FEBRUARY - Week 2

Sunday

Early evening

Firstly, it's not a Heron. That dear Mule, is a pigeon of the common variety. Matter closed. Anyway, I've basically been asleep all day and night and could hear the frying pan on as she was cooking a 'bolognaise'?

I have been asleep since approximately yesterday and I make no apology for this. February demands it.

There is something about the particular quality of a February afternoon - the light doing very little, the garden entirely uninviting - that makes the sofa not merely comfortable but necessary.

I was horizontal in a professional capacity.

I became aware of the frying pan at some point in the early evening. The smell reached me before full consciousness did, which is, I think, the correct order of things. She was making a bolognaise. I have no strong views on bolognaise as such -- it is a human concern -- but the smell is considerable and I found myself in the kitchen before I had properly decided to be there.

I was on the counter briefly. This has been noted by the relevant parties and I note their noting of it. I maintain that the situation was ambiguous.

To the blackbird.

There was, or may have been, a blackbird just outside the back door at some point this afternoon. I say may have been because I was, as established, substantially asleep and my recollection of events in the early part of the day is impressionistic at best. A blackbird was present. Whether it arrived in the manner it appeared to have arrived, and by what means, I am not prepared to confirm.

An internal review is underway. I will report further findings when the findings warrant reporting.