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Staring Out Of The Window, When The Phone Rings

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This place is packed with distractions. Like this ice edged purple sprout. It is November, the latter part. On this planet. What of other planets? I mis-type November, but only once, as Novelber. Today is not for writing but for dragging rows of numbers around, making accounts. The first frosts have visited; two mornings in a row, now comes rain, falling thickly, hypnotic. Thoughts wander in this weather they go anywhere. (Always blame the weather.) Numbers add up to a headache. Still some apples hold on branches: last all winter through, sometimes, some types. They are best to see frosted: fruit and ice growing: crunchy, sweet, fantastic! I’m supposed to be - but the phone keeps interrupting - nearly gets turned off - It rings. A finger hovers to stamp out the noise: why is that number ringing? Because it’s Wednesday. Not Tuesday. Wednesday!! If you know film terms, this is the dolly track zoom moment. If not, the word ‘lurch’ will help. I am supposed to b

Honey, I Sunk The Bath

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It could have been one of those projects that lingered into a domestic mythology. We do have such a pantheon; minor deities of projects such as boot racks and office tidies that add something to the ambience of clutter, we find: a sense of a purposeful future, perhaps: stuff that could happen. Yesterday or thereabouts I had wiggled the iron weight of the old bath till there was room to dig the hole that would reposition it as our new pond. Then it rained a bit, nothing more, here, was done. But, then, Little Granddaughter was here and how we love an outdoor project! Enough to disregard inclement weather and at least turn over some turf. The ground here is clay-dense, rock littered: generally. ‘Granma, watch me!’ A trowel’s fill of mud gets flung high over the rockery. Such is the power generated when three years’ life experience connects with earth. Somewhere between the surprise of finding good top soil, the lightness of drizzle, and this power of youthful enthusing, we

Three Bloops

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Today’s focal accomplishment was not the coconut rice, though it remains a favoured dish in the menu rounds. Too much concentration focused on the compilation of a folder, in which, page by page, fresh from the printer, a novel was stored. My novel, not often discussed. Brainwashing or true belief, I’m not sure, only A Writer Writes: a writer does not talk of writing, this is wasting writing time. Except for those moments when I fume about synopsis and blurb, they are functional safety vents. Only one chapter went in to the folder backwards, and this (bloop 1) was remedied swiftly. The other two bloops were in the rice. I double salted (bloop 2) and though I did not forget the chilli, I did neglect to chop it into less than one whole piece (bloop 3) which gave Houseguest Ben quite the surprise. Sets of three being culturally usual here, I am hoping that this pepper incident is the last bloop for today. Small things all, set against the general malaise over the loss of our

Therein

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Up in the polytunnel, the vine had snapped its tether and fallen over, flouncing out red leaves, exposing and breaking  a root bound pot. Planting out could not be deferred, no matter how low the desire to dig another hole. Heavy soil, we have, thick with clay, set with obstacles. Vines will not like it, so we have devised a planting tube. A crock of old pottery and some sifted out stones make a drainage band, the rest is compost, lighter layers of top soil, fine volcanic rock. And there it is, finally planted. There may be grapes, or not, next year. But unless we had spilled this sweat, we would never know: therein the satisfaction lies.

The Cat Shambles

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Skulking around the rabbit hutch, we saw her first, a small framed fluffy cat. I chased her off. She skulked the old sheds instead, then, wary of contact. Until: it was somewhere around 2am at the party we hosted for Girl’s nineteenth birthday, when thronged drunks were outdoors attempting disorderly and giving up, on account of being too drunk. We had dragged out garden benches and sat laughing, and into the middle of the scrum-cackle this cat appeared, and friended us, and walked into the open house and lived there. We called the vets, the next day, holding gingerly our coffee mugs, but none of her description were on the missing cat list. We still aren’t sure why we let her stay. It was the right kind of house for her, perhaps; certainly she proved a tyrant to the cheeky mice. Sometimes in the mornings she would have slime trails on her, a sign of a deep hedge sleeper. Her fur dreaded up. She didn’t much care for grooming. We named her Shambles and never knew how old she was.

