Thursday, July the 22nd, 2004
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Like the first morning. Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird. Another thing that has broken is the hedge of the hoyden in my bailiwick. Her hedge has been threatened before, for her neighbours have evil designs and they are all bent out of shape, as morals go. Late at night, these neighbours sit in darkness plotting against the hoyden. They draw charts. They make lists. Their eyes are glued to their fishtank in which brightly-coloured tropical finned things swim about listlessly in water. Her neighbours have taken against the hoyden and have determined to break her hedge. They use a saw and chisels and secateurs and other metal things and they wait for her to go about her hoydenish business one wet Friday morning, and then they pounce upon her hedge, and they destroy it in half an hour. The blackbird, the blackbird that spoke earlier, the one that used to sit atop the hoyden's hedge and sing its little palpitating heart out, the blackbird has flown away now, like the first bird. It has taken wing and flown so far away that the hoyden will never see it again. What she will see is her broken hedge, its rack and ruin. And she will break down in tears on her doorstep, her doorstep in my bailiwick, and she will weep not knowing that her neighbours, that couple to whom she gave a dozen eggs last St Swithin's Day, as a gift, that same couple who seem to her all smiles and chunky cardigans are the false friends with fatal flaws who have broken her hedge. And I too want to weep, for the hoyden and her hedge, and the morning that is broken, and the blackbird that has flown.