Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Blue sky stretches over the whole weekend and shows no signs of shrinkage. Some people say it's too hot, they are instantly harangued: have they forgotten so soon all the weary intolerance of grey skies? Other people recall The Last Great Summer, 1976: lotus eating and lounging and even beige was a bright colour back then. We never wore shoes from March to November, only sand on our feet. We never ate any food except ice pops. We remember this, lying in the shade at Bluebell Barns, watching banana tree leaves waft. We all have sunglasses on. Two empty bottles of dandelion muscatel cast shadows in the kitchen, which we can't see from this angle but our fuzzy heads hold the image. And the Prosecco bottles, and the red wine. I'm drinking black coffee, eating lazy breakfast bagels, feet up on a wicker table, watching those glossy tropical leaves, deciding on a sea cure. The beach is cobbled in various sizes of warm stone. Out we wade, into remarkable clarity, mak

Just before work I am melted to the car seat and watching magpies covet shine. Handsome, indolent heat makes everything such languid effort. Minds are wrestled from drift, only briefly, only for the necessary part of a task. The rest is all dissipation. After work, pull car and steamy skin into a random moorland car park, sit; door open, coffee cold; face to face with a lowing sun. I am fixed in the seat, it seems, much as a chrysalis fixes to a stem: until bare feet wake up, press over the short-stemmed grass.

Yesterday's walking took a spell in the river, wading out neck deep, to stand; eye level with a swimming Dog; watching the blip of fish snatching gnats; the linger of centric ripples; under the snaky outcrops of root. The water was invisible: was only the reflection of tree and sky: was only the beads on bared legs. Yesterday's wet clothes sway on the washing line. A dry walk, today, for no particular reason. Heat speeds up molecules: slows a walk. We average an ambling pace, stopping our legs once for strawberry picking, once for rose petals. We dare not be too still though, lest we be baked like terracotta, left decorative but brittle. At home it is pleasant to sit, flip flops kicked off, in the umbrella shadow: a mistake to slip those dark soled sandals back on. Cartoon hopping in hot flip flops wakes the cat, who; of course; has been sleeping all day, content in the shade of a garden table and the cooling roots of grass.

The window stays open late: suddenly the room beats with moth wings.  Pale moon creatures, from the backdrop of summer night, fashioned from the same velvet. A cool and soothing brush with darkness; a sleeping draught, a diving bell; respite from the fraught of heat; they bring good dreams, the mesmer of these beating wings. Indoors, outdoors, this world, or that; everything blurs in the summer melt .

A thin breeze can't cover this heat. Cat sleeps all day, content in the shade of a garden table and the cooling roots of grass. Dog wanders between shadows, thumps a tail at the darting passage of summer birds. I tip the lounger back to find shelter beneath the sheet drying on the rotary line. How annoyed I am to need to move, or eat, or clean, or earn a living. Annoyed that coffee won't materialise by whim. Yet when I move to simmer noodles and sweep carpets and type words, when I tighten up the espresso pot and hear it bubble on the electric stove? Discernable ritual satisfaction! Back to the laid back lounger I go, chilling my little cup in the thin breeze, under the wash-line shade. Cold strong coffee I have, and the sun on my feet. Everything else will follow.

At my brother's wedding: with my deeply lovely sister in law :-)  Slow start to the weekend heat wave. The talk of it is more heated than the weather. The view from my car includes a horizon of convincingly solid cloud. My attention is drawn by the increase in traffic. When I look again at the mountainous cloud, it is invisible. But the Bristol air is hazy, thick full of heat. I have clear sight of it from the tall windows of my brother's first floor flat: single glazed, it won't be so warm in the winter, he notes. We walk over the open common grassland called The Downs. There's an irregular pattern of picnic groups. Pink-faced people rest on benches under young trees. Talking of stereotypes, we walk into The Burger Joint, greeted by a chirpy waitress. Do we want to sit outside, she asks. There is a beautiful cool slate floor indoors. She laughs when we ask for shade, because everyone else is crammed around outside tables. She brings iced drinks,

The rain is dried up, so the field grass needs grabbing, makes the lane busy with rushed tractors. Wobbly trailers shake grass stacks, flurries of stalk fall out over the tarmac: smells rich, fresh, sweet all at once. It'll be like that, till the weather turns or the job's done. Horseflies are biting. Strawberries are cropping, you can pick a handful everyday. Some of them even make it home, but some fall in your mouth. It's how they are. A broody Nextdoor Chicken has hatched one chick. It's set the others off broody now. Everyone has washing out, windows open. Elderflowers are on the turn: season's always over quick. Pick while you can, and never mind the staring. Sometimes a crowd will gather: just curious. It's all just how it is.

