Life in The UNC Part 2
The first pair of surgical ring-cutters I ever saw, despite working for over 40 years in a Medical School linked to a teaching hospital, were a pair loaned to me by "The Major." Whose relation had "liberated" them from one or another of the emergency services. The old aluminium rings were always a doddle to remove. The newer plastic-coated ones more difficult. But the German ones were just impossible to shift by the old methods. The surgical ring cutters however sliced through them like a hot knife through butter. With no risk, whatsoever, of damage to the birds leg .I just had to have a pair of my own. Apart from "The Major" wanting his back immediately after I had finished with them, ten, maybe twenty times a year, I was carefully and labouriously cutting rings off other people’s pigeons. Usually from old stock birds. Where the build up of dead skin under the ring had constricted the circulation, thus causing the leg to swell to such an extent that the ring had to be removed. Occasionally rings had be taken off because of broken legs sustained in racing/training accidents. Whatever. Word spread rapidly "Rod has got a pair of ring cutters" and now fanciers come from far and wide.
So it was that Eddie and "Squeak" travelled the thirty miles or thereabouts to my loft. To get a ring cut off a stock pigeon. Each year, from Bourges, Eddie and I compete for "the lucky bone trophy." And a handsome trophy it is too. Standing four inches high, with a width of three inches! And it is all of five inches long. It comprises of one well-chewed dog’s bone some four inches long and two metal washers, mounted on a varnished wooden base with green baize glued to the underside. Surmounting it all is a magnificent two inch high gilt pigeon. Nailed to the top! Eddie won it this year, but preferred to leave it in my cabin. I think he might just have a houseproud wife! It goes back a good few years to the time when he left his thermal jacket at my loft and went home wearing mine. I won Bourges that year, wearing his jacket, and refused to give it back, as it had been "lucky."I had known it wasn’t mine from the moment I put my hands in the pockets and found the bone. Eddie, you see, had two Jack Russell dogs. He said I could keep the coat but he wanted the bone and washers back. Which he then had mounted and presented to me as the "lucky bone trophy." It takes some winning!
Now and again I have some dealings with West of England High-Flyer men and Birmingham Roller fanciers. It seems to me that the high-flyer boys have less disease in their birds than we racing men have. This would make sense as they compete only against the clock. Their birds do not come into contact with any other pigeons, unless birds are introduced into the loft, whereas ours go every week into a basketful of other birds. Of mixed ownership and often dubious health! In our case the bottom line is, as I have always maintained it to be, that every Friday you are only as good as the worst fancier in your club! Forget the antibiotics. Better to work towards improving the immune systems of your birds.
The roller boys confine their birds as teams, into kit pens, as opposed to the high-flyer men who us single pens. The roller men that I know personally seem to get more trouble and seem to have less hardy birds than the high-flyer crowd. And this too would follow. There is a great deal of skill involved in both disciplines and I admire them for what they choose to do. I even went to the trouble of once asking a top high-flyer man how he fed and trained his birds. In case I was missing out on something that I, as a racing man, should know and could use. You have to keep an open mind. And try out new things.
The guy who sometimes takes me down to the club with my birds for race marking has a whole whack of yearlings. Ex- darkness youngsters which raced well as YB’s and have raced well, mainly inland, this year. And which have never been paired. They look great and will be paired next season. Who knows what will happen then? He is the man who pays the corn bill so he can do what he likes with them. They are his pigeons. His son flies the same strain of birds but on the natural system and to an open-hole routine. In a different loft. At the distance. And he does equally well with his. It would be a pretty dull world if we all did the same thing.
We are all looking forward to the wedding. Bob is the best man and therefore has to give a speech. I am being kind when I say he is not a gifted speaker. In fact I am lying! When Bob and his close friend Don were young, and chasing girls, they worked as a team. Bob, who has perfect eyesight but mumbles a bit when he has had a few drinks, to be brutally honest he talks shorthand, used to spot the likely ladies but said nothing. Don, who can hardly keep his eyes open after a few pints, would do all the talking! It was a perfect working team! They complemented each other then. Just as they do now. As a highly successful racing partnership. Incidentally Bob is refusing to tape his speech for us! A pity that!
