It's Still Life

I. Years ago, I stopped cycling after swerving to avoid a shoulder-to-shoulder line of schoolgirls taking up the pavement. My forced trajectory ended at a fence. Holding a fractured rib, I remember thinking, ‘What god of ridiculousness thought a person balanced on two thumb-wide tyres would come out of this alive?’

This week, while gardening, I found my old bike behind the arms of a bush, against the fence, where my husband had thrown it. I’m thankful I still have no ambition in that direction.

II. I think I might be made of some sort of synthetic copolymer. I can eat these chilli peppers (YUM!), but my husband acts as if swept up in a firestorm.

III. Thankful for places nearby where I can walk long distances and burn off energy that otherwise works against me.

This is on the way to Worth Abbey.

IV. Silly food that still tastes as good as it did when I was a child. A fish finger sandwich on a soft roll with melty cheese and coleslaw.

Bon appétit!

V. I pecked at my keyboard like a starved chicken, then remembered that the grapevines are heavy with ripe grapes.

I’m thankful for the occasional good memory.

VI. At the top of a very steep hill overlooking Clayton, W. Sussex, are the Jack and Jill windmills. I’m thankful that not all nursery rhymes are fiction.

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water — and truly it’s a long way down from the Jill windmill to the valley floor.

VII. Thankful for those rare moments when a photo recalls the hum of electrified fencing and the murmur of wind through grass, and you smile and think, Wow, did I take that?

VIII. Tomatoes still growing in the greenhouse, still watered by hand. Cucumbers still producing, so more pickles to come.

Which reminded me: my mother collected Heinz pickle pins, a hobby that began at the Seattle World’s Fair. 1962.

IX. So thankful that the farm up the street grows sunflowers. Not for their seeds, but for their beauty.

They are the audience; never seeking proof or approval, never asking to be chosen. They’re like breath you almost forget you’re holding.

X. For Six Sentence Stories and the writers who spread their imaginative ink each week. When I was a child, Mum said medium-ugly girls have a pile of books beside their bed. I assumed she was trying to persuade me to clean my bedroom.