A Day of Disappointments

The line of newly decapitated chickens left to drain over the bath tub told me that this was not going to be a day full of sunshine. I knew as much when I switched on my PC this morning. My attempts to lure Telegraph readers here with my newly launched blog had resulted in nice round figures. The round figure happened to be zero, which was also the number of people I'd managed to attract here after reading my post about Gordon Brown’s lack of humour.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say that these Telegraph readers are a somewhat humourless bunch, conservative in their tastes, and the type of people who can’t appreciate a handsome Welshman in a thong. I also have another more sobering suspicion: that the Chipster has found his level. I shouldn’t post on anything other than generously proportioned underwear, genitals, and guide dogs for the blind. If recent comments are an indicator, I should also get drunk every night and go out on early morning raids to adjacent blogs where I should leave my badly types ramblings.

The utter failure of my posts at My Telegraph has been an ever greater disappointment because I’ve been giving more thought to trying to find a little work in freelance writing. I’m not sure what I could write, where I could sell it, nor who would buy it, but I have been reflecting on how stupid it was to turn down the chance to write for Britain’s best known publisher of hardcore pornography. I might not have known many of the words but, as Gabby pointed out, what are dictionaries for if not for looking up all the filthy synonyms for parts of the body?

The second big disappointment was Gabby’s announcement that she and her sister intend to record a third Cheeky Girls album. It was the reason for the chickens. She claims that white meat helps her vocal chords. Help them do what, is what I’d like to know. I’ve hidden this news here in the body of the post because I don’t want to unduly alert the media. The last time the Cheeky Girls got back together, the government stuck a military cordon around Bangor. It might not mean much to you but the people of Bangor suffer when those girls start to sing. They’re already talking about guest vocalists including Charlotte Church. I don’t think I need to say any more.

The third disappointing thing I’ve discovered today is that a good friend of mine, an honourary thonglateer and second most handsome man on the planet, will no longer be the head of the Welsh Liberal Democrats. The good news is that he’s hoping to become chairman of the Lib Dems next year. I wish him well with that. I really do. If more men were like Lembit Opik, this world of ours would be a better place.

The last disappointment to come along was the news that Richard Madeley is considering giving up blogging. Yes, you heard me right: it is a disappointment. I feel sorry for the man. I really do. We’ve had our public fallings out but we all know that they were only for the cameras. It was done in the best possible taste. I like reading his blog and I want him to reconsider. Come on Dick. Chin up. All three of them.

This has been an odd bitty post but I’m a bit of an odd man. I’m now off to write something intellectual for My Telegraph. I might even wear a cravat.

Birdy Flu Strikes North Wales

You’ll have to forgive me if I skip the pleasantries today. I had a morning that’s not to be envied unless you’re the sort of person who dreams of making animal sacrifices to the gods Fad and Fickle.

As you might know, it’s been confirmed that North Wales has been struck by avian flu. It was news that was sure to set the cat among the pigeons, or at least, one Romanian among the chickens.

The Chipster was doing a few stretching exercises in the front room and had touched his nose to his knees, fingers to his toes, when a sudden scream shattered the peace and quiet of an otherwise quite restful Bangor. I turned around, ready to make my apologies to Monica, who I had assumed had walked in on my exercising. It’s a simple fact of the world that not every appreciates the sight of two exposed, though perfectly formed, buttocks first thing in the morning.

I was wrong. It was Gabby holding the newspaper.

‘Birdy flu!’ she said. ‘Birdy flu in Wales.’

‘Are you sure?’ I asked her, taking the paper from her quivering fingers. It wouldn’t be the first time her poor grasp of English had caused her to worry unduly and before things got out of control I thought it best to check the facts.

Only, just then, the door to the spare room opened and Monica appeared. She was already dressed for the day in her black combat trousers and denim jacket but was in the process of adding a final touch by buckling a commando knife to a concealed pocket on the inside of her thigh.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

‘Birdy flu!’ screeched Gabby.