Sunday was post-mortem day. The vultures had gathered early. I myself had been there since 6 am. Waiting for the latecomers from the day before. One of my favourite fanciers has a very simplistic, but possibly correct, view of pigeon racing. He wants only the pigeons that do the business. No others. In other words if one pigeon gets back in good time his attitude is that there is no excuse for the rest. They should be there too. If one loft has a good race why shouldn’t the rest of the lofts have a good race? If other people can do it, he should be doing it. How I wish the good ones always won and the bad ones never came home. Life would be very much simpler!
Views on the race were mixed. It was certainly not a "smash" race. But a difficult one. And it raised a few questions. Do you have to race from the very beginning, right through the whole programme, to obtain the "old pros" that can handle an awkward race late in the season? If you just want to give your pigeons experience at the channel, and are not competing, do you just fly the early channel races instead? Or were the ones that were lost at the last race just not good enough or not fit enough? And why is the last race invariably not a straightforward one?
All good pigeons have to be thrown to the wolves at some stage in their career. That much is obvious. But, contends my friend, the sooner this happens the better. He wants answers. As quickly as possible. The good ones will come through. Those are the ones he wants. That we all want. But what is the correct balance between risk and failure? Between being too cautious and being too rash? And do the best ones really always come through? Sometimes. Perhaps. Not always. Take your pick!
On how many occasions have you heard a fancier say that he has had pigeons from many different sources but, "they’re not as good as my own?" This is often the case. And we got to wondering about it. Is it as simple as your own birds being used to your management or the lack of it, over a long period of time? Or are they really not as good as those you already have? One of the company, when asked, worked out what percentage of his race team were not of his own breeding. The numbers surprised me but what is more to the point, gave the fancier himself ,whether he knew it or not, the answers to some rather pressing questions that were sat there, in his head, just waiting to be asked. Apathy rules. But only if you let it!
ROD ADAMS.
Don't get me wrong. Women are not barred from my loft set-up at all. It is not some kind of male bastion against womanhood in general. It's just that not many women, hardly any really, Heather apart, bother to come. Heather is something else. She is a regular, though not frequent, visitor. My hard-bitten fancier sidekicks are a treat to watch when she appears. She is extremely kind-hearted and loves all animals. Especially pigeons. If they are lame, blind or infirm, so much the better. Were I to come back in another guise, in another life, I would want to be a pigeon looked after by Heather! I would have a life of luxury and die of old age. For certain!
We both worked for Newcastle University. Me in Physiology and Heather as a secretary in the School of Chemistry and took early retirement at about the same time. But I had known her long before that. Her pigeons, with one exception, a retired racer, are pure bred street pigeons. Collected from beneath motorway bridges or picked up in some gutter. Usually badly injured or very young birds newly fallen from their nests. It is nothing unusual for her to stop a stream of motorway traffic in a major city to save one of these birds from being squashed!
All of her pigeons have names. "Vulcan." "Squidgy Baby." "One-Wing" (it has two) etc. Even the retired racer is named after the person who gave her to Heather. They reside in a purpose-built shed, complete with aviary. Also in an outside toilet. And on a shelf in the garage. They live long and well. If attention is required they are brought to me. Sometimes accompanied by a photo-album detailing their progress. The boys love it and go straight into their best behaviour mode! Ever so polite. And no swearing! There is, I think, genuine amusement on both sides. With Heather playing up to them and the boys gently mocking and teasing her. It is good to watch.
It is nothing for her to wait hours for me to come home late at night. So that I can look at a newly-fledged thrush. She hand fed the last, one every hour or so, for two weeks. Before accidentally standing on it! Life can be cruel! Deaths amongst her birds are accompanied by full state funerals. With all due honours. Culling is a not an option. Full stop. I cut their toe nails. Clip wings. And carry out regular inspections on them. Much to the amusement of my cronies. Who sit there muttering scurrilous and totally unfounded insinuations, about just what kind of relationship Heather and I might have had in the past. Just loud enough for me, but not so loud that she can hear! It is, of course, all lies. Ask my wife. On second thoughts perhaps that's not such a good idea!
There are times, though not a lot of them, when I have the loft and cabin to myself. And those I enjoy. I quite like my own company and am happy doing a crossword and listening to classical music. Or simply doing nothing at all. I earned my living for 42 years by sorting out other people's problems. Being thoroughly harassed in the process. Those days are gone. I once worked with a rather eccentric postgraduate student who spent most of his day just looking at a wall. On which was a poster showing a three-legged stool and the caption "Some days I sit and think, some days I just sit." Some days I too just sit. Many of the reactions to my choice of reading -matter have made me so paranoid that I now switch the radio off and hide the newspaper when any local fancier arrives. It is a regional thing. Peculiar to the North East. Which newspapers you read. What music you are partial to. And so on.
