Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Frost spreads in the night and the morning arrives sparkling. The sun keeps a clear path, melts it all, it keeps the sparkle: the twink, the sense of mischief and glamour. Dog and I run through field grass kicking diamonds. Oak leaves blow down, opulent in colour: one falls into my hand, almost directly, a clear gift. At home one has wetted boots and an old brown leaf: yet the experience will not depreciate.

All around, walls of cloud. Propped above, precarious, a blue sky. Washing on the line all day, in sun and brisk wind, is drier but not dry: holds a scent of autumn, an apple-spice, cool air smell. Each peg unclipped drops into the pot, each item lumps into the basket. Starlings make their massed flights, indistinctly edged against the pallid glare of sun. In the field behind one pheasant whirrs up, wings so mechanical. Cat is curled, sheltered, by the flowerpots. Dog pushes her nose along the grass. In the kitchen the Rayburn is lit, the washing up is regrouping, is always regrouping. Hot sticky swirls of rosehip line the big pan.

Boy has an alarm set. We take our two minutes reflection on the drive to Plymouth. Rain smudges sky and land together. On Royal Parade poppies decorate trees. Every memorial is adorned: bright rings under the dark lists of names, the dense squared stone. Names, listed; lives, loves, heroics, fear; compressed to this. Too many names to unfold each: too much to endure, too much to forget.

A Sunday set aside for remembrance. Most of the day I am up in the nursery room, painting a tree for the imminent grandchild. Little Grandson sits cross-legged in the cot, asks one question for every brush stroke. Why is paint wet, for example, and where's the owl. Soup for lunch, two kinds, homemade. Baby Girl drops by to visit, chewing car keys. She brings Mum and Nan and a light up teddy. Little Grandson kisses her on the nose. Back at the paint face, the last leaf is lined. Coffee and cake to celebrate. Across the world; we see by television; a hurricane has torn up towns, wiped out homes, lives, securities. Little Grandson is tired, he drags a blanket to the sofa. A poppy wreath props on the cenotaph. A camera pans over faces: tensed, grieving, respectful faces.

Shoes unlaced, socks inside out, left on a car seat. Trouser legs: one two: rolled up. Prints in pairs press soft sand. Onshore the wind blows, steals a childlike chuckle, throws it over storm bashed garden walls. Rain drives sidewards, cold as pebbles. The café is open. Soup is waiting. At night the moon crescent rests over clouds: the glimpsed belly of a genie.

23:32. Put the espresso mug down. Admit, relinquish. The sky, vast and soft and cold and black and silver speckled, turns slow overhead, whale-esque. How wearisome it seems, to need sleep or nutrients or basic hygiene. One would rather be as the sky: existent, encompassing. Can eyes crumple? Under-shadowed: distant as the night.

We are under water. Shoals of rain flash past: deft, tiny pieces. Puddle surface breaks like mirrors. It is the nature of water to unshatter: smooth to its course. Without flow it chokes. At home chicken bones are split to broil in a steel pan. Steam jitters the lid, escapes in warmly spiced blooms.

The way the wind blows is roguish today. It ties knots in loose hair, chucks tree debris, tugs at moorings. One pheasant attempting flight is held at a hover till it gives up. Clouds are pushed till they fall into one fuzzed grey spread. Indoors, a busy oven: the last of the pumpkin seeds roast, a pan of butter boils to ghee. The floors are swept and we are indecisive about the washing. Drive home from work under a dark sky, not one firework appears. There are evenings when we have stood, bundled in outdoor padding, sighing at flagrant fires in the sky: tiny against mountainous flames: writing shapes with fizzing white heat: thrilled by the tar barrels: ears crackling with luminous shrieks. Indoors, behind the Rayburn door, coals and hand-hewn logs form an orange opal underworld. The flames are lazy, magnificent, mauve-tinted.

