Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Wednesday afternoon: Cloud is foam on a dark sky: blows like spray. Wind in the broad oaks is wild music. Everything shakes. Even the dense perfume of the lyme trees is blown out across the field where the cows, overwhelmed, have lain down. In the garden, under the Perspex arches, heat gathers, pressures like a pulse. Thursday morning: Clouds are tall ships, moored, out on a Mediterranean blue. Wind furls. One small girl lies on a rug, counting aeroplanes, telling a dog not to chew stones, telling pirate tales to a plastic crocodile. Thursday afternoon: The renovator smiles. Her hair is dusted red from rubbed off rust. The first coat of paint was rushed, because of the quick darkening of sky. The rain did not transpire. The chair frames are drying in the back of her car. Weather can change. The brush is resting in white spirit. She forgets about the brush. She sits at the picnic table with her granddaughter: they make stories for aeroplanes. Where's

A calendar year begins in winter, stark and spiced. Spring pokes through, budded, pretty. The bloom is biggest in summer. Even the late to leaf ash trees are feathered in green, now, in the year's second change of season. The hedgegrass has gone wild: gobbled up the village name; licks at the speed limit signs. Wild strawberries and feral loganberries take warmer and deeper hues. Flowers spray colour everywhere and the roses droop with scent. ' I love it!' Little Granddaughter greets her third year: swirls in a princess dress, swings a plastic tool kit. Her mother calls her 'Princess Fix-It.' Gronmere has painted her a tree mural: she loves that too. In the garden her first sunflower opens its warm yellow face and is loved.

Monday Evening: Bundled solar lights in the polytunnel give tropical leaves an artic-blue slant. Ten slugs are plucked from the soil: moist bits of muscle that contract on touch. They have no concept of ownership, nor of work: their lives seem harmlessly simple, apart from this misunderstanding between us. They eat our work before it fruits: their boneless bodies are fed to nesting birds. Wood smoke moves through the house, startled up by the wine blips. After a good day's work, feet rest up and the gardening books are open. Tuesday Morning: Everything green gets bigger and bigger. Lawnmowers are pushed to keep the grass from swallowing all of civilisation. The butternut squash might form its own government. We edge the vast leaves, placatory.  'The feed is working,' we agree. Underneath, the spinach is finding a way, the sweet peppers seem content. Over at the shed the roof seems watertight. 'Exciting times,' we agree. There is still a prob

The last tent to arrive is put up in laps of drizzle, next to the old fashioned frame tent, facing the giant ex-display bargain. The last tent is a modest dome, suitable for short stay camping. But not, it turns out, as waterproof as it should be. Rain is sieved by the flysheet: the big tent has the same problem. Ad hoc towels soak up the worst of it. There's a moment that will be familiar to most damp campers, where everyone considers giving up. Once the indoor picnic is spread; oh my heavens, it goes on for miles; that moment is consigned. It's not so cold, after all, once we've found some dry socks and this fine dining. It's only one night, after all. What's a little rain on your olives? We will eat and talk; I'm on Chapter Ten, I can tell them; and Little Grandson will stay up late playing Uno, looking sooo casual in his dinosaur onesie. He loves his cousins and his baby brother: but they are rubbish at card games thus far. The morning is made f

'Gronmere,' Little Granddaughter says. [Transitioning the name previously spoken as Nam-ma. ] 'My flowers are getting Very Big in the [a pause here: aware of the word 'polytunnel' uncertain how to turn it to sound] shed. Very Big.' 'Yes.' Gronmere is blowing up a balloon, the sort that can be folded into symbolic shapes. 'What shall we make?' [Expects the answer 'a flower.'] 'Milk for a chicken.' 'Milk for a chicken? Made from a balloon?' 'Yes.' [Laughs, as though Gronmere's puzzlement is surely faked for her amusement.] Outside, a continent of cloud drifts by. Rain flattened grass eases vertical. The lawn hops with happy blackbirds. Leaves of the iris wave, spear straight. 'Sword fight?' Gronmere suggests.