Happy Independence Day American cousins: we had a different sort of emancipation going on here today :-)  We walk the hill from crest to trough, then swing left to follow the fertile edges of the drainage ditch. Along here stands a cluster of elder trees. In the summer the trees flower behind a thicket of weeds that grows over boggy ground, weeds that sting, scratch, wrap around limbs. Mr frowns like Ahab at those foam white blossoms. Sometimes the boggish earth will swallow your legs, even before the greenery bites. It's my folly to strike out first, wedging each wellied foot into rootballs of reed. No machete: though we carry a hook pole in a harpoonish manner: a pair of craft scissors snips out the worst of the thorn attackers. We use the pole to slide ourselves off the drainage bank, and sneak along the water path till we can climb up right inside the elusive bounty. Three carrier bags of blossom carried up the hill, from trough to crest, triumphant. 

Pinball weather: bouncing from hot to chill. Under the construction of the polytunnel, jumpers are off, regardless. A scarf lollops, gently, in the breeze, the fringe of it slumped from a garden chair. Close by, the rotary line flouts its load, from fast drying fleece to saggy cotton, on poles of a jaunty angle. A sort of mud dust drifts over us. We pull melodrama faces: anyone watching would immediately identify this difficult level of effort. Three bays of awkward Perspex curve up and over inside the frame. It is not rain but time that ends the work. A quick brush of teeth and we are out of the door, armed with kick pads, ready to teach.

Rain patters the leaves over our heads. Dog runs, on scent based urges, round my general position. Brambles are closing up the path: cotton leggings were a mistake. Everything smells freshly damped, even the river, even the stale quarry pools. On a shale beach a feathered jewel waits for me to admire it. A duck's gift, I think, and carry it home, and it is tucked behind the Buddha figure that lives in my car. Later, after work, instead of driving back through the main street, me, Buddha, the feather, we take the snaky single track under the willow, over the bridge, along the side of the crooked castle. Windscreen wipers clear the view: the day's light stoops under the blanketing night: I couldn't sing any louder no matter how I may try.

Braving a steely humid sky, myself and my neighbour hang out washing. Dog and I go walking, sans coat, through the lanes where the hedges are uncut and they whisper at us all the way round the block. I do not know what they are saying: it seems gossipy. At home a fresh rose opens and is plucked for the teapot. My rose-brewing teapot has a cracked handle from Saturday's shelf disaster. It's not quite broken yet though, it stays in use. I stare at it, to get the most from its presence. Seems like an ordinary day. An ordinary, hot day: in the shower I look for soap and find instead one smallish centipede. Outside, the wind stirs up the clouds, the vegetation, the pegged out washing: and my hair, which dries all unruly.

At the end of the sixth month, the year is half done, or half undone. The first phrase invokes either a mild panic- is everything planned achieved? Or a smugness: everything planned is achieved. I do love to tick off a good list: satisfying, yes: but a life with no room for surprise is tourniquet-ed. Yesterday we came home late from a birthday party and the kitchen was dangerously pebbled with broken glass. The shelf above the Rayburn had lurched from its moorings. It was not planned, nor convenient, but we rose to the clearing challenge. Leaking over the floor was sterilizing fluid, not three gallons of lovingly crafted home brewed wine. Under the striking range of the shelf was one gold teacup, one bowl sized coffee cup and a floor: not any of us. The shelf will be re-pinned, its security re-planned, to be ready for the rest of the undone year.

Little Granddaughter says: 'What's that noise?' Last week she said only: 'Noise!' Language grows like shining mystical bindweed, crawls around everything, confines, illuminates, defines, shadows. (She still makes those silent movie star faces though.) 'It's the A30,' Grandad says. 'Cars, brmmm brmmmm.' 'Oh, cars.' Cars are soon forgotten. She finds a feather, and Dog has hair. 'Doggle got hair,' she informs. 'Hair.' She pulls her own strands, to demonstrate a connection. 'Dog has hair all over. It's called fur.' Granma can be pedantic too. 'Doggle fur. Teddy!' Weeds are flowers that grow in places where they are not wanted. These words are not weeds: I think, language is a bindflower . At the end of the green path, she launches the feather into a tree. 'Wheeee feather! Bye!' And having released it back into the wild, walks away up the stony path with the poise