Starlings burst trees with silhouettes and prattle. Butterflies press to warmth on fence planks. Where the river ran over the field crop strands hold in neat rows, like green hair on a cheap doll. Clouds are big, the blue sky bigger. A brown deep churn of river rushes seaward. To the bend where the fallen oak branch had taken the form of a dragon we run, ungainly, over tussocks, splash puddled mud. The water looks flat. We stare for the rise of snout, the plumed tail: and keep staring. The form is freed, we know it: out of the fibrous wood somewhere under that flat wide water he has found his limbs and turned seawards and our hearts fly after him and he was ours, for one summer.

For all the stoic talk some stuck-in-traffic fidgets appear… Still, when a journey is sufficiently endured the arrival is a delectable moment. We race past the drum and sitar players to our room. One monk's habit and one Saxon warrior bodice are swiftly recovered from cases. There is bodice lacing to be done! In the lift down to reception are a nice Indian family heading to a wedding and an implausible Middle Ages duo off to banquet. 'Are you here for the wedding?' Aethelfrida The Invincible asks. 'Yes,' the nice lady says, faintly confused. 'Are you?' 'No,' Brother Mr smiles, though it crosses his mind to act surprised that they haven't joined in with the Medieval theme. Two courtly ladies, two monks, one early Tudor gent and a Saxon tribeswoman meet up in the reception area and order taxicabs to Coombe Abbey. 'Have you been before?' Our Cabby enquires. We have not. 'You'll love it,' he declares. He&#

Love how light paints a wet road. Love the smoky breath of cloud, the greys, the pumpkin colours. Driving, singing, fill the sky with my noise. Deep in a belly is a point of universal connection, is the origin of my noise. Love the gold leaves falling. On the windscreen, where the coffee steam bloomed is clearing. The flask cup rolls loose. Other lights make starbursts, across glass, across wet road.

Happy Halloween... On the other side of the glass daylight is filtered by thick mist. It could roll away to bright autumn or a slow drizzle. Either way, it looks good for business. Karl hears Louise drop her car keys on the side, knows the kids are delivered to school. Kettle noise will follow. He should have a shower, although it's tempting just to crawl into yesterday's clothes. He puts them in the wash basket. That way, no temptation: that way, no scowls from Louise. Her hours at the shop have been cut, she makes up for it with extra housework. The house looks lovely, he admits. He thinks of the day he announced their engagement: his mother, saying, 'You'll do well, you two, you're both workers.' Almost time to order another wreath for her grave. The years are getting faster. The mortgage is getting smaller. He heads for the shower. Ivy heaves the burger boxes in the cold store. There's something about the work that makes her happy. The lift

The gulls fly inland crying tales of the sea. They draw misty tears from towers of clouds. Dog on the sofa speaks in her sleep. Up shines the sun, up shows fingerprints on windowpanes, grandchild sized. Where those dishes came from; crumbed and sullied; is a mystery. Pale things stir soapy in the washing machine. Indoors, dark fabrics air on clotheshorses, on the backs of chairs. Work trousers hang from a bookshelf. Outdoors, sentimental rain falls on a pegged wetsuit.

After the night the storm opens its eye. The walk to the river is shorter than it was, the water much wider. It flows through the field where the crop grows a hand span high, floods out swathes of it. It curves out through the culvert that was barely damp mud last time it was noticed. Birds had left clear prints. Tree trunks hold in the overspill, the footprints will be gone. Upstream is impassable: we must guess that the island, the oak dragon, the beachy flowered banks are sunk. The sky is bruised. Deep bruised, blue black. Stars: I see stars, flicker, blink.

Here is some family gathered round a table. . Here is some drawing work by Granma and Little Grandson. They ink out dinosaurs enjoying a diet of cabbage that plays tuneful havoc with prehistoric digestive systems and may account for dinosaurs not hosting family dinners. There is some confusion over what a Triceratops looks like.   Next day Baby Girl takes the lead in a pocket-filling pram stroll. They find sour sloes, a sweet apple, blackberries of all kinds, bunches of grapes and one pair of hairdressing scissors in the generous hedges. Nice neighbours give them a cake. A whole iced chocolate and vanilla sponge on a plate. It was spare to requirements in their house. It sat on the worktop while a roast dinner was appreciated. But… back at Granma's house… Boy cut his hand in a kayak roll accident and there are bills to pay and the phone won't talk to the laptop. Pictures are laboriously emailed. Boy's hand is glued up and wrapped.

