Rhythmic bellows anticipating swallows in their pyjamas

There are days when everything seems to come together. This weekend Bessy, Margaret and I had ventured once again into the mountains and landed in an abandoned Welsh farmhouse.

There were sheep communing, fern-clad slopes waving and the faint mmmmmm of something wonderful - there but intangible, warmth without source, anticipation dangling like a brother with a spider on his thread.

Yes, it was my birthday and one not to forget. Bessy dived into a nearby reservoir and resuscitated a thought brought to a halt when it was constructed. Funnily enough, the thought - which Bessy communicated by whipping the wire of the fence in a particular rhythm we two understand - was one that made absolutely no sense to me: will the bellows in the kitchen turn the corner before the pyjamas catch them? It might be that I missed something. Or it might not.

Margaret watched a few swallows doing their thing above us as we ate lunch and decided to take to the air too. It was quite something to see her manoeuvre in such a way, particularly when in the air. I think that's why I love her so much - there's nothing she won't have a stab at and entertain me with as she does.

What a birthday. Simple things like lots of air and loose-fitting clothing. Lovely.

Hot coals in whimsical patterns of beauty

There was a peep from Margaret and then a sigh and then it was all over. Bessy cocked an ear and looked like there had been a meltdown on the far end of a never-ending poker, a poker that might one day have shifted red hot coals in patterns that in their random re-allocations pronounced beautiful dreams that might have been. I read those coals and I realised the dreams would never be and yet, there remains with me Margaret and Bessy and the fleeting whimsicals that pass through my head every now and then.