Monday 12 July

~  I have to talk to the helpdesk of the bank where we hold our UK sterling account.  The perky young English woman with the Estuary accent tells me they are in fact in Malta.  She says she envies our being in France, and we chat briefly about the weather, the relative merits of our two adoptive resident countries, the problem of living on an island against a larger land mass, and other related matters.  It seems to me from experience that people on these services are often quite eager to make this kind of conversation;  I really don't think this is only PR, or even boredom, but a genuine need to break through the impersonal and displaced character of the relations they have with you, and to see each other as living real lives in a real place.

~  A line from White Egrets: 'Swifts practised their archery...'

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~ A trio of corvids, two jays and a magpie, in the eucalyptus.  I am not sure how the balance of power lay; with corvids there almost always has to be one.