ECHO 13/1/06

Friday 13th – the garden is cold, greyish this morning and the wind is up and billowing through the evergreens, swaying – the birds have vacated; do they know we are leaving tomorrow and therefore saving me the hurt of having to see them one more time? – we do not want to go – but the house is caught in familial wrangling, misunderstandings and poor communication – it is a shame – even the black cat from next door who has been regularly trying to hunt the birds enters the garden but swiftly retreats, doing a rapid U-turn and heading back the way it came through the trees –

You idiot of movement
Twisting unseen through the pampas
And thistle seeds
An echo of a man
A fold of tragedy
We were barely worthy
But at least we came fairly
Without malice
And will leave the same way

In the ‘disused’ airfield I saw an odd military vehicle parked not far from the radar wall at the south end; two windowed wagons on caterpillar tracks joined by a short articulated arm with a small cockpit and drivers’ wheel in the front wagon – the police were present too, driving this way and that in their luminous cars across the property.