Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Snowdrops white-flare in sun: overcast they embrace a wistful prettiness. The sky is gathering dark: into the cold pool of sky: clouds are beginning to dissolve. We are working in a school while the old town hall hosts a musical production. It smells like soap; fake floral, somehow reassuring. Outside, the last winter month splices into spring. In here; the lunch benches, the climbing bars, the bold childish brushstrokes on thick paper, the wires that hang from the back of a stereo; that clean scent. The last class gather in through the fire doors, in from the night. It's snowing.

Are you sitting comfortably? Once upon a time there were gentlemen, outwardly gender defined by tailoring and facial hair. There were gentlewomen at this time as well, with plump hair and laced in waists. And the fashion of this time was not all coiffure and garb but also social. Support for the orphaned, the bereaved, the enslaved, the badly housed, the homeless, the sick, the malnourished, the uneducated and the generally oppressed was the height of good manners. Social conditions improved, though they were never perfected. Gender identification became less important to intelligent people, and the costumes more user friendly, though sometimes less pleasing to the eye. Philanthropy remains chic, to this day. Money is after all quite useless unless in some kind of use. Beyond a certain level of stuff, there is too much stuff and it becomes oppressive, not fun: not glad to be alive at all. To effect joy is a regenerating act: it brings freedom to the giver and the recei

Photograph by Layla Burford: thank you :-) Breakfast is messy; thick, hot, sweet; baked banana pancakes. Leftover espresso recycled with boiled water. Steam does a little dance over the mugs. We think we might be awake. Shirts pressed, ties tied, blazers brushed. Outside everyone winces in the wet cold. The paperwork is safe in plastic boxes. A short drive is admired for its convenience. We do not always have the benefit of convenience. In the car park are people shrinking which has a logic to it: less rain falls on a smaller area. We greet as we walk, brisk, chirpy, into the school and down the corridor and into the hall and say more hello, hello and get on with jobs. Wheel the meal tables out, stick floor numbers down, lay out the paperwork, find pens, count students, file them out. Herd them into grades, say Do This Do That and what, for example, can you tell me about why we do it. Sigh for their disappointments. Admire their achievements. Herd them up again fo

Yesterday in the polytunnel it was discovered: a short distance of panel had blown from its fixing: swiftly mended: battened down before it becomes a hatch. Tomorrow the biggest storm is expected. Cornflower, now, this morning sky: smooth as plaster in a fine country house. Boy goes walking to take in the blue, to breathe some dry air. As he steps up the driveway the backdrop blackens. He looks over his shoulder. 'I enjoyed that calm,' he says. Exit stage left, pursued by cloud … Wind catches like flames, roars over the fields. It sings in the wires and throws rain everywhere. On the city road colours trail; finger smudges in wet chalk; neon signifiers of modern isolation; a beautiful city stoicism. In the car just me and music communing with weather and deep water hues. Out from the city the unlit roads draw glitter from headlights. Shadow trees bend. How rain dances: silver on graphite: siren calligraphy. First crocus! Cheery precursor of sprin

No storm today. Rain and a trudge around some local damage. In the lanes potholes are ground deeper by a swill of loose stone. The fat trunked ash is conveniently falling twig by twig. Next door fares a leaky front room and a greenhouse left more frame than glass. We lean over the fence, observe the wrecked reflective pieces. Elsewhere; we note; other people are prising trees out of roofs: evacuated: more, much more is forecast: weather talk stumbles out of the anodyne zone into an apocalypse. The sky lies on the horizon, innocuous grey, keeps us guessing.

~ The road is so wet; a long dark throat of it One slit-eye moon rolls Night arches by: note the languorous float of it ~ Like a whale, I think: in the chill deep it lives Calm or storm: comfortable, part of the abyss ~

Something under the ground Outside the converted chapel Creeps up ominous A red bloom spreads On the gravel, looks murderous It's the ruddy earth, or the terracotta brick Or we are mistaken And things are as unseemly as they seem… In the morning sky Pink and dark Clouds bloom Over Carzantic: storm roses.