Viva frommage

Well, it has been a grey, wet weekend in Basel so I have spent an awful lot of time hiding in my non-grey flat. I went to see the Russian cats I am currently feeding, hoping for a bit of furry love but they both seemed in very cranky moods. (They are both grey too, you understand.) So I took myself and my non-grey aura home (apparently I have a fire-orange aura at present) and did some writing. Hooray for me. Not anything great you understand. If I was going to compare my words with a type of cheese (which seems the obvious thing to do when one lives Der Schweiz) I would say they had the consistency of cottage cheese. Quite crumbly and and not very cohesive but potentially quite pleasing as part of a bigger salad.

Anyhoo, I decided to do some work on a piece I finished late last year. By finished I mean it has a start, a middle and an end but even back then I knew it wasn’t the story I was meant to be telling. So I have dug it out again to work on and while the words are not easy for me at least some are coming. In fact so pleased am I that I managed to concentrate long enough to write for an hour, I am going to attach the first few paragraphs ( largely for my mother – and yes I am eating, my underpants are clean too! ) just because I can :-)

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The Weaverman of Askhan Bazaar

By Joanna Galbraith

In Askhan’s main bazaar they say you can buy almost anything. Tea hand-picked by monkeys. Goblets made from goshenite. Bonsai kits for growing children. Porcelain teeth. Endangered bees. You can also find a fortuneteller who sees the future in cats’ paws and a man who makes giant cymbals out of discarded saucepan lids.

The bazaar is on a hilltop to the south of the snow-capped Sacra Peaks. The Peaks are high. They can feel God’s breath. Yet the bazaar cannot be dwarfed. Lofty and tall, cut from old mountain rock, it looms fortress-like across the whole of the land. Gloating at river beds that bleed dry below. Poking holes into clouds so they bruise, break and cry. The path to its gates is a hazardous climb; the Devil’s Intestine as it is commonly known. All folk who climb it will bear scars on their limbs though they wear them with pride, like wounds borne in battle.

‘Look I have no kneecap.’

‘And I no skin across my palms.’

‘Come my fellows there is no competition, I am missing both my heels.’

Fortunately all suffering is soon forgotten for one inhale of the bazaar’s breath is like an opiate dream. Pain becomes a welcomed friend; water tastes of wine. You can swallow the quavers of unfinished songs and sing them one more time.

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P.s. For those who are wondering, Shazza's’s first efforts in the kitchen on Friday were excellent. (Even the designated canary appears to to have lived! ) Unfortunately however, Shazza is proving to be quite the saucy minx by refusing to do any sort of cleaning up. Apparently it does not come with in the ambit of Kitchen Sorceress, so it is up to me to remove the tomato stains from the ceiling etc