Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

The Wishbone Alphabet – an experiment, of course, with attitude, life and the eponymous soup. If you are going to eat an animal, it is considered important, in my house, to be respectful about it. Nothing should be wasted. Gravy is a serious but joyous rite, which we habitually celebrate for three consecutive days. On the first day, while the oven scorches and the meat sputters, vegetables are pared, the peelings dropped to simmer in water. Skins of parsnips, turnips, carrots, onions and potatoes bounce around in a convection current, steam fills the small kitchen. Onion skin dyes the concoction dark brown. Strained out, the skins are shiny and slippery, slivery like little fishes. This savoury dark water is held in a pan, to cook the peeled vegetables, to be mixed with the juice and fat from the sizzling roasting tin. Splashes of scolding water and tiny prickles of scorching fat decorate our forearms. This is the basis for the first batch of gravy, of which some mus

The Wishbone Alphabet – an experiment, of course, with attitude, life and the eponymous soup. There was a time when I thought that I might be a writer of explicit sex and horror. I have also tried my hand at constructing a romance. Some good sentences came of this; and some intriguing, disturbing short stories which I will hide in my papers to be uncovered by delighted ghoulish great children one day; but the overall attempts could reasonably be categorised as failures. These clumsy fumblings have become part of my more experienced writing though. Excursions into the barbaric and the erotic have given my pen a visceral tang, and the perils of love have made me brave enough to allow visible vulnerability (maybe I should have saved this sentence for V day!) Once I tried to make a curry from a tin of syrupy sliced peaches, possibly the most revolting dish to emerge from any of my kitchens. From this I learnt you can take a sweet curry too far, but sometimes you can’t tell

Here is something I jotted down yesterday: It’s 22:59 hours into the day. I have travelled only from home to Baby’s house, back to home, and one return journey to Plymouth. The sofa holds me in a comfortable scoop, while fire blazes in the wood burner. A faint crusted badge of Baby sick adorns my jumper. Her best trick today was dragging a flannel from the clothes airer to slap my face in a vigorous replication of the act of washing. Also, we have danced, so, whatever else has happened, the day has not been wasted. Baby babbles in sound, we don’t yet share a spoken language. When she is tired she rests on my lap, head lolling into the curve of my shoulder. A bubble of sick pops out. ‘Uh-oh,’ she smirks, eyes closing.  

The Wishbone Alphabet – an experiment , of course, with attitude, life and the eponymous soup. I use the word ‘experimental’ to embody my approach to life so far. I mean it in an avant-garde rather than scientific sense. In balance, I write a very organised shopping list based on an orderly meal plan; being experimental isn’t a licence to act continuously on impulse. Assessment and learning are part of it too. Or am I being too subjective? Maybe I am simply glamorising contrariness? I rejected the idea of a regular Saturday job as a youngster, for I valued my time above all material things, so I sat on the beach in my second hand clothes, eating cheap sandwiches.  I played with the idea of not going to school, not being a fan of rules, but I liked learning so I decided to amble along that path for a while.  A weekend in Dublin, before starting my exciting degree, produced a daughter. I practised being a mother and then thought it might be a good thing to reintroduce

The Wishbone Alphabet – an experiment, of course, with attitude, life and the eponymous soup. ‘ If I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution. ’ Emma Goldman. There may be a squillion different dance forms, or not, I’ve never tried counting them.  I do my own kind. Dancing, in my favourite form, is something to throw your self into, with complete mental and physical abandon, like a toddler on a bouncy castle after a bottle of cheap fizzy pop and a bag of tartrazine sweets. It is expressive, joyful, delirious, irrational, fantastical stuff. Dancing has broken many light shades in my house, and caused some of my most fabulous bruises. It doesn’t have to be dancing, but everyone should have something they let themselves go into, something that isn’t drinking or smoking or an external stimulant. It is something that should flow outwards; flow and be flung out, even if it destroys the lampshade. It should destroy the lampshade. After my revolution, destroying

The Wishbone Alphabet – an experiment, of course, with attitude, life and the eponymous soup. Much creative work requires reflection, and it’s easy to get over involved with your self. Sometimes I am sat writing and my family want to talk to me. Sometimes I feel cantankerous about this; have even been known to mutter to myself like a seething little goblin; but however brilliant that interrupted sentence was, it is unlikely that the world will stop turning without it. I am (even if begrudgingly) mindful of the importance of the interruption. I can’t remember why, but I was once asked if I were trapped in a burning art gallery with a cat, would I rescue a beautiful timeless work of art, or the cat? Most people, including me, would choose the cat, even if it were the scratchy kind, all spit and claws. Those that would choose the artwork might want to share the miraculous inspiration of the art with future generations. But without life meaning anything, what’s the point of art?

The Wishbone Alphabet – an experiment, of course, with attitude, life and the eponymous soup.  In this refreshing bit of didacticism, B represents the grade of life you have attained and A the grade of life you are assumed to aspire to. Algebra of the soul isn’t about being academically gifted. It’s about how you deal with the lack of sparkling perfection in your life. Having an image of perfection can be inspiring. If it’s a model of guidance it remains something to encourage us whether we achieve it or not. For example, I doubt I could be a monk, but the Dalai Llama says things that help me make decent decisions about how to live. This model says, B is acceptable, and, most importantly of all, it’s your B, enjoy it. If perfection is a model of judgement, it splits your world into succeed or fail. For example, is my bathroom clean? I don’t take the judgement model too seriously, hence the state of my bathroom. If I could wave a magic wand of achievement