Serendipity

No snow could empty the roads , streets and lanes like this heat .Six weeks of being baked awake .

Bewildered people , dozy with the day , emerge , as the sun sinks , to shop . They buy what look like very random selections .

Late in the evening we wander in the relative cool to the  pub . In the dark people move stealthily like cats . All these dim figures - like ghosts .

We drive ,windows down,  and the Saxophonist takes a wrong turning .
I suggest we keep going . Half way through the next village is a green turning and my instinct says take it .
It is a green tunnel , dim and shadowy .There is a dead end and I climb out .I peer into the gloom and there's a pale chink further on .Is it sky or is it water ? I don't know but I grab the picnic from the boot and stride off ahead .
I am a small pale figure amongst the dark trees
.
Suddenly the small figure squeals and sprints .
There is a wide wide water , a strip of beach and a heady mix of salt and seaweed in the air .

A wrong turning and intuition . Don't these often make for the best discoveries .

Would Crusoe do so ?

This heat. You feel bleached to the bone .
I can't remember the last time I put the oven on . Never mind , there I am out on the shore line again .

There's the odd yacht , sometimes a seagull and me .
My hair has gone white blond , my skin is permanently salty and there is sand in every pair of shoes I own .
 I have given up on hair brushes . makeup and , come to that , underwear. Robinson Crusoe would disown me .

I'm sure it can't be right but it feels as if we live on cold crisp apples and cigarettes .
At night we drink cold cider and watch the pipistrelles swerve as the seagulls do in the day .

Identified flying objects.

High , high up there is a glider looking like a giant seagull in the lazy air .

Fresher , greener air streams through the windows as we scissor along the lanes half hoping to outrun the heat .
Then I can smell salt in the air . I have bare legs and sandals .A white egret wades and the breeze ruffles its feathers .Creamy elder flowers bob on the branches as the breeze reaches them .

Now a seagull skims the sky looking like a small white glider .
Seagulls and gliders , gliders and seagulls .......

Further to my last post ...........

The crows and rooks are spread out across a sunny field as if they are out for a days metal detecting.

The dark conifers stand out in the wood like tower blocks amongst the green green dwellings and   newly coming leaves of the oaks and horse chestnuts.

Everything is slowly being saturated in sunlight. If I had a bar of soap I could wash in it. It is plentifully generous.

Suddenly cherry blossom is not sagging and drab. It bounces on the branches - maribou and plume. Puffed up posies jumping and jostling in the sun streaked warm breeze.

There is nothing that isn't more cheerful in this sunshine.You could look in the backs of cupboards and in remote and obscure small zoo's. In both cases everything you found would be cheerful. Fact.

The sun shouts about how it will bring elderberry and blackberry to come to be. How it will grow and harden nut shells and make apples swell pregnant with promise.

You think I'm a bit tipsy on the warmth and the sunlight ?
Let me tell you ( quite sternly ) that today is perfect English spring time and I'm inebriated, paralytic, sozzled, intoxicated on it.
Excuse me while I wipe my mouth on my hand and take another swig.

Horses and silk slips.

You might have seen a small figure in a large grey duffel coat and a small grey bowler hat scurrying along or you might have missed her .She did not linger.
I would say no one lingers in this cold but there is no one about.
All is silent as Christmas day .

Even the seabirds and sparrows are missing .

In the chilly gloom wisteria blossoms hang like icicles.

Put something down and it's almost painful to pick up .The cold has drawn inside it .
The same with your clothes .Back in the car. In a fold of the fabric you are wearing lurks an icy slice of cold. As you move it does too. Lurking and lingering before surprising you with an extra small slap of sub zero as you start to relax .

Each horse in the field stands waiting.
The trouble is that we have all been waiting  so long we are not even clear on what we are wait for.

Amongst the post this morning was a brochure of jaunty summer skirts ,silk slips and sandals - give them to a horse I don't want them.

But I do and you do. We want to sit companionably bare legged, clinking the ice in our glasses.
The Egyptians worshipped (amongst others ) a sun god. I'm not saying they were right or wrong, I'm just saying.

Of weather and courage .

Wet
Bloated , saturated , water oozing from every orifice : eyes , arse and everywhere in between .The landscape is drunk on water .

