Pigeon flinger

In town, the pigeons are feral. Bred and evolved for a city environment they are like a winged version of a motorcycle dispatch rider, mad-eyed, filthy and reckless. They also crap all over the place. They’re starved - their diet is whatever they can scavenge so it’s down to fag ends and pigeon shit basically. In the country, pigeons are plump. Christ knows what they’ve been eating - the local cat population by the look of it. One sits in the garden and is startled by a creaking - it’s a twelve stone pigeon sitting on your fence which is swaying like the Berlin Wall on unification day.

In the city, pigeons swoop and flutter, usually at your head. They are blasé about human contact but if sufficiently startled, usually by a small child, they will flock off.

In the countryside, pigeons keep a wary distance, conditioned to be just out of range of somebody who would, for instance, worry about discharging a shotgun in their back garden and missing the fat feathered fellow, instead vaporising a neighbour’s gazebo. Hence, when they take to the air, they need assistance.

This can be the only reason for the size of the aerials in the neighbourhood. Our feathered friend clambers up on the roof and makes his way to the end of the steel structure, which begins to bend like a willow under his weight. He gets to the very end, jumps once, twice and then: sproing! He’s off into the wild blue yonder leaving nothing but a cloud of feathers and his launcher vibrating with a noise like a ruler being twanged on the edge of a desk.

The alternative is that my neighbours are deep cover agents, planted in the 50’s, and that they use the communications gear to contact the mother country. As this can now be done more cheaply and securely using a phone card bought at a bargain price at a car booter, the communications gear is now used to get a decent telly picture, even on channel 5. No mean feat.