It must have come sweeping down the bungalow chimney
when the fire was off duty
that feathery black beauty
that was never going back up the smokestack.
Was it a crow?
Was it a raven?
Or was it a very sooty pigeon?
We didn’t know.
We just knew that whatever it was,
it didn’t want to go.
For all our shuffling and shooing,
nothing doing, going-wise.
That ruffled kerfuffle,
flitting around the sitting room
eventually sitting down at rest
on the central light fitting.
Eyeing us.
Contemplating starting up a nest, perhaps.
So I run to the bungalow’s rear
splaying open the French windows.
The bird follows and flies
steering away through the stretching gap
and my mum begins to clap
that ruffled kerfuffle
that disorderly duster,
that freaky beaky bungalow invader,
that got us in a right flap.
Thank you for the drawing of your dog which is accurate but lacking in vitality. I can see that the creature is asleep, like our own, here beside the fire. It is a challenge to breathe life into the image. A challenge to which you have failed to rise. If I did not tell you such things, I would be shirking my work as a grandmother.
So, you wish for an old woman’s advice about approaching this young beauty at your school. My advice is plain. If you love her, tell her. I cannot make it plainer. If you love her. Tell her. Spill the beans, as your grandfather would say. It did not continue between him and I, but still I will love him for all of my days.
He called me his Blancmange. I called him my Potato, because he was versatile and his collars were very well starched. In French, we say tu me manques: you are missing to me. The beloved is put first and not the self. Put the beloved first. Write to this girl of your feelings. Let the beans be spilled. But do not bother to enclose any of your drawings.
Your grandmother