Its Falstaff , its the fat boy of Dingley dell in the Pickwick papers .
Collar undone , belt undone , still it's fat with water . No sluish gate  , no lock and certainly no man with a broom will make a difference .

Wet
Two  young Canada geese , cocky and sarky come up from the estuary .They start  along the grass parallel to the path .
On the path trendy hikers and the determinedly middle class walk wet in the expensive attire that style forgot .
The two geese wink at me and start to strut mimicking the pretensions on the path .

Dry
Many years ago ,being reckless , I walked into the newly opened hairdressers .
There stood a tall , big boned Asian man . I sat down and told him I wanted "different " and "bold". He wanted to know how much courage I had got .
I told him.
He said he hoped I was as excited as he was. Then he cut my long , long hair . And then he cut some more and shaved some more .
I stood up again with just peach fuzz on my head .We were both excited and I walked away to turn heads .

Wet
The rain is never far away . Get half way down the hill and you are sodden before you start your day .
Tired of the relentless weather . Tired of being tired I sit at the table and remember livelier times . I reach over and put the phone on the table . I sit silent listening to the rain . I have the phone number but do I have the courage ?
I ring and he answers . So I summon what courage I can and and I and my long hair go out .
I remind him of that spectacular cut .We both smile broadly .
He cuts .

Dry
So I sit here ,  late at night , listening to fresh music and drinking sappy green wine .
He cut , we hugged and the saxophonist says I look like a confident woman .

And I am  - me and my short shock of fire cracker hair .

Sin in a tin .

I have narrowed it down to just three cookery books , the back catalogue in my head and one in the post . I have bought in the few herbs , spices and oddments that the books suggest and I don't have .

ME: I am the model of efficiency ! A role model to you all ! Aren't you jealous of my competence and the clarity of my vision of the year ?

YOU: Are you on something ?

ME: I don't know what you mean !

YOU: Well , for a start what is that lump on your head ?

ME: Nothing .

YOU: Just a minute there's bruising too .

ME: No there's not .

YOU: YES THERE IS ! Someone has lumped you one - probably for being such a know all . YES , somebody has definitely taken a swing at .....

ME: It was a tin , closely followed by a kilner jar - happy now ?

YOU: What ! You know people who routinely sling tins at you and don't mind lobbing a jar to follow ?

ME: Its a cupboard thing .

YOU: A what ?

Its a cupboard thing . New ingredients at the front in a little box , most likely staples behind .Any bulk buying is taken out and put elsewhere .
Anything I forgot I'd got and doubled up on comes out too . This happens several times what with having access to several good markets and having a wholesalers card  .
In the end there is literally no spare space in the kitchen cupboards and things are so stacked and shoved that things leap out at you if you open the cupboard doors too quickly.

YOU: Ah ! Now we are getting to the lump on the head . And what was that you said about competence and clarity of vision .

ME: Ease off or you will be sitting in the pub on your own tonight .

So there are also wicker baskets full of pasta , noodles , couscous and various flours . The cupboard in the dining room doesn't shut properly because

YOU: Dear God ! How much stuff do you have ? Are you expecting the apocalypse or do you just have a compulsive hoarder thing going on ?

ME: No . Neither .It's just keeping a good table and knowing a real bargain when you see it .

YOU: Oh well .

ME: God , I wish I was a catholic at the moment .

YOU: Why !!!

ME: Well , you get to go to confession and they say  you feel better then.

YOU: OK , we don't want all this coming out in the pub . So what do you want to confess about ?

ME: Tinned tomatoes .

YOU:  Pardon . 
NO !   NO !   I heard you alright .  I'm just boggling about your answer .
Let me get this straight if you had been born to a Roman Catholic family you would be in the confessional right now pestering some poor priest about tinned tomatoes ?

ME: Well yes .

YOU: This has got to stop. Right here , right now - you hear me ?
And just for the record how many tins of tomatoes do you currently own ?

ME: Sixteen .

YOU: IS that it ? Are we done ?

ME: Well we could talk about tinned mackerel , chickpeas , bean sprouts ....

YOU: I don't know what to say to you ! Can't you just donate your spares to a food bank and we talk about something else ?

ME: Yes but the guilt and the feeling that I must have knocked back a stupid pill .

Isn't there anybody else out there with illogical spare , a stash or  emergency supplies  ?
Come on make me feel better - there's a tin of tomatoes in it .