This year's Mrs Magpie baby has arrived. I feed it every hour and swan around in a black and white gown. (not really but perhaps I should). At the moment it has a special mixture made for young parrots that has multiple amounts of goodness in it that you feed on the end of a very tiny paint brush. It's going down well but I daresay if it starts growing green feathers I might worry. It's always an uncertainty if these tiny babes will survive. This like most of them had fallen out of the nest and sometimes weeks later they don't make it due to internal injuries as they hit the ground. I haven't got any concerts lined up for it - when Mrs Magpie was a chick like this I had to take her to a Pattie Smith concert in Cambridge so I could dash out to the car every hour to feed her.
Ghost Pocket fortunately is not interested in small birds any more. You don't take a life when you've already lost yours apparently.
He told me in no uncertain terms though that I had too much stuff. You can't take itwith you he said and like me you'll be off soon so get rid of it. Throw it away or sell it - I think there's a new bill coming out called Assisted Buying to help you clear the decks. He's right of course - I do have some stuff. I remember cycling home with a dress maker's dummy I found abandoned in Baker St. I was once referred to in a national newspaper many years ago as Queen of the Skips in an article entitled a Room of My Own.
What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more. The Ghost Pocket scans the contents of the room.
Seneca? I say - Another mate upthere?
He twitches his whiskers.Of course - Senny was a stoic philosopher of Ancient Rome, a statesman and dramatist. It is not that we have a short time to live but that we waste a lot of it. And I must say he continues fixing a beady eye on me he would say that we suffer more in imagination than in reality. Anyway as my mate Herodotus (490BC) Dotty as we like to call him would point out that of all possessions a friend is the most precious.
Rocket wanted to know that as a dog is a man's best friend does he count? And could I make sure I don't throw out his spare beaded collar, the chewed ball and the bear with an eye and both arms missing.
Nancy isn't interested in stuff and anyway as she has Miaowzheimers she can't remember if she had anything anyway. Perhaps there was once a toy mouse with catnip in it but that was all.
This is the time of year when young animals are arriving at the wildlife hospital in droves. Above this gorgeous owl and below with such an anxious little face this fox cub.
I think he's going to be my Thought Fox. An inspiration for creating something as Ted Hughes writes in his poem (see below.) Honestly you just want to cuddle them they are so adorable but we must love them from afar because if they get used to humans then returning to a life in the wild would be near impossible. Imagine if as the farmer approaches him with a gun outside the hen house he rolled over onto his back for tummy tickle.
The Thought Fox
I imagine this midnight moment's forest: Something else is alive Beside the clock's loneliness And this blank page where my fingers move.
Through the window I see no star: Something more near Though deeper within darkness Is entering the loneliness:
Cold, delicately as the dark snow A fox's nose touches twig, leaf; Two eyes serve a movement, that now And again now, and now, and now
Sets neat prints into the snow Between trees, and warilly a lame Shadow lags by stump and in hollow Of a body that is bold to come
Across clearings, an eye, A widening deepening greenness, Brilliantly, concentratedly, Coming about its own business
Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox It enters the dark hole of the head. The window is starless still; the clock ticks, The page is printed.
