in vitro

Last month a fox broke into the duck house and killed all the five ducks including the rare and wonderful Mr Walters with his Easter bonnet.

 As is often the way with foxes it just killed them and actually didn't take any away to feed the youngsters which I thought was a shame. I blame myself as the duck house door didn't shut properly  so easy to get into. I haven't had a duck killed by a fox for eons unlike the ones killed by my neighbour's dog. There's not much space in the garden for burying five ducks, gone are the days of singing Kumbaya around the grave of a guinea pig. So I buried them in the hedgerows. No ashes to ashes.

Subsequently I put the five eggs I'd collected a few days previously and put them in an incubator. For 28 days I religiously turned the eggs many times in a day as the mother duck would have done so the embryos don't stick to the inside shell. I occasionally clucked at them. But the word clucking unless you are a hen means disapproval so perhaps that is why they decided not to hatch. I mean who wants to be disapproved of after being trapped inside an egg for twenty eight days? However the 28 days passed and as I'd suspected nothing hatched as I'm pretty sure they had not been fertilised. I'd never seen any frantic activity between the two males and their harem. 

Many years ago I bought six white Indian runner duck eggs off e bay and that is how Mr Walters came into the world. He was a one off. So now I've ordered half a dozen black runner eggs again from e bay and so begin the twenty eight days of nurturing.

Billie has been in our life for a year now. I can hardly believe how small and adorable she was and how this was before she learnt the joy of stealing mobile phones, digging up the garden and chewing all the cushions. I must try clucking at her.

So it's birds, birds, birds. This is the time of year for them to fall out of their nests and find their way to my sanctuary. Corvids. The crows, the rooks, the jackdaws, magpies but hardly ever a raven. At the moment I have two young rooks who still need to be hand fed and two (see below) who can feed themselves but are learning to fly before I open the door to the shade tunnel and let them go on their merry way. They have not yet packed their suitcases.

Rocket said he'd stay in his egg for twenty eight days but not to bother turning him. He'd like some light refreshment.

As I'm not writing much at the moment - (Writer's Block? )Pocket says he has a theory on writer's block. Writer's Block is neurotic inhibitions of productivity  he said. I think Edmund Bergler the Austrian psychiatrist  said that I told him. Well your writer's block is just an excuse he scoffed. You have flagging motivation. So easy to make excuses - just listen to yourself. So I looked at my excuses and thought he may have been right.

I didn't write yesterday

 because a swarm of bees

stole all my words 

and gave them to the Queen.

I didn't write yesterday 

because I couldn't find my pen

the magpie had stolen it.

I didn't write yesterday

 because there were not enough hours 

in the day.

Because I had nothing in my head

and nothing to say.

I didn't write yesterday

because I couldn't be bothered.

Pocket told me I should just take up accountancy instead.

Ashes

The incoming waves bring

the ashes onto the beach.

Brian was scattered here last week

but part of him still rests

in the rock pools

 with the hermit crabs

and the plastic bottles

and the child's shoe.

Most people aren't aware of Brian

after all a week is a long time

in the life of a wave.

By now some of Brian

is under a coconut tree

in the Seychelles,

is swimming with dolphins

in the Channel Isles.

He'd always wanted to travel.

On one beach part of him 

is in a sandcastle,

on another in a sandwich

and smeared around the lips

of a small boy.

Which once he was.

Linda Coggin.

PS perhaps Pocket has a point.

magpie message

 

For anyone who may be new to this blog I will briefly explain that a few years ago I hand reared a baby magpie chick who although lived outside used to tap on the window every morning to come in and would sashay across the table and either sit on my laptop or steal a pen and fly away. If I called out Mrs Magpie she would fly down from some tree and land on my shoulder, peck my ear and tell me off about something. Sometimes in the morning I'd find her roosting on top of the cupboard in the kitchen having spent the night there. Then over a year ago now she found a mate and I realised Mrs Magpie was infact Mr Magpie. They'd meet every evening in the apple tree at six thirty in the evening and sit on a branch next to each other. If she was late he'd fly onto the roof of the house and call out for her. Eventually they flew off together and I didn't see them again.

Then - last week as I was talking on the phone in the front garden there came a call from the cherry tree and there was Mr Magpie. He chatted for a long time, no doubt telling me about the handsome family he'd produced though he hadn't brought them round to show me. Then he flew to the poly tunnel where he'd been raised when learning to fly  with me in hot pursuit. Of course after over a year he would hardly fly to my shoulder but he continued squawking and then flew off over the fields.