Monday Afternoon: In the polytunnel a sunflower swells close to bloom. Peas climb and look merry; something in the curl of those tendrils: how they reach to the world. Leaves on a butternut squash, squash a few stray spinach plants and the leeks, encroached, will need a rescue soon. The tomatoes have their own cul-de-sac, opposite the nursery shelves that are stocked in repurposed pots. In here it simmers with life, it brews up out of the soil, this amazing overboil of leaf and frond. And even outside, it is hot. Washing is crisp on the line. Monday Evening: After the storm, after the lightening bolts horizontal over the road ahead, after the one roll of thunder heard; the long deep roll over the moortop; a looking glass puddle at the roadside shows us the stilled sky, the tree branches leafed and quiet. Tuesday Morning: Dark swarms; washing is unpegged from the line. Squares of yellow and blue fold over the wire clotheshorse instead. Under the lean-to roof

There is brainsteam (imaginary, vivid as a scald) hissing from my ears: sign of a fine writing binge: also indicates an apt time for a break, before reality is hazed out. Dog is pacing. She has fulfilled her sofa sleep quota. 'Walk?' I have asked the right question. The lanes splash blossom; creamy foamy Cow Parsley umbrels of blossom. Blue and white and pink and yellow shine below: bells, worts, orchids, cups. Split tailed summer birds dive and the cows are sun bathing, between bouts of warm heavy rain. All day it fast switches: rain, sun, both full. The rainbows are thick with colour. Back in the little office room, words arrive and are typed down. Between words, weeding and watering and the planting-on is done. And de-slugging and the whipping here and there of wet washing. Hedge birds sing, just of ordinary things. Dog follows, puts her nose over the grass: all seems well. All the windows and doors are open to the scents of rain and bluebells. In th

Flash Blind On Thursday April's Alphabet Challenge is completed: I look it over, satisfied. This years tactic of the random word choice proved easy in that there was always a subject available for each letter; difficult in that I don't write from prompts. It was a shove outside the comfort zone. Any exercise performed outside this zone gives maximum benefit for effort: I feel toned and ready for May's challenge: a (fingers crossed) final push of Finishing The Novel. This morning and more is taken up with a slug war (fighting back for the basil and melons with salt and garlic: smells better than other wars) and driving Boy to Places. Later this afternoon, with Dog, walking, down by the river: not the desk time I had envisaged, too beautiful to argue with: all the trees gain leaf weight, the hedges swell, the summer birds arrive. Time, then, to ready oneself for going out to work, to let go of what has not been achieved with the day. We are on the doorstep, abo

Last day of the Alphabet Challenge: my dictionary random selection offers me a snack. Zwieback, filling the niche between toast and biscuit, is an egg rich loaf that is sliced and further baked: zwieback means 'twice baked.' Cinnamon would be a nice addition, although the recipe I looked up had nutmeg. All Recipes: Sugar Zwieback Today is not for baking, there is too much garden work to do, so I'm leaving this link here to get back to when the next batch of planting and repotting is done. For my finale, I have put all of my randomly selected words into one sentence, and found that there is a kind of story in it, because every sentence has a sort of implied story to it, because story underpins everything we do, because more than bones or dust, story is our existence and our legacy. No wonder we are drawn to this reading and writing lark! April 2014 A-Z Finale Sentence: After an a bysmal b anister c onclusion at my d omicile lead me to e xpostulate, dr

The name of the tree that binds heaven, earth and hell. In the Old Norse tongue it was spelt Yggdrasill, apparently, but the significance of this extra consonant is not explained. No pronunciation guide in the Writer's Dictionary: perhaps there is a companion book, a Reader's Dictionary? Significance of the tree and of the binding is apparent, though all these interpretations have a personal element. Heaven, earth and hell, as bound by Yggdrasil and regarded by myself, form a set. They represent life and consequences. They represent the present moment, potential futures; a body of knowledge and experience passed on by all the souls that have lived. Further ruminations are interrupted by a phone call that leads to a family trip to hospital with Girl and Little Granddaughter, who has fallen from a chair in a hard-floored kitchen and broken her left clavicle. We all look at the x-ray, at a fine line in pale etched bone. Girl is blinking tears, they are ruining her

