Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Each day a quota holds, a minimum punnet. Fingernails clipped short, cuticles sundried, dyed in berry shades: criss cross thorn scars, inked in. The weather blows cold, blooms hot; it seems visible, a haze of temperatures, spiralling. They rotate over crop fields. They echo the blades of harvest. The hedges will be cut too: every day a quota holds, to fetch the berries in. At home, there are two kinds of thing: that which is left, stacked unheeded, undusted, untended, until after picking: that which is paraphernalia for picking (vats for brewing, jam pans, ice cream tubs, bottles, recipes, air locks, siphon pipes, vinegar, sugar, spice and such and such.) This morning plucked meadowsweet bubbles with honey, flavours our fermented tea.  Variations on our harvesting vocation: Friday: Acquaintance made with a tiny kitten. Little Granddaughter has named him, or rather announced a string of names and her parents have picked their least unpopular offering. So he is not called

Several fruits the squash plant started, lately: each of them had putrefied, no bigger than a fat thumb, grey furred. The stems leaked as they were cut, as all the wide and finely spined leaves were sliced out and a green overflow drifted up against the fence next to the compost bin. Several more fruits were seen, hard greenish fruits that seemed impervious to mould, too late: the stems all cut, the roots dug up. Too late! But here, in the opened space, is room for potted melon plants to unconfine roots. Melons are summer fruit: pumpkins are for autumn? But the pale outgrowths swell healthy, hang content from trellis in the topsy-turvy polytunnel. Outside more blackberries are picked and picked. The hedges bloom butterflies and sometimes one will sit on a dark-bright berry, slurping juice: carefully watched, though as yet none have changed colour. The air is hot or cold without intermediate: summer and autumn awkwardly spliced.

Saturday, Dog & Me We venture out around the middle point of day, when the tractor boys have slumped for lunch; I guess at cab-warm sandwiches and an energy drink. I have a pot for blackberries and barely stop, just wander and pluck and the layers add up; globules, purple-black, heavy in the heat; I have an eye too for where rosehips are rounding out, for dark dots of elderberry, blue sloes with their whitish bloom, amiable red on the hawthorn stems. We wade the thick grass to the maize field's far edge where a leafy tunnel whispers, irresistible. We had better not tread too far, maize being the kind of crop that will grow behind your back and not tell the way out. I hold my berry tub close, to remind me: these I picked to take home. Jam, wine, cordial, crumble, pie: the recipe is not decided: something, always, is being made.  Sunday, Girl, Little Granddaughter, Dog & Me Two gallons, the big tub holds. At the hedgerow, thirty finger digits drip purple. One

It was as though the essence of festival had been tube packed then blown up. Our vantage point was excellent, we clearly saw: it was fire fragments of candied fruit, fairy lights, tinsel sheen; glitter flowers, gaudy wrap; they burst into the night, blitzed out, dropped jaws: such brief and glorious pauses. We drove home, down lanes, tiny, roofed in hedge: labyrinthine: the moon was three quarters fat, shining. Our bellies ruminated burger and chips. I should like to be a spark, of sorts, I think, while the road opens out to streetlamps and there are silhouettes behind curtains. Just one spark, and we should have a camper van, and drink more coffee on more beaches and just one grain of sand on the beach of brilliance, that's my ambition, one amongst the throng that calls to you and says this is it, is it not enough? Look closely, it is all this beautiful, it is all delicious, and you don't need much and how lovely were those fireworks, one is all agog. A late night

Water rises, slowly, in the balanced dish, in the thin china flaked with corn that went unrinsed after last night's supper, the tap squeaks. Other dishes too are stacked, the edges ripple overflow: water pours, with intermittent squeak, stirs up the stagnant strip of flat in the washing up bowl; tiny reflections tremble. Grey light sighs over crumbed worktops. A towel on the floor in front of the washing machine, striped in shadow, dotted in sand. Where are the wetsuits? Unrinsed, one suspects; smiles, raises up the window blinds to bulked cloud; thinks of yesterday. How warm it was: how we sat with the sun-bloom on our faces, on the way to work, straight from Perranporth beach, in the car drinking cold coffee and how the rain came down! The air chilled. It even had that smell, that faint spice of autumn. At work we were pale with sea salt and dusty sand. At home, warm socks waiting.

