psychopomps

 

I have a flock of psychopomps in my bird tunnel. Two rooks without tails and two crows with white feathers. The hi-jacking jackdaw has finally decided to stay in the wild. This is after weeks of him flying away only to return ten minutes later and squeeze in through a hole in the netting to feast on the excellent buffet I lay out for the other birds.

 

Psychopomps are spiritual guides whose primary function is to escort souls to the after life. Ravens, crows and other corvids are famous as guides. I can't decide if my lot are treating this place as a school for psychopomps or like one of those old actor's retirement homes where people sit around  regaling theatrical stories or performing their King Lear or Ophelia from the comfort of their arm chairs. 

"Whose soul have you escorted?" they might be discussing.

"Oh I helped Humphrey Bogart" "Really? I guided Marlon.... he insisted on doing his Macbeth ....." "Orson's rendition of the Good ship Lollypop was most uplifting.."

I just love the word - from the Greek psycho - breath, soul, life and pompos - a guide. Death's cat in my book The Curiosity of the Black Cat was a sort of pre-psychopomp I guess - he brought comfort to those as they were dying but as far as I know didn't escort them anywhere.

Above are twenty nine swifts at the wildlife hospital - each one has to be hand fed every two hours. The hospital has more hours in their day than anyone else to accommodate this.

Pocket the cat has suggested to Rocket the dog that he becomes an influencer. 

How do you do that? I ask. 

He tells me he gets free things by modelling them, like this very smart life jacket. 

I don't think that's a lifejacket I say - I think it's a very expensive harness that I remember paying for myself.

He insists that he was made to wear this hat in exchange for little biscuits made to look like bones.

I have been given a special needs hedgehog who is blind. Inspite of giving him a very smart hedgehog hotel to live in and I thought an extremely large fenced in area he periodically digs his way out only to be found snuffling on the track or my neighbour's garden in daytime. I suppose being blind he doesn't know when it's night time. Hedgehogs shouldn't be out in the day but considering before I was given him he spent nearly a year in a box I think he should do what he wants and I'll try to guide him home if I find him in a sort of psychopomping way.

Pocket the author tells me he's changing his name to JK Pocket and that he's writing a book about a magic school for cats called Mogwarts. I told him I thought he'd find that was already written in JK Rowling's Harry Potter series and was called Hogwarts and was not for cats. He scowled at me and told me that had nothing to do with it and he was writing it for a Middle Grade audience. "Is there such a thing as middle grade cats" I ask. He turned his back on me and said over his shoulder that he had already had a fan letter from a cat in Italy. 

"Ciao meow" he said and then asked if I had the film Roman Holiday on DVD and could he watch it to get some ideas.

Above is a close up of one of the twenty nine swifts. When it fledges it won't touch ground again for two years. As William Blake wrote "He who kisses the joy as it flies lives in eternal sunrise."

One of two remaining fox kits growing into her ears.

And here the magnificent Scout is looking at the emerging hazelnuts and imagining them in a rather nice praline biscuit.

The last of the roses - they have been amazing this year, filling the house with their perfume and the garden with colour.

Reflecting on old people's homes I thought I'd put on the poem I wrote ages ago about my parents.(neither ended up in a home fortunately.) Living with my parents was like being in a Samuel Beckett play. This really did happen. (all names have been changed.)

Small Talk

Mr B(who sat in his big leather chair

lost in its wings)

would stare at the set in the corner

and although Mrs B

would bring in the tea

he never felt the need to join her.

Should she speak

(and he could not hear)

he would raise to his ear

a massive trumpet 

made of tortoise shell

whilst she,

mouth full of crumpet,

would quell her irritation

and her lips would move

in syncopation

"What did you say dear?"

Mrs B thought of euthanasia.

Eventually, instead of death

she brought him earphones

and plugged him in

by curly cable from his head

across the floor and coffee table

to the belly

of the telly

as if he were joined

by an umbilical cord

and Mrs B who ignored the screen

did not have to listen

at Christmas to the queen

or commercials for tampons and lager

but could play

as softly as she liked

the Beatles and Wagner.

And when she needed to talk

Mrs B would walk to the porch

and flash signals across the room

with a torch.

Linda Coggin