On this final week of the Alphabet Challenge, I have reached for The Oxford Writer's Dictionary, which gives a writer a fast and easy aid to usage, style and spelling. X is a tricky letter but it covers some interesting stuff like xylography, the printing of wood block books. However the random choice is… x.n. I have never heard of it, unsurprisingly, as it means 'without the right to new shares.' It belongs to a tricksy financial world ( Lord of the Rings reference: I'm thinking of Mordor) which is in a galaxy far far from here ( Star Wars , thinking Death Star.) On a disinterested Google search, Xn shows up as a chemical hazard code, meaning harmful, before it appears in a Reuters post about steel and stock markets. [Cue scrunched-face thinking moment.] I do not, actually, despise money. Currency is a sort of metaphor, where an object represents being equal in value to another, and often is composed of pleasant artifacts: notes and coins hold fascinatio

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/south-korea/seoul At Bristol Academy, 163A Church Road, Redfield, Bristol: It is crowded. While our nervous yet determined students are working up a sweat in the hall upstairs, I take a walk around St George's Park. It rains, light heavy, and snows cherry blossom. Over the pond each drop patters, sends out loops. Ducks waddle on the path. They all look as I pass: quack, contended. Nice weather for ducks. Chestnut trees have flowers that stack like wedding cakes. Spring is for beginnings. Summer to autumn for fruition, winter for the hack back to skeletal basics.  Spring is for beginnings…  There's something about the combination of a mass meeting of like minded people, the creative surge of nerves and knowledge (plus espresso) makes my brain splurge: before I have put a foot back to the Academy words are pinging. In the porch, simply conversing, words become attached to potential actions. Mr appears, from his hall upstairs perch. He is smil

It had been one of those days where the rain had given up and allowed the sun to prevail. There was a jangle of change in my pocket and some of the coins where even the shiny important sort: I was thinking perhaps I would treat myself to a beetroot or a bulb of smoked garlic, from the greengrocer in the White Hart Market. Across the tiny market lane the secondhand bookstore had a box of tired old books, three for a pound. Three books for a pound, irresistible: that's a fact. I found a David Lodge, a Bernard Cornwell, and a 1946 cotton covered hardback titled The Impudence of Youth. The author, the eponymous Warwick, had written quite a list, I saw, and something about the whole package had a pleasant feel to it. And I had enough pennies left over to purchase a bunch of celery. Settling outside for a read, the words were dated, and that was most of the charm of the piece. It had a mix of 'come on, there's a plot that needs to proceed' briskness and dis

Potentially edgy, I thought, on first reading today's random word, though Fowler's is concerned with the noun signifying a clamp (vise, in American English, this word coming from the Latin for 'vine') and the titular application, as in vice admiral (meaning next in line or in place of. This word from the Latin for 'change.') But the idea was to take the word as a starting point: was it? I forget my own purpose, here, and stare out of the window. Daydreaming like most habits can be considered as a positive behaviour or as a vice (the naughty kind, which word stems from the Latin for 'fault.') It is a matter of perception and balance. Cake, for example, and let's make it a big creamy chocolate stack, is not packed with nutritional necessities. A lot of it will cause you harm. A little (or enormous) slice now and then, however, is a reminder to have fun in your life. If you get the balance wrong, your health suffers. It would be sensible to r

In Fowler's, this phrase refers mainly to geographical terms: down south, up north. Growing up in Cornwall was somewhat insular and we referred to everything that was placed northerly to us as being 'up country.' Only when you are a mere infant it is more 'Upcountry,' as though it forms a different land.  If you go Upcountry, they'll put allsorts in, call it a pasty, 's a disgrace. And, if there is an up and a down, who says the earth is flat? Stuff is simple and yet puzzling when you are four. On a tilted link, then; sliding into childhood language; here are some words I use that I rarely remember are dialect: Addled (broken) Cack (poop) Cakey (feeble, from the saying 'put in with the cakes took out with the buns') Chacks (cheeks) Cheel (child, usually a girl) Furze (gorse bush) Gawky (stupid) Heller (naughty) Kiddlywink (unlicensed beer shop, also I love 'kiddly broth' for cheap soup) Mind (remember)