non-squawkers from nowhere

Drilling headache - decided to leave my year seven marking on the table and skive off for a watery coffee in W--. Snuck out five minutes before the bell, thus avoiding the end-of-day rush. Roll marking, detentions, staff, bustle. 

I want you to know that I did come back; I am very dedicated.

Discovered a new thing: a new local - very exciting - a café that I didn't know existed, and maybe an entirely new concept. It's a café-cum-butcher. The coffee is not far superior, but they do sell sausages. Tongue and steak and kebabs.  The space is divided down the middle using one of those elasticised-tape barriers you find defining the queues at airports and cinemas. On one side there were laminated tables and chairs, Herald-Suns and sugar-holders and a few idling souls. A counter down one side with some cheeses and jam tarts and sandwich-ingredients. On the other side: flesh. I think that the wife does the brewing and the husband the butchery - or perhaps I just wanted them to be together because it seemed such a perfect picture of independent cohabitation. 

Is this the biggest thing since petrol and milk teamed up?

On my way out, just opposite the school gates, I saw a grey flock of cockatoos circling tight behind the branches of the pines. There must have been at least a score, but they weren't wrenching the air with their scream-squawks like cockatoos do. They were just circling on a diagonal, brushing the roof of the house, rising, diving, rising, in a great big ring. Really strange. When I stopped to look, a parent honked me.