The Banishing of Huginn

I'm blessed by having many wild birds around my house. There are all sorts of birds, and as I live here longer, I am getting better at identifying the different species. There are wrens, wagtails, great tits and brave little robins; pigeons, blackbirds and magpies in various numbers from ominous one, through joy to silver, gold and dark secrets. And then there are the corvids: hooded crows, like capuchin monks and rooks, loads and loads of rooks. I lump them together as "crows". The rooks roost in the oaks and return home for sunset, squabbling as they settle for the night. 

My wife was in the habit of feeding the birds in the early evening. She would scatter seed and shattered fat-balls on the back lawn. You can't feed the smaller birds without feeding the crows, who are fiercely intelligent. A sentinel or two would be stationed on the ridge of the garage roof and within seconds of food being scattered on the ground, the sky would darken and the ground covered with raucous family groups: this year's spoiled fledglings demanding to be fed by over-tolerant parents scarcely larger than themselves.

One afternoon in early autumn, I was standing at the back door observing the crows. Many were picking away at the lawn, looking for seeds or scraps they had missed earlier. A few were strutting about, proudly grasping an acorn in their beak. When they found what seemed to them a suitable spot, they would put the nut down carefully, peck a hole, place the acorn in the hole and cover it up. They would then turn away, apparently satisfied with their work. I can't see the point myself, but I understand how oaks are planted.

I had some minor tasks to do, so I went outside and before I started I paused for a moment and surveyed the crows. They have grown used to me and after a brief fluttering of wings they settled back to their business of gleaning.

Suddenly, a single rook separated from the group and flew straight towards me. I stood my ground. I don't claim bravery, rather the slow responses of advancing years. The bird turned upwards, its wings spread and its feet extended towards me. It alighted on my right shoulder. I felt its weight shift as it adjusted its position and I turned towards it. I found myself face to face (or maybe nose to beak) with the bird. It seemed to be a juvenile, with a black beak, rather than the boney grey of an adult. As it turned its head from side to side I was looking into its eyes. I was entranced, frozen as if in the presence of great power. The bird was not hostile, instead it projected calm, but uncaring interest, a remote intelligence observing and noting my actions. Unbidden, I extended my right arm, until it was horizontal, my hand clenched in a loose fist. The bird walked calmly along my arm until it was perched on my hand. Its feet were scaly and cool. I put my left hand, palm upwards, in front of it and it reached across and gently gripped my fingers and the skin of my palm. This was not an aggressive act, not a peck, just a gentle caress and I could feel the serrations of his beak.

For the rest of the day, and the whole of the following day, I had a new companion. I decided "he" was a boy (though I cannot tell the difference, and it matters only to other rooks) and named him Huginn. He would come to me when I was outside, perch on my shoulder and fist and eat from my left hand. He took cat food from a small saucer I held in my hand and even half a hard-boiled egg directly from my palm.

On the third day he was gone: no more Huginn. There was no sign of him. He had disappeared without leaving a trace except in my memory, returned to the emptiness from whence he came. I missed him as one would expect to miss such a companion. I still miss him and mark his absence. Stories of talking birds and magical familiars now seem much more real and much more likely than they once did. Experience is a powerful tutor. 

The worldly explanation is that Huginn was probably a chick from the previous year. He had "imprinted" on one of the women who work at the garden centre which is associated with the COPE (Roughly the Irish equivalent of SCOPE) across the road. As he had become more confident he had begun venturing further afield and had found me. The reason he had disappeared was that unfortunately he had begun to become a nuisance at the Garden Centre, disturbing customers and the residents at the COPE home. As a consequence he had been tempted into a cage and then "re-homed" some distance away. We all hope that he is happy and will eventually find a mate.

Of course, there could be another explanation, one which if I'm honest, I rather prefer. In Norse and Germanic mythology Odin, the chief of the gods, who traded one eye for wisdom, was served by two ravens known as Huginn and Muninn (memory and thought) who brought him news of all they had seen in the world. There seems to have been uncertainty or dispute about whether Huginn and Muninn were simply messengers or whether they were extensions of Odin himself. Whichever they were, I like to imagine that I had an encounter with the numinous, the divine, and that Huginn has returned to Odin with the message that I had been set a test (which I do not fully understand) and that my response had been satisfactory. 

