An inconsequential and pointless blog… on an itchy nose and a pigeon’s hiccups

I remember thinking once that, perhaps – on one morning in the Middle Ages – perhaps in the middle of the 14th century – perhaps just before lunch on a Monday – a man in a field in England – or some other country in Britain – got an itch on the side of his nose. And the itch was so insistent that he, automatically, without thinking about it, scratched the itch – perhaps it took less than two seconds – and then he carried on with his life.

Later – perhaps only 10 minutes later in his life – he would have totally forgotten that the itch ever existed.

But, at the time – for those few seconds – perhaps less than two seconds – it was the overwhelming physical fact in his life.

No-one now – perhaps six centuries later – remembers that the man himself even existed, let alone knows about the itch.

Those two seconds – when the itch was the most overwhelmingly insistent thing in his life – were infinitely less than the tip of a needle in eternity.

But they existed for that lost pin tip in eternity.

A pigeon eating a crisp… well, part of a crisp… today

I was sitting on the platform at Cricklewood station in London this afternoon, when a pigeon walked up to my feet and started eating a discarded crisp (not mine) on the ground.

The pigeon had five pecks then got hiccups.

It had 16 little hiccups (I counted), looked as startled as I was and then recovered its composure.

I think they were hiccups.

A pigeon having hiccups… or perhaps coughing… today

They may have been little coughs.

It is difficult to tell with pigeons and I had never before heard nor seen a pigeon with hiccups – nor coughing.

Then the pigeon walked away, looking for other discarded or random foodstuffs.

I do not know how long pigeons remember things.

Probably not very long.

But this incident did happen…

…for infinitely less than the tip of a needle in eternity

… like everything else I blog about here.

Tempus fugit et nunquam redit

…as long-dead people used to say

… or maybe Tempus fugit et nunquam reddit

… or Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

It has all been said before

…by those who said it better.

It doesn’t matter.

Best forgotten.

How not to repel pigeons with a can of illegal CS gas and some chilli powder

Ultimate anti-pigeon spray: Lady CS gas

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about a friend in South East London with pigeon problems on her balcony. There must be a lot of it about. I have another friend in North London with a similar problem. She told me yesterday she intends to take direct action.

In my previous blog, I also mentioned someone who had caught a rat with sticky paper and had ended the rodent’s life with a sharp knife attached to the end of a broom handle. Life can be violent in South East London.

“I think I saw an article in the Evening Standard,” my North London friend told me yesterday afternoon. “it mentioned a paste that would get on pigeons’ feet. It sounded like a new thing they’d just discovered that was going to be pretty well 100% effective. I imagined it to be something like a glue and it was in chillies.”

“Well,” I said, “for a long time, they’ve put stuff on the stone window sills in London buildings that burns pigeons’ toes off.”

“I know! I know!” my friend said. “I used to think they were just pigeons which had gone too near to a car.”

“After a certain age, pigeons in Central London have no toes,” I said. “They just have little stumpy legs like Long John Silver.”

“I know. I know,” my friend said. “Don’t remind me.”

“… but without parrots on their shoulders,” I added.

She did not laugh. In my experience, people seldom do when I say things.

“When looking for the wood lice thing,” my friend continued, “I did notice and thought of getting a thing that would keep cats and foxes and…”

“Catnip?” I asked.

“… and pigeons away,” she continued. “But I think it might also have repelled all birds, so that’s why I didn’t get it.”

“Tabasco?” I suggested.

“It was a peppery thing,” she said, “that was actually in chilli. So I was thinking I could use chilli powder. Surely. Maybe. I’ve sprinkled it on the floor of my balcony. I dunno where to get the paste stuff from. I wish I could find the article. Whether I should mix it into a paste or some sticky substance…”

“You’ve sprinkled chilli powder on the floor of your balcony?” I asked.

“I’ve sprinkled it on sticky paper,” she replied, “because I haven’t actually made a paste. I haven’t figured how I’m supposed to… I was going to think of something… Not honey, because that would be crazy. That would attract ants or something would go very wrong. But something sticky.”

“It would attract ants?”

“Honey. Wouldn’t it? But I’m going to try CS gas, too.”

“CS gas?” I asked.

