Soup By Volume Two

  Chapter 5: Words From February 2013

  Unmufflement

  Mild rain, the sort that barely damps. Muffled by a coat hood, walk the rough path to the woods. Wide pools of floodwater in the low fields, reflecting sky. Lively birds, fresh storm felled branches and an old shoulder bone is what we meet on the path.

  January is gone, like a bottle on a tide, holding a rolled up list of wishes. Have more fun, I asked of myself, be open to riches, and don’t talk about, do it. Little decisions, they add up.

  Slide back the coat hood, under the trees, listen to the rain, symphonic, in the open-palm reach of the evergreens.

  Suddenly Flluuurrrgh

  He came in looking pale: he had forgotten his belt: he wouldn’t be able to grade without his belt.

  ‘Wait here,’ I tell his parents. I walk back into the hall and bow; an observation of courtesy that, at some point, we all perform inadvertently: at a supermarket, a school, a public toilet.

  ‘Excuse me, Mr Paine…’

  I know. It’s a good name. And the right person to ask. Instructor Paine points to a bag of spare belts, and there’s the very colour I’m looking for. After a hug of much gratitude, after a courteous bow at the door, I return to the nervous scene, hand over the borrowed item. The drama is quickly resolved and there’s nothing unusual about stricken faces just before a grading. I forgot about it.

  The hall looked brighter than usual, because of the new expensive floor. The new floor didn’t have any marks on it to show students where to stand: we set them out in neat rows so our grading examiner can exercise proper scrutiny. The electric tape is missing, so then ensues all the excitement of a tape hunt. Mr Douglas-Green corners a red roll in his kit bag. I butcher it into neat X shapes. The students may now enter.

  ‘What belt is Thomas wearing?’ Mr asks.

  ‘It’s a 5th Kup.’ (Thinks: oh no, is that the right one? Looks: wrinkles brow. Thinks: it is the right one. It’s just not tied very neatly.)

  If I had been looking at his ashen face then, maybe I would have known.

  Suddenly, flluuurrrgh…

  As the tea coloured vomit soaked into the cheery blue floor cloths, then I recognised that he was paler than he should have been. He usually does very well at gradings.

  Earthed

  Hedgetrees exude an energy of moving, even frozen in their dance: it goads a passerby to wander further.

  I’ve come this far, I could take a stroll in the woods.

  The top path is shining, licked by rain. All the fallen leaves make soft compost. Trees grip the abrupt edges with roots like dinosaur toes. Where the path is smothered by fallen timbers, there is a new path being worn beneath. Above is rotted limbs and some low badger tracks.

  I’ve never trod there, and it’s so close. I’ve come this far.

  The bracken is black, frost smitten; the prone wood-flesh uncomfortably soft. Only the brambles are green and fresh and drag blood from unwary skin. Where the track runs out is too steep for standing, descent happens as a seated slide.

  Sometimes the moss here grows bigger than the trees.

  Three hours pass. Dog and I, mud flecked, drowsy, find the house again.

  We both seem surprised, to unearth this life outside the woods.

  Song Of A White Sky

  Two types of snowdrops shiver in the slippery breeze: the shy droplets and the belled petals, striped with green.

  Icy, the breeze slides.

  Nipped fingers pull the wool of the warm scarf, cosy up fragile flesh.

  Cold mud, under the tread of the boots, plasticized: tracks that draw the eye to the gate of the field where the old barn squats.

  To the gate, and pull the squealing bolt and find here, white as winter flora, open sky: wide open sky.

  Blue Lights

  A fistful of storm in the sky tonight: splinters clouds into pieces. Such an air of drama: slams at my car: an exhilaration, a fright: I am caught up. And there, on the other side of the road, blue lights, flashing. Cars pulled to, hazard lights busy. A glimpse of torchlight, of shone cones in the far ditch.

  Let the news be good, I am thinking. A bruise and a lesson learnt.

  (How long now has my crashed friend been in hospital? He is bored, and grumpy, sat brooding over AutoTrader pictures of cars he isn’t driving. Sometimes the second chance at life has a long painful labour.)

  Let the news be good, I repeat, while the wind frets.

  I tuck my car into the very top of the driveway.

  Indoors, Dog is sprawling on the sofa; Cat, happy in her basket.

