Come Back Stool. We could sell you

A guy who has just written a book on Pigeon Fanciers was on the Today programme this morning publicising his seminal work on the modern British Racing Pigeon industry and the anoraks who are its life blood. He explained that we must put to one side the traditional fancier image of an old man in a flat cap and replace it with the new thrusting virile entrepreneurial Pigeon training manager risking all with a flick of a Pigeon out of a cote en route to winning £100,000 in the Racing Pigeon Derby.Having said all that at some length, the example of this new breed of super-fancier who came on air was certainly elderly and seemed to be wearing at least two flat caps and judging from his diction speaking through a third. And could have come straight out of the Convent Garden scene in My Fair Lady.(He was actually from Salford) He seemed however to be au fait with the new tricks of the trade such as keeping his prize pigeons in a double glazed cote (tiled-with showers! Why?) and in perpetual darkness so as they were fooled into thinking it was winter all year round. Perhaps to keep their minds off sex (no Spring, ever; no sap rising; see?) and perhaps as they would fly quicker to keep themselves warm, or something)what happened when they had to race in August and actually were obliged to leave the cote to do so was not explained. Mind you if they were reared in Hutton no sudden temperature change would be a problem. We can have winter all year here without drawing the curtains

I wonder if Stool (see previous posts)is still around these parts or has returned to his double glazed, curtained cote. If he was a 100 grand winning bird we should have kept hold of him and demanded a reward from his owner who presumably would not have wrung its neck for dropping out of the race for a well earned break in the Merse given his previous (rewarding)track record. However he may have been on his first outing, got it all wrong and it would have been a different sort of curtains in his cote had he been sent back to Flat Cap in Salford.

Stool. If you read this stay put wherever you are. And if you are back at home, a Prodigal son forgiven don't bother to draw the curtains. It's probably as murky in Salford as it is on the bonny banks of the Whiteadder

Labels: Pigeons, Salford, Stool

  ¶ 9:30 AM