Not that many years ago, I would have described the summer – and the spring – that we’ve had thus far as ‘lousy’. Even ‘shite’. But now, with the same kind of perverse logic that my elders and betters in Norn Iron would have described a day fit for neither man nor beast as ‘a brave wee day’, I am here to tell you that – at time of writing – it has been a fantastic summer. So far, we’ve escaped any kind of extreme heat. My mother used to tell us of a time in ‘her’ war when, perhaps in her bedroom in North London or walking back home from school, she would hear the death rattle of a ‘doodlebug’ nearby and when she heard the motor cut out, despite her better instincts, pray that it would fall on some other poor soul, blowing their house to bits and not hers. So I scan the news headlines on the way to the sport page and see how they have suffered in north India and other points east, and I thank the weather gods that we have (certainly until now) been spared.
Nevertheless, I’m not counting my chickens – perhaps because neither the Good Wife nor I have still not done anything to realise the much-expressed wish of having some fine feathered friends scratching around the house, eating the huge brown slugs that abound. Indeed not. Only the other day, we re-hung the jute curtains on the mezzanine balcony after their hibernation in the roof space. We commissioned a young seamster last year – if that’s what you call a male ‘seamstress’, although my daughter might tell me not to be so contra-sexist (and does he, I wonder, belong to the local Local of the Seamsters Union?) – from nearby Martel to make them for the front porch and the balcony above in an effort to cut the temperature of the house by a degree or two. They worked, to a degree, and my wife thinks that they look nice, particularly from the inside looking out. That’s all that ultimately matters. So I pegged them back to the wooden rods known in these parts as tringles (that’s a strangulated ‘tran-gls’), with The Dame clutching the ladder anxiously as her habitually anxious husband teetered at its apex.
To get back to chickens, we really would love to have some. It would be a challenge to strike up a meaningful relationship with the sisters and how very satisfying it must be to eat ‘your own’ eggs (as we say, in our customary ‘specist’ way). I love birds, although I know very little about them. I haven't loaded my wife’s app on my phone, which identifies a species by its song. ‘Ornithology’ for me is one of Charlie Parker’s best-loved numbers. This much I can tell you, however: the lack of extreme summer heat has helped the local avian population. Our woods are alive with the tropical sound of golden orioles, which I confused with the call of the hoopoe until a friend and amateur twitcher disavowed me of the notion on a boat trip along the river Charente for France magazine. As well as the everyday robins, tits, blackbirds, sparrows and the occasional parliament* of crows, we get the rather more exotic jays, nuthatches, yellow woodpeckers and all the other lesser-spotted varieties I’ve given up trying to dissuade from thieving our fruit. Meanwhile, up above in the friendly sky, buzzards and rarer kites and hawks wheel around 'incredibly high', ready to plummet like Mexican cliff divers or more aptly Stukas, given their thirst for prey. It’s enough to keep even the most indifferent inveterate couch-potato captivated.
Despite my lack of knowledge, only the other day I had an experience that I’d like to share with you. It was without doubt what I’d call a spiritual or extra-terrestrial experience. I’m not a particularly spiritual person; I love gospel music and I talk to the animals, but that’s the extent of it. Unlike The Dame, who’s spookily in touch with any of life’s extra dimensions. Literally sometimes. She can massage a client and pick up on something germane to his or her make-up that goes back several generations. She was the first I told about my experience, like a frantic child eager to impress a grown-up.
It was the other Saturday and there I was, working away at my desk, busily earning the pension granted me by King Charles’ parliament. Just above my screen is one of our two round windows, yeux de boeuf or ox-eyes I guess, one on either side of the mezzanine walls. I was suddenly aware of a fluttering and looked up to see a crested hoopoe looking in at me. My heart fluttered in return. I sat transfixed by the caller, occasionally mirroring its neck movements, so close that I could see the way the breeze ruffled its feathers and the blink of its diaphanous inner eye. Wanting to grab my phone to take a crafty photo as proof, I dared not move anything other than my head in response to the bird's gestures. For five minutes – I kid you not; I am not given to the default exaggerations of the Good Wife – we sat in silent communion, then it hopped off onto the roof to preen its feathers with its rapier-like bill for a good couple of minutes longer – before flying away.
Even before I’d recovered from the metaphysical shock and the rare feeling of being blessed, the friendly neighbourhood hoopoe was back. Once more at the round window, to repeat our meeting of the spirits. During this second communion, I was able to establish that the hoopoe flattens its crest when stationary and opens it in flight. I’m thinking of publishing this invaluable insight in a specialist journal, but should perhaps consult with Sir David Attenborough or someone of his kidney for confirmation. Just in case my hoopoe was like one of those Native American 'braves' that would do everything arse about face.
Finally, it flew off. For the next few days I felt a little like Moses after the business of the burning bush. If nothing otherwise of note were to happen in 2024, my encounter with the summer visitor would have filled me up for the year. I scanned the sky and the woods for any further sign of my soul-mate, knowing of course that if you’re lucky enough to see a UFO or the Loch Ness Monster it happens only once in a lifetime. No indeed, nothing. But wait! A couple of days later it flew onto the top balcony, to stay just long enough for me to reach surreptitiously for my phone like the card cheat in a Western film who knows he’s been clocked. And so I offer you this admittedly poor portrait of my exotic friend.
I'm in danger of becoming a hoopoe-bore. Like that pesky Ancient Mariner, I waylay anyone prepared to listen. Sometime after the event, I went to my garrulous friend Paul's 'Boys' Night'. It's something he loves to host when he comes over alone from North Devon to use the former family home as a holiday venue. It's become such a regular annual event for a small but select bunch of us ageing boys that it's even got its own What'sUp? chat group now. Paul makes us pizzas in his purpose-built oven outside on the covered terrace and we drink beer like proper men and he swears a lot, like someone who has been let off the leash. There's usually four of us, but this time there were five, as Dan brought along his son who was over from Bristol for a week or so. He'd grown his hair and a bushy beard since I'd seen him last, so he reminded me of Ben Gunn, emerging from the bushes in Treasure Island.
We talked, as we tend to do, of music and sport and children and animals and the vagaries of growing old. Given a captive audience and since I don't often have a lot to say, I recounted my spiritual experience with the avian visitor from Africa. Dan reminded me that he had had a similar experience. In their old house, he too used to spend far too long working at a screen just beyond which was a window to the natural world. One day a hoopoe hopped onto the window-sill and engaged in a bit of silent communion. I'd quite forgotten in the excitement of feeling unique and blessed.
We concluded that maybe what the hoopoe sees in such close encounters is not the worker within but its own reflection on the glass. Maybe the crested African visitor is at heart a vain bird. Perhaps, unused to its own image, it lingers like a window-shopper to admire the goods, twisting its head this way and that to study its beauty from different angles. My, it might think, what a beautiful creature I am. In which case, maybe we should rename it the Politician Bird or better still the President Bird.
Which reminds me: there are elections happening either side of the Channel this month. I shall cling to my preferred version of the ornithological truth meanwhile in the face of all the inevitable uncomfortable untruths flying about the political landscape.
(Photo of Brecon Beacons courtesy of Dorin Vancea (@dvancea) on Unsplash.com)
* My friend T.T. points out that it should be a 'murder' of crows, but I'll leave it as it is because it proves my contention that I know nothing about birds.
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