At the party a barn owl is perched on a stump of driftwood on the lid of a piano.
It's a 'gwdihw' in the south of Wales , but 'tylluan' in the north.
I have to say that I prefer the former, with its onomatopoeia.
The owl looks out sagely on all these celebrating humans toasting 70th birthdays with bubbly wine and nibbling at crustless sarnies.
My young great niece asks my brother - ' Is it real Grandad?'
The owl was our present to my brother and his wife for their 70th.
They're both keen 'twitchers' and wherever they travel binoculars are as essential as sun tan lotion.
I recall when we stayed at Miyajima, off the coast of Japan, my brother was up at the 'skrake of dawn' ( a fine Belfast phrase) to seek out the bird-life, while I had been out the night before , sitting by a pond and listening to frogs serenade the moon (David Attenborough has a lot to answer for!).
I was delighted that my brother and his wife took to the barn owl, as it's important it finds a suitable home.
It was created by a certain John Davies, who was once a renowned and rightly acclaimed poet in Wales. John was also an excellent editor and I had the pleasure of co-editing the anthology 'The Valleys' with him.
John straddled north and south : the former coalfields of his native Afan valley, north of Port Talbot, and the slate-lands and coastline of y gogledd.
I visited him on a number of occasions and even then, he was beginning to devote more and more time to his bird-carving.
Over 10 years ago he stopped writing poetry completely and gave himself entirely to the beautiful carvings, with his wife Marilyn painting them so meticulously .
He has become one of the finest in the country.
The barn owl is so solid and statuesque above its driftwood plinth, which suggests the striations of the sea.
Since his retirement my brother has also focused very much on one project.
As well as an ornithologist, my brother is a pilot and is actually building his own full-sized plane in his back garden....not a Jumbo Jet, I hasten to add!
I recall when we were kids together in Penparcau, near Aberystwyth and my brother's room was packed with Airfix models suspended with string from the ceiling. If we ever argued I would aim a suitable weapon at them.
His kit planes were even more impressive : expertly manufactured from fragile balsa wood and fine tissue paper taut, varnished then painted; they were propelled high into the Ceredigion air - like the red kites we never saw till years later - by small, pungent oil motors.
I envied my brother his practical skills.
The only thing I would make then was TROUBLE (often involving stones).
I once picked the flowers from a neighbour's garden, knocked on their door and asked them if they wanted to buy a bunch!
Maybe I was a budding capitalist.
Now I don't envy him, but appreciate his abilities, just as I can see the poetry in John Davies's wonderful creation :-
CARVED OWL
for John Davies
I waited all morning
for the owl to come :
I signed my name,
could hardly see
its claw-print scrawling.
Opening the box, a nest
of bound bubble-wrap,
it didn't fly up
but merely stood
placed on its perch:
a twisted driftwood rock
with rough touch of salt ;
it was proud as names
of 'gwdihw' and 'tylluan',
took them both, south and north.
I could feel the poetry
of fine chiselled feathers ;
how the wood had become
your metre, your stanzas,
how the shapes your song.
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