  (Nothing reported on the local news: suggests it was all cleaned up swiftly and no serious injuries incurred. A reminder, though: to be happy to be home safe.)

  Waiting To Leap

  A swift time spent outside, today. One chicken must be flurried from under the car, before the short drive to school. Boy takes his folder of photographs, goes to wave the usual laconic ‘bye: one odd insect nestled in the passenger window frowns at the cold air, interrupts. We peer at it. It has that waiting to leap feel about it, as crickets do: is a bland khaki colour; sits still as a carving, big eyes boggle either side of its big head.

  ‘It’s going to be one be of those days,’ I say.

  I forgot the banks open late, so after placing my car at a vaguely parked angle; the insect staring balefully after me; around the tiny cold town I walk. Too cold. Hot coffee will help. One window seat, one Americano. An extravagance, really. Civilised and privileged.

  I have money: it needs to be paid to the bank when the doors open.

  When the coffee cup is empty, I walk to the bank. When my purse is emptied, I walk back to the car. The insect is elsewhere. It could be anywhere, I think, which reminds me of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.

  Which I understand in a rather basic and creatively misappropriated way.

  ‘One of what days?’ I ask of myself.

  One of my days.

  Duvet Day

  Rain bounces on the lean-to roof. Dog barks. One eye opens. Eventually I realise that it’s my eye. Watch the tall fronded trees sigh in pale grey daylight. Tea is fetched to my bedside.

  Hours, somewhere, are ticking by. I can’t hear them. I sleep.

  Hunger puts my feet on the stairs. Feed a cold, that’s the old wisdom. Starve a fever. What does a cold like to eat? Fruit and yoghurt is what it gets.

  In the post today: my copy of the book I illustrated. Sense of achievement prompts further action.

  Pour coffee into brain. Write. Stories for papers about our students getting new belt levels- done. One essay required for request to take Second Dan grading- done. One chunk of novel- done.

  Three ticks earns a rest.

  Trees wave, eyes drop, dog woofs, rain drums.

  Vapours

  The fire is lit. Piping, strong and pitch-black I drink up coffee: slap mustard and garlic all over my food. I am feeding a cold. I think it’s dying. If needed, there are offers of sympathetic soup, to drown it.

  I am well enough, after yesterday’s rest, to go out to work: encased in vest, shirt, over top, leggings, trousers, scarf, ski socks and baseball style boots.

  To my reflection I say, ‘It’s a look.’

  I get a look back, unconvinced, but warm.

  To my students I say, ‘I smell of garlic, mustard and Vick’s Vapour Rub. Any of you have difficulty breathing, it’s either because of me, or you need to stand next to me, and I’ll clear those airways.’

  The Flip-Flop Mountaineer

  To both satisfy and provoke curiosity, contained herein are the illustrations from my newest foray into print. Always I will tell people that I cannot draw or paint, only illustrate within a fairly limited scope. They look at my pictures- the pen and inks are the better examples of this- and curl lips.

  There’s no hook for compliment cast intentionally.

  The bit missing from the statement is that I could: if I could be bothered to pursue and practice: sketch convincingly whatever is
set before me.

  Why don’t I practice?

  Because writing is the deep obsession.

  So, why not just write?

  While I draw, a wordless refreshment happens, a buoyancy, a reaffirmation.

  Each picture is a push past the comfort zone due to this lack of technical skill. It tests the nerve, the verve, the whole composure.

  If you find the right path, climb the mountain in flip-flops.

  At the summit, out the brilliant words fly.

  Always Awake To The Smell Of The Coffee

  In the dark the stars

  Find no cover and must shine

  Between their light and my eyes, this

  Car window, smudged with old rain

  Here I sit

  Settled in the passenger seat

  Tipping espresso from the worn pink flask

  In the dark the trick is

  To stick your thumb just inside the cup:

  When the thumb is hot, stop pouring.

  Drink up, think of

  The rain smudge: what it could

  Represent.

  Shine

  At the foot of the fat-trunked ash one starling lies, open-chested dead. Emerald edges of the wing feathers catch the sun. In the branches above, the life of chatter persists. One starling barely expects to be missed, and it need not be a gloomy thought. A raw bravery it takes, for a person to be content with such; starlings are born to the mass, unquestionably, expendably part of something. I turn the still bird over, gently, into the grass where the ice twinkles: commend it to the earth.

