Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Water from the showerhead trails, cold and limp. Bracing: one must think of it thus, if hair is to be washed. And besides, it's simply different to do this. Think of odd hotels, the quirks and inconveniences of adventures. Put a hand on the tiled wall, the sleek white squares. Watch the loose pattering of spray, see how the locker room lights shine through the water's twist. Brace, and step under the chill. Cold awake now. If you are this far, push on. Wash hair, wash skin: watch the foam carry the comfortable dirt to a gridded drain.

Alcoves in the hedges hide the blackberries and the picker. Muddles of flora from bud to seed; spiders, the sort with banded legs, spin thick webs; slow wasps can be picked off the fruit and left to be confused; into the open pot the ripe fruits are dropped. On the other side of the hedge are whispers: hazel fronds or ghosts, it cannot be told. The story is indecipherable, the noise fascinating. This sky could bring any weather. The wind is colder than yesterday. Purple fingers sneak through brambles, pluck away the ripe fruits: into the pot they drop: hazel fronds or ghosts: whispers and wind chill bringing welcome shivers.

'A meal of green tea, scandal, hot Sally-Lunn Cakes, and a little novel-reading.' Pendennis; William Thackeray; 1849 Solange Luyon fled France: in 1680, she arrived to the City of Bath, to Lilliput Alley, where a baker's business bloomed, and she baked the bread of her Huguenot heritage. Her name was anglicized, and the popular breads known henceforth as Sally Lunn's Buns. The baker's house still stands and the breads are still made, though the oven is updated now. But what became of Sally Lunn, refugee, entrepreneur? When her recipe was rediscovered in a secret compartment above the fireplace, was there no clue of the writer? She disappears, in a puff of blown smoke. Marie Byng-Johnson is almost as vague. She bought a run down town house, in Bath, in 1937, and turned it out as a tea room. She found a secret compartment and there was a secret recipe and she told Sally's story and baked her buns and business was good. If you google M

Since our old college is shut down, Jen thinks Bath would be a good central point. Several dates are negotiated. Sorry, I'm in New York! We're away camping, it's booked. Ect! The 7th? Yes! I drive up. Girl says: I hardly remember it at all. It's 20 years ago, I say. We park and check in and get on a bus. Always on a bus, in those days. The 484. Still had to walk a mile or so down the drive to the college. Carried all our laundry on that bloody bus. In those days. Shared a house, all of us. Formative years! I know them, as though we had never parted company at all. Hugs and exclamations! Girl was five or six: and now she's 24?! Ridiculous! That's older than we were… Elaine slides the photo album from her bag… Oh! I remember that jumper; those knickknack things in the fire surround; hideous carpet; that tall girl- Yes, she was at Leeds- Paul the landlord; didn't care for wearing trousers around the house. Afraid of girl

Consciousness glides, up through the shallow snores. Awake? Yes, awake: thinking of coffee and outside. The windowscape is cloud and blue. Walk? Dog's supine loll is compacted and sprung. Ah, we are both renewed this morning. The fields are calling: they are stubbled and bleary, waking like drunks. Wine glasses wait by the sink. They have stains the colour of lips. Coincidental. Out holding a tub, to stalk the edge of stalks, peering for dark gleams. Some will fall into fingers, some require a twist, some a reach, a risk of nettle rash, of wasp, of scratch. Rain circulates, light as breathing. Three horses out, they have heard the field call too. Will the dog mind if they gallop? No, she will thrill at the hoof thump and later eat some dung.

The Nextdoor Chickens quit their dirt pecking and look up. They make a noise that echoes quiver. Swallows take to wing. Damp air brings dinner even if the sky shakes. What is thunder to them? A gutful of gnats, a dinner bell? All day drama has built in the clouds: such scenery! Kiss curls cast in solid iced white. Puckered anthracite. Contortionist flecks. Charcoal smeared with candy-floss. All of it, only water! Rain shakes down, rich quenching drops of it. After this is a flattening off, a sky pasted uniform grey. Early for work I sit in the driver's seat and inspect: the layers are there, subtle, idiosyncratic still. I mark the light and shade of each droplet on the windscreen slope, the crescent curves of reflection.

Nam-ma is driving as the first leaves fall. She remembers how they skitter. Jerky, comedic, enthusiastic: once she had a wind up toy, a pair of chattering teeth, a similar quality of movement. Little Granddaughter, red cheeked, has slumped to sleep in her car seat. It is hot, even with the windows down. Dog lies panting; a tail thumps, irregular, for various scents. They park near Feather Tor. Nam-ma pours a flask cup of tepid espresso, looks forward to the cold leat water. The little Buddha is missing, she sees, stooping the coffee flask down to the passenger foot well. He is not in his usual nook by the gear stick. He was there… when? The day the brakes failed and no-one was hurt. That morning she had rubbed his tummy: she remembers; the cool, the smoothness of it; she had said, 'For happiness.' LG awakes, is enamoured immediately: 'Cows!' Beyond the cows they walk, to the leat, where a dragonfly circles an ancient granite cross and wild po

From faded tarmac steams this end-of-summer heat. Our headlamps catch spools of white vapour, it moves, circular, in the throat of the road, like a liquid pours, only lighter, slower. Things we should recognize loom unknown from the fog. Pairs of lights drive by and sound just like cars.

