The horse whisperer
A post from 2012 in memory of my Dad…
Influenced by hit films of yesteryear like Dr Doolittle and the Horse Whisperer, Dad can often be found down at the allotments talking to the chickens.
They are three sets of them on the way to our plot, living in varying degrees of squalor. He crouches as best he can on the path by their respective coops making a noise like a creaking door.
Spaniel
He has always loved animals. He had a Cocker Spaniel as a child, which meant that I also had a Cocker Spaniel as a child. Smudge, a slow portly animal, used to disappear from our back garden on warm afternoons and come back with whole joints of meat in his slobbering flews.
He never got much of a ticking-off. Dad admired his nerve and the fact that he’d brought home the bacon (and lamb and chicken and once a foil wrapped packet of cheese sandwiches.)
We came close to roasting and eating the spoils ourselves (that’s the sort of thing people did back in the 1970s) but Health and Safety prevailed and Smudge got to polish them all off himself. The nearby Fantail Hotel had a Michelin starred restaurant and Dad said it must have an open larder. That seemed unlikely. But then so did the idea of Smudge doing anything stealthy or agile.
When I left home, I got a dog of my own. Maxi and his successor Dog MS were both shepherd dogs. Dad has loved them as his own, spending hours playing with them in the garden or sitting fondling their heads while they stain his trouser leg with their dribble.
‘What a lovely dog he is,’ Dad says about Dog MS, forgetting that she’s a girl. But little slips like this don’t bother her. She reciprocates his love in full. In fact, she throws herself at the feet of any man in a flat cap, thinking they are all Dad.
Dad has previous with birds too. At their old kitchen window in the Cotswolds he and Mum would take their elevenses watching sparrows, finches and tits of all kinds descend on Dad’s home-made feeders. He would see squirrels off with a home-made catapult.
So perhaps it’s not surprising about his new friends. But the interesting thing is, the allotment chickens have started to talk back to him. At the sound of his footsteps, brown, black and white hens rush in a feathery tide to the fence, clucking and pecking at each other’s eyes in their haste to get to the front. Their foreman the cockerel, doesn’t join in the melee but stands at the back looking outraged and making sudden, sharp little head movements, with machine precision.
Looking outraged
Even once Dad has moved on, the hens stay at the fence squawking. It makes you wonder what he has said to them. It makes him wonder, too.
Let’s hope they don’t start flocking to the fence every time a man in a flat cap comes along. The cockerel will have to introduce a work-to-rule system, or egg-laying production will be seriously down this year.
I love it, I love it …especially your dad with his catapult! You have such a way with the words, Mandy.
So, he is pretty popular with the chicks!
Your dad’s just opening negotiations, Mandy. A deal for chicken manure would be most advantageous! Isn’t there a Kevin Costner reference missing here, too: “Chatters With Chickens”? A delight.
Lamar… so true. Mandy Chickie – fab as always.
Hello chucky egg, one of many pet names given to me by my old Irish uncle Patrick Joseph (before you say it, yes, his brother was Michael – and yes they were affectionately known as Pat and Mick Corey)
Anyway, thanks Mandy for another opportunity to revisit my childhood and recall grand memories of chicken runs,allotments, and coaxing them home before settling them in for the night. He called them ‘little bowsies’ especially when they had done well.
Praps a picture of your dad having a natter with his feathered friends. Loved your ‘feathery tide’ could just imagine them following each other to the fence. A gem. Enjoy the sunshine. Looking forward to seeing you again in the summer.
Another great read, thanks Mandy … and yes, I too loved your ‘feathery tide.’
You’ve evoked memories of my childhood, when Mum went off to town for a new winter coat and came back with a golden retriever puppy and six chicks instead. Dad took to breeding said chickens and, when we had to up sticks to move 200 miles north, poor George the cockerel appeared as Sunday lunch … Oh dear.
Looking forward to your next instalment, Mandy – and hoping all your Dad’s feathery friends remain cheerily clucking away.
Thanks, Joyce and Kathy, bless you. Lamar and John, LOL – v droll! Love the childhood memories, Monty and Glynis. Eating George – oh dear, indeed. I remember something similar from my childhood with an adopted duck (who strangely enough was called Glynis…!)
When I was a kid, my Dad kept Bantam Hens and geese, and would sell the small and large eggs in the pub,( Was this a Lancashire thing)?. Anyway, he use to get me to collect the eggs, so as a kid, I would have these strange dreams about Bloke’s in pubs drinking bitter and eating a mixture of very large and small eggs!!
Aint scarred me though Mandy, I hope? brill blog as always.
I remember your dog. He was very fat, despite always running, and once brought home a frozen cheese cake as well. Did you eat the leg of lamb? That was your house in Farnborough.
love your blog.
Jo xx
Joe, a few months back, I saw a jar of pickled eggs for sale at a pub in Barnoldswick. Judging by the colour, they were probably your dad’s originals.
Jo, yes we did eat the lamb: I wasn’t planning to admit that! The hotel staff must have been in the habit of leaving things out to defrost in the garden as Smudge was indeed massive and would never have managed to sneak in anywhere unnoticed. I’d forgotten the cheese cake. Another time, he came back with some cheese and pickle sandwiches wrapped in foil.
love this one! yr Dad on catapult duty is great. my Dad bought a rather puny water pistol to try to tackle the fact they had 12 cats living next door. he kept complaining it was nowhere near as good as water pistols were in his youth, so i went out and bought ‘power water rifles’ for both him and my Mum and they adored charging out into the garden through the patio doors – like Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid in those last iconic shots in the film – and plastering the shitting cats with litre-jets of cold water! love, Char x
12 cats, Char? That’s an excess of felininity in anyone’s book. Good on your M and D!
My old Dad used to fill up his pockets with crumbs and seeds for the birds before he went off to the shops for his “messages”. On his way home he would walk along the estate wall that divided the estate road from the main road and make bird noises. In the wink of an eye he would have dozens of small birds lining up on the top of the wall, on his arms and shoulders, around his feet, and pecking food from his hands and pockets. he did this till he was 91 and was known as “the Birdman of Alloa”.
Hi Marion, thanks for that: it’s a lovely image, it really is.
I wish I’d met your Dad!
Thanks John. I’m sure you would have got on like a house on fire!