Death

Today, mostly for a bit of exercise, I walked a mile to the "Waitrose" store by the inner city ring road. I made a few purchases - including two jars of Italian roast coffee granules, two bottles of my favoured "Essential Care" shampoo and conditioner and half a dozen eggs. Then I caught a bus home.

Almost as soon as I got in I noticed our main kitchen window. It was now smeared or something. It wasn't like that when I left the house.

"What's happened to the kitchen window?" I asked Shirley.

"Well I heard something hit it. I think it might have been a pigeon."

She asked me to look closer and I agreed with her that the ghostly shape seemed to suggest a pigeon's wings and beak and it was just the right size, If a pigeon had flown into the window glass, it was the first time it had happened in the thirty seven years we have lived in this house.

"Well was it a pigeon? Did you go outside to look?"

"No," said Shirley. "I was too frightened!"

"What?"

So Brave Sir Pudding unlocked the back door and sure enough, under the kitchen window was our kamikaze wood pigeon. Now deceased, kapput, no more, gone to pigeon heaven.

There was no funeral ceremony. Instead I picked the dead pigeon up by one of its wings and took it up the garden where it could nourish other creatures - magpies, crows and perhaps one of our neighbourhood foxes.

I found a big black folder and held it up to the window so that Shirley could capture the impact image with her smartphone (see top picture) and then five minutes later, two magpies were pecking at the pigeon's carcass. Later there was a hungry crow and as evening fell, a fox appeared at the feast, licking his lips.

⦿

And as I consider death, yesterday was my 73rd birthday so I myself am  a year closer to pigeon heaven now. We invited our next door neighbours - Jill and Tony to lunch out in The Peak District. I share my birthday with Jill who is now well into her eighties. I booked a table at "The Barrel Inn" in the hamlet of Bretton.

You go up narrow, winding lanes to reach the remote pub. At the gravel pull-in on Sir William Hill, I spotted a blue camper van and thought to myself - I have seen that van before!  Incredibly, it belongs to Ashley - a vlogger I blogged about here. And there was Ashley just outside the van putting her dog Apollo on his lead!

I determined that I would stop to speak with her after the lunch date but when we went back that way, the blue van was gone! I think the mathematical chances of such a sighting happening are incredibly remote. Almost like winning The National Lottery but with no five million pound prize attached!

Later, we had spaghetti at Frances's house and there was a lovely chocolate cake that Shirley had baked and decorated. Of course both Phoebe and Margot needed to have their own goes at blowing out my candles with repeat singing of the "Happy Birthday" song.

As humbly requested, Phoebe portrayed a tiger in her grandpa's homemade birthday card...

You might be able to make out an abstract fellow who is stroking the tiger and saying, "I love Tigers". That my friends, is a depiction of the author of this blog!