Monday:
I breakfast on the balcony. I notice that Owl is covered in bird shit, which does little for my appetite. I get a wet cloth and wash it down. Perhaps I might have to revert to Plan B and buy an air gun to cull the doves.
Looking down, I see that Reg, the caretaker, is constructing something on the lawn below. It looks suspiciously like a barbeque. I do hope that he’s not planning a social event, as he threatened to do at the residents meeting.
I go on line to the dummy owl website to see whether they offer any tips on the placement of their birds. They claim that their most effective model is one that has a head that slowly swivels in a breeze, making it look lifelike and thus more threatening. Apparently, it also hoots if the wind catches it at the right angle. I order one immediately.
Tuesday:
My worst fears are confirmed when there’s a note through the letter-box announcing that on Saturday week, Reg, in his role as chairperson of the residents committee is planning a “get to know you” barbeque. I have a particular loathing for barbeques. Under-cooked or charred meat, eye-stinging smoke and the unwelcome attention of flies, wasps, midges and people with whom I have little in common. Oh well, I’ll bite the bullet, or in this case the cremated chicken, and attend.
Wednesday:
I watch a re-run of Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles. The scene with the farting cowboys still amuses me. I don’t know why a fart can be so funny. It’s a normal bodily function: Jesus did it as did his disciples. The Queen does it, we all do it. Yet it’s socially unacceptable to do so publicly and we are generally coy about it. Perhaps it’s this that makes it amusing. Belching is equally unacceptable in polite company, although I believe that in some cultures this is considered a compliment to the chef.
Many years ago, someone gave me a little device which very accurately reproduced the sound of a hearty fart. It was a piece of welding wire about four inches long bent into the shape of an archer’s bow. An elastic band was threaded through a button and fixed to either end of the bow. The trick was to wind the button up on the elastic, then place the bow under one’s arse while seated on a chair. At a given moment, by slowly raising one cheek, the button would spin against the surface of the chair producing the sound of a loud fart. It worked best on a padded seat and with some practice, one could achieve a quite lengthy and loud result.
At this time, I was sharing a house with a bass player, Kirk and his girlfriend, Tina. One evening we sat down to dinner and I placed the primed bow under my bum. We passed each other food and I declined to have any peas.
‘Don’t you like peas, then?’ asked Kirk.
‘Oh I like them well enough,’ I said, ‘but they give me terrible wind. Even just one can start me off.’
They expressed incredulity at this, so I offered to demonstrate. I placed a single pea in my mouth and rolled it around. I then made a great show of swallowing it as if it was a rock. They waited expectantly and I began to make faces indicating that an epic struggle was taking place in my innards. Just as they were losing interest, I raised one cheek of my arse and let loose an appalling and prolonged fart.
‘See, I told you so,’ I said, before owning up and showing them the device.
The man who originally gave me the fart simulator and might even have invented it , was one, Peter Hobson. Peter was an excellent drummer, and graphic designer. He was also an expert on perfumery and made a fair amount of money producing something called Vicar’s Friend, which was biodegradable confetti made from different coloured scented rose petals. He was a true eccentric, but, in the great British tradition of such treasures, he had no idea that he was and would have dismissed such a notion while hitching up his plus fours and resettling whatever silly hat that he happened to be wearing.
At one time, Peter ran his business making potpourri and scented pine cones from a wooden hut in the garden of a pub. This hut was also used on one evening a week by the local lodge of The Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffalos – a kind of working man’s Masonic order. A stuffed buffalo’s head adorned one wall, its glassy eyes looking balefully down on Peter and his usual team of resting actors and ne’er do well musos as they worked. These Buffs might have traced their origins back to a time before the Great Flood, but when they adjourned to the bar after an evening of arcane oaths and complex handshakes in the hut, they reeked of lavender oil and were viewed with undisguised suspicion and hostility by the locals. Their dignity was further undermined when Peter re-adjusted the buffalo’s glass eyes, making it appear to be looking in opposite directions.