“I have a can of mace which I usually carry in my handbag.”

“Isn’t that illegal?” I asked.

“Yes,” she agreed. “But this is London in 2012. You were telling me yesterday that story about your tour guide in North Korea who got hit on the back of the head with a baseball bat in Bristol…. I don’t know… Do you think spraying CS gas would deter pigeons?”

“It would probably surprise them,” I agreed.

“The mace spray, if it’s working, would repel them immediately,” my friend said. “But the can may not be working any more. It’s quite old. Does CS gas deteriorate over time?”

“Not my area of expertise,” I replied. “I can tell you about comedians and Charlie Chuck’s ducks.”

“They wouldn’t be able to hang out in the area,” my friend continued. “It stings your eyes and it stings your feet.”

“It stings your feet?” I asked. “I haven’t seen street demonstrators leaping in the air when the police use CS gas.”

“Pigeons have bare feet,” my friend explained. “It’s quite a widely-known fact. Pigeons don’t wear shoes. Not even flip-flops. No animals like CS gas. It’s not just humans.”

“Giraffes are above such things,” I suggested.

“It depends on the wind,” my friend said.

“I had an email from Mr Methane today,” I said. “He said he’s recorded a…”

“Look,” my friend said. “There is a pigeon problem on my balcony and, if I can make them not like where they’re landing or think Fucking hell! My toes sting!, then I… Of course, a lot of the chilli blows away. I poured the powder on the floor of my balcony and some of it blew away. That’s why I stuck it on sticky tape, but the sticky tape isn’t exactly sticking for some reason.”

“Will the pigeons not stand on the sticky tape and fly away with the sticky tape on their afore-mentioned bare feet?” I asked.

“Well,” my friend said, “that might make them think twice about staying as well. That’s a terrible vision: coming back and finding a load of pigeons stuck to the floor and to each other, half-dead.”

“This is like the rat story, isn’t it?” I suggested. “Where the rat has to be killed by a broom handle with a sharp knife on the end.”

“Yes. I wish I could get the same sticky stuff that the rats had. That would do it, wouldn’t it? And it would stick.”

“You think the anti-rat fly-paper would work?” I asked.

“I had a newly cleaned and painted balcony,” my friend said. “Nice and bright and spotless. The pigeons shit on it. I don’t want to have to clean the balcony if people pop by.”

“But you would have to clear the sticky tape and chilli powder anyway,” I pointed out. “And the people might go barefoot and go Ooh Oooh Ooh with the CS gas.”

“You mustn’t touch things like bird shit, pigeon shit,” my friend said, “because they have all those illnesses that are very bad for you and kill you.”

“Illnesses?” I asked.

“Oh I don’t know,” she said. “E-coli or something. Something really bad, anyway. People could be dropping dead. You could be blinded or something. There are things that can blind you, like dog shit can blind you.”

“Well it can,” I agreed, “thrown with the right momentum.”

“No, no,” she said, “the bugs that are in things like shit. The bacteria can get into your body and cause all sorts of ailments.”

“Dog shit can send you barking mad?”

My friend gave a big sigh.

“Look, I am trying to sort out this pigeon thing,” she said, “and I would like to get this sticky paper for the rats. I don’t know where to get it from. But I swear something came to my mind. Gela… something. Gelatinous?”

“Gelegnite?” I suggested.

“Gelatinous.”

“Gelegnite would do it, too.”

“Only if you had the bloody pigeon to hand at the time. I mean gelatinous stuff you could mix in with the chilli stuff and it would stay there as a blob. Then I have to take into consideration things like the wind which is going to blow some of the chilli powder away – or rain, which is going to wash it away. But I could mix it into a little watery paste. I just need to have it so it will stick there in a little mound of something that irritates them and they think Oh! this isn’t very nice. I’m off!”

“What about putting a little pile of dog shit on the floor of the balcony?” I suggested. “That might blind them.”

“Yes, but it would also blind me, wouldn’t it,” my friend replied. “Chilli is not going to blind me.”

“Dog shit won’t blind you either,” I said, “unless you roll in the dog shit. Just put it down so it…”

“Birds would be highly sensitive to chilli,” my friend interrupted. “As would you, if it was rubbed on the sensitive parts of your body.”

