We heard a fizzing sound then Henrietta,
one of Albert’s best homers,
fell from her perch. “Get her!”
said Robbie but by this time another shot
had embedded itself
in the tarred felt that swaddled the wooden pigeon-loft
made from plywood and ancient pit props.
We huddled and hugged too terrified to move.
The chickens fluttered in hysterical
panic as the pigeons scattered to the rooftops.
Another kid from up the street
started to cry, tearfully stuttering
appeals for his mother to rescue
us. Another shot ricocheted off
the washing-line post
and left its stamp just above Derek’s eye.
He still had it years later. He said
that girls found it interesting, but
that day he wasn’t so mesmeric, with elastoplast covering one lens of his NHS specs
and mud slarts on his Fairisle.
Nobody on the estate had a phone installed, so
somebody’s sister had to run to
the police box, but before she got back
a constable had arrived as he’d been having
a cup of tea with his auntie across the road.
Or so he said, and I thought I heard an
incongruous ripple of female laughter from the kitchen when he did. He picked out
the shot from the mud and straw, mumbling
“one-seven-seven Webley”. Whatever that meant.
It was abject and unreal. Everything looked the same
But you couldn’t trust any of it any more.
Somewhere nearby D-Day veterans were triggered by shades of horror
But none of this was our world and we weren’t schooled in it
So we stayed put, puzzled in the mud.
Up the cop stomped to the bedroom for a clearer
view across the backs, and extending a tanned veiny neck soon saw steel glint
in a garden across the bottom row.
Then another shot pinged the wash tub.
As smoke drifted airily from grizzled Yakovlevych’s
log-pile (he didn’t work at the pit)
I realised he’d lit it to spoil the marksman’s view.
I could hear the police walkie-talkie
and the officer in the bedroom
was guiding the black Wolseley patrol to the shooter.
Shortly after, we unpeeled our faces
from the mud as we got the all clear.
It was no American-style sniper aiming to
Pick-off grubby innocents in revenge for
Some imagined personal slight by the authorities,
The stealing of the job he was born to do by illegal immigrants,
Or the granting of the vote to black people.
Just a hormonal 14 year-old with his brother’s gun
And a paper target hung on the washing-post
Who the Bobby said couldn’t hit a “buffalo’s bum wi’ a banjo”.
Still, there was Derek’s scarred black eye
And poor Henrietta’s little beak, stark in the straw,
The red spot of life expired marking
Her breast among the scattered feathers.
The daughter of a champion, worth over 2k
in today’s money at Murray and Mills.¹
Albert snipped off the ring from
her tiny ankle. The pink legs, evolved from
Egypt to Rome, Baghdad and Brussels,²
crossing Cumulet and Carrier³ and competition
bred, that had balanced her from Barcelona?
to Barnsley, looked so fragile that I thought
I saw a tear gloss his dusty eye
before he wrapped her in last Saturday’s
Green ‘Un,? and dropped her
in the bin.
¹ A leading dealer in elite-bred racing birds.
² Egypt used pigeons for messaging in 3000 BC, Rome and Baghdad similarly before the Crusades broadened the practice. Belgium invented racing in 1818, and the sport in recent years, though declining in popularity, has become highly informed by genetics and sports and nutrition science.
³ The Homer was a cross between the fast high-flying French Cumulet and the sturdy endurance of the English Carrier.
⁴ Home of a celebrated marathon pigeon race.
⁵ The Saturday sporting supplement of the Sheffield Star evening paper
Stephen A. Linstead
Image from BBC North-East
.