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A Short Tae Kwon-Do Holiday

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Saturday too early the alarm is beeping. Sleep on, the inner voice whispers, all cozy and snoozy and compelling but we get up anyway. Rain falls and falls. Hot water tumbles from a tap. A short bath of bliss and ease before the plug is pulled and a coffee pot bubbles and somehow in the car we are sitting, dressed, hair wet. Fingers warm on an industrial mug. Watch the sky bleach. Rain falls and falls. Where are we going? Swindon. Ah, yes. Home of the roundabout. Mr slats the car into a space. We have yellow shirts on, much brighter than the weather. Into the arena we take our flasks of coffee and the usual game plan. The job of a Welfare Officer is to safeguard children and vulnerable adults. The opportunity of a Welfare Officer is to bring a sense of resilience. We say: ‘Let me see… One nose, two eyes, that seems right: is that normal for you?’ They rub their bumped faces. Some giggle, some make the face of You Are Not Funny You Know. They see the fight through and get to be

October Haze

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All the molecules of a storm swarm the sky. While they misconfigure the sun shines a bar of heat. Down in the cut field Dog herds pheasants into squawks. Rosehips are plucked, rubies of the hedge, though the shield beetles wave legs like angry curators. The polytunnel echoes where the tomatoes stood: a tub on a windowsill indoors is full of ripening. Potted chilli plants are spread across the gap. So content in this stretched out warmth, the lime tree blossoms petals of solid white, densely fragranced. One medium frog squiggles from under a melon leaf. It blinks as though newly woken and its legs, uncomfortably, ungainly, follow the chartreuse body back into shade. Night shimmers in, in layers and pieces. Storm winds peak and trough. Leaves fall, pave the roads in a mulch of gold.

The Far End Of Early Autumn

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Saturday, Northcott Mouth Beach Wellies are dragged off, after the climb over barnacled rocks. One day, this beachcomber thinks, that hunched cliff will stick out legs, the cave mouth will shut, the land will swim into the ocean. Bare feet slip into sand, that finely ground metaphor for time. Dogs run and surfers sing, sliding down rock slopes, hopping over stones, splashing happy to the cool clean barrels. Sunday, Exmouth Little Grandson gets strong by eating cabbage. His baby brother waves a Yorkshire pudding, yells triumphant. He has cheeks like a moon, like Old Gilbert, theres a photo of Gilbert smiling I remember: the same moon beam from both faces. In the highchair Baby Girl twirls broccoli in her curls. Out of the highchair she not only walks but marches and spins and performs a most graceful collapse-in-angst. She is drawn to Great-Granma’s pearls. Spectacles have the same enticement of shine but one is told no, again! Baby Boy shoots past in his walker. Pee-yo

A Farmyard Faux Pas

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Cows turn their angled heads to lean through the bars. Little Granddaughter holds an open hand up to their raspy tongues and unnerves them with the pitch of her delight. They are getting used to her though, they soon settle to it. She repeats that she loves all of them and especially that one and this one and all of them. ‘We need to get shovelling,’ Granma reminds. The dung pile is on the opposite side of the yard. Granma has forgotten to put her boots on but it’s a dry hot sort of autumn day. Dry dung dust skitters in a warm breeze. They haul bags and a spade and a small gardening fork out of the car to begin. Little Granddaughter sticks her miniature fork gamely into a dung globe and tips it into the first bag. ‘That’s hard work,’ she says, rubbing her back. ‘Phew-ee.’ Granma has ten bags to fill. She smiles. ‘We can go and see the cows again in a minute,’ the little one decides. She prongs another dung ball in. Granma has the spade. She is thinking about the sound of the

Tales From The Tenets And Other News

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It’s all over Facebook and Twitter (on my accounts if not all) so it is time perhaps to speak of it here too. Tales From The Tenets. You will most likely be familiar with the concept of a tale. A tenet is essentially a principle, a guideline, you may know this also. These eponymous tenets are known to many Tae Kwon Do practitioners, being in common use as rules to live by. Courtesy Integrity Perseverance Self Control and Indomitable Spirit! We spin them out like a chant as we explain them to our new students/remind regular students why they are doing those apology press ups. But how to make our mantra stick? How to show these rules are to make you a good person, how to explain that good people are happy people without sounding like this: blahblah do-as-you’re-told blahblah be a sheep baa baaa ? You could try telling some tales, of course. Ronko The Rude Clown, for example. He has such selfish mean behaviour that he can’t even be bothered with personal hygiene and as a resul

Early Start, With Ear Flip

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The warm night wind blew round and round till it circled to a faraway storm.  Morning comes, and mist settles over the river. It makes shadow puppet scenery with our horizons and the sun is a creamy blaze. Dog wakes reluctant, obedient. Me too.  I put on my running shoes: she sighs: I know.  Both of us will pad to the lane. We will breathe in musty farmyard, sour-fresh hedge, damp tarmac, we will feel the air, humid, moderate. Reluctance sheds off, I know it does. We pad to the lane, breathe in.  The sequence occurs as expected, as previously experienced. The way Dog looks, an ear flip, a jaunty tongue, is firsthand delight. Untrammelled. We run. Some of it is plod and grumble. Some of it is pure sprint: uphill: steeply uphill. Some of it is stretch-the-legs (walking for a bit, whilst maintaining a mindset of running, which may or may not be cheating but at least is still moving.) All of it under this sky. 

Of Sticks And Fish

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Are you playing Sticks? Oh... I'll wait... With eight fruit bearing trees a garden officially becomes an orchard: we have fifteen planted now. Eight are the new hand reared damsons. They look barely more than twigs, too slender to survive. But I remember that the cherry was dog mauled (she thought it actually was a stick, ate most of the bark) and thrived. It was the most productive fruiter this summer although the cheeky blackbird ate all but two of the cherries. There is no knowing, only doing and thus with wry grins we had collected from our neighbours; marched it, one at each heavy corner; their old bath. This will be my new water garden and may even house a fish. For now it is a perfect nook for lolling and reading and the occasional visit from a spaniel. It is so comfortable, slumped, dozy, watching the washing blow: a warm wind brushing my forehead: eyes could close here and open anywhere, it has a portal feel to it, a comfortable portal reflecting sunlight. Perhaps