“People pay good money for that in Soho,” I said.

“The sticky tape isn’t sticking,” my friend continued. “The chill isn’t sticking either.”

“The next time you come home,” I said, “you’re going to find six pigeons stuck together on sticky paper, unable to fly.”

“It would be awful, wouldn’t it?” my friend said, “But the sticky tape isn’t sticking.”

“Mmmm…” I mused.

“Of course,” my friend said, “when they get stuck or trapped or in one place, they just shit and…”

“It would be counter-productive,” I said.

“Exactly,” my friend said.

“It is a problem,” I agreed.

“Yes it is,” my friend agreed.

We sat down and ate spaghetti.

Eccentrics think differently – but maybe everyone else is out-of-step

(This blog was also published in the Huffington Post)

Someone somewhere sometime – well, it may have been Victoria Melody in Lincoln yesterday (more about her later) said: “We are only as interesting as the people we know”.

And I do try my best.

Yesterday I went to an Eccentrics Symposium at the University of Lincoln. Purely as an observer, you understand.

I went along with my chum mad inventor John Ward, whose yo-yo safety net (a hair net attached to the yo-yo-using person’s leg) once got a two-page spread in German magazine Stern when they were writing about serious conservation issues. John says:

“I have found that, if you keep a straight face, people will print anything. James Dyson will be remembered for inventing his vacuum cleaner; Frank Whittle will be remembered for inventing the jet engine; and I will be remembered for inventing the electric bra-warmer.”

(It was featured in the science pages of the Guardian.)

Interestingly each of the speakers claimed that he or she was not actually an eccentric himself or herself – except for John who had little alternative but to admit it, as he has featured in various academic books on eccentricity.

Anthony Schrag, the first speaker, grew up in Africa and was nicknamed ‘Wrinkle Blue Bum’ as a child because he liked to climb trees so much that he reminded his friends of local apes. He is an artist interested in the way people move. His CV says he focuses on “blowing things up, climbing on things and occasionally kidnapping people”.

Yesterday, he revealed he had discovered that, if you tightly wrap a boy in a blanket or similar covering and roll him down a hill, the boy cannot stop himself rolling. He also persuaded the audience to try the internet craze of ‘planking‘ – lying straight, across unlikely objects… though the President of the World Egg Throwing Federation (of whom more later) claimed that, on the internet, ‘planking’ has been replaced by the craze of doing a ‘Batman’ – hanging upside-down by your toes from unlikely objects.

John Plowman talked about his hats – he always wears one except when having a bath and having sex and buys them in London, New York, Chicago and – well – anywhere… mostly pork pie hats although, he admitted, this is rather odd as he is a vegetarian.  He seemed to have bought two non-pork pie hats because they have initials inside them; one of those two had his own initials inside them. He always carries an umbrella with him because he does not like his hats to get wet.

‘Project Pigeon’, an “art and education project which works with pigeons as a vehicle to bring people together”, did not send anyone along but they did send a video along which included shots of pigeons doing back flips. These are a specific type of pigeon and they have to be kept in quite small cages to prevent their tumbling getting out of control.

Unless I misunderstood, tumbling pigeon and ‘parlour rolling’ contests are held and this type of pigeon was specifically developed by a bus driver in Birmingham in the early 20th century by selective breeding. Quite how he chose pigeons with the appropriate genes I am uncertain. The Project Pigeon website claims that this particular type of pigeon is “the uniquely acrobatic Birmingham Roller, a type that originated in 1920 in Bordesley Green, Birmingham, after local fancier William Penson noticed one of his birds perform a backflip while in flight.”

It looks to me a bit like the pigeon is having a panic attack but, according to Project Pigeon, “today there are hundreds of Birmingham Roller clubs around the world and fiercely fought competitions to pick the birds that perform the most dramatic tumbling.”

The utterly fascinating Victoria Melody  as previously alluded to – “We are only as interesting as the people we know” – had actually spent about a year living with pigeon fanciers because she has a passion for other people’s passions. She said that, when she put an ad in a magazine saying she wanted to live with pigeon fanciers for a year, she got a lot of responses from much older single men living alone.

