Of Mockingbirds and felt purses

Last night I heard a mockingbird sing, its liquid notes pouring from its throat - a mixed repertoire of birdsong, no doubt mimicking the other common songbirds of Arizona: perhaps the cactus wren, or the junco or the black throated sparrow. I don't know enough about common songbirds to say, only that it was beautiful, as beautiful and uplifting as a British Blackbird in springtime - and there were no mechanical noises. This mockingbird, unlike those we read about in the newspaper, has not learnt to imitate a car alarm, a telephone, or a reversing truck.

I helped Zaria (aged 5+) and Freya (aged 3+) to thread felt pieces together to make their first ever felt purses yesterday. And as they decorated their purses with stick-on felt flowers and bees, and hid tiny chocolate eggs inside the purses, I reflected on the thrill and excitement of genes, and the generations. Yesterday, James, Freya and I sat round the table looking at each other with my maternal grandfather's greeny coloured eyes - Norman eyes, I always think, handed down through my mother, from that first Norman settler on the Welsh borders about 900 years ago. Yesterday I looked at a photo of Zaria beside Kate's mother, and saw an uncanny resemblance in the set of the jaw and the expression.