slug love and the heart's candle

OK, I know that slugs aren't cuddly. They are also not our friends – this year we've had to replant up to 5 times each our beans, brassica, courgettes and even leeks. But look at this. I know nothing of slugs' reproductive behaviour, but I guess that's a little ball of slug babies. I know that the conventional view would be to stamp on it all, quick. But – call me nuts, but doesn't this touch you just a tiny little bit?*

Here lost tribes of corn marigolds flag field margins. New honeysuckle blossoms; and my outdoor potted jasmine has put forth some flowerbuds, possibly first time ever. Redwings are torn across the sky; above my head in Simon's field a pair of buzzards lift off in sync.

Devon-based Hilary Mantel has just won the Man Booker literary prize for a second time, with her Thomas Cromwell sequel. She's the first woman and first Briton to win it twice. Go, girl. Will Self was a favourite; an 'outsider', debut author Alison Moore with The Lighthouse from that small indie press known for its poetry, Salt, was also on the shortlist.

I'm learning the art of rest. Can't think why I haven't tried it before. In the night my blood pulses in my ears like the too-fast crash of waves on shingle. My heart slams against the walls of my chest like a loose shutter at a window, or a night-bird throwing itself repeatedly at glass. Over and over there's a question that I'm not getting, and one that I cannot answer. I'm shielding my heart like a candle from this wind that makes the trees whisper in Ash, Sycamore, Willow.


* See also 'How to Love Hornets', a blogpost from 2011