London Here We Come!

I’ve made two big decisions recently. One is I could do with a bath after all this flying about. Not covered this kind of mileage for years. The second one is a massive one – me and Mart are moving back to London. Brighton’s been fun and all that, but there really isn’t much to do down here apart from look at the sea and take the piss out of seagulls. Having spent so much time in The Smoke recently doing Pigeons Got Talent – more on that in a bit – I realised how much I missed the place. The smells, the sounds, throwaway on every corner, the bridges. To be honest, I can’t fucking wait.

We spent a few days up there last week. This is Mart posing in front of one of the ‘Don’t Feed The Pigeons’ signs on Trafalgar Square:

He asked me to take it as it’s become a must-have pic for the visiting pigeon. I did draw the line at him jumping in the air though.

The deciding moment came on Saturday when we squeezed in a game of Shit or Miss on the tourists in Piccadilly Circus. Not done that in years either. Good times.

So, now the decision’s been made, we just need to decide where to live… When we left London a few years ago, we were on a pucker ledge on Beak Street in Soho. Just looked it up in the archives and it was nine years ago we moved there. Mental.

This was what I wrote about our move day on March 7th 2006, which was pretty much when I first started Pigeon Blog.

Not sure if that particular ledge is available at the moment. Probably not. We may even want to find a quieter spot. Don’t know. Guess we’ll see when we get there.

So, onto PGT. We’ve decided to extend it another couple of weeks as the caliber of hopefuls appears to have gone somewhat downhill. We had a good run at first, but the last couple of auditions… Oh dear.

Here’s two examples. Let me introduce you to Dianne.

“Hi, what’s your name, where are you from, and what have you got for us today?” We said.

“My name’s Dianne, I come from Clapton and I’m dancing the Fandango.” She replied.

“Hi Dianne. That sounds interesting, but aren’t you supposed to have a partner?” I asked.

“I’m going to perform it solo.”

“Fair enough, Dianne. Off you go.”

Jesus. This was it. Literally. Left leg forward, left leg back, left leg forward, then back again, and with no music:

Seriously. Okay, so she had some rhythm, but considering the definition of Fandango is ‘a lively couples dance from Spain’, WTF?

Then along came William Shakespeare. I kid you not. He’d actually called himself William Shakespeare. Said he was going to be performing the opening monologue from Richard III. Know the one? ‘Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York’. The really famous one that goes on for ages?

He tried it six times and didn’t get any further than ‘this son of York.’

Unbelievable.

Anyway, I think we’ve lined up a couple of good ones for next week, so watch this space. Fingers crossed we can wrap it up after that too. Mart and me have got some serious ledge hunting to do!