decs up and partied. I made a black and orange spider, out of cardboard, to match our streamers. Flat looks funky. Inflatable flashing spook is a big success. Daughter extroverted as ever, chasing guests with an egg box dragon. She decided to wear a green hat, rose patterned gypsy dress and a fluorescent beach bag. Went to bed happily too. I think parties are natural environments for her. Lots of people around, lots of drink to go round and I made pig