A Proud Day

Just like with every PhD, there were moments when Pascoe, and even Nigel and I, thought the end would never come.  Around the end, progress slowed to a very slow sloth crawling up a steep tree bough in a leisurely fashion.

But finally on Saturday, graduation day had arrived and to cap it all, the letter appointing Pascoe senior scientist at a biotech start-up arrived through his door at about the same moment we did.  So we were all in ebullient mood.

The firm which was hiring out the academic gowns for the ceremony clearly had a plan – a very tight route from the hire-stand into McKewan Hall for the ceremony and then straight back out to the stand again.  

But Pascoe reasoned that he had paid good money for the hire and was going to take his robes out for a spin.

We processed through Edinburgh Christmas market where I had been drawn to the twinkly lights like a consumerist moth, and then as the cold rain grew heavier, into the National Gallery of Scotland where Pascoe posed with the great art. 

It was a lovely experience as a number of strangers congratulated him and stopped for a chat. 

And Pascoe certainly got the value out of his robes.

The Impossible Dream

I hanker after a little place in Cornwall. However, it is a complex category of dream since we don't have the money and we don't actually believe it's the right thing to do.

Yet, my vague wish for a pied a terre in my homeland of Cornwall remains since it is an emotional impulse, not a logical one. In Welsh and Cornish there is a term 'hireth' which means something like 'the longing for one's homeland'.

Partly it is the love of my homeland which tells me I should not aspire to a second home there. It is to snatch a dwelling from a young family who might make their lives there and contribute to the economy.

But this week a huge chunk of logic was also added to the scales. I had to be home to open the door to tradesmen to repair a broken window, a leaky roof and a blocked drain. All the routine aggravations of house ownership in one week. If we were lucky enough to own another property it would be house maintenance times two.

No thank you.

I shall stick to dreaming and looking wistful, like so many displaced Celts before me.

Rosy-fingered dawn

If there's one thing I try to avoid, it is the Dawn. 

When I rearranged my teaching life I was keen to swap early morning commutes for evening classes. I simply am not a morning person.

So when something is important enough to get me up early, the dawn seems like a foreign country to me. 

Saturday morning, I was travelling to the Saatchi gallery where Perran had bought us tickets for the Tutankhamun.

The footpath to the train station was deserted.  Silence.  A huge grey heron flapped noiselessly over my head. Some chickens murmured nervously behind a garden fence.  And when a black crow took off just in front of me, I could hear the taffeta rustle of its black wings.

But then came the best of all. As I turned onto the road beside the old prison, the trees blazed with golden leaves and a little robin was perched on the railings. As I drew closer though the bird grew less familiar. I was expecting to see a red breast but instead the whole bird was a sooty black. As I neared, it turned and fluttered to a nearby tree and its tail flashed orange. 

I was looking at a black redstart,  an uncommon sight in the South East. 

If I had set out later, would I even have noticed the redstart in all the bustle? Would it already have fled to somewhere quieter?

Maybe I do like dawn after all.

If you love them, let them go

I don’t like to see birds held captive in an aviary.

Small zoo cages also bother me.

For a long time, we talked of keeping doves, then finally we took the plunge.

But the first stage in keeping doves is to keep them netted in for six weeks while they decide that your dovecote is home.

Nigel carefully put up a net that was as spacious as possible, but still I did not like to see them trapped inside. 

Whenever somebody visited I felt I had to explain our apparent cruelty.  One friend jumped to the conclusion that the net was permanent and scolded me.

However, the only thing worse than keeping the net on was the day when it was time to remove it.  

You cannot be certain the doves will return.  Like adolescent children they will be exposed to the dangers of road traffic and evil strangers – although in the case of the doves, the evil stranger is a sparrowhawk. 

It was my birthday when we removed the nets and our children were there.  The doves sped off into the blue as fast as their wings would carry them before the nets were even down properly.

“They buzzed right off!” said Carenza.

Only at dusk, when the urge to roost came over them would we know for sure if they would return.

That night, as the sun lowered in the sky, through the clear evening light, first came winging one dove, then several more, plopped into their pigeonholes, turned and looked out at us. That first night, we were two short, but another came and rejoined the second night. 

One down.

We would have to be content with that.

Supernatural Bird Activities

We had netted in a batch of new doves – to keep them in our dovecote for six weeks while they came to accept it as home.

Now, we were only one week off releasing them so they could fly free.

We returned home one night in the dark. 

I looked up and said goodnight to the roosting doves.

But then I stopped in my tracks.

On the floor of the enclosure lay a still white shape.

“One of our doves is dead.”

But when I looked up at the dovecote where the rest were roosting, I counted the same number as ever.

We looked again at the dead dove and saw it had some black markings unlike any of ours.

“So the one on the ground is from outside?  But how did it get in?”

Nigel hazarded, “Perhaps it was trying to get in through the net and it died.”

“But then it would still be stuck in the net.”

It was like Sherlock Holmes – The Mystery of the Dead Dove. Or is that a Henry James?

I decided that a neighbour had found an injured or sick bird and tucked it into our enclosure, out of the way of cats.  Where, unfortunately, it had died.

One day soon a neighbour would come up to me and explain.  However, a fortnight later I am still waiting.

Spooked by the event, we un-netted the doves a week early.  So for them it was a good outcome.

I’m now wondering whether, in the interests of freedom, they somehow managed to rig up this “dead dove scam” themselves.

Our house with "doves"