JACKIE WILLS

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I don't want to be British

March 22, 2021

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A cataplasm of webs

Research and poetry.....I remember the thrill of discovering how a spider creates a web across a stream. Of how she can spin a web across my lawn, from the apple tree to the elder. Many things are still coming together. Walking on the racecourse with Julie and her dog, picking blackberries and elderberries. Raspberries from the allotment - still ripening, even more jam. Making elderberry cordial with ginger and cloves - it seems elderberries are a super fruit, even more so than blueberries. Reviving my old obsession with Culpeper in discovering an amazing book at Yale Medical Library with brilliant illustrations. This remedy seems particularly seasonal. A CATAPLASM OF WEBS Take Venice Turpentine 2 ounces; Juice of Plantain 1 ounce and half; Figs 3; the yellow pareing of Orange Rind 2 drams; Bole 1 dram and half; Soot half an once; Pigeons Dung 1 ounce and halfl large Spider Webs 6; black Soap 4 ounces; Vinegar enough to beat it up with. To drive an Ague, tie this about the Wri

The vixen's stare

She sits by my neighbour's front window, sometimes tries to wander into the house and she has a face I want to look into all day, to absorb that moment's contentment. She's about the same size as a young fox that wanders across mum's terrace and when the back door's open nips in to take out the red slippers I keep there. I side with the myths of fox as messenger of the gods. I don't like the anthropomorphic characteristic of cunning. A fox walking down mum's road the other evening with a rabbit hanging out of its mouth was a reminder of truth. It went up to the Tye and waited near one of the many warrens. I could not disparage a fox for that. Humans, on the other hand, put words on the walls of art galleries and ignite fields, forests, mountains and valleys.

Friends and a view of hills

When I looked like this I was wearing a Swatch watch with babies' faces on - black, white, mixed - it's in a box with birth tags and curls of baby hair. John in LA sent me the pic. I remember the earrings but a stranger wouldn't associate the me I am now with this glossy haired woman. Whose kitchen was I in? With babies came a voracious need to write. It was always part of me and as time went on, I had to garden, too. The children were little when I took on a share in an allotment. It provided raspberries for summer and autumn birthday cakes, plums in mid summer, potatoes and beans. So I'm drawn to writers who garden, like Olive Senior and Jamaica Kincaid , who I'm off to see at the weekend. Kincaid said about writing, “It’s just heartbreaking to see young people thinking this is a career. Publishing is a career. Writing is life. It’s something you do because you have to do it.” I've written most of my conscious life but just as it goes with gardening, it wou

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