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Spiderson

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Squirrel huffles along an oak branch, kicking a splat of water from leaves; as though he’d emptied his chamberpot down on the heads of the lane interlopers. Grumpy morning squirrels are not good shots, luckily. Above us also are spider zip wires, weighed down by mist. Later when the sun shines they might be diamond bunting… hmm, which is better: spiders on zip lines shouting ‘woooo yeah’ or the exuberant decadence of diamondiferous garlanding? Web lines in the back garden assist the tether of the tarpaulin, which is Mr’s poor substitute for a shed. Today he finishes making a picnic bench from pallets and wood scraps. The spiders are no help with the carpentry but will set up a fly patrol around the table. Perhaps they will join our picnics; bring a plate of fly wraps; a jug of moth smoothie. (I’m alive to spiders in particular today. Thinking of our godson, who is four years old exactly and an apprentice Spiderman. Spiderman in Wellington boots, blowing out his bir

Thoroughfare

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Under the mist a steamroller squishes fresh road surface. Under our feet, flinty little chippings to be marvelled at. And my fingers are cold, I tell Mr; the autumn is cooling, I feel it. Against the mist, blockish bovine shapes observe our passing. The bullocks are curious; packed solid with brisk curiosity, crowding at the gate. At the edge of the tar sprayed lane, slugs venture; only one that I see is crossing the unfamiliar terrain, the rest recoil; it’s the first time I’ve witnessed slugs in uproar. Before work, I smell of sun lotion and fresh air. I sit and draw careful lines: flowers growing from a grave pile of rocks. Our shy neighbour calls through the hedge- would we like some green beans? She hands them through a small gap of hazel while we discuss the merits of a petrol mower. After work, the night air has a zesty slice of ice to it. Mist hides the road, we believe, and that seems to keep the road firmly in existence, whereas fields have blurred to impossible

The Happy Cartographer June 1994

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Girl models one of Capability's hats; I am wearing Girl's hat, and writing something like a diary This is a series of extracts from my real diary, not fiction, which I am revisiting to find out how I came to be here (hence the cartography of the title) and why I am so clever at being happy. The main points so far are that I actively choose to be happy; to find what is genuinely positive about a situation rather than grimace and bear it; that I notice and therefore appreciate my surroundings, that I do ask myself questions to be sure that the path I follow is the right one for me. None of our internal maps are likely to be identical but there may be something in the drafting process that can help in the discovery of happy places. Here I am, aged 24- lugging my youthful notebook around college. “5 th June 1994 Capability F Sequin’s 21 st birthday. The question I want to ask myself every day is: Is this my life? I use writing to be sure of my path, to so

Directional

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Beady birds string the electric wires. Either side of Dog’s head an ear is in full flight. I press over the chunky treads of tractor, listening. Cut sticks of rapeseed respond with a percussional plink, while hollow wheat stalks ring like wind instruments. We play to the sky, which looks to be dissolving, into the dip the river inhabits; out of sight it disperses, into the bumpy flow of the Tamar, taking our music with it; takes it all the way to the ocean. Fish will hear the earth sing. There are many wheat fields so I use the marker of the church spire to keep direction. Dog jumps straw hurdles until she lies belly up at the field edge, steaming, and has only the energy to flick her tail. While she cools her core, a palmful of blackberries travel one by one into my mouth. I can’t see the spire from here. We could easily be lost, and not mind about it at all. 

Princess Lily

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Almost how the garden looked today Mr cuts the grass. I kick my flip flops under the pampas, to keep shady, and walk around the garden with Rabbit. He favours the perimeters; nips off the tips of blackberry shoots that have escaped the brutish mower. My washed hair is drying in the sun, absorbing the rich light. The lawn I admire as manicured. Rabbit has his harness, the red one with the gold bell, and matching lead. Leaky hosepipe sounds like a water feature; a long tumble of water over imaginary marble steps. We require a statue, I say to myself, so that Rabbit and I may take a turn about it, and speak of it later over dinner with dear friends. I shall tell them that I wore the long cotton skirt with the rose print; the darling rose print; and so admired the pastoral composure of the astutely cultivated fields.  Dog and Rabbit share some shade: taken before the lawn was chopped, one should add