  Ice under sun throws uncountable gems: Dog and I crunch through a fortune.

  I seek distraction. Back at the cottage, a combination of mould and bad housekeeping has made an unfortunate impression on my bookshelf in the little office room. The shelf of comfort books: some held since infancy.

  Up through the brook, over the wide curved field. The ice is melted here, except in the shadow of the old barn. Ice in shade has no light to refract. When the sun moves to find them, each crystal here will shine into extinction.

  What is gone, is gone. Keep the lesson, not the textbook.

  The Distracted Host

  Out come the frying pans. Dog must have her lead on to go next door for eggs, lest she succumb to cat chasing. A telephone call is made to fetch milk. There are two kinds of flour in the cupboard.

  I have vinegar smeared books propped in sun traps. A sense of responsibility has prompted a salvage attempt. Maybe the picture books could be scanned. Here’s Cinderella and her rescue complex. It’s not the story that enamours, after all: it is the pictures. The first dress is pale pink silk: prettier than anything I had ever seen (circa 1975.) The second dress is pale blue satin: the most sophisticated thing: a girl, looking beautiful and feminine: gathered net in a masculine colour. The third dress is silver and gold lace. There could be nothing more glamorous. Or there could: all ready I had seen such wonder and it had drawn out the idea that the world stretches further than you know.

  Meanwhile, distilled white vinegar diminishes mould spores and my houseguests need pancakes.

  Time And Toast

  A disappointment with the cornflakes is soon forgot. Godson loves marmite and butter toast. He also loves Dog, who benefits from a slyly dropped crust. We make plans to view some cows (not many of those wander through his city life) and go off the path adventuring in the woods. He has a sonic screwdriver and I have some pruning shears. For now though I drive my houseguests into the wet slap of a small February town, leave them to continue the rounds of visits and I’ll get them back all dizzy and in need of a rest tomorrow.

  All the spare bedding is persuaded back into the airing cupboard, a tangled solid mess that makes me feel like I’ve just hidden a body.

  There’s a suitcase in my front room, a gauzy cerise bow wrapped at the handle to make it easy to locate from a train’s luggage stackpoints. Several times this morning I look up from typing and smile at it.

  And then work time appears on the clock: the day has been swallowed up as crafty and swift as Dog took the crust.

  Kooky Valentine

  Here’s how romance works in our house~

  Mr: I bought you roses! From a petrol station (giggles.)

  Me: You know you can’t eat the shop bought ones- they put spray on them!

  Mr: Perhaps you could put them in a vase?

  (Both laugh hilariously.)

  It has a sort of Theatre Of The Absurd vibe to it.

  Here is a poem, untitled, written once upon a time before Mr. I like it a great deal but it only existed before now as biro lines in an old notebook. It deserves better. As a love poem, it’s unorthodox.

  'This is not the girl

  Whose song you sing

  Not the one you think of

  Not the one you love

  She’s the one who walks alone

  Who sings where no one ever hears

  And what she dreams you’ll never know

  And if she ever leaves that path

  Her footprints always bear that witness

  Where she’s been brings her where she is

  And the feel of cool rock

  Lasts as long as songs and love.'

  Adventure Brings A Return To Form

  We woke up under the river mist. Fingers of sunlight wrung the damp air, squeezed the water back into the fat flow of the Tamar.

  Dog’s tail was a fur propeller. We walked under our own steam in the bewildering bright day, down to the woods and up through the top path where we prepare to hack through fallen trees with Spiderman (Godson’s alter ego) and his Mum.

  ‘I’m not really Spiderman,’ he says, eyeing the slain trunks that lie askance across the path, green with scales of moss and pine-spiked. ‘I can’t really climb that.’

  ‘Have you tried, though? See here, how you can stand on this low branch?’ I hold his weight until Mr leans over to take him.

  Mr says, ‘Do you think you will fit under the next one?’

  Godson ponders. ‘I don’t know.’ He ducks his head. He thinks again. He strikes the pose of a superhero edging on a high ledge and goes sideways through the arch of dank wood.

  ‘Are you all right, lad?’ his mother calls.

  ‘You can call me Spiderman,’ he says.