Yesterday, she screened a video taken by a tiny camera and transmitter which she had attached to a pigeon which then flew across Brighton; she says she received and recorded the pictures using a satellite dish on top of a car. The pigeon, alas, went AWOL.

An even briefer video of two pigeons playing ping pong was apparently shot by B.F.Skinner, the highly admirable man who later created the concept of a pigeon guided missile during World War Two: a concept which I feel the US military was short-sighted in rejecting.

But Victoria Melody’s passion for people’s passions stretches far wider than pigeon-fanciers. She spent a year immersed in the fascinating Northern Soul scene – centred round what she described as “the Motown Music that never made it into the charts”. It was a year, as she described it, of “being taught how to dance in people’s living rooms”.

Her latest cultural immersions have been dog shows (with her Basset hound Major Tom) and the world of beauty pageants, specifically preparing for next year’s Miss Galaxy 2012, where all contestants have to be married women.

Which brings us to Andy Dunlop, aforementioned President of the World Egg Throwing Federation, which was formed in 2006 though the sport started in 1322 in Swaton, Lincolnshire. Andy has managed to persuade the English Sports Council to recognise four of the five main egg throwing disciplines as legitimate sports. These are:

– two-person Throw and Catch, which consists of one catcher and one tosser.

– six or seven-person Static Relay (in which competitors pass eggs to each other by throwing them).

– individual Target Throwing, although Andy did not mention to the English Sports Council that, at the annual World Egg Throwing Championships, the target is the World Gravy Wrestling Champion – with extra points for hitting his groin.

– team Egg Trebuchet, a trebuchet being a large catapult-like siege engine which was employed by armies in the Middle Ages.

The English Sports Council, rather short-sightedly in both Andy’s and my opinion, refused to recognise as a legitimate sport (despite the obvious skill required) Russian Egg Roulette.

This involves guessing – sorry, skilfully choosing – which individual egg in a six-pack of eggs is raw as opposed to hard-boiled. Five are hard boiled; one is raw. Contestants, with handkerchiefs tied round their foreheads, as in the Vietnam movie The Deer Hunter, then smash the eggs on their foreheads to prove/disprove their choice. Obviously, the one who smashes a raw egg onto his or her forehead loses.

Victoria Melody attempted this with tragic results. Her hair was still sticky with raw egg 40 minutes later.

Egg Throwing is a fast-spreading sporting event. This year, the World Championships in Lincolnshire attracted TV crews from 26 TV stations worldwide. The Deputy Vice President of the World Egg Throwing Federation is former British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott – or, at least, Andy Dunlop chose Mr Prescott’s non-refusal of the offer to be an acceptance. Likewise, he took actor George Clooney’s non-refusal to attend the World Egg Throwing Championships as an acceptance and got worldwide press publicity across the globe for George Clooney’s decision to turn up at the championships in Lancashire which, sadly, he did not.

But, as Andy says, “it cost nothing, got us worldwide publicity and was better than paying £60 to put an ad in the local paper”.

This is a major factor as important in general eccentricity as it is in egg-throwing.

A more serious point was made by Andy when he pointed out that it was only a few centuries ago when almost everyone believed the world was flat and that the planets all revolved around the Earth. People who thought the world was round and that the earth revolved around the Sun were seen as slightly mad eccentrics.

And who was right?

The minority.

The eccentrics.

When Bernard Manning took Charlie Chuck backstage at James Whale’s show

Yesterday afternoon, I had a tea-room crawl around London’s West End with comedian Charlie Chuck. He had come down for a meeting in Soho about appearing in a TV ad.

He told me his girlfriend now has 21 ducks and a Buddha statue in her back garden. To celebrate, we went down to see the ducks in St James’s Park which is a fine example of ornithological multi-culturalism where any number of imaginable and unimaginable breeds intermingle, mostly politely, and occasional light grey pigeons wander randomly about, looking slightly stunned at the surrounding plumage, like drab, grey-suited City gents who have accidentally wandered into the VIP hospitality tent behind the Pyramid Stage in Glastonbury.

Dave (Charlie Chuck’s real name) told me more about his unbilled second show at the upcoming Edinburgh Fringe – Dave Kear’s Guide to the Universe – which I blogged about last week and which he will perform in theSpaces@SurgeonsHall for six days. He has plans to develop this year’s show into an hour-long play called Mister Nobody at the 2012 Fringe and has been discussing with a 1960s ‘celebrity vicar’ what that might involve.

