Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Tired. Close to end of year. But here is a snippety bit of the third novel I am being slavish over right now- this is a work in progress piece, but it sums the character up and she is getting ready for a Christmas jaunt. This is the 'before' of the writing: might post the 'after' next year!  *** Lilith wakes up in a cold bath.  She has no time to wash her hair now so she degreases her self-cut bleach mop with some glittery talc, which spills all over her body.  She peels on her short red dress, discovers all her tights are in the wash, she finds some red satin trousers.  There isn’t much time for make-up either so she draws on some red lipstick and splodges on more glitter. ‘Punk chic,’ she tells the mirror, as though it is questioning her outfit.                                             ***

[Fiction inspired by the weather- and just in case it is not clear a) I am not a werewolf; b) I do not own a wolf skin coat. ] The wind is singing, all those wild wordless sounds that shiver out the feral heart of me.  I want to pull on my wolf-skin and run through the dark.  There are millions of teeth in my mouth, each one is crazy and fierce.  I can run until my feral heart beats so loud all I can hear is myself and it's dark and there's nothing to be seen and there is only me running through space for nothing else exists at all. When I return to the world, in human skin, I will lie on the couch and listen to the wind song and settle into sleep. Dream of the unchecked run: dream of space.

Did you ever wade through rock pools and find a sea anemone filtering food from water with a cluster of flower bright feelers? As curious children we often held a fingertip up to the suctioning limbs. The anemone would spit us out and hide, all the bright feelers folded in a dark wet ocular mass. There is only so much that can be filtered. Under one sky and over one earth, children do these petty things and lose their jumpers and tell ridiculous fibs and nevertheless represent to us the strongest bonds of love. Where you are placed, under this sky, over this earth, is irrelevant to love, and to grief. 

Baby strides the living room, wearing Grandad's pants as a cape. This is how I can discover that her superhero hideaway is inside the folding clotheshorse. -Where's my superhero lair? How silly of me to forget. It's in my head, where I left it. I have simply neglected to think of it. While I rediscover this wonder carved from a solid crystal; circa Me Aged Nine; Baby addresses her lessons to Dog. 'Thay! Thay!' She holds a ball in her hand. 'Woooo!' Permission to fetch the flung item. She rehangs the underwear on the airer. Time to be sensible and fetch some supper. 'Baby, why is Dog eating a slice of cheese?' She looks at the ceiling, shrugs, smirks: the sign that we will never know all of her secrets. Dog? Is that you?

(Dragonfly by Jon Tremaine) Here we are in Truro, town sized city. While Boy is at a meeting about a narrow boat expedition, his friend intends to take on Christmas shopping and win. A rendezvous point is decided. It will be my second of the day. My parents surprise me by not being late. Cobbled streets hiss and spit with frying food. Wide faced woman in a blue coat taunts the human statue. She calls him 'Magic man! Magic man!' He moves like stone, heavy with patience. Children hoot. Stalls are boxed and spread with colour and things that shine. I buy a card from an artist in Victorian dress, a finely lined drawing of a dragonfly, wing patterns wound with depictions of native wild things. Granny Meg leads the way through a line of charity shops. Granpa Jim left his last coat on the rocks. She gets him a replacement for a fiver. 'Fishing,' she says, affectionately annoyed. 'Yeah and I lost my phone.' Sheepish Granpa. We find a table on a

Compared to the ear snuggling warmth of a fleece hood, the air blows chill. Otherwise, a mild day; rainy, unstormy, a settled sort of grey. In the park, Dog chases her ball through more mud than other dogs, somehow. It's a run around day, I get in the car and out the car and back in again, saying the next destination and task out loud to myself. Boy to school. Baby to Ella's house. Words to paper. Marinate pork. Do not remove car seat. Remove chainsaw. Baby to Nanny's house. Wash car windows. Boy from school. Eat. Friday: Okehampton. In snippets, a piece by piece day. Last drive home; under clear dark and stars. Time now for apple wine, then a fat quarter of sleep. 

Ground ice slackens back to water, lurks in the shadow at the road's edge. The shape of these puddles always reminds me of crocodiles. So we drive home, by the reptilian lines, noticing the clouds that dampen our chances of viewing the Geminid meteor shower everyone is posting about on Facebook. Visible from all time zones, weather depending. Moods stay clear: new horizons are clear. We are close to owning three clubs (not nightclubs; not quite like that. Think sports club without a permanent venue.) ' B ude,' Mr says, ' O kehampton, P lymouth. BOP. Is that too cheesy, because that's what we do: bop!' (Mimes punch. Can't mime kick: is driving.) I am laughing. Explain my answer. 'No, it’s funny.' In case he misreads the laugh as derisive. The in-car focus group approves, so BOP Tae Kwon Do is invented. This isn’t the grand unveiling, this is the initial, work in progress point. Drive past the crocodiles, feeling brave. 