‘Birdy flu?’ screeched Monica.

‘Yes, Birdy flu!’

Monica turned to me. ‘Did you hear, Chippy darling? It’s the birdy flu!’

I shrugged my naked shoulders. I mean: what else is a man meant to do when it’s birdy flu? And there it was in the paper. ‘Bird Flu in North Wales.’

Gabby snatched the paper off me and examined the page one more time, this time chewing her bottom lip in worry.

‘Well, that’s that,’ she declared, threw the paper down and looked to her sister. ‘Gabby think this job The Cheeky Girls…’

‘Oooooookaaaaaayyyyyy!’ squealed Monica as Gabby dashed off to the kitchen. She came back with my best set of kitchen knives in one hand, a rubber tube, and an empty litre-sized milk carton.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Birdy flu not catch Gabby unprepared.’

Well, I barely had time to throw on something sensible, but with my best green thong and a pair of sandals I followed the twins out the flat, down the back staircase, and to the garage where we all piled into the car. Ten minutes later, Gabby hit the brakes at the allotment and told us to hurry.

‘I think you’re overreacting,’ I suggested as Monica passed Gabby the knifes from the back seat.

Only the Cheeky Girls weren’t for waiting. They were soon running off down the small lane leading to the allotments, and then quickly over the fence that encloses the chicken coop.

‘I hold them and you do the cheeeeeeeck,’ shouted Gabby as she raised the door the coop. The noise she had made in the sound of her mouth and I have no idea how you’d spell it.

‘Righty!’ said Monica who had selected a large cleaver from the knife set. ‘Unless Chippy want to do the cheeeeeeeck…’ She too made the noise in the side of her mouth.

‘What exactly do you mean, cheeeeeeeeck?’ I asked.

Monica slipped the knife from her thigh and waved it in her hand. ‘You know. Cheeeeeeck,’ she said and passed the blade less than an inch from my windpipe.

I leapt a step back, which isn’t an easy thing to do when only wearing a thong and flip-flops.

‘I’m not murdering chickens,’ I said.

‘We not murder,’ said Gabby as she manhandled the first bird. ‘We save from fate.’

‘Hacking at chickens because there’s a very slight chance they’ll catch the birdy flu doesn’t seem like saving them from their fate,’ I observed.

She turned to me. ‘So, you don’t do cutting. You go and take pipe. Suck petrol from tank. Put in bottle.’

‘What do you want petrol for?’

‘Silly,’ she grinned. ‘We need to burn chickens. Stop birdy flu.’

I rubbed a hand over my face. ‘Do you know how dangerous this sounds? I’m not standing near a naked flame. I’m covered in oil. I could ignite at the drop of a thong.’

Monica turned to me, a darkly impatient look on her face. ‘Monica think Chippy coward.’

‘Chippy is a coward,’ I said. ‘In fact, he’s proud of the fact. I’m not slaughtering chickens. It’s not how we do things in this country.’

Gabby stood up, chicken in her arms. ‘What you mean?’ she asked. ‘I saw TV. I saw turkeys in trucks. Bernie Matthews and his turkey twizzlers.’

‘Well that’s where you’re wrong,’ I said. ‘In a case like this, the government sorts out the mess and then the EU come along and pay us lots of money for having lost our chickens. Bernie Matthews made a nice bit of money despite all of his troubles.’

The girls fell silent.

‘How we get money from EU?’ asked Gabby finally.

‘You just have to be a member.’

‘And is Romania in EU?’

‘From January the first,’ I replied.

She looked at the chicken. ‘So, government kill chickens? We get lots of money?’

‘That’s the way it works.’.

The sisters looked at each other and then Gabby dropped the bird.

‘The Cheeky Girls!’ they both screeched and then they began to do the hokey cokey, surrounded by some of the luckiest chickens in North Wales and a man in a thong and flip flops who, for some reason, couldn't consider himself even half as blessed.

