Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Rain fell all night, light as spider silk. Fat water beads on the grass blades are splashing over my cheery Wellington boots, as I’m out with Dog in the fields on morning walk duty. I am not convinced that this can be the same water as last night’s delicate precipitation; part of the same costume, like netting and sequins, but not the same material. The sky is made of monocloud, softly overcasting the day. Dog explodes five pheasants from some reedy undergrowth by the stream, but later fails to take notice of a rodent which quietly vacates the path behind her. I see a waddling brown fur back in the thick grass, big for a mouse, small for a rat, and it disappears into a tunnel system under the blackberry thicket. 

Sky was so heavy with cloud this morning it was tilting. While I was being fed a row of wooden bricks by a chuckling Baby, it must have sorted its self out. Baby hasn’t localised her laugh, it happens all over her body, as does her lunch. We look out of the window at the hazel catkins twitching in the chilled breeze, at the bridal white buds on the blackthorn trees, at the straightened layers of low cloud. Winter has not gone, but stands at spring’s shoulder, overseeing the new season. In the middle of winter we light fires to call back the sun, but in the middle of summer who wishes back the dark? I don’t begrudge winter’s lingering. 

Outdoors is sharp and bright as a new knife. The air ambulance has helicoptered past my window, I can’t see the landing point. Not in our fields- too steeply tipped and topped by electricity cables. I would rather be out fending off the wind than sat in my office but I can see the moors from here and the windows are open. I can breathe the cold air. My real office is a windowless unheated cupboard, so the alternative is to sit in bed and type. Rectangles of paper-clipped chits are recorded and stuffed in envelopes, this is how the accounts are sorted out. This is what people mean when they speak of reality; organising receipts. It is certainly not a dream, but the birds singing in the trees, shoring up their nests, that is the real world to me. The moor peaks are in shade, except where one cloud is missing. One bright oblong of hillside shines like a beautiful smile. 

I should be soooo tired but when I look out of the car window everything is so sharply in focus, I notice more detail than I can fully process. When I woke up too early this morning, Mr was snoring and most of our cash had worked its way behind the bar of the Bristol Hilton. Left him sleeping, put on my favourite red swimsuit, wandered to the pool. There was only me and the water and the steam room. Dried, dressed, smelling of complimentary body lotion, back the room where Mr is putting on trousers and talking of breakfast. Breakfast is a fantastic idea, we pursue it wholeheartedly. Later at home I am walking around the fields with Dog, the wind is cold, the tree joints grumble. The wind rattles through everything like it is trying to find its car keys. What does a wind need car keys for, I ask myself, the kind of question that tells me I am indeed rather sleep short. Getting in a car and going to a Dinner Dance, I decide, the wind is jealous of my weekend adventure; answering my ow

Without being unaware of the kind of sunny breezy day it is, wakefulness is submerged. I’m looking upwards at the day from shallow bleary waves. Baby is good company, and she sings at the trees thoughtfully when we walk round the fields. There are two babies in the house this afternoon, the littlest one drinks milk, farts like a machine gun, sleeps. Baby girl senior rolls in the dust, gets stuck under the table, sleeps. We are amused. Later, when I look out of the window, Cat is poised at the edge of a puddle dipping her head to drink. A robin watches from the scooped branch of an ash tree, indignant chest puffed. Cat will not be hurried. 

The sun was obvious behind the mist this morning, like a grandparent plays a game of surprise from behind the curtains, we know what is coming but the delight is not blunted.  It has been a long time since we knew the sun would keep us warm, since we have not thought of coats or even scarves. Anticipation we didn’t even know we had flowers into joyful embrace. I hold my arms up to the sun like petals and get buzzed by a furry fat bee. All the windows and doors are wide open. Mr is down in the shadow of the hill with the chainsaw and a recently felled alder tree. Day heat comes from the sun, night heat from the combustion of wood.   