 I haven't seen him again and probably won't but I loved that he had heard my voice in the front garden and came to tell me that all was ok and he was still alive.

Billie who was not alive when he hung out at the house thought a bee was much more interesting and I doubt she'd have been so generous sharing a room with magpie when he/she was young and had to be kept warm inside. The magpie not Billie. Neither of the cats or Scout the old wolfie we had then or Rocket minded and sometimes the bird and Pocket would be next to each other on the table. I daresay Pocket was wary of him/her though of course would never admit to it.

Rocket told me that Pocket had started speaking in strange tongues and he'd had to cover his ears up as it was so annoying.

We hvae to udnretsnad taht  nboody is cmonig to svae us from oruslvees said Pocket as he wafted past. I asked him what on earth he was talking about. Typoglycemia he muttered the brain can still understand words even when internal letters are jumbled up as long as the first and last letter remain in their correct position. But that's words written down I say - not spoken - it doesn't make sense spoken and what are you saying?

We have to understand that nobody is coming to save us from ourselves - and you don't expect me to be writing and reading as well as everything else do you?

Carl Sagan said that I told him but he merely pursed his lips and said do you mean Cral Sgaan?

Pocket has also taken to following us on our walks which makes Billie so excited she leaps up and down and turns into a spinning top. It is rather annoying but I love that Pocket wants to do whatever we are doing. I told him I might take up sky diving but he ignored it.

View from the kitchen window

Magpie

I am the magpie from your cherry tree

I'm surprised you don't recognoise me

I know I've been gone a year

but now I bow down to you in greeting.

If you don't believe me I'll show you

my nest built from your pens

which I stole 

also your letter from the DVLA

and the wedding ring you threw on the floor.

One for sorrow they say

what existential nonsense

but let me tell you

I have a mate now

and two truly is for joy.

Linda Coggin April 2025

phone home

 

I put my phone in my top pocket and took Billie for a walk along the track and when I got back I had no phone in my top pocket or any pocket. So I re -did the walk - twice - met someone on the track who reminded me it was not the end of the world and who also looked where I had been. No phone.

My daughter had luckily put a tracker on the phone and assured me it said it was somewhere in the house. For two days I searched. Lifting up the sofas, looking in the fridge and the oven in case I'd had a real senior moment but to no avail. I mean even when I was younger and the cottage was freezing I made a hot water bottle and then couldn't find the stopper anywhere only eventually to see I'd left the carton of milk out but put the  stopper in the fridge. Friends came round and rang the phone but there was no phone tinkling under a pile of papers or behind a cushion. (not that we have any cushions left thank you Billie).Eventually the lovely said daughter sent me a link to a find my phone which if I pressed a button would emanate a loud bleeping noise from the phone even if it was on silent. Again I wandered round the house and the front garden and eventually went into the back garden where Billie doesn't normally go to hear it bleeping from the bottom of a large bag filled with hedge clippings. So Billie must have either picked it from the floor as I missed putting it in my pocket or she took it from my pocket and ran out and dumped it in the sack. I wouldn't have found it in months. I soon realised that what the man on the track said was true - it wasn't the end of the world especially after what is indeed happening in the world right now.

This lovely fox was in my daughter's garden in Peckham. You so rarely see them in the countryside but London and other cities have many urban foxes. A friend who has a boat told me that her husband had left a port hole open when he left and a fox had run along the gang plank in the marina and popped in through the porthole inviting some of his family to join him. He made a nice nest on their bed and chewed a few yachting shoes and maps. Pocket overheard me telling someone this and said that actually he was really a ship's cat and now wanted to sleep in a hammock if I could rig one up for him.

He adopted a sort of nautical swagger and paraded around the landing as if he was on deck of some eighteenth century warship like The Wager about to invade the Spanish bounty hunters. Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, so do our minutes hasten to their end.' he said. That's Shakespeare I said - I didn't know you'd read the sonnets. He stared at me from behind the eye patch I noticed he'd slipped on. I shouted after him that actually The Wager had sunk and what was left of the crew were castaway on a barren island where there were absolutely no mice and would he like that? He ignored me and swayed off muttering that the ship's biscuits had weevils in them.  Rocket trotted past me with a lime in his mouth and when I asked him what on earth he was doing with a lime he informed me that Pocket told him he might get scurvy unless he ate some citrus. 

