a story a day: day 1, 24th Jan 2012

i'm away from my usual haunts for five weeks, and i've got a lot of time on my hands. i'm going to try to write a story a day. here's the first. i have no idea if it's any good but please feel free to leave comments or ask questions

here ya go

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it was early: the blackbird, always the first to start the chorus, had become his wake-up call. it was a spring morning that smelled of wild garlic and mist. it was very green: that spring green the hazels become. no wind, but if you look at the round hazel leaves, held out like the hands of a supplicant, you can see that they move, even when it's dead calm like now. no two mornings are quite alike in the woods.

he hadn't needed the burner in the mornings, and there was condensation on the underside of the tarp. it was nice with the sides open again. the birds were really going for it now, and he could hear the woodpecker having her morning face-off with her neighbour. it's silly, he thought, i've taken sides with the one who lives closest, in the ash. maybe that's how it is when you make friends with wild creatures. they're individuals.

later on, they'd be all over the bird tables. maybe the sparrowhawk would visit, like the other day. he whizzed past in a shallow downward glide, like a shot from a gun, with wings straight and body flattened so it looked like a yellow-eyed charcoaled streak of pure hunter. he's magnificent.

but the lingering pleasure was from seeing the signs: the panicked alarm calls, and the impressive synchronised crash-dive into the bushes, a wave of small birds, all flashing their brightest feathers. he'd looked in the right direction like a reflex, followed by an instant whoosh! of a bright sensation: of being alive, totally fucking alive, and plugged by the feet into the green, woody world around him. maybe it's the sparrowhawk doing it. it seems to ripple around him when he's hunting. everyone should feel it at least once, he thought. things might be better if they did.

he didn't hurry getting up. the sleeping bag was nice and warm. no rush. that's a funny sounding bird, he thought, it sounds just like my alarm clock...

...and when he woke to turn it off, and looked around at the flat white walls of the bedroom, the deep physical need to go back to the woods had returned. there are too many people round here, he thought, and sometimes they don't make much sense.