I don't necessarily understand this game- jumping in anyway! Answering 10 questions posed by Teresa Cypher, http://dreamersloversandstarvoyagers.blogspot.com/  10 clumsily assembled questions of my own listed underneath. Answer in a comment or leave a link so I can find the answers on your blog :-)  1. Tell me what you think of love--is it overrated or underrated? I think it's misunderstood. People want the floaty magic feeling but the everyday effort escapes them mainly because they underestimate how much effort can be involved. It's a very important part of life.   2. Dogs or cats? One would not be as much fun without the other! Dog is a bigger presence in our lives but Cat does work for a living here, so I had better be diplomatic.  3. If you could have either a helicopter or a bulldozer to play with for a day...which? Bulldozer, after some careful consideration: because we have fields, and a very bumpy lane. 4. What is your earliest memory? I r

Air is mild in temperature and temperament, high in humidity. Wind adds a frisky chill factor, sun streams add heat, dark clouds deliberate. This is my favourite kind of sunshine, a burst of brightness before rain. I was wandering up the rough lane, slowly drinking strong black coffee, watching the mist that hides the moor peaks. Dog, bored of convalescence, jumped the fence into the field.  Trusting her instinct, me and my coffee followed. We wander from the top path down past the exposed rock face, where the stone crumbles and crinkles, it looks wrinkled like an old elephant’s arse. The tumble of cold breeze and damp sunny air remind me of peeling off a wetsuit in a sandy car park, and the tussle to get dry clothes on salt saturated skin. There is always a thermos of strong black coffee in the back of the car, waiting. The last leap year day of February starts. I watch for the rain but the air has absorbed it. The sun makes us loll like lizards, a flake of moon rests in the day

Today we took all the furniture and unfixed objects from Boy’s room and the Spare room and the home office room that is wedged under the stairwell. The Spare room turned into Boy’s new room, Boy’s room became an office and under the stairs a futon slouches under big flora and fairy lights, overlooked by a wooden giraffe. Then we were tired and queued up for hot baths. The wood burner has been full of fire all day, if we don’t have baths it will boil the water in the pipes making them bubble and clank and the taps get dangerous. We have barely stepped out of the door into the switch on-switch off rain. Dog is convalescing a cut paw, curled in the armchair watching the furniture move about. 

Forecast sunshine is cordoned off by cloud. The lazy warmth gets through, it is sinking into the ground, looking for bedrock. Every step sends a spray of rainwater back into the air, and it falls back down in a re-enactment. Dog runs in her water-world, she has had breakfast, she is out in the fields, the fulfilment of her sensible expectations bring much happiness. I have found some germs that I am sure don’t belong to me. My nose has a tide now, a fast tide that I try to hold back with strong tissues. I think, I have had breakfast, I am out in the fields, it is a fulfilment, and even two achievements. Imagine not being able to wipe your own nose. Remember how lucky you are. I say thank you, universe, and the temperate light trickles down. 

The daffodil choir warm up their yellow throats. They sing up to the sky and the piercing circle of sunlight. They sing to the buzzards that scan the fields from warm air currents. They sing to me, Boy and Dog walking in the fields, under the sky and the sun and the birds of prey. They stand bold upright in the vase on my kitchen windowsill, singing their yellow-bright song, while I dip the dirty plates in hot water and soap bubbles, while I scrub with the plastic brush. I can smell fake lime, fresh air from the open windows, daffodil flowers and the sunshine that is trapped in my skin. Dog lies on the doormat, cleaning up a pot of cream.

Black night bleaches out into the pale ghost of day without any sign of sunrise. A middle chunk of day happens indoors. We are in a sports hall watching out for beautiful kicks and swift punches, to put scores on fights. After the medals are all handed out and the photographs taken and the hall empties, we go outside to find sunshine filtering itself through tree shadows, lower and lower. From an A30 lay by we watch the sunset, we talk about the clouds, how the aeroplane trail has cut through them, like a plume of impact. Sinking light in the sky is red-peach and grey, colours of flowers, fruit, metals and mist. Suddenly the moon is there, and one star, and they lie side by side resembling two eyes, one is a twinkle, the other is the moon curved in a wink.

Today the weather suspends precisely between sun and rain. All day we are carrying umbrellas and hot in coats. It is a benevolent jest. Baby laughs in the fields, watching Dog run, watching grass get walked on. Later we go into town and buy a new red kettle. The old model won’t boil water, so it has done itself out of a job. Baby laughs at the giant tv in the electric shop, she has smeared biscuit all over her face, as is customary for babies. I have been awake longer than the sun has been in the sky. Concentration is wandering off. I am retracing my steps after it. But now I can make coffee.

The fields are in their morning dress, darkly wet bark and water beaded grass blades. I have my velvet pyjama bottoms, the striped top with the bonfire spark holes, a green winter coat and my Wellington boots about my person. It is not much cold at all. Dog chases the ball over the moss slope, straight through gorse and bramble and thistle. Dog retrieves the ball, each time with some jaunty flora attached to her fur. Today there is a brown oak leaf on her front right flank, giving her one avant-garde jodhpur leg. Yesterday there was a dried thistle hat. When the goose-grass comes, with its sticky burs, she will wrap some around her head in a wild bridal fashion. 