  Newquay Late Winter

  A lone writer sits on a town bench, swipes wet sand from a foot with a stripy sock. Other foot, other sock. Further up the street on a similar seat, a man in a purple t-shirt is sleeping off a liquid lunch. Seagulls outside food outlets watch for opportunity. In the air: onions frying, sea-salt, a urine-dampness. The gulls pace. In shops hang t-shirts, rainbows of t-shirts, shining t-shirts, print-your-name-here t-shirts and hooded tops with hand pockets and holes for wires for headphones for your life sound track. Two boys stand outside a coffee shop, un-ironically play air guitar, sing to some music they love: it communicates something to them to provoke this signed response: a generational marker. One lone writer laces up boots and walks on to join friends. In the amusement arcade they post rapid coins into a cascade game, laughing and laughing till the campervan toy prize tips, on a tide of pushed pennies, down into the tray.

  Dust

  The house is swept from top to toe, cobwebs flicked and dark corners scrubbed. Original colours restored: the bath suite white as it would have been last time it saw a serious cleaning cloth. Grumbling spiders withdraw. Every window is open to the lively wind till the cold gets dark and the riddled fire is lit. The oven smells of bread, the hob of soup and strong coffee. A critical eye would find plenty more to do. Tired eyes, satisfied, rest under eyelids while the espresso brews: dream of chaos and order: a typhoon moving in gridlines. Wakes in a wave of character notes ~

  The construct of the isolated self longs to escape. It seeks the Other.

  Caffeine, alcohol, love, all kinds of drugs are the things that compress and unfold the self, that flex to break, that break to open, that open to hope to fill that emptiness withi
n. That’s how it begins. Fear of this abyss can push a person to anything. This deconstructed self has broken boundaries, has lost control, is boundless, in flux, open to potential. To survive, a reconstruction must be made. The old self is fragile. A more complex form develops, ideally. But caffeine, alcohol, love, all kinds of drugs are the glue of fragile surfaces. Not everyone can deal with dust.

  D.I.Y.

  Monday evening. Boy is on the sofa, hustling friends for a midweek half term party. Dog sleeps off her wood walk exertions. Cat is in a box, also sleeping. Mr has removed his trousers for the purpose of stretching. I love my home. Beyond this remarkable family scene two things I have done today deserve a note.

  Thing One: Black Belt promotion application form filled out and handed in. Officially training for 2nd Dan grading in April.

  Thing Two: ISBN application form filled out. To bring my Tae Kwon-Do stories to the world, I am becoming a publisher. Black Belt Books: that’s me, with the design guidance of my brother. He lives in Taipei so we are quite the international concern. First edition of The Time Travelling Tae Kwon-Do Tour Bus due out as soon as the final proofs are set and the printing price agreed. Soon will be wondering how to store one thousand copies of a niche market book.

  Fear and pride mix up like stage fright.

  Misfortune is an option. My misfortune though: I would still be proud of that. Once when I had no tools I put shelves up with a flat rock and a butter knife. There were more presentable shelves on the planet, I can believe that: but none more fun.

  Share

  Ice laces the edge of Roadford Lake, it breaks like sugar glass as Dog pads through. Little Granddaughter sparks giggles.

  ‘SPLASH!’

  This is how she shares the joke with us. Boy is trying to photograph still water but no one can be cross.

  ‘SPLASH!’

  Boy has the smile of the gracefully defeated. There’s a tail wagging, a child laughing, a warm sun in a clear sky.

  Girl has sunglasses big enough to reflect the lake. Everyone tries on my hat, my candid heavenly-blue hat.

  Siren Song In Spring

  Flat scales of ice on shaded roads.

  Plaintive, the wind sings; catches in the slung wires, in the spokes of the old aerial, a natural and an alien sound.

  Out of the blue, mist veils the river, blows across rooftops.

  Washing is clamped to lines: see it strain to fly, the arms of shirts waving like drunks at a wake: danse macabre.

  Spring pushes up in pointed buds: sallow, amethyst, velvet-white.

  On the stems of wild strawberries, petalled eyes open.

  Hedged

  Iced and singing the wind, slender as a blade, slivers through every chink in every wall, drags through clothes and skin, etches over bone, turns muscles to flint. Shoulders are tight packed gravel. Coffee swallowed, teeth grit. Under the rib cavity, a heart squeezes.

  Moans of weather, beats of heart, thick-headed fretting.