I once and only once, a long time ago, made the mistake of coming into the pigeon club carrying an umbrella. I could not have got a more raucous reception if I had walked in with no trousers on! The wearing of suede shoes. Horse-riding. Ballroom dancing. All seem to elicit the same response. Many years ago one of the boys, a coal-miner, was seen sneaking into a local school of dancing on a Saturday afternoon together with his wife. Naturally he kept absolutely mum about this. But of course word got around. And how. He walked into the pigeon club, carrying his clock, the following Friday and was confronted by at least seven pairs of unshaven pigeon men, still in their work clothes, all waltzing around the floor. Studiously avoiding his gaze. Needless to say he still can't dance!
Peter is not a pigeon man although he does feed about 30 street pigeons every day. Twice a day. They eat more corn than his chickens do. And are a complete nuisance on race days or when I am settling youngsters. We call them "Peters Pigeons." Peter lives in a caravan (not far from my old loft) on his smallholding. Which rejoices in the name of "The Funny Farm."It is a bit like Noah's Ark. There is a Muscovy duck called Boris, chickens, rabbits, horses, several cats, the odd stray dog and "Tinkerbelle" the goat. Peter is well read. A good carpenter and an excellent gardener. He leads a pretty self-sufficient life and despite being in receipt of an old age pension he fairly recently completed a three year gardening course at Newcastle University! He is, in short, nobody's fool. All his spare money is spent on books, seeds and at the local flea-market where he buys Victorian gardening implements for his collection. He loans me his books after he has read them. I am now an expert on the Second World War. The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. And Jack the Ripper. Peter has eclectic tastes! He also prone to inspirational, though totally impracticable, ideas.
I forgot to mention earlier that he also has a donkey. Jenny. One Christmas time Peter had an idea. He would wash and groom her. Put a white blanket over her back. Hang two white pillowcases full of presents on her like panniers. One on either side. Then take her to visit the local children. It was an amazing sight. A flat -backed coal wagon with two scaffolding boards running from the rear to the ground. Peter on the wagon pulling for all he was worth. At a donkey that obviously wasn't going anywhere! Despite the presence of his wife at the other end. Shoving for all she was worth too! As he said to me later "If Jesus Christ had been waiting for this bloody donkey he'd still be in Jerusalem!" He has worked on farms. Owned a coal business and worked with horses all his life. He was hugely amused when someone described him as a recluse. He is a character in a world short of characters. A man who is doing exactly what he wants to do and is happy doing it. Now is that not an enviable position to be in?
We work hard at the social side of the sport in South Shields. "Those who play together, stay together" kind of thing. As well as it being a clearing house for information on who is doing what with whose pigeons and where, or what diseases are in which areas, it acts as a place where we organise outings to meetings, major shows like Blackpool, one-day events and Up North Combine dinners. Where we have a standing order for 24 tickets but always need more. And occasionally there are visits to the local greyhound stadium. My contemporaries are well-informed about pigeon ailments and how to deal with them. Some have their own microscopes and nearly all do not treat if they don't have to. And even then preferably on an individual and not a flock basis.
They regard, as I do, the possession of pigeon medicines as a form of insurance. If the expiry date is reached and the product goes in the dustbin, then it was money well spent. Because the birds were healthy enough not to have needed anything. But had they been sick the remedy would have been ready to hand. And little racing would have been lost. Otherwise, by the time professional veterinary advice had been sought and the appropriate medicine obtained, a full years racing could have evaporated. In the UK it is a lucky man who has a veterinarian who knows anything about pigeons in his area. They do exist and should be consulted, but there are just not that many of them about.
We got to talking about little fishes in little ponds. Big fishes in little ponds. And big fishes in big ponds. We were, of course, talking about Club, Federation and National racing. And about a particular fancier's intended movement towards long distance racing. It is a long slow haul. Where patience is the watchword. We talked about stock birds as well. And agreed that these should not simply be birds that are not racing. Birds that are merely kept in the stock loft. As is often the case. They should be progeny-tested producers of good winning pigeons. A true stock bird is nothing less than that. There are not a lot of them about. Despite what is written in the fancy press!
ROD ADAMS.
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