The Birds

I think it’s nice they’re back even if they are overdoing it a little

It snowed last night and they may be in some sort of remission because they aren’t making me wish they’d fuck slightly off like they do most mornings at 6am.

But there were two robins on the trail in front of us the other day and they wouldn’t budge. They stood their ground. They glared. And when we quietly slid past them, me and Daisy, they cackled a little and may or may not have shown the whites of their eyes.

You know I love Daphne Du Maurier because you’ve heard me swoon about Rebecca a couple of hundred times. She also wrote The Birds, a short story that Hitchcock made famous and while we’re on the subject, a funny thing about The Collector, a 1965 thriller that I thought was another Hitchcock movie written by Dame Du Maurier, but google just corrected me and the bottom has fallen completely out of this story.

But you know me. I don’t let truth or logic or no bottom interfere with a good story or even an average one. So onward

When we were little, we had an Aunt and Uncle, Ada and Bill, and Uncle Billy was caretaker for a lodge somewhere in The Thousand Islands in eastern Ontario. It was a beautiful old place, made of stone and super spooky with all kinds of trapezoidy attic rooms for Mrs. Rochester and all her sisters. It was eerie and creaky and wonderful and there was a rural farmhouse on the property, also stone and old and eerie and creaky, where Auntie Ada and Uncle Billy lived. 

We went to visit them and when Auntie Ada showed my mom the room she and my dad would have in the stone basement, my mom said NO WAY because it reminded her of the room from The Collector. She wouldn’t so much as set foot in there and here’s why:

The Collector is a 1963 thriller novel by English author John Fowles, in his literary debut. Its plot follows a lonely, psychotic young man who kidnaps a female art student in London and holds her captive in the cellar of his rural farmhouse.

I’ve got the book somewhere around here because when I saw it in Goodwill decades later I remembered how it had affected my mom and I scooped it up and ended up reading the whole thing with one hand over my mouth and then I understood exactly why she refused to sleep in the room which Aundie Ada had so carefully set up for them.

We laughed at her then, Auntie Ada was pissed, but my mother – as always – stood her ground and they slept somewhere else

Also on that holiday, my parents went to a big party at the lodge, and we had a babysitter and were actually watching The Birds – it may have just come out because it was like 50 years ago – in this big old farmhouse. We got so scared because there was somebody on the roof, with birds maybe, that we telephoned over to the lodge. I guess the babysitter was scared too, and she told them what was going on and that’s when they told us the noise was fireworks so we pulled ourselves together, away from the salt and pepper TV, parted the drapes and looked out the window and it was amazing.

I’d seen fireworks before of course, but I’d never seen anything like those fireworks, and likely I never will again. When you mix things with relief there’s a special kind joy you get that fills all the cracks

Also there were wild turkeys all over that island. Like you’d be walking around and you’d turn around and see that you were being followed by a very-interested-in-your-every-move hoard of turkeys or whatever they’re called.

Maybe its a gobble of turkeys and if it’s not, it should be

I decided to rake a little yesterday, you know, in a puttery kind of way and did just enough to expose the tender little tulip and lily buds to the snow. I hope they pull through. 

This is the beginning of Week 2 Working from Home and it’s going just fine thank you, although there’s a slight lag in workflow, so I am making work for myself and I hope I don’t regret it.

I am proposing, in just a few hours, a project that if they agree to, will keep me busy for as long as necessary, and maybe even longer, because after all, working from home probably doesn’t mean knitting blankets for the shivering buds in the garden or painting the kitchen cupboards which have been in primer since before Christmas or learning bird etiquette and how to teach it or learning the usefulness of commas or finally taking down the blind that seemed like a good idea at the time I guess but has been hanging in the front hallways for like 25 years, preventing a whole lot of sunlight, and will be the perfect place to hang a couple of plants now that I have a greed, fuck off spellcheck it’s not about the money, thumb.

And here’s a sample of what keeps me awake nights: How could I water any plants I might hang there because they’ll be way up high and I don’t have the necessary apparatus.

What if I plant a spike or two in each pot and just throw water balloons into them weekly? I know, right? Or I could throw ice cubes but that would be like what I did to those poor little sprouts

Anyway I’ll give you the brief brief of my idea here, which will give people something fun to do and keep me employed, and if you see any holes in it, let me know. Like quick

One of the properties at ZoomerMedia that it’s my job to promote is ZoomerRadio which is a really great station that plays all kinds of songs that actually take your breath away a little when you hear them because they are songs that you love and have somehow forgotten existed and they bring a wallop of joy as in all the feeling those old songs once gave you come flooding back and it’s a real rush. Like, it’s really a great feeling.

I find myself turning it up all the time, you know, leaning into the speaker and hollering “wow I love this song” and before I know it, the music is blasting, and I’m singing my heart out as if I’m alone in the house which I am not these days.

I have worked on campaign ideas that have involved music trivia and some of these were never used so I’m going to dig them up and turn them into games that people can download from the website and print out at home. You know. Crosswords etc. with nice little clues of varying difficulty, you know, like Who Didley and How Many Supremes and other things that are satisfying and also make you remember Yesterday, when all your troubles were so far away.

And you must remember this: although it’s kind of a drag, big girls don’t cry and someday we’ll be together, Mrs. Brown, because all you need is love

AND Clutterbucks Episode One was my most-read post ever, just like I hoped it would be, so thank you everyone who read and subscribed. Episode Two coming your way on Thursday. Gulp.