Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Here I am, at the beginning of a new project. It has been in discussion for a few weeks and now the practical stuff must be applied. It's a challenge I'm confident with, but this means nothing. The gap between talking of doing something and actually doing something is a place in which other things grow in interest, and you aren't sure if it's disproportionate or not, so one had better have a good distracting think about it. I like a project to simmer in my mind for a while (a very apt soup metaphor. Exactly as I make soup, in fact, I have to get a sense of a flavour and then the herbs and spices work.) But how easy it would be to wander away in this pitch of fascination, wander completely off subject… In the clear day sky, a broken eggshell moon is left. An oversight, or act of defiance? A chair is rediscovered under the washing pile. Old sketchbooks consulted: remember the series of prints done with plasticine and ink? Mixed media abstracts with glitt...

Sky the colour of wet slate, clouds like smudged chalk, up to the demarcation of a double rainbow. Beyond this: perfect edged white, cyanine stillness. Other words, immaterial: other frescos, outshone. Nature flummoxes with a magnitude we can only faintly sketch. I attempt to describe a feeling of symbiotic absorption. Cross out notes, words are too clumsy. Allude to a space behind words, a silent resonance. Rain gathers, confers; at the right density, it drops.  

Hail fell, just the size of rough-cut rock salt, bouncing over the lane all pretty and fleeting. It melts on the ground, joins a rain stream undercutting the edge of the new tarmac. Dog looks up and then ignores it. She has pheasants to put to flight. Mr is outside pressing juice from blackberries. He says he thought of fetching the car to us when the hail struck, then he had remembered how I love a change of weather. He's right, it was delightful: just that slight difference, it puts crystals at my feet. I needed that, today: a boost, a sign, a few crystals at my feet. Dared to spend money on three cinema tickets. It is Bond's fiftieth birthday, and we don't go out much. Sneak a look at the faces of Mr and Boy by the light of the title credits. Rapt and joyful; I liked the film immensely, but this was my favourite scene. On the way home, Mr buys a Millionaire's Cheesecake. 

I have been blog-tagged. A writerly sort of tag, in which one drags out an old story snippet. Most of mine aren't on any useful USB, but are actual paper copies, unbound sheets of tatty A4 paper. I considered saying 'No thank you, this looks too difficult,' but then curiosity kicked me firmly in the pants. Paper all over the office now. Reading stuff, avidly, blanching. It is like seeing photographs of yourself with painful teenage hair. Embarrassing, but something to be secretly proud of: proof that you dared to have a go at life. In this story, I have attempted to describe the artist's outsider status using a mythological fish. It went through many titles, including Luna's Beast; this snippet is from the version named 'St. Pariah.' Formative stuff! ' The water was very dark. It looked so deep. I thought that was why I felt so isolated, because the sea was enormous. I swam out to the boat. The waves were behaving strangely; I noticed this,...

Last night I tripped over one of our house spiders and as a result of this it became deceased. I thought to have stumbled on a small stone and shook its curled body from my sock with a remorseful 'Oh.' It was the one with six and a half legs. I laid the husk out overnight in case it was merely bluffing. This morning I consigned it to the Rayburn flames, with a little All Souls prayer that it be delivered back to the bosom of the universe. I couldn't help thinking it had been trying to tug at my trouser leg, to whisper me a secret. I shan't know it now. Mr and me took Dog walking in the secretive woods, along the literal road less travelled, through bramble cover and over fallen branches, under the strange filtered light. The woods don't quite seem real, which is why it doesn't seem odd to walk past the holes of the Border Trolls (creatures that drag their fat knuckles through the pine needles at night, patrolling old boundaries, from here to t...

HAPPY HALLOWEEN:-) The smooth sides are preternaturally white. It reminds me of a headstone, the first time I see it. 'Why is the fridge in the spare bedroom?' It doesn't seem to me that the question is odd. There is a 6 foot fridge-freezer in the bedroom, but no bed. 'We had to move a few things around, that's all.' The landlady scowls. 'I'm in a hurry?' 'Oh, okay.' We follow her back down to the kitchen, where the stairs open out. 'Would it,' I ask, but I pause, and the landlady huffs. I take an audible breath and start again. 'Would it be okay to move the fridge back to the kitchen?' 'I don't know, why don't you ask it?' She shows her teeth. I think it's a smile. 'So, if you want it, be quick, I have another viewing this afternoon.' Sharp looking teeth, behind that slash of red lipstick. 'We'll take it.' Luce nods, resigned. 'There's nothing left on...