(I originally called this "The Murder and the Banishing of Huginn", to use the collective noun for a group of crows. When I read it, I thought it was a piece of unworthy click-bait!)

[Original Events: 13th and 14th July 2025]

[Date: 6th October 2025]                

A book and a machine

Hi CCCC, How are you keeping? I was doing something and I thought of you.

We've had an eventful start to the year. The events were weather related. We got snowed in for a few days and lost our water supply for a day (maybe two) and we lost power for a different couple of days. On two occasions I walked down to town to top up on groceries ("there's no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate equipment"). I have "appropriate equipment"! I actually had to open the neck on my jacket to maintain the right temperature. One time I got a lift there and then back. The Irish are good like that. Then there was the wind and we lost power for another 24 hours. Lack of power knocks out the oil fired boiler but we're ok, because we also have an open fire, with plenty of smokeless fuel and logs.  Dress up warm, eat sandwiches, read until the light fades, go to bed early. All rather primitive. Doesn't bother me in small doses.

Book: That's the project at the moment. Remember the photo I showed you. I'm reconstructing a photo album of my sister's early life. It's for me, my daughters and my nephew deserves to know more about his mother than he does.

Machine: This was what made me think of you. As a short diversion I decided to make myself a "muffler" to go round my neck. Reason? I wear a dayglow yellow jacket when I'm cycling. The jacket collar was getting grubby from rubbing my neck and the jacket is not suitable for washing. Solution: muffler made from a new tea towel. I sewed it up using a sewing machine which belonged to my aunt. The serial number was allocated in December 1921 (at the Singer factory in Kilbowie, Clydebank), so the machine is comfortably 100 years old and still quite useable. It's a little stiff, but I'm reluctant to mess with it other than a little sewing machine oil. May (my aunt) married in 1924, so I like to imagine that the sewing machine is either a wedding present, of a young woman preparing her "trousseau" in preparation for marriage. Both ideas are rather romantic.

Doing the sewing made me think: am I unusual? Using a sewing machine isn't a hobby for me, it's just something I know how to do. If I need to make or repair something, then one of the first things I think of is the practicality of doing it myself. I thought I needed this piece of cloth (which by the way is very comfortable and warm) so I made it!

Anyway, must go and get on with the photo album. Keep well.

Regards,

Luna the cat and a bloodbath

 Recently I was away from home for a short while. When I was away I received the following text. I found it again when I was clearing out the inbox on my phone. The text (or at least, the vision I imagined) is so good that I thought I would share it for posterity.

Luna is a cat.

Ok luna opened sachet tomato ketchup last night like bloodbath in kitchen!!!!

[7th October 2023 12:23]

Rendered into better English, with some punctuation. 

Ok. Luna opened a sachet of tomato ketchup last night. It was like a bloodbath in the kitchen!!!!

My mind boggled at the imagined image. I'll leave you to do the same. Fortunately our kitchen has a tiled floor.

[28th October 2023]

Gateways and Boundaries

Do you like mysterious doors or gateways, maybe even to ways to other dimensions? Of course you do, everybody does! Here's a little tale for you. Of course it's all true, but maybe the contrast and brilliance have been turned up to eleven in places.

When you were in K???? I remember taking you along the road and through a field to go and look at the River A????, which flows down from F???? village to where the river joins the larger River D???? in K???? town. 

Every year, when I cut the hedge which forms the boundary of my place, I have to trek along the road and then back through the field, so I can inspect and cut the back of my own hedge. It's all a bit of a nuisance. The hedge itself is Leylandii and somewhere inside of that is a chain-link fence supported on concrete posts. As I'm sure someone must have said, sometime, "it ain't going anywhere". Fortunately, I took the growing heads off the plants shortly after we moved in, so it’s not going to get out of control. Now I wish that the people who built the house had used something other than Leylandii, because it's too vigorous, but I'm not complaining because it’s attractive and maintenance free apart from once a year. 