The brick wall represents the one thing I cannot write: blurb for my novels. I can do hyperbolic, predictable hook questions: Will she wise up before death hits her some more in the struggle to break the pattern that will see her grow stronger or die…? I did exaggerate that, but only slightly. It's because I dislike the set up, the need to sell oneself and I daresay it's not uncommon. There are too many people out there blowing trumpets they don't know how to play, I don't want to be one of Them . (Secret snob! And the ones I am thinking of are enviably shameless so if you are worried that you might fall into this category, you instantly exclude yourself.) These books are portraits of ordinary people. Most lives are odder than you think, when you look at them. Is that a strap line though? Would I read anything advertised so casually? So I have inadvertently set myself the task of reinventing the blurb genre? Cast an eye over the metaphorical block

Woke up to a sparkling frost with grass like peppermint ice. Had a bother with the car door, which sometimes freezes shut. Today it locked itself open, hence the drive to the garage with binder twine tying me in, thinking I need a new lock on this, how much is a new lock? I have forty-five pence in my purse! Mr Garage Man squirts some WD40 and laughs at me. There is something wrong with the lock but it's the wrong time to protest: the right time to say thank you and drive Boy to school. He has his walking boots on and I brought Dog, thinking we might all have to walk home while the car was garaged.  Take Dog to the park instead, where ancient pines hold symmetrically foliaged twigs up to cerulean sky, and the horizon is made of rolling moor hills. After much running, fantastically backlit, she comes back to the car with icy belly fur, dog-stalactites. At home, I don't have to fumble for my house key with numb fingers, as Boy has thoughtfully left his in the door

Sat at the front room table so I can be next to the heater and the heater, though portable, is best here where it can also dry washing. Sun blazes outside but the cold damp air has brought the washing in. I have sunglasses on for writing. This morning's walking was partly on ice. Brittle ice. Tap on my keyboard, find comfort in words. Also paint patient Christmas roses onto folded card, also make chicken pie. With sauce, this week. Reach for saucepan. Jollied up. There is a rainbow in it. A round one, like the aura that gathers round the moon. Excited enough to take a picture of it. Paraselene is a fine word: it means the image of the moon inside the lunar halo. 

Brain is tired. Brain has been working hard all week; interlinking a trio of novels, amongst other things. Also Body is tired, and a cough is taking residence, quite unasked. Danger of taking a wrong turning and then - the horror! Danger of being lost in pity. Will things turn out okay… Brain ticks over a little too fast… Jumps through subjects without conclusion… Walk through lanes with Dog, pelted with midges. Find a half ripe wild strawberry, which, in a way, changes everything. I eat it, of course. It tastes of strawberry and water. Some alpine varieties do fruit through the autumn, so these must be of that ilk. But a strawberry swelling up in the hedge in December, a berry I pick and place, rain damp, in my palm and devour, seems as something that grows from the stratum of miracles. Struggly bit. Then comes things turning out okay. Brain squeezes these words into consciousness. Body, wrapped in many layers, is warm and manages a cough free sigh. Also this pas

[Adaptation of a story by Joanna Erdody: not sure if she was the original author. I have a battered childhood copy that is not dated and has no ISBN number but before it was mine some old pencil lettering tells me it was once the property of Margaret Bradley, 48 Scott Road.] The Vain Little Tree The little tree thought to himself, again, how lucky he was to have grown so beautiful, and he felt sorry for the people who were trudging by, sighing over his perfect form. They couldn't take him to their homes. He had a card ticket tied to one of his emerald branches with a red silk ribbon. It spelt out the word RESERVED in gold lettering. He felt sorry for the other trees who did not know where they would be sent. By the end of the day, some of the others also had tickets, though the card was thinner and they were tied on with string. The tall grandfather tree held up his ticket and peered at it in the dim light. 'Ah,' he said. 'It seems I am

Behind the glass of passenger side window, artificially lit. Car park is sparsely populated. Wind blows, desolate resonance; shakes the last of the leaves from the token trees growing from graveled squares. Coffee banners thrill in the fight with unseen forces. Inside the superstore warmth is wafted through aisles of every kind of fruit. Breath hot into the wool loops of scarf. Glance up, only a glance is required. Mr has a signature walk, I always know it. I wonder how many steps I have watched him take. I always know him, but never quite what will be in the shopping bag. Brandy, port, two packs of thermal clothing. 