Cold circles back with icy grey skies and thoughts of snow. We watch the sky and, intermittently, it rains. It’s the sort of weather that can be shrugged off, cold enough to warrant preparing an evening fire. In the evening we are driving to Plymouth. The windscreen is rain speckled. Beyond the glass, cloud has filled up so much of the sky it has spilt over onto the ground. In the mist, whispers of shapes. The traffic is a river of brake lights, slow flowing. Trees, older than the road, crouch. Domed industrial units menace with bulk. Things in the mist are hidden, it makes them easy to imagine transformed. This is not what everyone means by the phrase ‘living in a fairy tale,’ but my ego thinks it should be.

Mr has laid down so many hedge branches it looks like a storm has torn through, following the rut of the muddy stream. Dog is in the stream, picking up mud samples that will not exactly colour match the brown leather sofa. I throw the ball into some prone treetops and pretend Dog is flying. If you are prone to idiosyncrasy, the opportunities to make your own entertainment are increased. All along the hedges, the cut wood stumps of the hazel and the willow are pale as Ophelia floating drowned in the pond, while the alder is brassy like a vintage fake tan. 

Pheasant lies in wait at the top of the drive. He is going to chase off the car that invades his territory most mornings. I think I have driven around him, I look in my wing mirror for his fancy feathers, but somehow I must have missed his flight over into the field, or imagined the bird was there. I’m not that tired, and the frost of the morning has sparkled me into wakefulness, so I am puzzled by this. There is an empty lane reflecting in the car’s looking glass, until I turn to line up for parking. Pheasant reappears, he has run in the blind spot all the way down the track, ruffling his impressive plumage.  Pheasant remains out of sight while Dog and I walk around the fields. The frost has crept away. Sun comes down and I smell warm earth. I have my winter coat on, but undone. My hands are bare, but hidden inside the coat sleeves. There are still leaves from autumn, slowly trodden into the ground, slowly being absorbed. The earth has a slow metabolism. 

Sun, unencumbered, surges in through every curtain gap. The birds see it long before I think to open my eyes. They are calibrated to sense the first twitch in the fabric of night. Their chorus resonates. This is how the nineteenth day of February begins. I take my mug of cold yesterday’s coffee from the pot and out to sit in the garden chair in which Cat likes to sleep. Tired, thanks to Baby’s unsprung teeth, I close my eyes and raise my face to the sun, and browse along the inside of my eyelids, following warm colours from a golden peach to the deepest heart of red. This expanse of colour can only be the span of my eyelids, but from here it is the size of space. Open my eyes, frown at the stuff-pile waiting to be taken to the tip. It has its own junk appeal, this untidy slice of life. Shut my eyes, escape in the mosaics of glowing cerise. Later, when the laptop workings are reinstalled with all the reverence of surgery, and the rebooted reincarnation is marvelled at, of cours

Today is woken by a satisfying release of rain. It throws itself down all morning. In the afternoon the monocloud mutates into individuals, allowing the sun to startle people. A nipping wind reminds everyone not to discard coats. Later I roam the fields with Dog, I walk under a cloud shadow, looking out at sun patterns on the moors. I look down at drops of rain lined up on grass blades. Just drops of water, not unusual objects, but these little dots all join up, they are all part of the water cycle and the miracle that life exists at all. Just like most people, ordinary and amazing. And then I came home to write about it, and found my old lap top unresponsive. Where there should be words and familiar icons, there is a blank screen. I am able to borrow a strange machine, and struggle with the odd ways of doing things that should be automatic. Many of my words and pictures are lost in the blank screen.  I suffer a miniature grief for it. The sky settles to an off white, and t

Fine rain filters down this morning, the weather finally makes a choice. A subtle choice, as the drizzle is too light to disperse the cloud and the clouds are too thick for the sun to be seen, leaving the sky in blended greys. Yesterday a burst of escaping sun threw out an abundance of heat, I could see from winter right through spring to summer. This day’s rain comes like a relocation, back to the end of winter, to a precise place in the perpetual flux between seasons. In the afternoon more sun sneaks out, and the laughing wind chases cloud and shakes the tree branches. The trees are not yet come to leaf, though I note the tall lymes are flecked with dark rosy buds. Blue is seen in the sky, warmth sensed in the air, clouds are whipped into egg white shapes, the crocus swells into flower. Here I find equilibrium, where the description is the narrative, where I am noticing the gauge of the rain.