Last year, I cut the inside and top of the hedge and had got to the stage of thinking about going round to the back. Cutting my hedge takes several days, so the job can spread over weeks. For some reason, I cut a little deeper into the hedge than I do usually in one back corner, and I noticed that the hedge growth was a little less dense there than normal. I poked around a bit more and found that the posts for the chain-link fence had been arranged in such a way that they formed a gateway inside the hedge.

This potential gateway was intriguing, so I showed it to Noreen and said that I thought it would be practical to make a gateway out into the field. The effort of creating the gateway would make the exercise of cutting the back of the hedge a whole lot simpler for the current  year and all future years (no need to walk a hundred yards along a busy road and back through the field). Noreen agreed, and a day or so later I had a gateway. 

I think the background story of my gateway is that when my house was being built, the builders constructed the gateway for access. They even put a threshold sill stone in place. When they were finished with the house, the builders filled the gap with an separate bit of fencing and planted the hedge, which over time obscured the potential gap.

A little more work, and I had constructed a little wicket gate to fit the gap. I can even point to evidence of the gate being completed on 25th August last year. Gate construction was made easier by having square upright concrete posts to work to. Not only is the gate easy to open and close, but it is invisible from both my garden and from the field! From my garden it is camouflaged by a piece of trellis covered by plastic pretend hedge, and from the other direction it exits into a wooded field boundary and is invisible from the field itself. So, now I had a hidden, secure gateway between my garden and the field beyond. It’s the sort of thing children love (and that includes children of advancing years).

The gateway served its intended purpose in simplifying the maintenance of my hedge, but it gave more. Now I have the gateway, I'm in the habit of walking down to the river, typically once a week. The distance is 150 metres as the crow flies or 350 metres around the perimeter of the field (which is the way I go, 'cos I'm good). 

Nobody would describe my place as urban and to call it suburban would be a positive insult, but access to the river takes rural to a new level. All you can hear on the other side of the hedge are natural sounds and the gentle whispering of traffic on the distant road. 

It really is peaceful down by the river. Having access to the river is a great improvement to my amenities.  Come the summer, I may spend a bit more time down there. My neighbours don't mind (because they walk their dogs down by the river), and I don't think the person farming the field will ever know!

When I’m walking around the field something strange happens. The atmosphere changes and everything becomes much quieter. The sounds of traffic from the road cease completely. This always happens in the same place. The effect does not change with the weather, in sunshine or drizzle, the same peace descends. The silence is welcoming, waiting to be filled by the sounds of the river. 

When I reach the river the banks are clothed by mature native trees and beyond the margin on the far bank there is a dark plantation of commercial conifers. Upstream there is short length of rapids and downstream the river broadens and becomes much quieter. On the opposite bank a tree trails a dead limb into the water. When the river is high this branch is dragged forward with the current and flicks back when the tension overcomes the water. The motion is repeated rhythmically. The atmosphere is quiet except for the sound of water, no houses are visible, not even my own, which is only 150 metres away. I am in another dimension, separate to, and completely insulated from, the modern world. Every time I go there I pass through a hidden portal and traverse a zone of silence and when I return the experience is reversed.

I’m afraid there is a prosaic explanation to my inter-dimensional portal. The field has an uneven slope between my house and the river. The steeper slope in the middle means that when I'm at the river the houses are hidden and all the sound from the road passes above my head. Whatever you may think, unnaturally, I choose to ignore the obvious and continue to visit my magical realm via a hidden gateway and barrier of silence.

4th February 2023

Letter to Carol - Michael O'Conner

 Hello Carol, Happy New Year! I hope you and yours are keeping well.

As you can see, I've survived the festive season. I've eaten too much, drank too much (not too, too much) and not taken sufficient exercise, but I feel good. Siobhan and Margaret returned to base, so all four of us were there for an extended week. 

I cooked Christmas dinner. The frozen "three-bird-roast" took 3 hours to cook. That seems like a lot of work but actually it really wasn't; it was just a case of following the timetable I'd written out for myself, doing stuff and doing particular things when the alarm on my phone went off. There was plenty of time to do other things as well. 

