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piano. I suppose London blackbirds have expensive private education that includes music studies, and are sent, eventually, to the equivalent of the Royal School of Music. And local blackbirds have to learn their music from their parents. So if their parents don’t have very good voices, the young won’t know how to sing properly. Life’s not fair, even for the birds.
    Another bird observation: our pigeons, I think they are rock pigeons, but they hang about in our trees, don’t know how to fly. They just think they do. They know what they’re supposed to do, flap like mad and swoop, but they suddenly fold their wings back and sort of stall, like a little paper plane. They drop, flapping their stubby wings like mad trying to gain height until they find a suitable branch or rock to land on. But it’s a very clumsy effort at flying, I must say. Grandpop used to make me paper planes when I was little. I’ve just remembered that.

CHAPTER SIX
    Note: Found a beautiful little nest on the path, it must have fallen out of a tree in the wind or something. It’s empty – no eggs or baby birds, thank goodness. (Does that come from ‘thank God’?) There is a book on nests and eggs here of course, so I’ve looked it up. It’s small and rounded and neat, and made of tiny twigs and hair and fine strands of orange string, and lined with what looks like long fair dog hair, or human hair, and on the outside there are tiny bits of green lichens like pebble dash on walls, and moss woven in. It smells of damp moss, like a florist’s shop. There are o ne or two tiny feathers inside, so maybe there were babies and they’ve flown. I think it might be a chaffinch nest. Another book says chaffinches are also called pink spink, twinck, and tink, because of the shrill note of the male bird. And in the autumn it sings ‘tol-de-rol, lol, chickwee-ee-do,’ the first few notes uttered somewhat slowly, then more rapidly, and a final cadenza at the end.
    I WONDER WHAT I would have done if there had been babies in the nest, if they were nestlings with no feathers. Would the parents have come back to feed and care for the chicks if the nest fell out the tree? I don’t see how they could really, and a cat could find the babies if it was on the ground. If I found an injured bird, could I ever kill it to put it out of its misery? How would I manage? Do they survive if you try to feed them?
    ‘Mum, what would you do if you found a baby bird that’s fallen out of its nest?’
    ‘Put it somewhere safe away from cats and hope the parents come to look after it. And keep the cats indoors.’
    ‘What if it’s got no feathers on?’
    ‘There’s a bird sanctuary in Mousehole, near Penzance. I’d take it there.’
    ‘Is there? Can we go there sometime to see it?’
    ‘Some time. Anyway, Gussie, don’t go Looking for Problems before you’ve got them. We’ve got Enough Problems already.’
    It’s Sunday and Mum always takes me to the local car boot sale on Sundays. It’s a great place to find old books – not that we need any more old books – and homemade marmalade, and clothes that people don’t want any more (but some are very Decent and Cheap), and plants. Mum has started doing more in the garden, since she’s had such success with the herbs, so she’s decided to make her mark on the wilderness, as a thank you to Mr Writer.
    There are some very sad people here at the car boot – people who look very poor and sort of crooked and with missing teeth. I’ve never seen so many people with crutches and walking frames and even wheelchairs, and double buggies and dogs, usually very big dogs or Staffordshire bull terriers or Alsatian dogs wearing masks. Muzzles, I mean. Some people bring two or more dogs with them and always stop in the middle of a narrow bit to talk to other people with dogs, so you can’t get by easily. And some of the people speak in such a broad accent I can’t understand anything they say. It’s like a foreign language.