Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Little Granddaughter crawls under our covers. 'I love Nam-ma,' she says. Her christening dress lies on the floor, a sweet froth of lace. At the font she scooped up water and washed her mother. At the party she danced past her bedtime. (She also licked and returned several sausage rolls, but I've little sympathy, if you must eat all that pastry and processed meat.) At Granma's house she slept for twelve hours. After she is returned to her mother, and settled on a sofa looking at cards and presents: 'Oh, s'nice,' she waves goodbye without looking. Good Granmas understand: they are stoic by nature, and loving. 'Thank you Mum,' Girl says. She will make a fine Granma one day. There is this, and our next Grandbaby due in 8 days, and our next wedding in 5 days, and I need to get shoes, and something to make my hair so pretty. And then there is my beautiful friend, and my fatherless godson, that bereavement, how can that not be on my

Two days of almost quiet :-)  Lean at the window, this morning, eyes following the swallow's loop. At times it seems to halt mid-flight: an ink outline painted on sky. On the walk back from the river, midday, hedges are scoured. Wild strawberries, tight and green, reveal signs of ripening.  This afternoon, on the broad stretch of comforting sofa, settle with a mug of hot tea. The doors are open and everyone wanders by: busy with a barbeque, an impending wedding, calls of children, playful dogs. The men have tried on their suits. It is time to cook some meat. The women say: 'Men. Fire and beer and meat!' There are laughing children on the roof of the playhouse, a flick of flame in the fire pit. There is wine in my glass. On the drive home, one round of moon looms. Think of: silver paint on velvet card, mother of pearl, carried to term, third trimester. Lazy morning sun stretches out, having so much room in t

Why is the wind So Cold ? Summer's first month is Days Away . That's it! I say, at the Brink of Letting Misery Prevail . I am going to Imagine myself a Holiday! Everything I know of palm trees and warm sand is being packed into it. My suitcase is the one leaking ultraviolet, trailing leopard printed straps. The food is amazing: all spice and lime zing, the drinks bubble fresh. The sun is blurred in the heat hazy sky. I think it might have melted. It has melted. It is made of gold ice cream, it's what the Gods eat. In the evening, as the flavour of the sky turns to watermelon red, we dance, coffee brews on a beach fire, misery is nothing but a snickering twig. 

Wild solace grows in these hedgerows. I follow the stream as a whimsical path. The drainage is manmade, a plastic tunnel channeled from the field. Dug over in the shale are old bones, old teeth, turned from the earth when the tunnel was dropped in. In the stream too, a bright skeletal relic: shiny clean in shallow water. I can't imagine these trees as saplings but they must have grown, out of the earth where the bones all lie. 

Darkness defamiliarises , my notebook advises, in neat ink, circa 1993. It is a form of chaos, of exhilaration: everyone has a need to be uncontrolled if they seek to know themselves. We learn our capabilities in the dark. Or we give up control, shirk the responsibility, roll helpless at the whim of the moon. Thumb a few pages further: find a transcription. 'Conversations with the sea.' Think of a beach under a night sky; where I hear my thoughts most clearly. The neat ink reads: The spray was tall, lashing overhead. I'm back to see you, I said. I know, said the sea, which seemed to be laughing. There's no lesson for you today though. Just rest. How should I rest? Do you have nothing to teach me today? If a lesson happens, then so it does. Don't be impatient, you're on the right path. Does it have a name, this path? No, of course not. It hasn't been charted yet. I write some of this down now. You're in my book. I know.

I remember you before you were born, dear chap, when you were that stupendous swell in your mother's belly. I remember a while before that, when the doctors frowned and told your mother that she would be unlikely to have children. I remember how she said it was okay, she didn't want any children. Brave liar, she was. You were longed for, not expected. You took your time, too, coming out into the world: and then there you were, a tiny face peeping out of a blanket, wrapped up, safe, making all the fretting bearable. We watched you grow in pictures, heard you burble on the phone before you had mastered a word. There were visits, which you won't remember, being so young. Maybe you will remember our walk through the woods, where you thought you couldn't get over the spiky fat trunks of the fallen trees. So many obstacles in life, dear chap… After we had conquered the trees, we went to the river, threw sticks in the water, cheered every splash. You wer

The song goes: 'That's life, that's what the people say, riding high in April, shot down in May.' These lines are singing in my mind. Behind me, the sun has heat. There was mist, this morning, the sort that travels in upright tufts. Ghost mist. There was a between worlds feel to the morning. Little birds pelt and blast and sway on fragile branches. They sing with their beaks full. It is tropically noisy. Dew gems shine and evaporate. Fat clouds drift. Shadows of roof-nesting birds fly up and down the stone wall of the house.