Blackbird

The days have been long and hot here. I have been sitting Wren in the garden in her baby bouncer in the shade of the Japanese maple. She usually falls fast asleep, the dappled light dancing over her flickering eyelids, and I wonder what she is dreaming of. One day a blackbird came and sat in the maple, right above her head. I watched him as he sang, his beady black eye ever alert. He came back the next day when I sat her out, and the next. It was as if he was singing for her as she slept. It’s a lovely thought but the truth may be more prosaic. We met one of our new neighbours the other week. She is a doughty character with a twinkle in her eye and has lived in the neighbourhood for over twenty years. She drives a Reliant Robin and is in constant battle with the local cats and garden snails. The snails are probably what is attracting the blackbird because, whenever our neighbour is out in the garden, wheeee, any snails she finds go flying through the air and land with a slimey smack in the side alley. It’s a blackbird feast out there. If I were one of the local cats I’d watch out, because if she ever caught one of them in her back garden, I’m pretty sure they’d go flying through the air into the back alley too!