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Gardener Fred's Monster

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Scariness level: beginner Posting my Halloween Story early this year... it is a full story with beginning, middle and end, and in the conventional order too.  The ending is left open, and if you are an imaginative sort you might like to supply a scenario for the sequel. Writing (boo hoo) can be a lonely sport, so a bit of holiday collaboration will be greatly appreciated.                                                                                             [With thanks to  Mary Shelly  and her Monster] Gardener Fred’s Monster Gardener Fred had ideas. Ideas and dreams. Ideas, dreams and ambitions. Ideas, dreams and ambitions that he worked for; he dug for them, he weeded for them, he pruned and raked and was out in all weathers for them.  In his house he had a trophy cabinet chockablock with shining cups.  He grew the biggest sunflowers, bloomed the brightest roses. His carrots were the envy of the village, his marrows almost canoe sized. Strawberries,

The Fae Field Inspiration

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Vocal are the geese at their interruption. They are not easily flapped, these birds. They are the same birds that sat watchfully unruffled in a cropped field, while Dog and I ran by, one energetic, lightly misted cross-country morning. Under the overhead honking is the whir of a blade wielding tractor: not a goose killer, a hedge cutter. It is cutting the hedge in the field we had hoped to be picking rosehips in. Huff. It is the sort of greyish dampish day best fitted to introspective thoughts, not suitable for noise or interruption. We drag our heels and then an off the usual track open gate to an undisturbed field is what we find. Like an answer when you weren’t sure of what your question needed to be. Here the overgrown hedge reaches out, it hands us a bag of ripe red hips and a pocketful of dark sloeberries. Dog runs routes circular, angular and out of the field flees three deer, two rabbits, one fox. There are so many pheasants Dog can’t fit them all into her sched

This Collective Cleans And Ponders

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Dog's enthusiasm for housework is infectious. We open the door, drop our jaw. A curtain of rain hides the world.  We must swap the faux suede for rubber boots: me, my hands, my feet, for reasons as yet unfathomed I feel like a collective today. A theory promptly appears that it may be the result of an uncharacteristic cleaning spree. It is unfamiliar work and yet hands, feet, brain all pull together. A combination of the unknown and the known makes one reappraise how a being is collected together, perhaps. Like an identity crisis only pleasant. Hands, feet and brain have done well, although the discovery of damp in the living room corner is a vexment. Contrariness over not using the word vexation is a distraction technique. The landlord’s phone is answered by a voice saying service unavailable, try again later. Further distractions involve looking for the culprit who put bird poo on the mantelpiece (Mr suggests it might be bat in origin) and venturing out to borrow a vacu

Tenacious Jocosity

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Outside there is a storm: if you put your hands over your ears and hear the blood inside rush, it sounds like this storm. Wheel spray splays like the tails of white peacocks, every car wings by. From the car to the house several unexpected steps sidewards explain the wind strength. The tenacity of things is considered. How many tempests will the deadwood in the ash tree survive, for example, and how if one builds a wall there is some knowledge available that will give guidelines to its longevity. This is why we use bricks or stone not straw, not sand. These thoughts proceed to enquire how we can know what material our words are made of? All this writing that may or may not endure? But it does not matter. One should link words oblivious, obsessed, absorbed, delirious, tempestuous. It is Friday, the evening. A glass of wine arrives and sits next to the Dettol which is a testament to the bad manners of our elderly cat. Outside the wind roars as though laughing. Oblivious, obsess

Falling Asleep Whilst Reading

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Limbs are flung, indenting squishy underlay. A bed of cushions, to defeat gravity. A cradle from which to dream: escaping in a soft coracle. Nothing to flee but weariness, but the weight of one’s own limbs. A book halfway read represents another path unwinding, the mind absconding on its own. Sometimes it likes to be alone. In space, can one lie on the air (the not-air?) Questions pop out of scenarios, not entirely formed, not entirely awake. Dog huffs from her sprawl, recalling perhaps some moment when a previous sprawl had been interrupted. A fine steam rises from a glazed mug. Off-white with a flower painted and the scuffs of frequent usage. Steam is made of dots, of impermanent ink. A metaphor.  

