Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

(Scratches scalp, sighs) I should remember how to add this code into my blog? I did it before. I can’t remember. Distract and come back to it? Oh, fine. Everyone on Facebook is feeling blessed. Think I’ll take a walk. See if I can remember to appreciate my legs. ‘How’s it going, hun?’ (Huffs: can't think with that racket going on!) ‘Do you want some wine?’ Neither question requires an answer.

‘Bodily, totally, root and branch,’ a phrase pressed into one word, ‘bodyaciously’ is given as the etymology for this word: slang from South Carolina.  Bodacious, in use from 1837 or earlier, may also be a blend of bold and audacious: a word composited from two synonyms. It was also the name of a bull famous for head butting rodeo contestants. Comedic chaos. Language should be this: like us: it requires play to fully live. 

I am ruled as the birds sing. I am open to weather. ~ There was that phase where I tried to live without cutlery (aged about 8?) The soup bowl had a lip, most awkward. In the end I gave in to a spoon. Cutlery began to make sense to me. But on the beach a shell was my spoon. It is still. When the gulls call, it sounds like they are laughing.

Tiredness is an arse. An inconsiderate underminer, riddling calm. Over and over, grace rises from stress, is interrupted. Focus slips to the floor, broken; mindfulness is kicked crossly into a metaphorical bin. It is not even a good shot. It rolls in shame, crumpled, to a halt. Oh gosh, we say, or something like that. And then wonder, what is all this work for? And what is to show for it? Did we need something- a house, perhaps? Being warm? No one remembers, only feels that it is unfair. But none of that was the point. It was finding the eternal in the moment: the spark, the genius, the serendipity! How did we forget? The jaw dropping splendour of the whole universe? Somehow, we forgot. Tiredness is a repetitive arse. It is not the only thing that tangles us: there are many recurrent debilities. They tangle our steps, like dirty shirts dumped on the floor. Same old shirts and quirks of fear. Never mind. Fill up the wash basket. Run yourself a bath. B...

This paperback of The Catcher In The Rye is a second reprint from 1987. It has age spots and a typeface I like (Monotype Bembo) and I would have been 17 in that year but I don’t remember if that’s when I bought it.  Surely I had read the book earlier, maybe even in hardback?   I remember Holden Caulfield though; disaffected antihero, soul in a soulless world, thinker in a thoughtless world. He acted on impulses born of that odd mix of emotion and moral responses. He had a keen insight into people, even if he was confused by what he saw: he saw it, reacted to it. He had stubbornness and integrity and that  individualistic  red hat. (If you don’t know the plot and/or the palaver of this book, have a quick cheat here: The Catcher In The Rye .) Rereading was a gamble - what if I’d left my old friend Holden too far behind? Perhaps I would find him gauche, all acne and embarrassment? If old JD had been having a laugh? What if I wanted to save him? What ...

Tuesday Is A  Calm Day Peelings piled in a pot, hob-simmered; dots of herb leaf turning, jade flecks in amber convections.  This onion, roasted to a sweet paste. Bone stock brewed overnight, tucked into the Rayburn’s dinky oven. This makes soup, a shimmering dark gold soup, edged in lemon zest, earthed with turmeric. But we are so hungry we add rice, pale rice, carrot, broccoli, red leaf, a fresh shine of onion, orange lentils, tomatoes; all the colours slippery rich with good oils. We put hot food in deep plates and we eat our feast outdoors. At the end house the clearance men are working. We hear their chatter. The house is being emptied: we speak of it briefly, sadly. Our lawn is mowed. The sun shines and the breeze does not steal that warmth. In the polytunnel, flora is waking; we speak of this, the spring miracle, the full happiness of it. There will be left overs for supper, we say, and this is how life should be. Wednesday Is A Travel Day  ...

My calendar says it is the 15th day of the 3rd month of the 15th year of the 21st century, a specificity that should focus a mind to the present point. My head says, is this Sunday? Possibly it is… No real decisions are made but we find ourselves stalking the moorlands with a sharp wind and a shovel.  We heft a small sack of horse poo half a mile or so, a circular route, back to the car. Unburdened then up Cox Tor, all the way to the panorama and the full push of wind. We hide for a while in the dip of a rock nest. Dog wags patiently. We climb down over knolls of buried stone; matted in grass, it reminds me of sloth hair and giant knucklebones. Gargantuan knuckle dragging sloth monsters slumbering under our feet. In every pool, ladles of frogspawn, rich bubbles of life.  Even here, where the vegetation is dwarfed by harsh weathering, there is succulence in this waking season. The sloths will be dreaming of warming sun. We sit in the car, heater ...