Walking to work down Durham Street

So there I was this morning, walking down the hill with SJD making beautiful sounds in my ears, when I realised that although walking to work with music does make everything that much more like a beautiful film or an arty music video, I was missing out on the sounds of the Tui that are making Durham Street their turangawaewae at the moment.




There are so many of them, I am surprised the King of Brooklyn, Mr Charles Rothwell, hasn't brought one home for me to inspect. And the magpies that have been waking me up at dawn - they're so loud. I saw one on Aro Street this morning making a noise like fabric tearing. So huge and menacing, but they always remind me of that ad back in the 70s for Watties - "magpies, welcoming the dawn" before shots of combine harvesters doing their thing. They also remind me of a park in Richmond where I used to spend my lunchtimes when I was temping at the International Tennis Federation in London. I would walk to the park and sit on a bench and hear the planes overhead going to Heathrow and watch the crows hop around the park picking at the grass. I was reading "In Cold Blood", and it was warm. It was all quiet apart from the planes and the crows and the pages of my book turning.