The Fox In The Chicken Coop

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes

Henry David Thoreau

I only began to suspect that I’d been misled by the local representative of the poultry industry after I’d arrived at the allotments. There had been little time to give much thought to why I was needed there and my eagerness to see where I’d be staying for the night meant that I when I finally found Gabby’s shed, I hardly expected it to be set in a scene of such utter tranquillity.

Cool yet bright, it was one of those perfect spring evenings. The shed was painted green to blend in with high ivy-covered walls that surrounded it on two sides, while standing beside it, a brand new chicken coop gleamed yellow in the last rays of sunlight. The acrid smell of the weatherproofing had come to rest in the yard and now mixed with those aromas of the fresh oil, still damply oozing on the coop’s clean timbers. Ominously, there was no sign of the hens but for the occasional irritated cluck that came from behind the little door that shut them off against the world. For the first time, I wondered why exactly I was spending the night protecting them when a fox had about as much chance of getting into the coop as I had of getting a good night’s sleep among the shed’s fertilizer and forks.

I put my doubts aside as I dumped my kit in the shed and set to clearing a space for myself in one corner, as far from Gabby’s old still as possible. As you’re probably aware, the processes involved in the manufacture of potato gin leave behind a smell somewhat like a muddy field and petroleum; which are oddly enough, two of the key ingredients of potato gin.

I laid my bed out across the back of the shed with a headboard snugly made up of piled bags of John Innes No. 2 compost before I decided to make a circuit of the yard before closing the shed for the night. As the last of the daylight steamed in through the shed’s door, I checked my emergency torch a final time before I went out to patrol my small protectorate.

There really wasn’t much to see. A wheelbarrow with a squeaky wheel was the cultural highlight of my tour, followed by a patch of ground which hadn’t been turned over since the last potato harvest. The evening was also developing the sort of chill that does nobody any good, least of all a man in a thong, so I was really quite happy to get back in the shed and slide the bolt across the door.

Adapting to life in the shed was surprisingly easy. There’s a comfort to be found away from luxuries. I remembered a quote by Thoreau, who famously went to live amongst the raccoons and squirrels in his local woods: ‘a man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone’. Well, I felt rich enough. I’d abandoned every luxury of the modern world except for a thermal thong, which as I’m sure you’re beginning to realise is one of life’s essentials.

I then thought of another quote by Thoreau: ‘men have become the tools of their tools’. I confess, this had me thinking for quite a while, and by the time I’d finished working it out, a total darkness had descended. Perhaps I too had become a tool of my tools. Or, I suppose, more specifically for a man in my line of work I had become a tool of my tool. I lit my torch and scribbled the aphorism down on the flap of a box of weedkiller in case I forgot it in the morning.

Men have become the tools of their tool.

Chip Dale

Only an hour into my retreat from the modern world and I’d already hit a rich vein of wisdom. Soon, I had another little chunk of the wise stuff ready to note down:

All of life’s answers can be found in a potting shed.

Chip Dale

I really was quite pleased with myself and I reflected on how this break was so clearly what I’d needed. A night away from the TV, the internet, this blog… I was instead happy to listen to nature as it prepared to nest down for the night. My supper amounted to a few cheese crackers and a can of Tango, which felt oddly out of place in such a rustic setting. Sometime around nine thirty, some large creature visited the allotments and relieved itself noisily in the darkness before sauntering off singing Phil Collins’ ‘You Can Feel It’. My torch lit up for the briefest of moments, just long enough to write out:

Phil Collins makes wise men of drunks.

Chip Dale

With all this mental exercise, I was beginning to feel extraordinarily tired and I decided it was time to get ready for bed. The absence of light drains a man in a more natural way than I would have expected. My mind drifting on the smell of potato gin and linseed oil as I slipped down into the bottom of my sleeping bag. I drifted off to the occasional cluck of the chickens next door.

A noise like a rusted gate opening woke me some time later.

I grabbed my glasses and checked my watch. It was still only three thirty.