As a family, we seem to have moved away from large expensive presents towards lots of small and sometimes silly things. There seems no point at all in exchanging vouchers. I do give Siobhan and Margaret (small) quantities of cash but that's different to me. There are lots of sweeties and biscuits as well! And chocolates!

I spent a fair amount of time over the holiday scanning photos and documents from the laundry box I told you about. Remember my brother James, the little boy I showed you some photos of? I've found another photo of him. I know I'm biased, and that the emotional associations will sway my judgement as well, but he was a handsome boy. 

One of the advantages of scanning things is that it makes it possible to zoom in on details and that can provide additional information: things like, two photos with the same background were probably taken at the same time. I've been constructing time-lines for the various characters in the story (My mother Margaret, her husband Alastair, James and my sister Catherine). Little details are coming to light and the story is taking on much more depth. The outline I told you was mostly correct, but even in a couple of months there is now so much more: some of it would suit a Boys' Own adventure, perhaps written by John Buchan, and some would suit a romance in a women's magazine, maybe by Barbara Cartland but honestly I've never read any of her work - maybe I should. I hope I can do the story, and my relatives justice.

Talking of stories, here's a sort-of "meta story". Cycling home from the surgery today, I stopped to exchange greetings with an acquaintence, Michael O'Conner. I am cycling home and Michael is walking home from tending to some horses he looks after. He walks the road twice a day, in the morning and in the evening, rain or shine. If I am cycling I stop and talk with him, if I am driving, heading in the right direction and especially if it is raining, I will give him a lift. Somehow, our meeting like this seems particularly Irish, or Scottish or "country". 

Michael will be a little younger than me, probably in his 50's. He is separated or divorced from a wife and has (at least) a daughter and one or two grandchildren. I know where he lives and where he is from (Castlemagner). His untidy hair is blonde which has turned to white and he's soft spoken. He wears heavy boots and a dirty black jacket. His face is weather-beaten and ruddy with a strawberry nose and hooded eyes. I would guess that he is a heavy drinker, quite possibly an alcoholic. I think he would be a handful if he was drunk. Honestly, if you saw him, I think you would avoid him (and in general, you might be right). Despite any of that, he is considered "reliable" and he looks after expensive horses. Once, when it was convenient for us both, he took be to see a mare who was in foal.

Michael and I are not friends but we are friendly to one another. We are an ill-matched pair. We would not meet socially but we meet on the road and exchange greetings and stories. I think our meetings serve some purpose but I do not know what it is: one for psychologists, sociologists and philosophers.

Must go. Got to have some sort of lunch before I collect my daughters from Cork.

Keep well!

Tom        

This, that, travels and cats.

The fancy took me to write a few notes, and you're one of them.

We've all survived the last couple of years without suffering significant harm. I'm troubled by events in Ukraine and limit how much I follow things.

I've just completed my one-year course at the local technical college - it was computer-related and I hope to put some of what I learned to use. The exams are over and I await the results. The score doesn't really matter to me though. I know what I learned. 

I don't remember where we left off conversations but we've acquired a new kitten (called Luna, should probably be Luna(tic)), and continue to care for a feral tomcat we call Scrawny. 

When we first encountered Scrawny he was, well, Scrawny. He was thin, his fur was thin and bedraggled and he wouldn't let anyone approach him. Scrawny is scrawny no longer. He will let Siobhan pet him and he will sometimes come into the house, but is very quick to dash out again too.

Luna, is always scampering about. She is about 6 months old and has recently been neutered. We plan to let her out into the garden when the fur has grown back over the scar area. From time to time she ambushes me: I will be doing something and suddenly experience a sharp pain in my leg (claws digging in). She sometimes climbs up and sits on my shoulder, imagine Long John Silver with the parrot but with everyone involved having more limbs!

Now that I've got my course out of the way, I'm thinking about making a trip over to the UK. I have some business which it would be easier and pleasanter to do in person. I have no plans at present but am thinking about what I want to do. Are you "receiving visitors" if I happen to be in your part of the world?

26th May 2022