The kitchen smelt of elderflower, until the grill warmed to cook sausages, until the boiled water hit the coffee grounds. Outside we ate breakfast, seated over new mown grass. A pink rose, open, bowed a stem. Later, where there is a shallowing over the brown shaded rocks, the river was forded. An elder bouquet, plucked and fetched home. A bucketful of perfumed, foamy flower heads stands ready for brewing. Now, rose tea steams in the pot. Sweet spiced vegetables simmer on a slow cook. Under the petal scents, too, mouthwatering fat-blobs linger in the grill pan. Somewhere in the sky an aeroplane carries Boy away, from Heathrow to New Delhi. Ten days to wait before we hear those stories. I can't help but think of the market in Singapore, where the smeech of deep-frying ducks made his eyes water. We went to a café for breakfast then instead, went busily about our day. When we walked from an air conditioned shopping centre past a sizzle of food stalls he said in s

Capturing the moment when the boys go to meet a friend and the Dads are left to sort the bikes out!  Yesterday morning, after a lazy run in hot mist, but before the shower is free, I am waiting for the 99p store to open: I need a new glasses case. I hope to come back to the car with this solo item. I have huge sunglasses on, there's no case big enough for these. Also one giant t-shirt, ripped leggings, flip-flops: technically I'm still in the queue for the shower. Across the car park I see a lad sporting a grey suit; it looks new. He tucks his trousers into motorbike boots. A Massey Ferguson tractor pulls up, it has a trailer and two shiny trail bikes behind it. Squeals from the road, and the bob of balloons: an open topped bus full of frocked up girls rolls by. Ah! It's the Leavers' Day Parade! Aged 16, after 11 years of schooling, a rite of passage and celebration, quick: before the weariness of adulthood can grab them! The suits and the dresses and the mod

Important to note: that a fish, stranded, exhausted, flips on the shoreline, gasps for more life. It won't worry about how it got there, only where it has to go. If the gravity of the moon has called to the ocean in you, if it has swayed the emotive deep: that is a wave undeniable. Celestial it is: alien, since it ranges beyond human touch: yet we were born of stars, so it is part of us, part of our carbon based heritage. Sometimes we have such feeling, it reaches across space. Full moon storm or full moon calm, wherever your incarnation has placed you: just as the fish knows it must be in the water, you know where your footprints should press a path.

Small in stature, big in personality :-) In Girl's front room there are an unruly row of legs. Fake tan on a mitted hand makes bold strokes. 'Is that too streaky?' Girl peers. Someone fetches another jug of Pimms, and there's a false lash re-gluing session going on in a bedroom splattered with beauty debris. 'I googled it,' says the lady in the leopard print dress, of the look they are seeking for this evening's theme. 'Lots of black eyeliner.' Outside it rains, which is the sworn enemy of glammed up hair. An arsenal of hairspray is lined up. 'Are we doing your hair Mum?' Girl's friends ask in a kind of chorus. When Girl was only very small her and a gang of friends would frequently paint my face in unwittingly whorish glitter, tangle elastic bands in my hair. It was scoops of hooting fun. I take a plastic cup of the Pimms and sit under the hairspray. I'm all ready laughing.

Tree fetches stick. Rare sight. To represent a full cycle of natural rule, there is the Oak King, god of the waxing year, and the Holly King, god of the waning. If there is a Sun King, he wears a fine cloud cloak for his longest day. I like these annual pivots, whatever the weather. In honour of the hours of day and night being at their extreme, therefore, some words: Everything waxes before it wanes Wanes before it waxes It all flows and nothing is static Acknowledge yourself here At this point, under this sun In the spiral of season, of experience Ask for illuminated change For a path lit: Ask for the courage To walk unlit: Poised, as the year tilts Facing fears, embracing love. Smiling mud bank.

Day rolls lazily out of night's blanket. It will only half open its eyes, so everything looks fogged and groggy. Breakfast was decadent. The gold china was used. A cup and a crumbed plate sit in the sludgy light. This world is reflected in gold curves. Now the sky is frosted glass, hills swoop in etched motifs. Lying down, the cows seem unimpressed, but they have beautiful eyes. At lunchtime, a scatter of showers patters the coast. Little Granddaughter holds my hand and we walk out too deep for trousers in the warm sea. We laugh, and we love the way the seaweed swirls.

The frame of my mind is accepting, it lets death into the picture. It is not morbid though, as death and life give each other such power. Today is the 15th anniversary of the death of my father, whose resemblance to Henry 8th always made me hope I would grow up to be Elizabeth 1st. I liked her fierce brightness, her big dresses. I didn't want to be Mary, all glum and locked up. My brother is nothing like sickly Edward either, so the Tudor analogy is humorously selective. Here is a little old diary juxtaposition: 'June 11, 1998 death is too much, too final… one moment and everything changes… You keep going over it: there: gone: there: gone… June 19, 1998 My Dad eased from life to death: no fitting or terrible pain: gradually his breathing was slower, breaths far apart, then no breathing… It was hard to tell the moment when he stopped breathing.' The best preparation and comfort for that moment, whether clearly cut or vaguely lingerin