Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Beyond this horizon a distant strum: we are confident of a storm. Feel the heat caught in cotton print, as the washing is gathered in. Birds are perched, noisy in a ruffled hedge. Brief relief: cool zephyr smoothing over stifled skin. One t-shirt left on the line, just to watch it dance. Car windows wound up, garden furniture herded to sheltered spots, blankets bundled indoors. Watch, and wait.

Little Granddaughter scoops, slops, pats, makes a cake of wet sand. She sings Happy Birthday, leans in to blow out an imagined candle, knees bent and hands splayed. Boy is in the ocean, recording the low roll of surf over a smooth rock. Dog fetches the ball, this is important work. Slaves to our art, each of us. It is good to break for lunch. We sit on a blanket with pasties of a dangerous heat. Eventually we get to eat them. *** Granma Grace is up and dressed in the hospital ward. Cool air blows and the nurse brings ice for her water glass. 'I thought that was it for me,' she says. 'But I've got more Great Grandchildren to meet, it wasn't my time yet.' We speak of getting a new chair, for when she is back at home, and getting rid of the little sofa, which is comfortable but too low to get out of with ease. She will keep the chair that Grandad Gordan once favoured. She talks to it, she tells us, imagines him there, rubbing his

Linen on the line is pegged. These trousers have stood under speedy equatorial sunsets. Here, spider-spun cotton: a shirt that has floated in the Bay of Bengal: bought on the streets of Malapuram. It flails now in the heated howl that blasts also through the house and slams a door and all of it evokes a beach under the brew of a tropic storm. Every piece of washing hung gets an extra peg, and is left to dervish-dance. The wind is a puppeteer: garments, like puppets, have a history, a seeming life. We calculate it will be July 20th 2015 by the time we've viewed ALL of Boy's India adventure photos :-) 

Heat: a plethora of drowsy and a dearth of sleep. Where dreams can't form, there flourishes reverie. This I like about heat. Despite our amateurish ventures into grooming, Dog is heavy coated, and that is why we leave the steamy lanes for the cool and wakeful woods. No grass scorch here, only the bone dry mysteries of some dead branches amongst fountains of green leaf, the fresh arch of ground cover ferns. Oh, look, an open gate: and that is why we edge the waving crop field. Tall grasses keep our feet cool, the rest is hot idyll. In the cattle field the beasts sprawl. We take the first descent to the river. Things seem to spring to being, most dreamlike: the trees, the gaping gate, the tree root steps down to the water. Unplanned and obvious. I think of last night, after work: we stopped on a cliff top, watched the sun set into low cloud, the sea was gentle, it sounded like breathing. Tell me something I asked: and the sea whispered: Mermaids exist. You are one

Roused reluctant by the alarm I set; am dressed before any real wakefulness arrives. Here I am on the doorstep and seem prepared, so Dog and I walk the lanes before it gets too hot. Over the river a tube of mist thickly sits: I wonder if the river itself is all mist. I wonder what the fish do about that. Habit kicks into a run halfway round. Dog has that roll to her eye that says she will oblige even though you are clearly wrong. Perspiration reaches saturation point. Stop running, before I turn to mist.

Maybe the heat simmered up, steamed away a peaceful night. I'm not the only one to wake ill at ease. My uncertainty, I think, originates in economics, though true lines of feeling are easily blurred. There is a need for some uncertainty in life, lest one grow a skin too smug and die of it. When the balance has over-tipped; either way; to right this: a two pronged attack. Firstly, make a list. Done: tick. Secondly, stand in a river. My old trainers are now my river shoes. Adidas , they are. No name on the swimsuit. Clothes in a backpack wait on a rock ledge. Dog leaps into the water, agitates mud, I can't see where to tread at all. A walk of faith: waist deep, hands trailing under the reflective surface, twitching at the sudden touch of weed, the unnerving quality of cold gloop. 'Okay, river,' the confession begins. 'I come to seek balance and peace and acknowledge that this is something only I can find for myself, within myself, so I don't kn

Dog's nose is dry as the dust laden lanes, so we drive to the river path. Common sense also chooses wading over walking, so at the river we are straight in, sliding on rocks till we're swim-deep, swimming till knees knock on rocks. Dog tacks from bank to bank, tail wagging like a loose rudder. We ogle the writhe and wring of tree roots, the sense of serpentine motion. We cheer when jumping fish full breech. All the way to the bay of the Oak Dragon these adventurers press, and each jumps twice from his whiskery nose. Each jump has a wooden nod. Even Dog clambers on the arched oak back and makes her own splash. Back at home, Cat's food bowl mysteriously empties. Dog feigns a modicum of surprise, then sleeps in the shade of the little fir tree.