I blinked back my sleep and the dream I’d been having about Felicity Kendal. It had been some inspired nightmare about ‘The Good Life’ and I’d been Tom Good, trying to milk a zebra in the in Margot’s shrubbery. I damned my cheese crackers and swung myself out of bed. My torch lay beneath my hand but I stopped myself from turning it on. I was sure there was something moving around outside the shed.

I looked around in the darkness, seeking out something I could fashion into a crude weapon. I then damned myself for not sleeping in my clothes. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might actually have to act and if it was a fox, I didn’t think it wise to chase it dressed only in my underwear.

That worry retreated as I realised that the thing out there was bigger than a fox and with a tread louder than the noise of my heart, hammering inside my skull. Thoughts of foxes retreated even more once the door began to rattle and an anxious voice whispered: ‘Anybody in there?’

‘Who is it?’ I said, now holding the torch like a club, half expecting the bolt to give way.

‘Is that you Mr. Dale?’ said the voice. The anxiety had disappeared and had been replaced with a gruff humour. ‘Aren’t you going to let me in?’

I stood up and turned on my flashlight before I slid back the bolt.

Standing there in the dim moonlight was the figure of a man; the same man who had sold Gabby her hens that morning.

‘I figured you might try to sleep on duty,’ said Mr. Green, gesturing towards my thong. He held up a thermos flask. ‘Thought you might be cold and wouldn’t mind some company.’

‘It’s nearly three in the morning,’ I told him, now a little calmer but considerably more confused.

‘The time all us sensible country folk get up,’ he assured me as he gestured me back into the shed. He followed me in and closed the door. ‘I’ve been wondering if you’ve had any problems with the hens. And then I thought about a man like you, not used to the rough life… I thought you wouldn’t mind a bit of company.’ He looked down at my thong and experience that odd sensation I so rarely feel: I suddenly felt terribly naked.

I was tempted to reach for my pen and write out the new aphorism that had suddenly struck me.

Never strip down to your underwear in a shed.

Chip Dale

‘You know, it gets cold this early in the year,’ he carried on. ‘So I thought you might just like a bit of company. A bit of company to keep you warm?’

And that’s when he winked.

Beware of men bearing thermos flasks in the night.

Chip Dale

I grabbed my pants and had one leg in them when Mr. Green put his hand on my arm.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

‘Not what you think I’m about to do,’ I told him and quickly had my shirt on as well.

‘Didn’t I just explain why I’m here? I thought you’d appreciate a bit of company.’

‘So, this is you’ve come for, Mr. Green?’ I asked as I foolishly bent down for my shoes.

‘Well if you put it like that…’ he said and I felt a hand on my leg.

Things had suddenly gone beyond aphorisms.

‘You’ve got a damn cheek,’ I said.

‘You have two.’

‘I came here for the good of my girlfriend’s chickens.’

‘You seen any foxes, then?’ he laughed.

‘Just the one. And I feel really sort for it.’

‘No need to feel sorry,’ he protested. ‘This is Campbell’s soup. Only the best for you, Chip.’

‘Don’t call me Chip,’ I said.

He stepped across to the door and slid the bolt across.

‘At least have some soup,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll be going.’

‘I don’t want any soup.’

‘It’s tomato.’

Tomato happens to be my favourite but I remembered an aphorism of my uncle’s.

A man is weakened by his weaknesses.

Arthur Dale

Which is much more profound than you probably think it is. I had a terrible suspicion that this tomato soup had something more than tomatoes in it.

‘Why not try some yourself?’ I asked, seeing how he’d react.

His eyes widened momentarily before he adopted a look of hurt.

‘I don’t like tomatoes,’ he said. ‘And I brought if for you.’

‘Then you can keep your soup,’ I replied. ‘I’m off.’

‘Please stay, Chip,’ he said, a note of desperation now in his voice. ‘I get so lonely with my poultry. Farming is a sad and miserable life. I don’t have any friends. Nobody really cool and exciting to be around. Nobody like you, Chip.’

‘I thought a man can’t be lonely when he’s got chickens,’ I said. ‘I read it somewhere.’

