Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Dreamt a perfect piece of writing; so brilliant, it brings me out of sleep to locate my notepad, slip out of the bedroom, sit by a lamp, record the words. The words stay in sleep, they don’t follow me, even onto the shallowest shores of wakefulness. A few images drift; a wooden spoon, a metallic blue Fifties Cadillac. It’s 5am, I return to sleep. The experience repeats, at 8am, only the images differ, only I stay awake this time. We can all write perfection in our sleep. As the kettle boils, I puzzle out a connection between spoon and car. A wooden spoon stirs up butter, sugar, flour, eggs, creates a latent cake. Cake and Cadillac, both celebratory symbols, some logic is evident. Dreams, like puzzles, I regard, partly, as prompters of self-centred insularity, so I don’t tend to dwell on either too much. A reaction, maybe, to being a writer, pulling every experience through a quizzical mind: equilibrium is essential, some time in which to mend the net. Sit with coffee. Rain falls in

In the winter, you can close your eyes on Saunton Sands and run. You navigate by the sound of waves. I have never yet made the blind sprint without laughing; in spite of the cold, my shoes are off, my feet get a cold burn, I hear Dog padding nearby. My broken foot hurts, but I can’t resist, the rush is worth the hurt. In the summer, the plain of sands is peopled. They are not bothering me, I don’t resent them, I wouldn’t send them all home: it makes for a different experience, that’s all. The water is warm. I wade in with Dog till she paddles beside me. She swims around the bustle of shore craft; the short boards, the body boards, one kayak, the mini-mals and the long boards. These summer people are in wetsuits, wisely, considering the wind-chill factor. On dry sand the summer people have windbreaks, deck chairs, beach blankets, buckets. Paraphernalia. It is worth having, if you use it and if you enjoy it; for what it is not how it makes you look. This is what I decide as I am sat

Because I decide to get my daily writing practice ticked off the list in good time, go out with Dog to hunt for an idea. Along the middle path lies a cleaned up piece of bone, sheep thigh, I think, a bin forage not a kill.  Flick it into a bramble with the toe of my boot, uncertain, preoccupied. Shall I write of this? What shall I write about?  The answer to this question must come to me: if I chase it, it turns to mirage.  Surrounded by peaceful swaying greenery, I stand, listen to the leaves say ‘shhhh.’ The idea is here, it grows towards me. It is the greenery, growing, closing up the lane. Two or so years ago, Farmer Landlord borrowed back the petrol strimmer previously left for lane maintenance. He was bringing it back. Half a mile of hedgerow seems like a lot when you trim it by hand. As a rare experience, not unpleasant: as a chore, it makes your body ache. Since we know we are leaving, we have let it go. Nothing is kept in order, things disappear. The granite trough, the ro

One year ago today, out swam Baby into a pool of warm water and a room of worn-out, overwhelmed, awestruck women. It’s a baby! We are dumbfounded like we had no idea. Being at the very first breath of a life has that effect. It’s weird enough that matter reproduces matter, but that a real person appears, a formative social being? Every single time: tremulous incredulity. The baby, likewise, is astonished, having no experience yet of the potential for boredom that some people find within the spectrum of existence. This is the very beginning of learning to perceive: making a relationship between light and shade, between presence and noise, between comfort and discomfort. Baby aged one year is pleased to be in the park, with toys and cake and sandwiches and people she recognizes as part of her life. She closes her eyes when the sky is too full of light. Tips her head when the breeze lifts her hair. Folded cardboard has words and pictures, like books, so she reads them. Her interpre

[I like to pick an approach, each month, rather than a theme, for my writing to play with. Through May, I played with keeping this blog like a diary. I write everyday, so picking the day’s events as inspiration brings a constant flow of material. I write everyday, for the practice with words, and for the practice with attitude. The more I train myself to see the inimitable nature of stuff, situations and sentient beings, the more my contentedness flows. My world evolves, ever more marvelous. So, through June, I intend to make the unique view a more specific focus.] Bunting cooks in windows or is hung to cool off in the breeze. It spiders out from the War Memorial, zig-zags every street. It matches my mood in brightness, because the phone call from the letting agency was to agree a moving date. Tomorrow is Coronation Day, tomorrow is Baby’s first ever birthday, a week tomorrow is Boy’s sixteenth birthday, two weeks tomorrow we move to Lawhitton. Red, white and blue in variations of s

Engines running, while wheels are stuck static in a traffic rut. I spy a scale of negative facial arrangements. Blank. Bored. Submissive. Resigned. Irritated. Aggravated. Angry. Here and there, music plays, a happy carload bounces with seated dances and karaoke voices howl from wound down windows. My guess is correct. They are indeed, young people. I hope they can keep this feeling, not as a nostalgia; as a sustained part of their older lives. My least favoured expression; on a face, in a voice, lurking in a mind; is dissatisfaction. It is the enemy of appreciation. Mr is facing the enemy today, trying to track down a parcel, following a trail of expensive unhelpful phone numbers. He is already irritated. On a number of occasions I too have made a customer service manager feel like they have earned their annual salary in just one day. ‘No, I’m afraid I did not make a record of the name of the employee to whom I spoke. This is because I was under the delusion that you employed comp

Checking emails: spam, selling stuff, Facebook birthday list, and a reply. Craig from Buglife ( www.buglife.org.uk ) identifying the Jewelwing we thought we saw as a native Beautiful Demoiselle. Calopteryx Virgo, though not rare in this habitat, does not disappoint.  ( http://british-dragonflies.org.uk/species/beautiful-demoiselle ) Spiders weave webs, or hunt, they plot, they stalk, they trap. They cannibalise freely for they are not obviously sentimental. But over the fields each year, the web pod nurseries are fixed into grass clumps, keeping the spider young safe. Ants are many acting as one, sublimated to purpose, a society of absorbed co-operation. Bees speak to each other in a language of dance. Woodlice are an early design, a segmented ancientness. Metamorphic invertebrates are my favourites, for their symbolism. Head brimful of glittering wings, of flight paths, lazily drive into town. There are traffic lights at the double roundabout. A colourful configuration of cars are