The list of lost things grows longer.
Unusually for me I made a cake the other day for which I needed 2oz of butter to make the almond topping. I diligently measured out the 2oz which was the exact amount of butter I had left. I turned my back for a moment and Mrs Magpie swooped in nabbed the butter, flying off with it to either eat it, hide it or make a sandwich with it.
I was reminded also of the possibly apocryphal story of the spurned woman who so maddened by her partner's infidelity stuffed his curtain pole with prawns and popped the finials back on each end. As the days and weeks wore on the smell in his flat was so awful he was forced to move out. Well Mrs Magpie raided a box of prawns I had left to de-frost in the kitchen and it felt a little like that. I found one in the fruit bowl, one tucked between a couple of dog towels, one in a flower pot. Fortunately I have no curtain poles but I'm surprised she didn't push one into my printer which she's done before with a dog biscuit.
Well of course that's what magpies are. Thieves. I don't know why she likes a pastry brush - but postcards? Perhaps she's sending them to friends with a wish you were here on them. And that's not all. We have a 'food' store which is an old Rajasthani painted cupboard with iron bars down the front where packets of rice, sugar, nuts etc stand like prisoners waiting to be released. She has found a way to cling onto the bars and peck through to the packets - or peckets as she clearly thinks they are - so the kitchen floor is often scattered with rice like some newly wed bride has passed through on her way from the church. I think she is apex predator now. She can open a box of eggs and eat them which is something that Pocket can't yet do.
The other day I listened to a recording of the mournful cry of the solitary Kaua bird from Hawaii whose wife had died in a hurricane. When he went the species became extinct. I imagined people listening to a recording of Mrs Magpie and assuming this bird too had become extinct. What bird chatters, squeaks, coughs, splutters, roars and mimics the other birds in the garden? It was with great disappointment that I heard the cheerful song of Mrs Peggotty who has long been gone with the other jackdaws only to see it was Mrs Magpie trying to fool me.
Here is Rocket whippet racing. Basically it's a bunch of plastic bags pulled along on a battery operated wire. I haven't let him near my shopping since incase he associates my bags with the thrill of the chase.
He's not called Rocket for nothing.
Here he is resting after a busy morning with the plastic bags.
Below is a little run down on the cats.
This is Pocket yawning as I discuss the Narcissism of small differences. I guess he'd rather we were talking about Ponzi schemes, venture capitalism or Wim Hof.
Nancy is getting old now but still as vociferous as usual. She's either telling us the end of the world is nigh or that she really hasn't been fed since Christmas. It's National Cat today I tell her. She sighs.
Life is a road that no one comes back down she says. She's like a little travelling alarm clock that goes nowhere.
Here is a lime green zinnia in transition. They've been one of the most successful cut flowers I've grown this year though these dahlias, roses and sweet peas have also been rather wonderful.
I seem to have reached an age where sometimes as I'm chatting away the name of someone or something escapes me. Talking to friends they too stop in mid sentence shaking their heads and squinting trying to remember. I wrote this poem on the strength of it.
Lost Words.
In mid sentence the name I want
becomes a greyhound sprinting
away from me
before I can trap it in my memory.
Have you met - er -
but now it is half way down the track
tossing it up in the air, shaking it,
growling at it
sometimes leaving it alongside the name
of that actor
in that film - you know -
the one with the - er
it won the - er
and that plant
it's - it begins with a dee or an ess.
If you're going to become a dog couldn't you
be something slower
a small pug perhaps or
a three legged poodle
not a racing dog
as fast as the wind
disappearing over the horizon
with the name I want.
Occasionally when I call
the greyhound comes back
and drops the name at my feet
Ah Sisyrinchium I say and relax
becoming perhaps too complacent
and confident
in the fluidity of my sentences
till fleet of foot it grabs
something else
and plays with it, chasing it
down the street
hiding it behind bins
until I shake my head
and shrug my shoulders
I don't know I don't know
I can't remember.
Once in a while the greyhound picks up
someone else's lost word
and leaves mine festering by the side of the road
running away with polygonum, Esther and
Manchester-by-the-Sea.
Linda Coggin.