Peter worked on many recording sessions, where his antics would often reduce the engineers and his fellow musicians to heaps of helpless laughter. He once wrote and recorded a beautiful piece of music for a film about humpback whales. I played a bit of sax on this and I suggested to him that a high trumpet part might enhance it and undertook to write this. A couple of days later, Peter phoned me to say that he had found a highly recommended local trumpeter, so we went back to the studio to record the part that I had written.
I had some initial misgivings when Peter’s ace trumpeter arrived on a bicycle with a battered case containing a somewhat tarnished silver cornet. These misgivings turned to astonishment and horror when he began to play what can only be described as a series of uncoordinated and strangulated raspberries – a bit like someone randomly jumping up and down on a whoopee cushion. Peter, ever the gentleman and a kindly soul, thanked the hapless bugler, who, before remounting his bike, informed us that he normally played the euphonium in the town band.
“I wouldn’t have minded” Peter said later, “but he didn’t even take his cycle clips off.”
I’ve often wondered if the “ace trumpeter” was the inspiration for the invention of the fart simulator, which, incidentally, Peter called The Raspberry Ripple. Sadly, Peter died a couple of years ago, appropriately enough on one of the Scilly Isles.
Thursday:
Melvyn Bragg on Radio Four this morning, bullying some boffins into making sense of something called dark matter. I remain in ignorance.
I make a cottage pie for my dinner and ponder what wine might best accompany it. I go to the minimarket and buy some Chardonnay and Merlot, thinking that I could try a little of both. Satan’s Sister is on the checkout, looking as chilling as ever. I’m curious as to why her skin seems to have a green pallor.
The new owl arrives. It’s made of plastic and quite light in weight. It’s a bit gaudy and certainly doesn’t have the gravitas of Owl One. I dig out an electric fan from the broom cupboard and set the owl up before it on the dining table. I set the fan to its lowest setting and sure enough the owl’s head slowly swivels. What amazes me is it that it also winks its huge eyes in a quite suggestive way. I’m impressed. If this doesn’t scare the fucking doves, I don’t know what will.
I switch the fan to its middle setting and the head swiveling and eye winking increase in speed. Also, there’s a faint hoot coming from the owl. I switch the fan off and try to see how this is achieved. After a bit of poking about, I see that there’s a kazoo-like opening in the belly of the bird. Ingenious.
I then set the fan to maximum. The head spins and the eyes blink at an alarming rate, making the owl look like a manic ventriloquist’s dummy that might have made Arthur Worsley proud. What’s more the hoot increases in volume and sounds eerily like the lonesome train whistle from a crappy cowboy song. The owl then keels over on its back and I almost expect to hear a fart coming from its rear end. Brilliant. I place Owl Two on the balcony rail.
Saturday:
Last night, I enjoyed the cottage pie and drank both bottles of wine. Consequently, I have a bit of a hangover this morning and I’m feeling grumpy. In the flat beneath, the Bellowing Brat is running through his repertoire of soap themes, which doesn’t help my humour, so I decide to walk into town to clear my head.
To my horror, the wretched accordionists are stationed at either end of the High Street giving it some welly and the Russian weightlifter is in the middle, still pushing the Big Issue. I dodge past her, but she spots me and spits out what sounds like “Spear Dali”. I think that this would be a jolly good idea if that old fraud, Salvador, were still alive. When I get home, I try various spellings of this in Google. Eventually, I find “spierdalaj” – which apparently is “fuck off” in Polish.
Sunday:
A quiet day. In the evening, I sit on the balcony sipping spring water, to give my liver a chance of recovery. There’s a light breeze and Owl Two’s head swivels gently. There’s the merest hint of a hoot coming from its midriff, which I find strangely comforting. Owl One is, as ever, static and august.
© David Sherrington 2012 Davidsherrington@aol.com www.bwildr.net
