Any day that starts off with an utterly wasted drive of 120 miles to have my haircut, only to find that Phil, my hairdresser, had taken the day off to go to the funeral of his partner, Tony, who had died of AIDS, is unlikely to get better ! Sure enough, I got knicked for speeding, and on a very safe stretch of road where one can safely exceed over 150 MPH,with only the odd deer or pheasant to look out for ( rabbits not counting since they can be safely squashed without undue encumbrance. As ever, the police were polite and respectful, although their level of deference seems to have declined over the past few
years and I cannot remember when the last one doffed his cap like the Italian police do ( especially when I am driving the Aston ).
Upon arriving home, I found that my electric gates would not respond, something being trapped underneath one. It was a dead wood pigeon, and since they grow to the size of Christmas turkeys around here, the sodding thing had truly blocked the gates requiring me to find a stick to poke the mangled creature free. I then noticed many feathers and the birds head on my lawn. Clearly, Moe, my wife's
Boston Terrier, had been pursuing his favourite blood sport of pigeon assassination. Sure enough, up rocked the little sod liberrally bespattered with gore and feathers. I had to rinse him off in the fountain before I could even be sure it was him. Of course, I could always put a crimp in his pathological
determination to rid the World of pigeons, by putting a loud bell on his collar, but since the pigeons substantially foul all of my garden furniture by crapping all over it, I feel much more inclined to have Moe
fitted for a tiny shot gun and train him how to use it ; that'll thin the avian population out much faster !
As if to finish the day as it started, I was awakened in the small hours by the most awful screeching.
Since we have foxes often visit us in the night to feed on the bones our dogs sometimes leave on the terrace, and the yowl of a fox sounds very similar, I opened my bedroom window and let fly with both barrels. Alas, upon coming down to breakfast an hour ago I found I had shot Archie my favourite peacock.
Quite what he was doing on my terrace at three in the morning we will now never know, since he normally sleeps on the summerhouse roof some distance away, but he was getting old and was blind in one eye, so perhaps it was a mercy killing on my part. In any event, I'll take him to the pub later - the pub specialising in foodstuffs of an unusual nature ; after all, wasn't roast peacock a favourite of
King Henry the Eight ? If it was good enough for old Henery, it's certainly good enough for me !