Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Through thick warm air fly globules of delight for field foraging birds: free range slug stuffed with organic homegrown tomatoes, freshly plucked from my polytunnel, and hand flung over a blackthorn hedge. Served with a shout: ‘It’s the circle of life!’ This is a rare day off, but I’m useless at slacking. An assembly of grandchildren would assist. They would love slug hurling and interrupt every other thing.  I’ve put the last of the lavender to dry, and a batch of rosemary, and calendula. Chives are cut, bagged, frozen. Tomatoes salvaged from predators and blight. Raspberries picked. The washing pile eradicated, for a day. And so, and such until the clouds pink and the sky darkens and a fuzzy moon loiters. Then I sit in my hammock and listen. I hear a mollusc munching. Birds lullaby. Owl. No further action is required. No bedtime-stalling supper, no stories to read, no stinky nappy, no ailments or shrieking laughter. Think of the culprits instead, a little inventory, a list o

In my mind the seasons have been separate gods. Spring, a maiden, moving ice to melt; summer, a predator, hot, basking, growly; autumn, a russeted stag, richly coloured, rarely frivolous; winter, a skeletal beast, empathetic, stoic, truthfully harsh. This year’s transition differs. Summer, gently, in the thick of mist, becomes Autumn. It’s not that time has existed in seasonal boxes, rather I had thought of each year-quarter as a thing outside of time; eternal, revisiting. Time was something we viewed them through. This year, something in my mind steps though the window. One thing becomes; replaces, supersedes; another thing, an evolution, and more precious for its brevity. I have run with gods for years and years, I have knelt to marvel, not unseeing, not unmoved. But this year? It is only I, feeling heat soothe out of earth, observing leaves slowly gilded, reaching my fingers to a ripened blackberry; yet more amazed, more alive to the miracle than I ever remember. The

1 In the dark we lay, in hammocks, wine tables at hand, each with a full glass; watching Perseid meteors, arrows of red-gold in Milky Way foam. Laugh, loudly, forgetting it is midnight. Ability to be delighted: this too we are grateful for. Arrows or eels, foam or powder - how a thing is seen, always debatable. Glass half full or half empty? Refillable! We shout, forgetting time has crept past midnight. 2 Storm winds galvanise clouds. In the day, sun pierced each break; the escapees had dropped rain, heavy pocketfuls, like stolen scree. Roses, grown tall, lash at porch glass. Windows have their latches tested. Roofs are pried. Too warm, to have everything shut. We would gape, separated from moving air. It is beyond vantage here - but we feel it, keening - the weight of the wild sea.

Rivers run slick with it. Cut fields hewn from it. Bared skin, too, holds a shine of sun. Into this time slot, to her own unhurried schedule, Grandchild 5 makes an appearance. Pink-gold, cute as a vintage tea cup. She slumbers under day’s fine light, wakes in the dark. Grandchild 3 ponders sisterhood. She observes that babies make parents tired. Could they could be responsible for rain that cancels a trip to the park? Still, she deigns to kiss the infant on her forehead, an experiment in early love. ‘Granma,’ she whispers, ‘look - I’ve got jewellery.’ She shows each amulet on her new anklet. How the star shape has a sparkle in the centre of it. Her very own sparkle. Granma agrees it is beautiful. The gleam of it. How it is crafted. 

Low and hot, the weather was affecting us. We thought in deficits, in morbid fractals. Lost, we retraced an old path: we went to the beach, of course. Trod ourselves over the flat stones, the fine sand, dumped our bags down, set the dogs free. Dog will plunge in, we know. Fat Beagle will wade to his ample waist and stare out while we decipher his expression: something at once dignified and put-upon, satisfied and wary. A rare piece of sea glass is discovered, green, the best kind. Into a bag pocket it is hoarded. Our possessions left below the tide line for the tide is far away and still pulling back. The sea must be clambered to, and swimming is hilarious, for one can only slither between the rounded rocks, and laugh, and our laughing is sea spray, is wings in flight, is sunlight on facets of wave. Up to his waist Fat Beagle stands. Dog runs so much she lames a leg. Our hot car smells like seaweed and dog farts. The journey home is gladly broken. Now we sit eating chip

At midnight still butter pools in its dish. Dog rouses for a drink, pads back towards her bed, lies on the floor, sighs defeat. Ice chinks in nettle beer. The clouds have swallowed a full moon, and nothing cools in digestion. We lie like butter in our salt puddles, dream of emerging, evolved. For now, like Dog, we surrender. Pad, pad, slowly to our beds. Sand is welded to our soles. Close eyes, recall that push, that cooling incoming tide. Dog twitches in her sleep. Mr hums a snore. There’s no sleep here for me. Downstairs, where the windows are left open, a freed moon shines.

Where clouds are rift, blue shows. Rain holds. Air holds damp, birdsong, scents of earth. Palette of the day, silver-greys, green, dots of bright flower. A heart is prised open, this beauty stuffed in. Seeking remedy, not respite. Yesterday was sun and rain. Foxgloves, bolt upright, held their colour. I stole a rose to make tea; first to breathe the steam, then to sip. I had coffee, rich and deep. I had banana tea, sweet and cheerful. This morning the sky is variant silver. Coffee brews. Wild strawberry pancakes on the hob; one gets burnt when Dog gives chase to a cat and must be herself chased back inside perimeters. Dog feels sorry for herself, confined. We pretend stern. Petal frail, she sends apologies: I can’t do anything, she says. But you’ve done it all, we say, it’s our turn now and that’s how it comes to balance. Granma Grace smiles. I like her without the dentures, somehow, it represents her being her, no matter what is reduced; that kind spirit being irr