Decision to take an early brisk walk is slowed by the ice underfoot. The verges have enough rough ground to hold steps at the width and length intended. Dog paws perhaps are made of rough ground, for she doesn't slip on any angle of hill; pads on any piece of tarmac she pleases. We are on the run of lane from Treniffle to Luccombe when the dark sky breaks. Cloud soaks up a flow of saffron light, it billows out like flaming June. Once I caught the edge of the Northern Lights; it was like this, luminosity flaring from night, just as suddenly gone. The risen sun and its tangerine finery slide behind muffling cloud. Dog and I walk, crunching ice, under the quilted silver.

There was no camera handy to record two of Baby's best happenings today. The fall from the wash basket was clicked, and the sleeping on sofa with Dog. The first unseen piece was playing in the water that gathers in the kayak, using an empty snail shell as a dainty cup, and a piece of fir twig as a spoon. Ingestion was gently dissuaded for sanitary reasons; by way of a distraction because I should dislike to curb those fey impulses. We took ourselves to the little stone shed to watch Grandad fine tune the chainsaw. Down at the woodpile, Grandad hewed old trunks and Baby was introduced to cows. At first they were giant heads squeezed over the low wall and under the bars, with brown eyes even wider than Baby's. She put out a hand and a cow tongue rasped the quilt of her coat sleeve. After a few laughing fits, Baby gathers handfuls of hay to put over the low wall. The cows are not cows, incidentally, they are skitty bullocks, most uncertain of the kneehigh pink coated t

Tiny spitballs of ice hit down from a bland winter sky. News comes along the relay line: crashed out friend in the hospital bed continues to improve. Not the most comfortable progress: he tries to pull out the drip feed, the instinct of fight and flight being much deeper than common sense. The outcome could have been more funereal. Instead, here is a kind of hibernation. Sleeping though the bleakest hours; waking, slowly, numbed; senses clearing, drop by drop. If you were ever going to revaluate your life, then here is the moment for it, the perfect bruised and bashed up moment. Are you thinking about it? I rub my fingertips where the blood-flow has slowed. 

Little Grandson studies a cup cake. Our crashed out friend in the hospital bed will be kept under sedation for 72 hours. Prognosis suggests that shortly after that we can queue up to be joyfully annoyed with him for the superfluous drama. Fingers are crossed, candles lit. Fingers tap on a table top. Thumbs twizzle. Concentration, hmmm….something I put down and can't relocate. I had already made soup, so cake was next. My Christmas culinary distraction cake. It was neither precisely measured nor expertly made. The act of slopping butter with sugar, the paring of peel, squeezing fresh citrus juice, dropping dried fruit over the washing up rack, the awkwardness with which I cut the baking paper and had to peg the sides in place to get the mixture in, the boozy soaked fruity mix that part way through baking acquired a thin layer of charred skin; the way I had to really think about the timings because I was tired and not concentrating? It passed the time productively

Last night the Christmas lights of Cadgwith were switched on. It was a clear cold night and the switch needed throwing twice to shake the power through the homely strung decorations. Neon dolphins swung over the sea, there was a whale hitched to the miniature peninsular known locally as the Todden. Above the colourful whale is a plain lit cross, for the memory of those lost at sea. Everyone had a fair try at singing. Santa was sat in a makeshift grotto; we sat outside the pub watching children brandish their treats. Back to our home for the night, a fine granite chunk of a cottage, for a large glass of wine, a sauna (splendid what you can find in a cottage sometimes) and a curry feast cooked by our splendid host. For the grand finale, a debate over whether Florentines are a biscuit or a cake, myself being of the opinion 'biscuit.' Word games can last for years with the addition of wine fuelled questioning. Cleared our heads this morning with sea air, another saun

First day of the last month. Mist from the Tamar valley rises up to a fat cloud: the Buddha of Sky Water. Out of the mist, the sound of gunshot: the cycle of life and death. Sun pierces everything, one last time. After this its reach will weaken. We must hold our own warmth. At the end of my morning shower, turn the dial to a cold setting. From feet to head the nozzle travels and my muscles twitch like river fish and my skin vibrates and my gasps are laughing. Alive and warm. After breakfast, brew coffee, bitter hot and fierce in strength. Awake.