The Recollection

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Yesterday when Baby ran in our garden she held out her palms to the beat of the sun. Today she waves as starlings flock, as we cross the cut field following the whirling tail of Dog. The sky is damp more than it is any particular colour. Baby studies the birds; they gather on a wire, fall like confetti into staccato winds. A slug dark with purpose seems lost amongst dry stalks. The ground curves down to thick green hedges. On skin, air leans close, whispers indecipherable sounds. Baby turns her head, from one edge of field to the other, seeking the source of the murmur. She looks to the earth, she looks to the heavens. She looks into her grandmother’s eyes and smiles with the semblance of someone who has recalled a thing of extraordinary import. I scoop her up like sifted gold; we run with Dog, laughing and laughing. 

Shush

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Autumn starts hot. Heat flares in the lanes, swells the hedge fruit. Reach around the orb spiders; pluck warm berries. Half ripe tang jumps a skip into a step. In the wheat field a yellow machine waddles. Thatch lines steam behind it. At the gatepost where the dead fox has dropped, bones bounce sunlight back through straggly grass. Silence: but for footsteps, but for the preoccupied machine, but for the contemplative chewing of cattle. Tilted head holds no thoughts, only acknowledges sun on skin. In sighs, wordless ordinary worries disperse. Later, the kitchen fills with rice scent, coffee burbles, the twist of wine pouring. The sky moves from milky opal to pale dark. A flat moon disk slots into cloud. Pale seeps away; peaceable darkness remains . 

Bad Hoover

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When Girl was a tiny blonde thing, she would push the nozzle of the vacuum cleaner along the carpet and say ‘hoove, hoove, hoove,’ until the game of housework was trumped by a walk to the beach.  Entertaining. I have spent time without a vacuum cleaner, as I have lived without most appliances at some point. Unintentional yet educational: time spent sweeping carpets, thrashing rugs, boiling a pan for a cup of tea, cooking on an open fire, cooking in a woodburner, treading washing in the bath, making shadow puppet improvisations. (The washing machine, the internet and a hoover, if we must live with carpets, are the things I choose to keep most. In that order.) Yesterday, after viewing the front room carpet, I trundled our hoover out. It is a small machine and for reasons of compactness the hose attaches to the body of it at a 90 degree angle. This bend gets blocked. To unblock, brave fingers must venture in, unsighted, and seize a clump of, hopefully, Dog hair. Yes, disgustin

Whale Scales

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The wind is learning to whistle. It pipes through the rotary washing line while I’m putting extra pegs on the dog’s blanket. The clouds go up so high, this patch of earth seems shrunken. This scale of things in which I am barely a speck is comforting. The wind grows, from a whistle to a whale song. I followed my father along the seawall on a post stormy day and I was about six and the wind was lively but warmish. Wave spray was catching at my legs, the cheeky stuff. Gulls, more gulls than usual, spun overhead, back and forth to the odd shaped rock where my father stopped and waited for me to catch up. The air stank but it wasn’t like the sewage outflow. And there, when my eyes realised what they saw, I learnt the true magnitude of the ocean. A blubberous mountain of whale lay turned and smashed on the shore. And the scale of things opened up; I was barely a speck but I was a speck of this vast creation; and it struck a ceaseless awe in me. 

Whilst We Dream, Life Continues

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In which I present to you draft 2 of verses 11-20 out of the 1,000 I am aiming for. Each verse should represent a moment worth noting, and all of these moments are to happen in one imaginary day. It was an easy idea to have, and at around 500 verses now (in first draft) I wish I had hit upon a lower number. But 1,000 Miracles In One Day is what I started, and it will thrill like a miracle when I get there. Reworking the earlier verses is helping to spring more forth. From sleep one sigh emits, an exhaled Aspiration that will persist Until action is provoked From the haunted dreamer Limbs shift, covers uncover, Disrupt rest, limbs tangle untangle, Cozy back, settle, the drama Resolves into contentment Outside, tides ebb and flow over hours Over sand. Dark waves roll, bring To the shore the energy of night Endurance, catharsis Peaceful, acquiescent sleep In this muted cotton-dressed bed The right place to be, the right time Neither too warm

