Mrs Blackbird has recquisitioned

a small glass tank in the garden. The Man had filled it with tadpoles  and was about to film them but when his back was turned the blackbird flew down, jumped in and splashed around, then she noticed the tadpoles and scoffed them.*

The tank has stayed there and she comes every day for an afternoon bath, the tadpoles have not been replaced but the Man buys fancy blueberries which he cuts in half and leaves them in a saucer by the tank so she can snack and swim.

*Coronovirus Lockdown has meant that all travelling filming work has been  cancelled, all the kit has come to live in our house, where it sprawls  over kitchen, dining room and garden and threatens to take over upstairs

I am trying to explain compost

my Chinese guest  is looking puzzled

any vegetable waste,  peelings, tea, coffee grounds ... put them in here  

I point at the kitchen waste bucket, she shrinks back in horror. Maybe I need to show more of the process, I pick up the bucket and beckon her to follow me up the garden, open the compost bin and tip the bucket  into it. She looks stricken 

Why would you do that?

It feeds the garden, the worms and insects break it down to make a rich soil - don't you feed your garden?

I feed my garden with yellow beans 

!!!

Das Sein

I'm preparing for this new term that is rushing up to meet me,  ploughing through texts thick with references to the thoughts of dead men: French ones, Greek ones, Austrian ones and then those German ones and their very special words.

I've sought to lighten my load by interleaving the heavy boys with joy, such as a wonderful book called Evocative Objects by Sherry Turkle. Also The School of Life chops the likes of Heidegger and Plato into bite-sized pieces for kindergarten philosophers like me.




The mother thrush is letting her son walk around in our garden, she's up on the fence keeping watch. His head is tatty with the remnants of baby feathers and he looks like a drunken uncle at a wedding party, an impression that deepens when a failed attempt to perch on a flimsy branch has him swaying ninety degrees in each direction before he flops back onto the grass. He doesn't fly away when I walk outside and I can see her bobbing around in panic in case I pick him up and eat him.



On Saturday I set off to meet my step-daughter for lunch, passing her father on my way out.

I was wearing one of my re-knitted woolens - it's hairy orange with a la-di-da collar

I said  I'm going to see your daughter

he said  and I see that you're going dressed as a mad woman