Here is Rocket on a real boat travelling over to the Isle of Wight for a day outing and was worried that he didn't have a life jacket on.

I found this poem that I wrote a while ago and forgotten all about as I was trawling through some notebooks and as it's about a fox I thought I'd include it here.

A psalm for the lady fox

A psalm for the lady fox

as red as their coats

as red as a rose

 and the setting sun

who runs with her mate 

before the hounds

over hill and dale

till the sun goes down.

A psalm for the lady fox

as the hunt gives chase

past the farm with the geese

over fence and gate

away from her cubs

she keeps safe underground

she leads them away

till the sun goes down.

A psalm for the lady fox

who stealing a hen

is shot by the farmer

outside of the pen

A psalm for the lady fox

whose blood on the path

flows red as their coats

as she lies in the grass

and whose milk from her teats

which also flows

is as white as the moon

and the drift of the snow

a psalm for the lady fox

killed by the gun

whose fur was as red as the setting sun.

Linda Coggin

the doors of perception

 

Sorting out the animals first thing in the morning is like being in a Brian Rix or a Feydeau farce whereby people are always leaving and entering the stage though different doors. First thing is to let Rocket out of the front door for a pee and Nancy through the upstairs door where she is safe for the day. Then Billie out through another door and Pocket through the porch door to be fed. Then Rocket through the living room door to be away from Billie trying to play then Pocket through the hall door to spend the morning asleep on the beds.

All the world's a stage Pocket purred as he sashayed past and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and entrances ........

Shakesp ......? I began but he'd already exited.

Billie has kept to her New Year resolutions and mastered the art of taking things out of coat pockets either hanging on the door or being worn. She is a fully fledged pick pocket and if we lived in Victorian times I might have sent her out onto the streets to make a living this way. She did this with my phone which I am so careful not to leave lying around but she took it out of my coat pocket and ate the new phone case I was given for Christmas to replace the last phone case she ate. Her favourite thing is tissues and yesterday she ate part of my address book from A to F. The only consolation was most of the names in my old address book are for people who are now dead. Like Mrs Magpie she loves pens and as I was writing this actually tried to steal my pencil out of my hand as I was writing a rough draft.

Pocket announced that he thought we should abide by the Wellbeing way of life and demanded a complimentary breakfast to start the day. I had to remind him that all his meals were complimentary but he just turned up his nose and informed me that life is a long preparation for something that never happens.

WB Yeats said that I told him but he changed the subject by telling me that we owe our existence to the stars and that Space is so big you may think it's a long way to the shops but that's nothing to space. I said I didn't think he ever went down to the shops - the nearest one being over three miles away though Rocket had been. Pah - dogs are so earthbound he sighed.  Then after a brief interlude he twitched his whiskers and embarked on another declaration.

The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance and measured the steps of the moon and mapped out the seven heavens by star there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul? 

Oscar Wilde said all that I said but when he tossed his head and licked ferociously behind one ear I pointed out that not only had Rocket been down the shops but that he had actually been offered a job at the railway station when my car broke down the other week and we had to wait hours for a tow truck. The station manager was so kind he not only made me a cup of coffee but offered to look after Rocket in the ticket office though he amusingly declared Rocket would only be allowed to sell  Rover tickets

Pocket was suitably unimpressed with this abstraction and then went back to talking about the galaxy, that on Venus a day is longer than a year and remarking that Nancy was blacker than space. Rocket said he hoped she wasn't as black as a black hole or he might unsuspectedly fall down it.

Teach me your mood, O patient stars.

Teach me your mood

O patient stars

who climb each night

the ancient sky

leaving on space no shade, no scars

no trace of age, no fear to die.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1841-18

resolutions

 

Here is Billie wishing you all a happy new year. She enjoyed her first Christmas along with other people's presents. I've suggested the animals make new year resolutions.

Billie's are: to eat more of other people's presents. Eat more cushions, slippers, dog beds, important pieces of paper and poetry.