Rain And Intervals

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Parking on the grass is denied by wheel spin.  The lanes are not for walking but splashing and how clear the water is, with that subtle property of magnification, framing old bits of leaf, saturating colour, and the sun puts warm on your face in these blue sky intervals and the water runs downhill, gurgling.  Clouds travel in thickly flanked formations. In a field a coated horse tail-flicks and observes how starlings burst upwards from grass, up to the bare ash branches to make their mass noise. Optimism pegs washing out: it gets a thorough second rinse before the sun interval repeats. It does not matter. It was not so unexpected but it cannot be predicted. Every day we can wonder what will happen next.

Remembrances

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What is it that we should remember? Not a blanket patriotic blurb. A common humanity. A day of souls. A day of unselfish acts. A day to mark our consciences, whether we fight or not. A day of measuring regret. It should connect us, this experience of human life. The severance is what breaks us. However war comes, it breaks us.

From Autumn, A View Of Winter

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From daylight, the hours slip. Into night the hours arrive. I see them as new hatched fishlings: blinking, gaping, full of instinct. Leaves; autumn is famous for leaves; for the ruby’d mulch. It is daylight, I am walking with Dog, we go under trees, alongside the swelled river. Walking is thinking but thinking outside is release not compression; the scenery is not lost. Head full of projects and lists, aims, objectives: internal mulch. What next? The paths are covered. A winter story is coming: barefoot, towards the hearth. Smells of candle wax and cocoa.

Cold Snap And A Cheese Board

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This cold is made of sharp-shiny teeth, dainty-pointy, gripped to one’s extremities. Thicker socks required. Toes and soles are tenderised. A hungry cold. Night gapes like a gullet. Some night perhaps when the wild of me wakes enveloped in the beauty of that consuming ache, then bare feet will run through snow, over sheer ice, then, a throat, a naked throat, a body dressed only in skin and wonder, can be offered willing to those teeth: but it is not that night yet. A thick knit of comfort pulls around: woollen socks, a glass of rum, the Rayburn churning hot water in a flimsy tank, a cheese board, two kinds of chutney (homemade) and one sweet pickle (shop bought, a shameful favourite.) Without hunger, satiation means little. Without comfort, adventure lacks contrast.

Pirate Trees Ahoy

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Such a wind blows as can turn tall masted trees to galleons and take them into the dark searching for gold and secret islands. In the morning we look and find two self-seeded broad bean plants: as good as bullion here is things that grow into food. The fat-trunked ash twitches, moored back to our hedge; the wind blows softer; they reminisce; we make-believe their whispers. Last night’s wind has blown the weather out of shape: odd bits of rain fall hither, thither. Fragments of sun, not enough to dry wet clothes, and half-rainbows, which hold their beauty and maybe the fragmentary nature adds a sense of luck to have any rainbow at all. Back to the dark sails the day. On the rotary line outside one sodden towel testifies to a swashbuckle system of belief: optimism, acceptance, derring-do. 

A Box With All The Bones

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Oct 30: Some call the weather mild, some ‘unseasonably warm.’  A midday sun can catch the treetops all tropical; such parrot-yellows, such paradise-reds!  Wild strawberries vivid in the cut hedge, plucked, nestle in a warm palm.  Even where the mud has fallen from farm traffic the lane is bouncing light. Later but not so late the dark gathers in. Soft focus and sepia in mist, the trees are rusting, flake by flake. The dark gathers in, closer in, to breathe damp-earth air, to breathe the woodsmoke. Oct 31: Most of what we meant to do was done, though it was jumbled up: a box with all the bones in it, not a wired up skeleton model. All the time one is thinking that those bones need sorting: can’t quite relax: one itches, like a broken bone that’s mending.  In the afternoon it is warm and calm and Little Granddaughter favours vampire attire. She dresses up our faces with thick paint. She cheats at apple bobbing, all the children do. They grin becau

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.