Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

One is up and out before breakfast, again, though it hardly seems repetitious to be trawling hedges for dark fruits. This time a horsefly bites. The wasps are presumably well fed: calm and slow. Two of the cut fields are ploughed over. The ground is neither damp nor dusty. Being turned it has a soft give, like ample Earth Mother curves. At the corner of the field, the straightness of the hedge, a glimpse of telegraph poles, the bare earth, the clumps of stalk turned upside down: it's odd, I think, to have all these signs of human life and feel so far from civilization. I remember having a sensible job and the joy of looking out of a window, how the rain sounded on the fabric of my leopard print umbrella when I took a lunch break stroll. If anything, those stinted years were the best training to be here and appreciate this scene. At home, a bath is waiting. The Rayburn has smouldered all night making this hot water. On the stove is a brand new Bialetti Venus 10 cup espre

Before breakfast a list of experiences edges on smugness. Two litres of blackberries, a wasp sting, an owl's feather, discovery of another cut-crop field, four spider apologies for web breaking, a short walk through a dance of brown butterflies, a revolting heap of badger poo and the attempt to wash a thousand sticky grass seeds from a spaniel's fur. Before breakfast. Breakfast was outside with an audience of this year's fledgling sparrows. We ate steak and egg-fried rice. Lots of pepper. This afternoon Boy and me are back in Britain's Ocean City where the sun and wind are tussling up and down the straight wide streets, chopping up the water in the urban ponds. Today we opt for a Park and Ride bus. It's like a tour. I point out several men of generous proportions, in shorts and Plymouth Argyle football shirts, eating pasties as they walk to Home Park. Given the variety of people also walking in their football paraphernalia, they are not representati

Yesterday's air was viscously thick. Three of us: Boy, Dog, me: pad on foot. Mr commands a bicycle. We all pant. The chap at the cottage is out painting and while we stop to rediscover normal breathing he bemoans the loss of lead in paint. It used to be so much tougher, the old style stuff. There's a high percentage of eccentrics per capita here. There's us in our lycra mixes and him in his overalls that are for coloured painting jobs. The other pair do for white paint. He laughs while he says this, though he misses the old style of paint. 'Well, you always knew a painter and decorator, in those days, they were tall and very thin.' 'From the lead poisoning?' Mr suggests. 'Well, yes.' He chuckles. 'That's right. From the lead.' He leans on some fresh sage-green paint, but it's okay, he knew he would do that. He has the colour paint overalls on. When we are able we say goodbye. We run to the river and clamber on r

The drives back from work are not to the dipping of the sun but the rising of the moon. It catches orange light in its early stages, as though to acclimatize us to the loss of sunset. This evening, on the horizon in perfect focus is the silhouette of a cow running uphill. It reminds me of the nursery rhyme: 'Hey diddle diddle The cat and the fiddle The cow jumped over the moon The little dog laughed to see such fun And the dish ran away with the spoon .' The scene is absurd, therefore fabulous. Thoughts flow with the passing landscape, these curious snippets of outlines and de-familiarising shadows. Ordinary things are beautiful to an attuned eye. Extraordinary things are easier to view, no less imbued. That's the why of it , explains my brain. Writing is a daily practice, for me: even without access to pen or keyboard I form sentences, sometimes out loud, sometimes in mind. I composed one this morning about swallows preening on telephone wires.

Alongside the river in the edge of the woods a path runs a course. Thorns are thin here, so bare legs can swing safely in the shade. Underfoot is a firm textured mud; the air smells of earth and water: a lively calm kind of damp. Dog makes clumsy sticks crackle in the undergrowth. There is bird song, there is the river burbling, there is my own muffled stepping on the soft track. For a while I sit, on the fallen tree bench, and dangle legs and throw sticks into the burble, and Dog throws herself with hilarious splashes. A swim is a tempting thing, but there is all this veiled scattering of light through the leafed trees and over the river to be watched. There is the surround of ornithological sound. There is the weight of legs, the ease of unburdened feet, the press of wood grain. There is the canine comedy. There are scents to appraise: musky, woody, fresh: sun on skin has a particular smell. Salted human caramel? There is coffee to be brewed and breakfast cooked: Dog cat

The densest substance in the universe, briefly, is made of eyelids. I have no hope to prop them up. Hope abounds everywhere but in these lids. They shut as velvet curtains do at the old style cinema, to reopen on a lit screen where pictures move, lifelike, with a flickering light. Everyone is smiling. It's a replay, not quite reality. I hear the cool leather creak, the tractor chug: know I am lying on my sofa by an open window: know I am dreaming. Out takes of the day thus far: Boy in his crisp white shirt, leaving his acceptance letter on the car seat: I am asking; so, what questions did they ask you ; release from pre-interview nerves unfetters hunger; we think about the view from the top of the big wheel, but the view from the café is fine and there we sit to celebrate with baguettes and beverages. Sun blares. The car park time is generous. We walk and say how things look.

It is my first foray into the newly cut wheat field. Stalks under sun are briefly gold: Dog runs through filigree, entirely impervious to the grandeurs of colour. She rolls in some olfactory delight, which might be of equal mystery to my understanding, and runs and rolls and her tongue lolls and her tail whizzes. I have missed the musical plink of these stalks under the tread of Wellington boots: zigzag a path just to hear more of it. In the hedge are blackberries, ripe and palatable. Dog eats some grass, the tall wide bladed stuff, dew-dotted. What seems a sentient moment passes between us: this simple recognition: 'Oh look, we're eating.'