Bird on a teacup on the upper arm

The songbird came back this morning and perched on the rim of the good cup, the one with the little blue ferns and the loop handle that Mum always said would outlive us both. I had poured a splash of tea into the saucer for the dust, out of habit more than hope, and he hopped down, dipped his head and drank as neatly as a vicar. His tail sticks out behind him like a feather duster. You would have laughed.

The road has been quiet since the grader went through. Most days it is lorries heading for the border and nobody stopping, though a man in a grey van bought two slices of seed cake last Tuesday and told me the desert was just the sea with the water taken out. I have started keeping the cups on a shelf above the counter, washed and turned upside down, the way Dad used to keep them in the dresser. Forty-odd of them, none matching, all carried here in newspaper from the house in Carlisle.

I don't know how the bird finds me. There is nothing for miles but scrub and the bones of an old windmill. Yesterday I put a clean cup on the step with no tea in it, only a crumb of cake, and he came and sat on the rim of that one instead, looking very pleased with himself.

So perhaps the road is not so empty after all. Come in June if you can. I'll put the kettle on and you can have the chipped one.

Love, Jo