Two things in particular caught my attention this morning, right before lunch. Firstly, I had an interview published in Martial Arts Illustrated magazine, which was done a while back and had almost been forgotten. I thought 'next edition' might the editorial version of 'manyana.' I knew it was actually in print after a tag on Facebook, so today I bought a copy and there is me and Mr (thank you Layla for the photos, very natural shots) not squashed in a half page (which I was prepared for) but splashed over three. I had to keep looking at it in case I had miscounted or the pictures were moving and this was dreaming. (It's national in the UK, but if you are further away and want to track down a copy, try www.maionline.co.uk. It was not a dream, the pages are there!) Strolls I, stunned in the sunshine, to my car and off to meet Boy and we buy a cherry pie because it's a celebrating sort of day. (Yesterday Mr put on his dark suit and went to the

The field by the river is cut, the cuttings baled, the bales lifted out. It seems quiet without the ripe crop whispering. The water lightly prattles. Surprised ducks make intermittent noises of extreme indignation. Dog appears on each occasion, feigns ignorance. She is slick with river mud: a coincidence, of course. Ripe fruits plop into my wide bag: bobbles of blackberry, early rosy hips, beads of elderberry, firmly purple sloes. At the far corner we turn up from the water. Dog runs over the broad earth: runs and runs for no seeming reason but the love of it.

The ninth month, fields are in harvest, apples yield on trees. Mr heaves the barrow up, he mixes and hefts and his sweat pours onto the ground, it is turning into a shed. It is one of life's simple secrets: that a dream gets fed by sweat, by push, by work. And sometimes you will see the work and decide the dream weighs lighter in your estimation than you thought, and you will let it go. And sometimes you will acknowledge the ache, the injurious frustration, the exhaustion, the painful mistakes, the re-takes and decide that this has the weight of a path that you long to follow.

It's morning. Pigeons chatter. Window open to sunlit breeze, to a pleasing chill that wafts over bared legs lying wryly on a guest bed. We are in Plymouth. Briefly one has dreamt of a pigeon teaching golf. It advises wiggling one's bottom and aiming into the sun: and be sure to squint, it says. Golf? Legs do not want to move. Everything is post-party dehydrated, aches from overindulgence. I had misjudged my tolerance for something; alcohol, buffet food, dancing, heat; a stamina of some kind has been undermined. Poor stomach, all pressed with that purging heat. Tentative toast and water begins the restoration process. Happy 40th Birthday Samantha Redmond! Another glass of water, sip by sip, held up to the light in the kitchen and it glints like sequins. I have brushed my teeth, am enlivened by the mint. I am able to put my day clothes on, the right way around, in the right order. Things bode better. Here are sunglasses, a car window that winds all the way down

Grandparent Pack Mules, hungry children, pregnant Mrs Mac, and Mr Mac; in charge of dogs; are veering from sharing a pleasant trail to enduring a march. One picnic area bans dogs, and the other demonstrates why dogs would be omitted from food sharing areas. Grandad is the first one to see the potential in the old railway bridge: the wide girder edge is a buffet table. The old sleepers slanting are almost benches. If we gather to one side the cyclists have plenty of room to whizz by, and spout little phrases of envy for our proper plates and superior olives. Little Grandson, Little Granddaughter both: they take this dining arrangement as they take all things: in chunks of awe and acceptance. Of course one sits on a slanty plank and eats ham with bike wheels whooshing where the condiments would normally be: of course Granma says not to climb on the table or you'll fall in the river. One must interrupt this feast however to point out the miracle of being able to hide a

Written myself into a fug, though the windows are pushed so far open it's a dangerous reach to close them. I have notes everywhere, things barely legible smudged on paper in blotches of biro ink. I have notes scrawled over several areas of brain and circles and arrows and optimism. I have skin that tingles with possible things: this, one can imagine, is how a cephalopod feels when it changes colour. Like a firework swallowed. Like chemistry in motion. Sensible enough, the day starts with a run but then breakfast has a look of impossibility and that's how the day runs on. In dazed intervals, venture out to the sweep of lawn. Mr is digging feverish holes: the shed begins. Oh! More mind-body shivers! Whichever universe this is, I like it, I choose to stay. I plant my flip-flops firmly in this magnificently cut grass. Breakfast takes three sittings. Well done, tenacious us!

Morning: A small convoy of Nam-ma, Little Granddaughter and Dog greet the ghosts of horses through morning mist. They tread their dew-proof boots: 'You boots, me boots, one two boots!' up the side track in the ploughed field. 'One boot, five boots, one moon, round and round.' Moon in the blue sky, halved, ends like froth, is somewhere between broken egg and breaking wave. 'Go sleep, moontime!' She has an expression of a person who is pretending to be cross for comic reasons. Then she clips Dog's lead onto Nam-ma's shorts and this is very funny. From here, those rubber booted steps are set towards honey and toast. Afternoon: It develops into the sort of hot, blue, shiny day where plans such as finishing the accounts are bypassed in favour of more scenic things, such as fixing a stable door to a polytunnel project, such as a fever pitch of writing by a wide open window, such as walking over the beach into the sea: whe

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