A thrush's song

Woke early (curtesy of FB!) on Saturday and was treated to the early sun turning the world to red. FB opened his curtains and squealed with the delight at the tree-full of rooks outside his window, calling for me to come and see. The air was cold and we loafed in bed together as long as possible, watching the sunlight turn from red to pale butter yellow as it rose, eventually hunger over-riding our desire for the warmth of blankets and cuddles.

I made a rare trip into the city this weeked - lured only by the promise of some good music and my sister - her band were playing. It felt strange driving in - the lanes and hedgerows fell away behind me and were replaced by concrete, lights, bars and restaurants - a city that was once my home and now feels as alien as another planet to me...

But the arts centre became a haven with my little sister's welcoming smile and warm hugs. The music filled me - Hanna's strange, ever-shifting vocals, Chris's bouzouki and clarinet and the warmth of his deep voice on the occasions he sang, my sister, Aby, playing viola or twisting her fingers at her side as she sang, rich and mellow, to complement Hanna's vocal swoops and curls... And as I listened, I was transported home again as they sang a thrush's song, the song of the Little Bear in the Land of Northern - it isn't always my own country, but it's wild and open and home none the less.

Home again, I play the CDs and sink again into a world of dark, ancient, Northern folk tales that, like all ancient story-telling traditions, echoe deep in the cells of all our bodies on one level or another.

I remember the part the music plays in the shaping of me, how, like landscape, music sits at the very core of me. So what of the city?! I had it all wrong, driving in, focussed on the landscape I was leaving behind - what I found when I arrived was as alive as any garden, any vista of fields, any hedgerow swarming with life, any rookery! And who cares what concrete monstrosities, who cares what heaviness of memory resides, what childhood insecurities or terrors - it's all gone, always, in the light of my sister's smile, and little else matters.

Home is here, undoubtedly, but it is also within me. And I would do well to hold on to that.

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