  Somewhere a memory shimmers: Longleat Safari Park? Legoland? A dream? A sort of park recalled. There is me and my two children walking round a maze. We are bored, in the hedge shadows. Boy is quite small so we hold him up to spy a bigger picture, a clear route.

  Play For Today

  My shoulders are pinched, uptight: not a finger pinch, something with more pressure per square inch, something like a vice or a blunt hammered nail. Over the day it distends from scrunch to pain. I drive to work and I think: I won’t manage this. Only when I get there and set the roof mounted heaters going in a sorry attempt to warm the floor, and I’m lugging kick pads, and my flask of coffee sits on a chair, even before my students arrive, thought has nothing to do with it, this is a burst of spirit: All the world’s a stage. Across the cold wood I tread, bold, sure of my character.

  Connubial

  Mr and I were early for the wedding. This is unusual behaviour.

  I did forget to wear my wedding ring (more expected: it is often boxed, as I can’t wear it for work. Sometimes causes hilarious misunderstandings, that I work evenings and must not wear a wedding band.) It snowed, a little flurry only. The bride and bridesmaids, even with the faux fur stoles, were bravely cold. It was easy to huddle us in for the big photo, seeking some communal heat.

  After the warming effects of a three course meal, sleepiness is inevitable. Little Finley half snoozes on his Auntie’s lap: he’s not been well lately. None of us were expecting him to vomit though. The bar staff handed over lukewarm soapy water and paper towels: luckily for them I am an adept sick handler.

  Then comes the disco and the dance floor covered in colours of light and twirling tinies. George does his first knee slide. Molly kicks her Uncle. Logan and Nathan stand on a windowsill shrieking at the wild rabbits bobbing tails across the lawn.

  On the drive home we laugh, we are saying how cute, how happy: were we really early?!

  Super Badger

  Woke up, a whole ten and one half hours after the day had begun. One lazy bit of a busy Sunday. The big picture is in my head but the bits keep falling under the mind-sofa (represents an obstruction here, not comfort.) Mr says we shall go to the woods to find some refreshment of purpose and to fell trees with our bare hands because we are quite Super.

  On the way home I think about the old path we found and how deep it is pushed into the ground. Once upon a time the king of the badgers reached the massive age of one thousand years and it was time for him to travel out of his woodland kingdom. As he walked, his wiry buttocks dragged tracks, and these became our country roads. Because: an entirety of logical sense is not required to enrapture.

  Tribe Of The Bobble Hat

  Little Granddaughter stomps to each park shelter post, hits every one in turn with two sticks, previously collected from under the giant fir trees.

  ‘Hahahaha! Dongdongdong!’ She chants. ‘Doggle, woff woff woff shtay.’ A group of cold teenagers lean into the wind, listening for such sounds, out on a music project. They are barred from sharing any shelter by the pink and fiercely bobble-hatted priestess. She stands at the head of the snaking path, shouts ‘No!’ They shall not pass, but edge on, gloveless and shivering. Dog lies on the grass, exhausted from her chain of commands.

  Hold Tight

  A roll of images from our walk, through woods, along the collapsing river bank, are the first thing I think of, presumably to block the possibility of everything else that might be lost to me. It might only be a loose connection or a sleepy battery that is not making the spark that wakes my laptop up. I have borrowed Boy’s Inspiron, which is fine but unfamiliar. I am stumbling over keys that didn’t even get a notice on my grubby aged Mac. Anyway, this short post is to let you know, if I seem to have disappeared, I have not. I am busy solution hunting and will be back.

  Apple Chapel

  In the Atrium of iPads all the golden rectangles pulse with the life I seek for my old MacBook. I see it, don’t hear it: wax dumps of each ear canal are thick with the blended oils of Earex. Arachis, almond, camphor. Smelling of mothballs then, I open my case on the problem desk. The grub of my screen, all the dirt of the faithful machine, it is hilarious in here. Even clean, the specs are laughable. I run a finger over the fault line that is held together by tape and a sticker from a Thornton’s chocolate. The assistant in his saintly blue t seems genuinely, gently amused. I am too fond of my laptop to be embarrassed anyway. We try a new charger and Everything Lights Up. For a power lead, ouch, yes, that’s pricey: but for a live machine and for the union of the internet, oh, yes, a pittance.

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