Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

On the longest day: rise early, missing sleep. Drive towards the risen sun, sunglasses perched. Across the cobbles of Exeter Quay snick-snicks an urban fox, slips quick paced under cover of scratchy shrubs.  At the home of Granma Grace, an ambulance is summoned (spoiler alert: this turns out okay). Paramedics Julia and Maria are asking us about end of life care: revive, we say, the quality of life is diminishing, the interest in it not piqued at all. At the hospital, our Grace is so lovely everyone must be lovely by return. She brings the sparkle.  A doctor brings her toast with maramalade, both paramedics pop in to see how she’s doing. We’re home in time to broil chicken for her lunch, she’s having a good food day.  (Angina medication to be revised.) Back home there’s Grandchild 2 picking strawberries, she tells me a whale’s tongue weighs as much as an elephant. A cold wind whips up around us, a lovely respite. We head for Bude, for two hot hours of tra

At the house of Granma Grace artefacts line each shelf.  There's a lady in a yellow dress, she's been waltzing for years – decades – caught in a turn, petticoats fixed in a spin - she looks to her absent partner.  There's a lady in festive red, and three more china beauties above dressed for spring, delicate, all looking to an absent return of gaze.  On the room's highest shelf a china couple are fixed, blue and white, a dab of yellow, an accordion on his lap, they both look ahead. Toby jugs flank them, one has a roughly groomed beard.  Below, in her adjustable chair, Granma nods her head in sleep.  Myself, sat on the sofa adjacent, I would not pick out her life in figurines. I would think of a tablecloth - something just as pretty with cotton lace, with embroidered flowers, with variable shades of white where food stains had been scrubbed out, where one of us had spilt ketchup, another had splashed wine.  Today I heated her breakfast milk, sh

I am listening - by which I mean absorbing - by which I mean I am becoming part of this - as though easing into the sea, arms and legs afloat, just drifting. I am tired.  Last night I was tired - but the evening air was so refreshing and my garden was there in the magic dusk, glowing with iris and rose and dots of closing day flowers and the bath-pond so little yet in its stillness infinite deep and I grew to be awake, alive, embracing.  Then it was midnight so I took a glass of dark wine to let sleep find me. Indoors was hot, I opened a window wide, then sleep did find me though twas all tumbled up, as though I had slept in storm waves.  Then it was birds shrieking, singing, it was 4.55am, sleep had fled, untraceable.  Pulled on garden clothes, went out to pour water on plants, ready for a hot day. I knew I would be at work, missing out, glad for bills paid, longing for my own land and no alarm clocks - the birds can wake me and I will find naps in hammocks, I w

Granddaughters (aged 4, aged 6) in my hammock, reading a joke book. “Why did the chicken cross the road, roll in the dirt and cross back again? Because it was a dirty double crosser!” Grandchild 5 (aged 1) has a hot-tired-left-out grump going on so I scoop her up, the whole squishy chunk of her, and she snuggles her head to my shoulder. Plan: put blanket in the other hammock, to cover the bump of the knot work, to make a cozy nest. Problem with plan: forgetting this sling of string has been left out all winter and is likely to be perilously frayed. We fell through it.  I hit the metal frame, G5 bounced unharmed off my ribcage, runs off wailing. The six year old retrieves her as Granma is caught in the net. (Soft tissue soreness, wrenched, crunched, dignity obliterated, nothing serious.) Granddaughters (aged 4, aged 6) have found their favourite joke of the afternoon: “You fell through the hammock, Granma! You were stuck!” Granma rather likes the

I am in the hammock, resting. Dog’s important work, about which she is so enthusiastic, is to spit bits of mulch into my wineglass.  My arms vibrate from the catch-up of strimming hedges and edges - how the wild sidles up, mouth open, ready to swallow us whole! Tenacity to admire, and good to be sure that if we take flight things will grow. Our wilderness is fertile.  Because of storms I had shifted my hammock stand chandelier to the shelter of a tree. It suits that space as much, dangling crystal foliage.  Hard green pods appear on fruit trees - all but the pear, nursed back from a near fatal fireblight, but that is in full leaf. To be at peace here one must embrace the noise of birds, for they can’t all sing.  A wind whips flame; across the fire pit a twisted log crouches, salamander-esque.  Fat gnat-ish things fly. The swifts will be in flight soon to gobble them up.  I am in the hammock, resting.  Hedges and edges neat enough. Beans planted out.

Summer must be sliding in behind us, slowly turning up the dial.  Primroses over-bloom, droop, even the bluebells are heavy.  Elderflower buds besieged by black-fly.  The lawn cut one minute and replacing every daisy head, every pimpernel, every dandelion with great sleight of hand.  Bees are in on it, prepared.  I am running for the hosepipe, feeling hypnotised. Azalea pink, chive flower purple, the fine stripes on citrine gooseberries - such awe is struck, such spectacle, such skill.  Take an interval in the hammock, the silky hot hammock, too hot for a blanket this time - see how it is as though one could take a butterknife and slice through anything - until the breeze comes, draws across, makes a cooled crust.

Last night, as I was leaving work, fingers of mist reached from the moors to snatch the road; and the road was almost lost. It became a ghost trail,  yet  still led home.  The sky was a void, backlit by an unseen half-moon. I had seen moon and sky clearly by day.  In the garden our van glimmers, by the light from an open door. Mr notes that the outside bulb needs replacing.  In the van, he says, the insulation is all in place.  He has some dust in his hair. He looks up. Dog is round my feet, her tail knocking at the bags I’m dragging.  Oh, says Mr, we won’t be seeing any meteoroid showers tonight! It’s good to be home, post-heat, post-work, pull on pyjamas, put feet on couch.  Turn on the projector, we can watch the sky from here.  Well, I can. Mr and Dog are fast sleep. I have a glass of nettle wine. I’m watching tigers hunt. I’m watching the sleepers smile.  Day view of the van, insulation installation in progress - easily as shiny