A Time Of Plenty

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This alien proved difficult to decimate. But quite helpful at fixing Buzz.  Little Grandson has more swagger than all of the Rolling Stones rolled together. Him and Buzz Lightyear strut the kitchen floor, decimating alien forces and demanding biscuits. He gets a laugh and a banana. Dog and Bouncy Beagle are in the garden, stealing each other’s sticks. ‘Grandad,’ Little Grandson enquires, ‘is Dog my cousin?’ Cousin being a word which to him, we glean, currently means ‘a living being who is in my family group but does not live in my house and has not got an obvious title such as Grandad.’ For lunch, there is leftover meat, quiche, flan, pie, profiteroles, but no cheesecake- Boy finished that at breakfast. After summer pudding and lemon meringue pie. The fridge groans like our bellies. We go to Great Grandma’s house to refuse further food. Little Grandson gets his biscuit and a bag of duck food. Down at the canal, past a hissing parade of swans, we find a good lobbing spot. Two

Time Squashed Monologue

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Nearly time to get in the car and go. Not enough time to get everything done before that, but that is how it is. A small adventure of family awaits; time to stop writing! Pack a notebook and a pen, scribble in a corner, a writer is an addict of sorts, but if you neglect life, what to write about, eh, idiot? Step away from the keyboard, come back when you have reportage! Outside the rain is blown past the window, I imagine the droplets as looking surprised, being swept at gale speeds. We are going for a barbeque… What to pack, other than a notebook and pen? I don’t know what else, proof that I need to leave the house and try talking to people before I forget how. Do I not love my family? Of course, everyone loves my family, they are delightful, funny, generous, amazing people. So why still typing? Okay okay, I’m nearly done here! Barbeque in a storm; it will be fun, I know, it will be wet dogs trying to steal sausages and accidents with ketchup. Time’s up! 

Ogledoggle

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Baby listens to the music of Dog running; plink plink plink; through the dry stalks in the cut field. I don’t know what she makes of this world, but she clearly attends to it. Solemn mouth imitates the sound of the wind in the trees; studious hand opens to gauge the movement of the air. Big eyes reflect the sky. Words of purposeful nonsense are addressed to us.  ‘Ogledoggle.’ ‘Dog?’ ‘Uh huh.’ I whistle Dog from her roaming: this is funny, belly laugh funny. A whistle conjures a dog. A happy dog at that. Dog’s tail wags in a circular motion, seems to propel her forwards. I listen to the music of the dry stalks, to the operatic snort of granddaughter. 

Walking The Elephant

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For my birthday, Girl bought tickets. My birthday is in January, but the show I favoured wasn’t till now. And I was quite certain I would not write about it, for mostly I prefer to take something ordinary and paint it up in the glitter of my proficient vision. To start with the extraordinary seemed like cheating, like a lazy exercise. But sometimes an imaginary elephant turns up and fills you with such wonderment! I have been to the circus, ladies and gentlemen; a circus unseated, where you wander, with the crazy performers, and they swing over your head and stewards in leather kilts are busy keeping the balance between thrill and law suit. What the troupe present is inspired by the journey of a wedding gift elephant. Walking from Lisbon to Vienna, thrilling and alarming, it represents the bewildering, discomforting delight of the unfamiliar, the push to believe that things can be different, the very extraordinary wonderment that transforms what was previously regarded as m

Jurassic Farm

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Back walking in the stalk fields, through the sticks of cut crop, over the rain flattened wildflowers, to the edge of the field where the stony ground and the sound of a lone wind make me think of wasteland, of a contented desolation. Am amused to find a child’s toy lying by a bale, a Tyrannosaurus Rex cast in plastic, missing both forelegs and all four feet. A dinosaur in a baler accident: nope, didn’t expect that. It’s not an astonishing life defining moment, nor does it need to be. A quirky surprise serves to remind that though lives are plentiful, this one is unique to me. Maybe, in more exotic time zones, other people are uncovering utterly mind-boggling prehistoric beasts, maybe they are at home, wedged in armchairs, frowning at rain. I am here, treading out the boundary mud. 