Autumn Begins To Chill

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This year’s tenth month is filled with wanderings. We add a string of small village names and the town of Dartmouth to our October map. Here we wallow in the last of summer’s residual warmth: it is dark, we are standing at the harbour edge observing small fish crowd submerged steps. All the boats have duplicates. It is impossible to understand that the water could be cold. We are outside the restaurant, hot with digesting. All the night is filled with human noise. At home the heat disperses into storms, is spilt and lost in precipitation. Foxes yip: the young ones are sounding out new territories. We see them often, walking intent at the roadside. One last thunder roll shakes the river valley and the rain pools deepen. (When not wandering this writer squints and squints over print proofs until her headaches drown out the thunder and the weather complains at the disruption.)

Night Weather

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The moon was broad and nestled in a circle of cloud. The other half of the sky flicked up a sheet of lightening. Such fascination, like a pin through a moth. Another strike illuminated the castle, another backlit the tree tunnel. A fox-face, vivid orange, retreated into a verge; an owl’s belly, ghost white, brushed over the windscreen. (Not until the next afternoon do we hear thunder. It rolls out of pure summer blue, turns the sky flat silver. Raindrops like crystals split the light into shining arcs.) A perfect round, the moon returns. All the sky is velvet. Voices are raised in the car park, tempers that rush and exhaust themselves to a truce. The storm wind halts. A man walks slowly back to his car, shoulders hunched. The car alarm starts up. He stops and looks at the moon: looks at the moon and glances at his car door as he pushes the key into the lock. The alarm stops. The perfect round moon, the cessation of anxious noise, it seems connected.

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

An Unsolved Sum

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This morning’s mist lingers as though it had forgot where it meant to go. It worries itself to a warmish haze. Some of the cows lie down, similarly bemused. The hedgerows’ first rush of abundance is cooler, slower. In the stone shed a deep freeze rumbles, thumping cold at boxed windfalls till they ice: it will take a day or two and the apple press needs fixing. Meanwhile holes are dug for damson saplings that have each been raised from foraged fruit, that have been pushing out of pots with longing roots. In the back field maize grows unreasonably tall, it spikes up over the hawthorn trees. It whispers not words but feelings and enticements, it calls to the story in us. We want to know where it goes, of course, that story-path that is the sum of work and nature.

Of Leaves And Socks And Banana Soup

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Across the car park a few leaves scuffle noncommittally. They are new to this, their movements unsynchronised, lightly wooden. Out of lit streets cars roll, caught slow in lines behind combines, trundling hay lorries. Headlights strobe variant shapes in roadside foliage, a country road rendering of the Northern Lights. Clear night, misty morning, sun and cloud afternoon. The weather pattern repeats but the heat fades. On an organised day a washing load will dry on the line. Little Granddaughter visits. She loves her expedition collecting dung for the garden, down by the cowshed. She friends the cows, liking this one best, then that one, then ten all at once but only because she only has that many fingers but she loves them all and babies, she loves babies too. Indoors she plays a game of doing her work, which is writing, making soup and picking up the dog’s poo. Outdoors she raids the tomatoes and makes her own rainbows with hosepipe water. Indoors she helps Granma cook up

A Well Dressed Chap Leaves Home

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Every morning is mist. Afternoons simmer till we float poached, feeling lazy, strangely refreshed. Down at the river summer lingers, trailing hot fingers in the water. A wade out will become a swim. The mud stirs up but the sun turns it topaz-gold: it will be the leaves next. Everything will cool down but the treetops will blaze. On Sunday evening we lit a fire. The Chap brought out his wooden ship, the one he built so carefully as a boy, the one with tiny balsa planes and a fine layer of dust and cobweb. He brought out his bottle of dark rum. One ceremonial tip of rum went on the ship, one went into his mouth. A fir branch flared the flames: onto the fire went the beloved replica. We watched, we let it go. For no particular reason I think of one afternoon when the electricity had run out. My son was four years old or thereabouts. It was autumn, perhaps that’s the reason. We had a key meter for the electric, the key could be recharged with cash at the local garage. I had put on