Family archive picture- my stepsister, now a mother of two lovely girls :-) Book held picture-side out, some of her hair plaited and some escaped, Little Granddaughter instructs Baby Cousin on the nocturnal habits of farm animals. 'A chicken goes to sleep. A cow goes to sleep. A pig… goes to sleep.' Baby Cousin, wide eyed, absorbs shapes, colours, direction of sound. Her hair is fair and fluffy and some months away from any kind of up-do. Her big sister's hair hangs waist long, darkish shades of blonde. There's a spider bite scar on her shin where a white-tail hid in her bedding once. A spooky Facebook tale is the culprit for last night's interrupted rest. … and he didn't pass it on and they found him in the sewer… We tell her it is nonsense, of course. She smiles, sheepish, in daylight, away from fleeting shadows. Yeah, she knew that.

Zombies are giving me food for thought. They seem to be rather prevalent (although not being a great consumer of modern entertainments this seeming could be misconstrued.) Regardless of statistics, I observe a moment of soulless chomping and wonder what the creature gains from its diet? A vampire thrives on blood, a werewolf gets to be part of crazy nature, a ghost has the mixed gift of haunting. Zombies are naught but insatiable consumers. They are dispossessed of everything but that hideous, pointless appetite. I think now not of Halloween, as you might suspect, but all the commercial machinations of festival and life that do nothing to promote the real engagements, the real privileges of living. I think of being part of a different sort of devouring mass, shuffling over superficial traces, treading down careless infrastructures, recycling the senseless, putting the sharp of my tooth against flabby moral authority. If zombies were like that, they would serve a

Caterpillar likes his life. He chomps his chunky greens and ruminates. He has put a few pounds: that's contentment, a physical manifestation of his ease in the world. Literally, he is growing in importance. He has a cousin the same age as him, the same growth spurt. Cousin Caterpillar is nervous about his girth though. It makes you a bigger target for predators he says, and what are we growing for? How a metamorphic invertebrate feels is irrelevant, Caterpillar reminds himself. He spins himself a chrysalis. Cousin Caterpillar must do just the same. If one is a caterpillar, this is what must be done. It's a fine job, velvety, rich looking, it fits to perfection. But inside the pod it is so dark! He can hear his heart beating and it doesn't sound right at all. He can hear the wind rising outside and do nothing more to shelter himself. He is stuck. He closes his eyes though there's no point. After this: after this he will not know the world at all.

Did we do good..? In the night a storm has blown in, a lively sort, whips rain and wrestles tall trees. Some storms have an element of brooding: the ones you wait for are usually that way. Yesterday we made the drag to Bristol, clutching coffee. Since Friday the Academy has been busy with the people in the white training suits; they have been running up and down the stairs, packed with fears and hopes. They have been leaking sweat, and some tears. At the foot of the stairs the breaking-horse sits. At the top on the left is the thin room, perfect for queuing, where the theory questions linger and sometimes answers come even under the pressure of those secluded hopes, those self defeating fears. At the top on the right is the room with the wooden floor, the main show. Everything else is peripheral. Here, observed, you test yourself. If you were there, you know how you think you did. If your students were there, you know how you think they did. But the official stamp is

Slow wind brushes on rain-soft earth and we hear none of it. We take breakfast at noon before walking to the river. Green threads stickle the field that was bare brown three days earlier. Pheasants and moorhens throw themselves up into flight. Down by the river grows an invasive weed, I've read the seed is edible. Mr and I take each a bag, indulge in some eco-friendly vandalism. We say how fast the water goes and look, where I crossed, was it last week, now it is thigh high, it would fill your boots and shove you. Two bags full and we are weary again. At home is coffee, some sneaked chocolate. Foraged goods are dropped in the larder cupboard, for experiments at later dates. I write. The others do… stuff. Food cooks, and goes wrong. Hungry, we eat and shrug. Next time, choose stock cube or salt not both: next time, get the water to boil before fresh pasta drops and sticks. Hey-ho. Outside the moon rises, circular, silver. We mooch about, mostly c