puffins and squirrels

Thank you to Nels, who sent a swan to let me know that the post had arrived. Brightwing is now resting on the river and enjoying the sunshine before flying home. She is breathtaking, and the ducks are terrified.

I was in London this week for the Puffin party. Oh, how I love Puffin! I could never have imagined, in the days when I read The Jolly Postman to my children, that one day I would be in a posh London venue with a glass of champagne in my hand, listening to Alan Ahlberg make a speech about how great it is for all of us to work for Puffin. Me and Alan Ahlberg. Us Puffins.

The next day, I popped into the Victoria and Albert to find that they had a new exhibition of architecture for small spaces. On the lawn is a construction called Ratatosk. Hard to describe - see if you can find it on a website - but it's made of ash trees sculpted and made into sort of arched pavilion. It's beautiful, and not only are you free to walk into it and touch it, it even has footholds cut into it so children can climb on it.

I learned that Ratatosk is a squirrel from Northern mythology. He sits in an ash tree at the centre of the world and takes messages between earth and heaven and the underworld.

I always knew squirrels were at the centre of the universe!