Best Cinematic Pose  Girl is at the cinema, most likely swooning, first over Bond James Bond, second over costumes, though the order may change. 'OhMyGod!' she will say, and the lack of spacing between words here is representative not typographically erroneous: 'Mum! YouShouldHaveSeenIt!' I will be on the sofa, mostly half asleep, mostly lost in editing, with one small sliver of me on an inner space search mission, finding the energy to respond. Her enthusiasm will help power it. Except, she says, 'Yeah, it was all right.' I have forgotten to factor in that she is a mother too and has just moved house. She is more tired than me. When I get home I peek at the two pumpkins waiting in the pantry, I approve of my earlier cleaning efforts, I think of the lovely disgusting Halloween story I am going to post up. And take a glass of blackberry wine. 

My brother, my father and me, circa 1974 So much revel in throwing stuff away: to be recycled, where possible, one adds, but the joy lies most in the feeling of having cleared space; yet on my desk is a lightly corroded camera battery that I can't quite bring myself to drop into the bin. Boy has opted to study photography, a balance to his sciences and history. We have dug out my father's old cameras; an OM10, an OM20, a couple of Tamron lenses. Film is a mystery to digital age Boy, so I sprung open the back of a camera body and yelped because there was a film in it. The odds on there being any pictures are slim, but I shall try developing it. Boy was two when my father died- there might even be a photograph of Small Boy to discover. I bought some new batteries to power the cameras back to life. Boy prised out the old ones with a cotton bud, handed each one to me as it came free. Quite corroded, the first three, but the last one had a shiny flat surface. I kept it ...

Unnerved by the house move, rattled with a cough, Baby did not have her best sleep ever. Granma observes the world through tired eyes, it is like looking at the world through a slower medium than air. Baby zips about, tetris fish fashion, Granma lumbers. After breakfast Baby diligently brushes her tongue, spits neatly upon the floor. Leaves are dropping; lie in ruffles at the road edge. Dog runs and Baby sings. Leaves stick in pram wheels. Later, when Baby is dropped home and drops straight to sleep on the sofa in the new front room where a small aquarium blows gentle bubbles, I drive home through a tunnel of trees that are baring branches, curved over the car, a wooden ribcage. Shipwreck; whale; dinosaur? 

On this chill bright day, we have been part of a babble (the word team almost works, but babble is closest) helping Girl and Baby move house. Granny Meg was also celebrating a birthday, so we had oven fresh pasties (Girl burnt her arm) and cake and cups of tea, in between the collapsing of furniture and ferrying of boxes and mixing up messages about what should be placed where and who has the key for which door of which abode. Baby cried when her toy box was carried away. She has no idea what the purpose of the day is. The new house has a garden and she likes this very much. At teatime, she rides in her big pink car seat, singing nearly-words, to Mrs Granma's house. There is lamb stew waiting in the Rayburn. Granny Meg sneaks her a bit of chocolate cake. Outside the night rises, the temperature drops, the moon is an ice blue sculpture. Mr Grandad puts extra blankets in the travel cot. 

(Not a stunning picture, but enough to prove I'm not making this up!) In the afternoon, a flock of starlings blackened the branches of the fat trunked ash. I had left my desk to witness the disturbance. The sun shone, and the bird shapes shrieked. Last night Mr tried his best not to run over a rabbit. It had a poor instinct for car tyres. Leaves fell to our windscreen, pale in the headlights, whirling ghostly. The world was cold and dark and beautiful, the sky thick with dreams. This morning we did not go walking in the woods because of the boom of echoing shot. We went to the unturned fields instead, trod badger paths, found an old hedge boundary in a steep neglected copse. In the coppice I was looking for a mushroom that Boy and I found, growing in a tree base. Light brown, soft, oozing bright ruby dots. At first glance, it struck us as a recent kill site. But then, on second take, the gently sickened awe, to view stigmatic fungus. Things lately have...

Halloween is creeping up. It's behind you. Feel the cold wet corpse breath on the back of your neck? The bloodless fingers on your paralysed shoulder? The hot flush of urine that steams in the icy crypt air? Mwahahahaha! I love the festival of Sowhain, most popularly known as Halloween. The dead return to visit with you, and you prepare yourself for the travails of mortality. Death is part of life, that's the short form of the message. The contrast of it is what makes life so valuable. Further psychological probing of the festival reveals a need for self-communion. At the death of summer days, we have to turn and face the nights. Unless you make like a swallow and migrate, I guess, but that journeying isn't easy either. Sooner or later there'll be something uncomfortable lurking in your in-flight socks. Integrity demands you deal with it. My worst monster is mankind, for evils perpetrated against everything; lowest of all, cloaked in ideology; and fo...

