Every morning for a whole year a blackbird sat on the wire outside my attic room in Tainui Terrace, Wellington and tumbled out a scrabble of notes. Every day the song was different. I should have been like the composer Messiaen. I should have recorded the bird, at least for a week or two, but sadly I was too lazy, too inexpert, too otherwise bothered, and I didn’t, so the opportunity was lost. Imagine it, every day a different tumble of knots and bobbles and curlicues and whistles and dots and streamers and points-verguiles, the punctuation turning into French in the soft lemony light that glows (on a fine day) at 5.00am behind the trees on the hillock that’s somehow been named Mt Victoria.  Read on >