Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle*

There's a house near Enclosure Bay, on one of my morning walk routes [which, by the way, I never pass without remembering the Orca Incident, that I didn't witness, dammit] that more often than not is playing music - not super-loud, but noticeable enough that I'm glad they're not my neighbours. The actual music varies, from indie rock to Enya, but today they were playing jazz. Regular 😀 readers will know how that instantly jangles every nerve in my body; but I was able to distract myself by taking myself back to the last walk I did where I had that sort of accompaniment. Which, of course, was New Orleans, because jazz is pervasive there.

I had actually been a bit apprehensive about that very thing before going there; but in the end it was ok simply because it's just part of the city - like the rowdy fat people drinking on Bourbon Street, like the pretty coloured houses in the French Quarter, like the drifts of icing sugar surrounding a pile of beignets, like the sparkly parade throws dangling from trees above cracked pavements in the Garden District. It was all just part of the atmosphere, and I loved it; and enjoyed being reminded of it as I walked along.

Even so, it was good to get out of earshot soon after, and hear just the birdsong again - tui, doves, kereru, blackbirds - and then, yay! a magpie. I love to hear a magpie calling. They're more rural than I am, so it doesn't happen that often, and is special when it does. There's something so lovely and melodious about that distinctive sound echoing along a valley - and, for me, evocative. 

Of Australia, because that's where I've spent more time in the country than I have here at home - and also where our magpies were originally introduced from. It was just one summer in the Clare Valley well north of Adelaide, back when I was 22, looking after a farmer's polo ponies, up early and out every day riding round the property mostly on my own but sometimes helping to move stock, cantering over sunburnt grassy paddocks, seeing kangaroos and a fox, and always hearing magpies calling. (Also seeing snakes and spiders, and ants in the sugar bowl on the kitchen table, but we'll move on from that). It was a long, hot summer, just like this one, and that magpie brought it all back.

* Thanks to Denis Glover and his poem 'The Magpies' for that wonderfully accurate bit of onomatapoeia.