Birdsong

It is a glorious morning and there is birdsong all around the house. Wrens, for all they are so tiny, have the biggest and most tuneful voices around here - well, except for the blackbirds. In all the places we have lived, there has turned up eventually an evening blackbird. Sitting somewhere above, it has been on a chimney stack, or once a weeping willow in an adjacent park, singing and singing as dusk fell until it grew too dark to see and the voice faded into the night. It has taken a lot of years for it to happen here, but at last it has. In fact, for the past year or three, we have had blackbirds nesting in the ivy on the wall near where we sit out, and I am imagining that they are now feeling sufficiently confident to sing, or perhaps more likely, that there are now other blackbirds around that need to be told just whose territory this is.

(And I do know that we have to be vigilant where the cats are concerned. Middle-aged and toothless (in one case) as they are, baby blackbird would still be irresistible.)

So why am I burbling about blackbirds? To remind myself of the joy and beauty of the world, and sometimes it is hard.

Out of the blue in my inbox this morning was an email from the husband of the cousin closest to me in age. They moved overseas just over three years ago, and since then I (and other cousins) have had little or no contact with them, sadly. A year ago I emailed, had a reply and a care parcel of opera DVD's, available for peanuts on the border of the country where they now live. Then nothing again. And now, today, a positive budget of catch-up, that in all honesty I would perhaps rather not have had.

I was angry with the tone of the email at first, but having had some time to think, I can maybe understand why it was as it was. My cousin has cancer - secondaries - and is I think, not likely to live. That is a lot to take on board out of the blue, and I think that the email was written to make it as easy as possible. Of course, it isn't easy. This is the cousin closest to me in age, that I saw most of when we were young women, and although life and geography has drawn us apart - more apart than I would have chosen - I still feel close in a lot of ways, and this is.....hard.

It is also life. In that now immortal phrase, stuff happens. We can't stop it, and only a few, best placed, and have any effect at all. Thousands of miles away, that ain't me. Hence, birdsong.

As well as the other things. Meetings and phone calls with friends, and with folk of like mind. Both of which I have been doing in the last few days, with a bead group to go to, the morning book group (an absolute joy this time with a short discussion on what we did and thought when we were feminists* lo those many years ago). Plus a pleasant visit from an old college friend.

I've been purposefully working away on the ex crochet jacket which is now a knitted jacket-in-progress, plain, blocky, touch of colour at the edges is the plan. Started the back first as being the largest block, and am more than halfway up. The seashore amulet bag - the bag is finished and I am starting on the embellishment. I'm not sure, will have to wait until it is complete before making up my mind if I am satisfied with it or not. I will have sufficient beads to make a bracelet of some sort, too (an ensemble!) and plenty of charms for that and another something or other if I am not content. And I have a direct application dye class all prepared for tomorrow.

Come the weekend, we are spending some time with my sister, and taking our mother to the seaside. That is, shall we say, curate's eggish. But I'm not going there. Well, I am - to the sea - and will bring back the photos to prove it. But you know what I mean.

I might even do some housework. Which would make me feel good. Not, I hasten to add, because I like doing it as all the stupid research has been interpreted as saying. I ask you!! (Justified.) Of course we feel good having done some housework, because it is done and we don't have to do any more for a while.

Hey, equilibrium.

Birdsong.

*I do not mean to imply that I (we) are no longer feminists, but the consensus was that we change, times change (not necessarily in the way that the media might have us believe, neither for the better), and like old soldiers generally do we tend to simply fade away. At least, that's today's explanation for it, I might yet come up with a better.