And It’s A Happy New Year From Me, Brian Pigeon
Those of you who got my Tweet will already know that Christmas this year ended up in a bit of a drunken blur, and a hangover that lasted for days. Jesus. Still not sure I’m walking straight. This is the story of how it happened.
After a quiet one on Christmas eve, Mart and I decided to go along to to Mike and Jeff’s Christmas Show on the seafront.
Rumour was they were going to do Aladdin. Thank fuck they didn’t. They really were unbelievably bad, and things only got worse when they started the dance routines. We were desperate to escape but seeing as not that many of us had turned up and we were right at the front, we had to stay.
Anyway, about half way through Mart spotted what looked like quite a large puddle of lager. This time last year it was pissing down so all the potential lager spillages turned out to be water, but not this time. Still don’t know what it was, but it tasted pretty fresh, and we were off. The day went mental. Flew into town for something to eat. Didn’t find anything, so went back to the puddle. Things were bound to get messy, which they did.
And there we stayed till the sun went down. Even Mike and Jeff joined in once they’d finished warbling. Staggering all over the place we were. The end result of it all was three days on a balcony in recovery. Good times.
So, there it is. Another year blows by, and what a year it’s been including serial killer seagulls in Hyde Park. As always I got to meet some great characters too including Charles, the resolutely single magpie and Thomas and Phil the gay seagulls, and of course not forgetting the St Ives Collective.
And then, to top it all, there was the launch of the genius game I’m mentioned in called Hatoful Boyfriend.
So, 2015, bring it on. Believe it or not, year after next I’ll have been telling it how it is for pigeons everywhere for ten years. How time flies, literally, so next year could be pretty special. Here’s hoping. For now, seeing as I’m probably still well over the limit after Christmas Mart and Me are having a quiet one tonight. We’ve been invited to join Nigel and Maureen on their roof. This was us at a party there a few weeks ago:
Great sea view plus it’s really near to our ledge so we don’t have to fly far. By avoiding the annual carnage, I might actually be able to do something on New Year’s Day for once. You never know.
Happy New Year everyone. Here’s to a rocking 2015.
Chinese New Year – The Pigeon Overlooked Again
For years I’ve been campaigning for the Chinese to honour the pigeon in their New Year’s list. Our exclusion baffles me. They’ve got everything from a tiger to a dragon. It’s not even like they’ve given feathers in general the swerve, there’s a rooster in there too. A fucking rooster? WTF? If you believe in that whole Noah thing, without one of us carrying that twig there would be no Chinese. Surely that deserves a nod? What has a rooster ever done for mankind other than make a loud irritating noise when everyone is trying to sleep. Us pigeons don’t join in the dawn chorus because we know that not everyone likes to be awake before daylight, including us I might add.
I first started looking into our exclusion in 2007 when I discovered it was the year of the pig. You can read what I thought about it here. Safe to say, I wasn’t impressed.
Then, in 2011, it was year of the rabbit. I researched this one to find out why a rabbit? I figured they must have done something to earn it. Saved a load of orphaned children from a burning building, maybe? Anything, but no. The best I could find is they can purr like a cat when happy. You can read what I thought about that one here.
2015 has been the year of the sheep, so what next? To my horror, on Feb 19th 2015 we enter year of the goat. Surely not. Okay, goats can climb trees which is pretty clever considering what they’ve got on their feet, but really? Mart did point out they make nice cheese too, which is true, but still.
We figured it was time to take action so while I was in London last week furthering my investigations into the serial killer seagull (or gulls, which is the latest theory), I popped into Chinatown with a couple of old mates. I even got Doug involved. I used to hang out with Doug a lot back in the day. Doug used to be partial to doing impersonations. Click here to see him doing a totally out-of-order one of Heather Mills when she was with McCartney.
Anyway, this is what happened. Please excuse the quality of the photography. Mart took them.
We figured the best route to inclusion on the list would be a sit in. Go into somewhere Chinese and stay there till they give us a year. At the very least we’d get noticed.
As soon as we arrived we spotted an open door heading straight into a packed restaurant. Perfect:
I should point out it was one that proudly advertised crispy duck, another bird that doesn’t get a year despite its food-based sacrifice on a daily basis:
No fucking justice.
I told Doug to go for it, so we did. Soon as we got through the door, this massive foot comes our way. Kid you not, it was huge, so we did a runner, shitting ourselves:
And we kept running, just in case:
Pissed ourselves afterwards, but have also realised we may need a slightly different approach if we want to appear on a Chinese calender any time soon.
Any suggestions welcome.
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