                                 

Above is Rocket seeing in the new year with a post prandial snooze. He asked what a cheroot was and could he have a dry martini with his supper? His resolution was to have a gentlemen's club that Billie was not a member of. I asked him what form this club would take and he said lots of comfy armchairs, the odd cheroot (if he liked them) and no unnecessary playing first thing in the morning. He also told me he was exhausted from reading all the books behind him and what did Pocket mean by telling him an unexamined life was not worth living? This was why he'd read them all but couldn't see how Vogue's Guide to Knitting and Crochet would improve his understanding and examination of his life. When I mentioned the quote to Pocket and told him Socrates had said that he just stuck his nose in the air and asked me if I grew any hemlock.

Pocket said he was above resolutions and he didn't need to improve in any way. But he did announce he was going to become a police cat. PC Pocket? I enquired. He glared at me Certainly not - Detective Superintendent Pocket if you don't mind.

I asked what he would be doing and he looked at me as if I were stupid. Arresting errant mice obviously. And any wayward shrews or small rabbits. I'll be patrolling from dawn to dusk if necessary. 

We have two new beautiful Indian runner ducks to keep our one remaining duck company. The female above has very unusual markings and the new male is also rather splendid.  I think they'd make very interesting babies if I incubate any of her eggs come spring.

Nancy said she might take up cooking as she didn't think she was getting the food she really wanted apart from the odd arrested mouse that DS Pocket might have left on the mat. She also asked me if I grew hemlock as Pocket had told her it was very tasty with fish.

                                            

Inspired by a wonderful poetry writing course given by the celebrated poet, writer, Memoirist, Reviewer, Workshop Leader and Occasional Mentor Jonathan Davidson on which we were encouraged to list the phrases we most disliked hearing, below is my list. 

 See it say it sort it is one that particularly annoys me though I didn't write it in my list below.

Unexpected item in bagging area.

There are certain phrases 

that make me cringe

like some copywriter has gone

on an existential binge.

We value your custom

the train will terminate here

the road ahead is closed

until early next year.

pin number unrecognised (is this a trap?)

your call is important to us

please refer to the app.

Your flight is cancelled

We have to let you go

your card has been refused

the tubes are on  go slow.

your bag is too big for Ryanair

you'll have to get off 

or we'll increase your fare.

We are fully booked

buy one get one free

your call is important to us

It's not You it's Me.

Linda Coggin 2024

christmas greetings

 

Suddenly it seems that December is upon us and therefore towards the end of it lies Christmas. To say that I'm not really prepared for it would be an understatement but below is Nancy getting in there first with Christmas greetings  Meowstle-toe (thank you Chloe for the picture and title)

So I thought a series of warming festive pictures perhaps - chestnuts roasting by an open fire ........

Pocket who normally hogs the fire is waiting for us to put up a tree so he can climb on it and play with the silver balls. This usually leads to the tree being at a jaunty angle and having to be tied to a door handle to stop it crashing down. We deliberately do not put a fairy on the top as this seems to encourage even more adventurous scaling of the branches.

and Billie - who has never had a christmas is holding onto what she considers to be the best cushion and asks when she can open it. Normally she doesn't ask of course and most of our cushions have already been opened, their fluffy white contents scattered across the floor like snow. Rocket was temporarily excited as he said he would make snow angels and did indeed roll around in it though nothing looked very angelic.

Rocket who is not in a festive mood here has found an airline flight cushion and is hoping he can fly away perhaps to Lapland where he might offer to pull a sledge(much to Pocket's disapproval. see earlier remark on you wouldn't get eight cats pulling a sledge. etc etc .)

The paperwhites opened early this year as I obviously planted them too early so won't be around at Christmas (much to Pocket's disapproval) (see pic of him scowling below)

But here a gentle reminder of a Christmas greeting from dear Mrs Magpie (now Mr.Magpie) who liked to pick everything up and fly away with it. I think the nest he might have made with his consort is probably lined with my pens and other useful accoutrements.

Happy Christmas dear Readers and thank you E.E.Cummings for his poem below.

Pocket wants to change his name to E.E.Pocket as he says he has scribed some rather catchy haikus. 

little tree

BY E. E. CUMMINGS

little tree

little silent Christmas tree

you are so little

you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest

and were you very sorry to come away?

see          i will comfort you

because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark

and hug you safe and tight

just as your mother would,

only don't be afraid

look          the spangles

that sleep all the year in a dark box

dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,

the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms

and i'll give them all to you to hold

every finger shall have its ring

and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy

then when you're quite dressed

you'll stand in the window for everyone to see

and how they'll stare!

oh but you'll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands

and looking up at our beautiful tree

we'll dance and sing

"Noel Noel"