Boy And The Day Of The Envelope

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The man behind the desk asks Boy to repeat his name, scuffles through the box of indistinguishable stationery. A white A5 envelope is plucked up, is politely accepted. Boy who says he is not nervous opens the envelope. Blank faced, scans the enclosed list. He chats. How can he be chatting- is that nerves? Or a good sign? I know not to fret, but I kind of want to just to fill the time. Boy strolls over: yes, the list is the list he hoped for.  Happiness for Boy. Sympathy for the ones who need to negotiate. Character building stuff, but it is cruel work building a character. Boy keeps his sympathy for the ones who accept how it is. I say, maybe they are happy: he says, how do they know? That he questions: that to me is the best sign of a genuine education. 

Chortle

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‘Ma’am;’ my tiny student gleams; ‘one day;’ ah, I think, here goes a story; ‘one day, when you’re a little girl, I’m going to marry you.’ He skips off, unburdened. A kindly hilarity hits me repeatedly. I smile at the clear pendant of moon that dangles low over the curvy home road. At the turn to Lawhitton, cloud curls up over the moon’s edges. I regard this magnificent mottled sky and, maybe thinking of adornments and romantic heroes, the phrase ‘chest wig’ arises in the busy part of my brain that likes to find new ways of seeing things.  Not a single chest wig photo? Here is a picture of Baby being surprised instead.

Bloodstream

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In the cut field, stalks of bone-whitened crop line the horizon. Each is half a shinbone high, so I walk boot soles outstretched, to flat the stems, avoiding stabs and bruises. Dog charges through, unscathed. I am watching the ground; minding my steps, admiring the pattern of tractor tread. Altitude vantage point instinct halts my walk at higher ground: I can see nothing but still cloud and the rolling plain of stalks. I am planting raspberries when the cloud lets a cascade loose. As long as I dig, I’m not cold. The spade handle is slippery, Dog eats a raspberry root: that’s the worst of it. Later, however, a slice of my toe goes missing. Smears of footprint record a hobbling journey to the first aid drawer. Rich dark blood sticks like mud, flows like slow water.   Self inflicted home chiropody incident- no sympathy required. But do be surprised by the freshly vacuumed carpet.

Turning Earth

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Turning earth for a raspberry patch uncovers two lizards and a pre-decimalised penny. First lizard scarpers under a rock pile. Second lizard runs over my hands; it has a bright orange blaze on its belly. I let it back to the earth. I love how lizards freeze on discovery. It seems that they assess the situation calmly, in a smartly proactive reptilian way. Mr rubs dirt from the coin. 1937, he reveals. George VI. The sun, unnoticed in the excitement, has simmered out, is blistering the sky. Girl arrives, takes Baby to the garden. She snaps Rabbit into a harness, takes him for a walk. Dog follows. Baby follows, wearing a sun suit and one shoe. Mr calls out that he has discovered a slow worm, I see it sss-ing across the drive, in its precious gold skin. What an extraordinary day, I comment, and quite forget to plant the raspberries. 

Love

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This morning I stand in my mother’s kitchen: from the window we watch rain burnish apples on bowed branches. She has been expecting this weather, she says. After breakfast, I ride in the back of my parents’ car. In Taiwan, my sister in law sighs, it is too hot. My brother nods. Their suitcases waggle in the boot space. I twist my head to check for Mr, driving behind us. It’s a long journey from Church Cove to Kaohsiung. We can only accompany them to the ticket barriers of Truro train station. My mother, my stepfather, my brother, my sister in law, my son, my daughter, my granddaughter, my husband and I, exchange tight hugs. We wave, we turn, we break the group. I keep thinking, my mother says, I’ll see you soon and if I can think that, it’s okay. She lifts her glasses up to smooth tears with her free hand. Hugs are trading well today. Deep breaths draw in rain freshened air. We drive eastwards on the A30: the clouds ease away from each other, the clouds regroup. Baby f