Splashed eagle in flight on upper back

The ovens were lit at half four and I've been up since three trying to get the starter right, which Mr Okafor says is the only honest measure of a morning. Out past the loading bay the sky over the Medway had gone the colour of cold dishwater, and then, just as I was scraping the last of the rye off the bench, something came up off the marshes so low and so big I thought it was a sail.

It was an eagle. A proper one, white head and yellow beak, wings pushing against the air like it was a ladder. Mr Okafor says the ones that come inland this way are usually lost, blown off course from the estuary, and that they never stay long. This one didn't seem lost to me. It banked over the car park and the paint came off it in spatters, blue and green and a bruise of purple, as if someone had thrown a palette at the morning and the morning had decided to keep it.

I dropped a tray of cobs. Mr Okafor laughed so hard he had to sit on a flour sack.

Anyway, I wanted you to know I stood in the yard with my hands white to the wrist and watched it go until it was a comma over the bus shelter. Then the first van pulled in, the kettle started screaming, and I went back in to the dough. Tell Dad I've learnt to shape a plait properly now. Tell him I'm not going to be a baker forever.

Love, Maisie