Car copes with the tractor churned mud better than expected: parked on good anchor points. Mr and I are out whittling firewood from the piles of tree, outside a cowshed, down at new Farmer Landlord's place. Nosy bullocks crowd to the gate. Chainsaw whirs, logs drop in the mud. I love the earth damp smell. I love the noise of it stacking. Get a bit of chainsaw dust in my eyes, mis-timing a leaning in to pick up the rolled away cuts. When it comes to chainsaws there are worse mis-timings. An idea has crawled into my head, somewhere along the route from yesterday to here. It's a feisty idea, so I have to rough up a story structure and start corralling words. But for a while, here, there's earthy damp air, there's dropping thumbprints of stumps into the open back of the car. 

This morning's suspicion: that the weather is hungover. The sky is a sludge, very much as though head-aching weather has smeared cloud around, thought 'that will do,' and gone back to bed. A definite air of not being finished, under which I decide to stroll, maybe towards the river, maybe not, because it is that sort of a day. And while strolling with vague intent, I spy a path, an old path to the top of the steep woods. Dog and I vanish in an oesophageal gap. Dog's eyes shine, borderline demonic, she is on some canine bacchanalia, dancing crazy through the ground cover. I am stomping bramble-gates, sinking in pine needle pile-ups, unhooking from crafty roots. There are openings into the ground, set in the hill, that seem to slide under bedrock, just wide enough to drag a person through. No one knows where I am ; this thought comes as a lovely shock. I could disappear. I could live here. It would be simple, in the sense of a matter of keeping oneself alive...

A day of heavy editing, Brain feels like a squeeze box, a bit broken; a wheezy squeeze box. Between the hard bouts of concentration, I've been prying in old notebooks. I wrote diary entries and story ideas on the same pages, amusing and confusing. Unless I was a werewolf, and simply forgot? Some superb character assassinations, I find, including this jabby little summation of an arty London café: 'It's functional, as though tables and chairs could easily be swept away and dance could take place. Overhead pipes give an underground feel- temporary, with the danger of subterfuge and the boredom of a siege. The atmosphere is not unfriendly but the chairs are open backed, to make way for knives.' But this strikes sharpest: a story note or a real person, I do not recall! 'Weekends she thinks are rainbows, chasing the crock inside which is a man with a small square box in his pocket, containing the magic ring which makes champagne rain and honeymoon sun or ...

Lead limbs drop in a hot bath. Water slops to the overflow. Steam hangs like a sigh, sticks to the mirror. Incursions of night air, from a thin line of open window, touch cold on heated skin, hold off the tendency to sleep. Floating and sleeping slip together, too easily. Spiders and flies make a tapestry, on the white square of ceiling; spin a warning.  Plug un-nested; drains out dirt and somniferous danger. Weight returns, reluctantly. A towel wrapped shadow, in the fogged mirror, slowly combs wet hair. 

Poor 'nice', poor over used, beaten up, inoffensive word. Privately one can use it, but publicly it draws ridicule. It has a taint of helplessness. Add a solid fist, a bag of grit, a pan of glowing cinders; knock off some flimsy pink and sugar: I wish I could recover this word. I would make a nuptial present of it: I know just the people for it. This is what I'm thinking, staring at a blank manila surface, reaching for a pen. What I'm smiling about, as glue and glitter are smeared barehanded onto folded cardboard. Put the card in the sun to dry- nice weather for it. The word is jumping at my heels. So, Dan and Anna, if you are wondering, that's what your wedding card is all about. 

Look to the window, momentarily released from a writing trance. Ten minutes may have passed, or a decade. I check the calendar and a watch. Most of two days, it turns out. I think Boy went to school and we had meals, and other things like flying side kicks with Launceston Young Farmers, like playing in the nursery sandpit with Baby, like brief glimpses of star spattered sky and rippled cloud. But, for the most part, I've been somewhere between 1972 and 1977, between Bristol and Bodmin Moor. The window is the room, backwards and blurred by double glazing. It's October 19th, 2012, it's nearly half past ten at night. Just for distracting fun, I pull out an old notebook from the desk shelf. My handwriting used to be so neat. Here is what I read: The spark that removes you from the 'doctrine of perpetual flux.' When everything changes and you change, and you perpetually move. Your head spins. Centrifuge breaks you up, no hand holds, no connection. Wit...