The magpie stood beneath a photinia shrub in the front garden, beak ajar and slightly upturned, as if it were singing in a film documentary from the silent era; but with no sound it was just a hot bird cooling itself in the shade. I turned on the sprinkler; they like to bathe in the falling drops of water. It was 42 degrees. 107 always sounded better, but you have to be of a certain age to remember Fahrenheit. Another magpie appeared, dropping down from a power line, or someone’s roof. It was probably a sibling or a some other relative of the first. The pair were most likely descendants of a deformed bird I once knew and wrote about . * Earlier in the afternoon I had taken the youngest teenager to her first shift at a takeaway restaurant. Before picking her up later I had sat at an open-air table outside a cafe in the mall with a drink and an Alberto Moravia novel. It’s only a kilometre and a half from home but in this heat ... * Two Women is set in the coastal mountains so...
Recipes and ruminations from a small house in a big city.