Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

First day of the last month. Mist from the Tamar valley rises up to a fat cloud: the Buddha of Sky Water. Out of the mist, the sound of gunshot: the cycle of life and death. Sun pierces everything, one last time. After this its reach will weaken. We must hold our own warmth. At the end of my morning shower, turn the dial to a cold setting. From feet to head the nozzle travels and my muscles twitch like river fish and my skin vibrates and my gasps are laughing. Alive and warm. After breakfast, brew coffee, bitter hot and fierce in strength. Awake. 

A further extract from what has already been rescued from my personal slush pile, so strictly speaking it's not a false start BUT it has proved popular so one more glimpse before I get back to making this project work.  *** Mother possessed thin brown hair but her ears didn't stick out.   Her belly did.   After marriage, after babies, after beer drinking, a belly was the end of the production line.   Brown, orange, yellow, swirls and flowers: optional, thank the Bloody Merry Lord, but the life conveyor belt would carry you along. Owning a Strawberry Dress could make you happy but it wouldn't free you from the list that read: School Work Husband Babies Beer Belly The End. Charleigh wonders when her married sisters will have babies. Damn: more babies, and they'll bring them round here for a bloody bath.   They already pop in for cups of tea.   Life should span more than a couple of streets.   If you were lucky you might go on a honeymoon, yo

Dear World, I am writing to you from a day near the end of November. This morning the moon lit up the sky, and hung around for a while after the sun turned up. Both of them together made the ground frost sparkle, and helped me find where the surface water was frozen still. In the dip by the Small Woods I thought to find thick ice but the tree shelter had huddled it; by the house where the sun hits, I was surprised by the slippery road. First clouds of the morning were silver, and the second batch was pink. By mid morning they were a soft wash of white and the frost held in the shadows. My eyes were full of sun glare and bare trees. Later the cloud fanned out, reminded me of a white peacock I saw once; a snow peacock. Later still, the sky got darkened drop by drop. Did you ever draw a picture in wax crayon then paint over it? The moon was orange wax in the watery dark. We thought of pressing our hands to the sky, to colour palms with night ink. I would make a print and alway

Unbedded myself in the dark for an early walk with Dog. As I walked, light seeped upwards: it would be amusing if the two events were linked. I could walk backwards into midnight. After breakfast, coffee and driving Boy to school, straight to painting, which forms the main activity of the day. Little pictures, coming to life. Full moon rolls along the horizon like a beautiful lazy eye. Bright planet beside it is a mere pin. Or a very small eye in a heavenly cubist face? A young man in shorts flags down our homeward bound car. He has a car but it has bounced off the hedge, rolled, righted, stopped with immovably busted wheels, equidistant between hedges, neatly blocking the road. 'Sorry,' he says. 'Learning curve,' says Mr. We flag down cars while he phones his parents, until the police arrive with flashy lights and high vis jackets. Big faced moon in a clear sky sees all. At home, via small detour roads, we drink dark hot frothed up mocha. 

I go down by the swollen river to have an adventure with Dog mainly as a psyching up exercise. Watercolours aren't intimidating unless you haven't painted a picture in a while and now you have ten lined up in front of a deadline. It is good to give yourself a scare. Projects are leaping out from behind trees: ideas burst from my head like birthing aliens. After the walk, after lighting the fire, after making coffee, after hanging up the washing, I run out of viable procrastinations and am forced to pick up a paintbrush. My painting is very much as my drawing is: no one will ever hire me for technical skill. As long as I hold my nerve I have a style that is lively and emotive. The whole is decidedly greater than the sum of the parts. At ten pm my fingers start to cramp so it is time to change media, to tap a keyboard, sum the day's lesson up.  Work in progress :-) 

Weary journeying (one car, broken, one tow truck, four hours later...) Two days without a blog post, which does not mean two days without writing. My lucky friends and legitimised eavesdroppers on Facebook and Twitter have had their time enriched by apocryphal drops of my legendary life (eating pasta out of Tupperware in a service station car park, drinking wine from a Travelodge mug: then I read up on them: weary journeying versus the joys of sweat and medals.) This weekend I spent nine and one half hours listening to rain hit a windscreen; less the brief lull of each concrete bridge. Leaves of warm colours drop from trees, at the edge of the road, in clusters in the flooded fields, I watch them and where my eyes wander my thoughts fly. People in autumn wear warm colours; that is the start of my thinking. But in winter they don't drop layers, like these bare branches that best display the stark beauty of the darkest season.  What people take t

If there exists anything more expressive of delight than Dog, freed of her stitches, head cone and lead, galloping through seawater, I should like to experience it. It is a step past my imagination. Her fresh scar is bright pink in the cold salt. I take my boots off. The sea has sharpened its teeth since my last paddle, the first bite of winter fastens to my feet. A lady with a bouncy terrier stops to tell me she thought I had pink Wellingtons on, until she saw the boots in my hand. She can't get down to loosen her laces so easy these days, she says, so best get your feet wet while you can, eh? Submerged in the sound of the surf, watching the running Dog, shivery foam on the tide line, waves that flow in long and shallow, the pearlescent prettiness of reflected sky; feel the icy sting on wet bare skin. See the rocks that the gods of geology fold up like a causal sandwich. Get in my car, the heater works. Dog sleeps on her sandy blanket.