At Princetown we set out. (There should be a Princesstown, I decide. The Little Granddaughters would love that.) Overhead clouds are passing, grandiose, pausing to monologue, wandering, yet intently, stage left. We start with a hill, The Chap advises, then the rest of the walk will seem easier. North Hessary Tor suffices to warm us up: me, The Chap, Houseguest Ben and effervescent Dog. She spins in dry dung, chases birds she'll never catch. How many people die here, Ben asks, after the instructions on bogland and hyperthermia. He observes the cloud drama and pulls up his hood. Thousands, says The Chap, kindly smiling, but less now there is good mobile coverage. He has full kit. We have water and dried fruit. Dog chews some grass. We can stick to the path, I say, let Chap go wandering. He has highlighted our map for a rendezvous lunch. The path we drop down to was a railway, once upon a time, when the quarry was a grand business.  My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Down the river lane and at the wide corner strawberry patches carry leaf, not flower, not fruit: but elsewhere; Barton, Carzantic, Treniffle; blackberries fatten. Four pots of jam have been made; blackberry with banana; one is opened for breakfast; another picking pot is full in the fridge, will be pudding later. The hedge is tentacled, prickled with mild perils, thorn, wasp, horsefly, nettle. Young green berries, hard as carapace, have their small heads nodding. Dog is grateful for the breeze; she sits to wait and listen; the recycling truck is late this week, has all its windows down and the radio loud. Clouds draw and a gate is open; we explore, we make the cut straw music, a late summer plink. Here the berries are not abundant, nor ripe, but the field is gold-red striped, puffed with stray seed. In the corner where the stream drips thorough Dog frolics in its hollowed bed, roofed in oak leaf; and out comes the sun. 

05/08/14: Last night we lit one candle, turned out the electric lights, let the house stand quieted, in memoriam. It was late when war was announced, a summer's late evening in 1914: some other family may have sat, then, freckled by sun, with a dog snoring and their grown boys playing cards, the radio on. Perhaps they made tea, as is still the custom, not knowing what else to be busy with. Keep calm and put the kettle on . Speculate that it should all be over soon, let other worries fuzz a cover: bombs will scare the dog, who will clear the guttering if the boys enlist? If… 06/08/14: Morning rain is musical; percussion on leaf; in the twist of a sluice like faraway bells. 

(A report from the TAGB Southwest Summer Camp aka Our Family Holiday) Eight nights under canvas, six days of Tae Kwon-Do training, weather most obliging.  Saturday: arrive, sign in, pitch up your tent. In summer Cornish roads are squished. Caravans bounce off hedges. Even motorcyclists get wedged, with steam squeaking out of leathers. Bored children cry, throw up brightly coloured sweets. Tracks over moor lands pulse with headaches of lost families and Satnavs advising turn around, turn around, in every direction. Even with the advantage of local knowledge it is such relief to reach the open field, kick off shoes, pace out under the pine tree edging. We raise our tent easy: those less practised are spotted and offered help. Boy and I are training this year: Mr is injured. He will be cooking and playing in the sea (not simultaneously.) Forays for supplies are made. There's a fish and chip van in the village and decent coffee available from the Post Office. At

One young fox pads across the village road, unnerved by a squabble of magpies. Heat is thickening. Flowers reach unbearable brightness. Dark fleas show on Dog's white fur. Back at the house six excessively purchased bags of cheap salt sit on the kitchen worktop. It is hot work to salt the carpets. It takes one bag of salt to cover all of them. The other five sit, over prepared, lined up, a show of strength. A couple of hours wait is recommended, while the fine mineral dehydrates insect eggs. Fleas are poor swimmers, too, they thrive in the moderate zone: not immersion, not desiccation. It makes the river obvious. Dog hobbles (infected paw: she is having an unlucky week) over the dry grass. The crop field is unstirred. All the wheat stands as though it would crumble to dust: we dare not touch it. But the water is close: cold, clear, edged in light that flows up, that plays over the broad tree trunks, over the tumbling weeds. Wading in happens fast. Heat calms, damsel flies

In The Afternoon: The loosest cotton still traps heat. Every breeze is embraced. People are walking in food halls to linger in freezer aisles, they are loitering at every air-conditioned doorway, they are sitting on shaded benches, postured like slightly deflated balloons. There's no explanation for the girl in a woollen hat. Girl and hat cause ripples of surprise. Only ripples: it is too hot for waves. Plymouth's streets hover heat. In The Evening: All the city errands are done. The air is thick, a clear fog, even in the wood shade, even at the river's edge. Coolness lies in the murk of water, calm as a carp. Beyond the upside down trees, clouds reflect. Later, wet clothes are dumped in a washing machine; from the doorstep of an untidy house, a thunderstorm is observed. 