Sitting in St James’s Park, watching a three-mallard duck-fight on the water, Dave suddenly remembered that, when he was a 20-year-old drummer with innocent hopes of a hit parade career ahead of him, he had slept overnight on a deckchair in this very park, the night before an early morning meeting with a record producer in what was then Tin Pan Alley.

He also regaled me with tales of touring Britain for a year in the 1970s as drummer with The Missouri Breaks – backing band for 1950s British rock ‘n’ roll legend Wee Willie Harris. Support acts for Wee Willie Harris on that tour were comedians Bernard Manning and Duncan ‘chase me chase me’ Norvelle.

That sounds to me like one hell of an eclectic tour.

Manning’s act involved going on stage with two large, fearsome-looking bouncers who stood on either side of him while he insulted the audience and the other acts. Seeing the size of the bouncers, no-one ever objected to the insults.

“I met Bernard again on James Whale‘s 40th Birthday Party show,” Dave told me, “and he asked me into his dressing room and told me You’re doing a great job. That’s a great character. I were chuffed. It were very nice of him.”

Britain’s Got Talent, farts, pigeon impersonators and PR spin

The ghost of Malcolm Hardee still stalks the world of comedy and speciality acts six years after his untimely drowning.

In 2009, my chum Mr Methane – the world’s only professionally performing farter and an oft-time performer at Malcolm’s various clubs – was invited to audition for Britain’s Got Talent on ITV. They did not choose him, perhaps because his farts were unusually smelly that day (they usually don’t smell at all and the act is an odour-free zone). But it was worth the trip as the video on YouTubehas so far got almost seven million hits worldwide and it led to him appearing on and reaching the semi-finals of Das Supertalent – Germany’s Got Talent, despite not being German and having no German connections.

And they say the Germans have no sense of the absurd!

On Britain’s Got Talent, the judges perform just as much as the auditionees – they provide OTT, sometimes cartoony, reactions so there is a supply of good cutaway shots for the edited, transmitted show.

It was good to see another regular Malcolm Hardee club performer – Phil ‘The Pigeon Man’ Zimmerman – making the tabloids yesterday by allegedly terrifying Britain’s Got Talent judge Amanda Holden. Getting reported in the Daily Mail is always good news. Especially when they claim you were dressed in a pigeon costume and you weren’t.

According to an ‘audience member’ calling herself Katie Beth who posted on the Digital Spy website, “When the crazy guy was on Amanda looked freaked out and left her seat and spoke to a security guy. Then she went back to her seat only for him to leap off the stage at the end of his ‘performance’. When he jumped off the stage Amanda was straight back out of her seat and stood/hid behind Michael McIntyre who spun his chair round so he was hugging her while security grabbed the crazy man.”

Metro correctly, if less dramatically, reported that Phil had, in fact, only approached the judges to hand out flyers for his comedy club.

And the Chortle website reported that, after the incident, Amanda Holden tweeted on Twitter: “Been possibly the best day we’ve ever had in London for BGT today!! Next week, Manchester here we come!” so I doubt if the lovely Amanda will need too much therapy for post-traumatic stress syndrome.

The spin betwixt truth and publicity is always interesting. But Phil Zimmerman is certainly someone to watch.

I was invited to Phil’s Guy Fawkes Night party last year but couldn’t go – it involved video cameras positioned throughout his house which (as far I remember) were going to stream what was happening inside the house onto the internet. I now wish I had gone. Someone who did go tells me it all ended when an irate neighbour started shooting at the party-goers with an air gun causing mass panic in the garden. When the police eventually arrived, they spent some considerable time crawling around the garden in the dark looking for pellets in the grass…

Phil Zimmerman. The man who brought the Metropolitan Police to its knees.

It sounds almost Hardee-esque in its bizarreness.

On the subject of PR spin and talent, I organise (if that’s the word for it and it probably isn’t) the annual Malcolm Hardee Awards, the real Edinburgh Fringe Awards for comedy. This year, they will be presented during a two-hour stage show on Friday 26th August. Accept no substitutes.