The little things in life…

We have a robin.  We didn’t have a robin in our garden in Switzerland with its old walls, lilac and fruit trees.  No.  Our robin lives in the plastic bag strewn shrubbery that divides our ground floor flat from the Old Brompton Road, breathing in the noxious traffic fumes, his precious song drowned out by  the constant trill of car radios as they wait for the lights to change.  And when our robin appears, which has happened on a rare occasion, usually when I am sipping my morning pint of warm lemon water  watching as the light chases away the remnants of night, everything seems to slow and soften.

“Robin’s are territorial, you know.”  I said to Mr. Jules as I placed seeds on the garden table.  Mr. Jules scoffs imagining Rambo Robin with a bandana and a kalashnikov.

I call my sister as I seemed to recall she once had a robin in her garden in Dorset.  She tells me to put water out for our robin and how her robin used to come to the back doorstep and sing to them.

“That’s NOT FAIR”  said Mr. J. when he heard of this.

Perhaps being a city robin he has developed a blasé, urban approach to life.