Castle Beach, with my daughter, 1990 One: The first sounds of summer are not song, exactly, but I can't ignore them. They are too entwined in this experience of life. My strongest sounds of summer are primordial: waves that wash slow over quartz pebbles and medium grain sand; chirrups of split tail birds; the breeze idling though a full-leafed tree. After this I think of beach chatter: what you hear when your eyes are closed in full sun, when the beach is busy, that blend of every human social vocal. There are human musical sounds that evoke summer things too, though, stuff you could put on a mix tape. There are: Two: Kelly Marie. I Feel Love . Because disco works best in the heat, because this is the song I associate with going on the Waltzers at the travelling fair. Sequins, candyfloss, coloured light bulbs spinning. Walking in a wonky line with innocently sticky knees; everything smells of sugar, onions, cigarettes, fruity lip gloss.  Three: Janice Joplin. Summerti

I walk Dog and my elderly neighbour around the block. I do not put Dorothy on a lead, please understand, although she does alarm me as the tractors pass. 'That's all right,' she says, stopping unpredictably under the bucket of a Massey Fergusson; waving at the grey bearded driver; 'is that one of ours? Oh yes, I know his mother. That's Christopher.'  Christopher waves back. 'Yes, I know his mother,' she grins, walking on, after the machine has crawled carefully by. 'It is lovely to be out here,' she says. Her eyes flitter like a butterfly over the hedges, the old chapel all done up, the quarry busy with forklifts today. I had been walking past Dorothy's garden when she asked where was I going: around the block? Could she join me? 'Well of course.' I wait for her to check that she's turned things off in her neat home, and she keeps pace very well and breathes easy up every hill. She tells of how she used to walk

Saturday: begins with finding a butterfly in a newly opened sunflower. A day in which one drives a loop of town hoping for a free space, settles for a car park, finds the pay machine is out of order. Pennies earmarked for parking are counted over to the proprietor of the second hand bookstore, the remainder buys an avocado.  On walking Dog, a tennis ball is un-lodged from a hedge; wild strawberries and meadowsweet grow; ransoms and red clover offer up ripe seeds. A swimming costume is found in the shoulder bag underneath the unneeded raincoat; there's a stretch of water clear of rocks. Swimming with Dog, upriver. Skin shivers, damply redressed, jumps old storm felled trees to warm up.  Home to show Mr foraged goods, and how a poppy has appeared in the vegetable patch.  A granddaughter is brought, tired, with cake to share. 'Did you have fun at the party?' 'We played football and chasin-' she prods the icing. 'I don't love blue. I love pink.

Trying with the borrowed laptop. Not liking the borrowed laptop. Feeling apologetic.  Such a first world problem! Trying again. The moon that is sighed to is as wide as it can be, milky as glaucoma. Mistakes every third word, at least. Tap tap- oh, not that- tap- oh… Try again: oh… Conscious of a lack in flow. Hands tap knees instead. Outside the moon has worn thin. The sky is swirled out and sequined: one star is spun free. Remember the fibre tip pen you had? After the years of cheap biro that leaked ink in your pockets? The lump on your finger from gripping the plastic? How beautiful that fibre tip! It glided. (Special effect produced by a marshmallow on a fiery stick)

I pegged a pale wash to the line  before work. I worried  about a stain on my white shirt  it's a shirt, only, a length of cotton stitched  cotton that was grown from seed picked and handled to the loom  woven, bought, cut, made, sold, handed on.  I should not take any presence for granted.  Then I remember that to care for a thing  might not mean to worry over it.  The sun will shine. Blotches fade, or not.  I will still like my shirt. It blows rounded on the line, not unlike  a pegged cloud. Loganberry Jam: delicious! Must remember to wear an apron for the next batch though :-) 

Inch high pomegranates perky in their individual pots: lettuce, revived, has a shine like slivered mineral, like banded malachite displayed backlit in a local museum. Labels have dropped from repurposed tins, they are rust dotted silver, nurturing life. A sequinned star that fell from a fairy grandchild's wand waves in the tops of tomato forestation. Under the intoxicating white flowered lime with many curious orange and peppery eyes squats a nasturtium. Laughing Buddha, missing his left hand, still is jolly in his resting tub: all the green, the colour splots, they are magic, treasure, cheer.

Widdershins we walked, on the Longest Day, late, as the sun descended to a bed of pink cloud. Around the lanes we walked, the lanes that lay low in the mountains of hedge. Dog's whitish fur was bouncing back light: our trotting glow worm. Through the tree shadows cow cries came, and dinosaur snorts that startled Dog.  Since then the feverish time is spent, hot, melted without a pot. Boy finishes his exams: is making frenetic plans for moving on: The Novel is ready to start rounds of editing: this is all change. We do not know what will happen. Our little world turns. But in the hedges bloom meadowsweets and wild rose. The path to the river is light and shade together. The river water muddied and I cannot see my feet. The cooling feel on these sore feet is calming and then the way the light is playing on the surface, and the smallest glimpse of rock: it seems to be inviting me in.  The river has something to convey.  Blind feet slide, several times slip, no ha