He backed towards the door. ‘I’m not going to let you leave,’ he said. ‘You can’t leave!’

I had a flashback to a similar scene in coffee shop earlier in the week.

‘You don’t know a girl who looks like Amy Winehouse, do you?’ I asked.

He looked puzzled and I could see that he’d left his guard down as he pondered my question.

‘You mean the singer?’

It was too late. Quicker than he could react, I grabbed the box of weedkiller and threw it in his face before I threw him to one side and grabbed the door.

I blessed the darkness as I ran. The allotment had woken up to our argument but by the time I finally emerged onto the main road, the sound of frightened chickens had faded to silence and I had only the sound of a man, cursing his naïvety in all matters fowl, to follow me home.

This morning, I rang Gabby and told her the full story, as I’ve just told it you. Her immediate concern was for the condition of her chickens.

‘They sensitive,’ she said. ‘They need peace. They need quiet. You should have eaten soup!’

‘But this wasn’t about soup,’ I told her, but she wasn’t for listening to reason.

‘Soup good for you, Chip,’ she said and hung up.

‘And I suppose it’s good for the chickens too…’ I mumbled over the ominous sound of the dial tone.

It's Only Us Chickens

And into the unpublished pile goes the page I’ve just written about why I’m not feeling funny today… You see, somebody sent me a pretty abusive email this morning and it made me begin to wonder why I bother blogging at all. But at least it made me angry. Angry enough to tell you that I carry on because a Romanian girlfriend who thinks she’s a pop star based on a number seven hit with the ‘Hokey Cokey’ is about as funny as life gets. Surely her’s is a tale that needs telling, especially when she comes home with a cockerel she bought from a man she met at her pilates class.

Gabby is mixing with the more unusual side of Bangor society these days and her cockerel is pecking around my ankles as I type. It’s not a totally disagreeable sensation, though having a cock at my ankles is perhaps symbolic of how far my spirits have drooped this week.

‘You like Chippy?’ she had asked the bird as she nuzzled it over my breakfast table. The bird had said nothing but fixed me with its bead of an eye. Fowl are not known for their appreciation of the finer things in life and certainly have little or no regard for a Welshman in a thong at ten thirty in the morning.

‘And where do you intend to keep our guest?’ I asked as I spooned another load of Alpen into my mouth.

‘Guest?’ laughed Gabby. ‘What guest? Only you, me, and bird. Bird is no guest. Bird is family now.’

‘Well Bird must be on your side of the family,’ I told her. ‘No Dale I know of has only three toes.’

‘There’s your uncle Jimmy,’ she reminded me.

‘Industrial accidents are hardly genetic,’ I replied. ‘Or at least they’re not unless you’re from Liverpool…’

‘You’re trying to be funny,’ she said as the cockerel made a noise in its throat. ‘See! Only Bird laughs. I don’t.’

And with that, I accepted Bird as part of the family. I knew, that way, at least one member of the household would find me a little bit amusing in the morning.

Gabby’s reasons for buying the cockerel are actually quite good. She’s going to set up a small business breeding chickens. She claims that she used to do this back in the old country and has been encouraged to start again after reading about Bernard Matthews who started out with only a couple of turkeys. She has ambitions of owning old aircraft hangers, full to the struts with chickens. The enterprise is to begin at the allotments, which is where she’s been fermenting her potato gin these last few months. She has sheds down there and has become something of a pin up for the gardening fraternity. The chickens will have a free run of the ground where she’s been growing potatoes.

At eleven, the doorbell rang. Gabby was in the bath with her cockerel so I answered it.

‘Ah, I wonder if I might have a word with the lady of the house?’ asked a man in blue overalls. He was in his fifties, grey hair had ebbed to leave behind a pale pink tidemark of skin. He also had that style of thin moustache that went out in the fifties. ‘You are Mr. Dale?’ he asked.

‘I am,’ I replied, gesturing down to my personalised thong which reads ‘Chip Dale’ in a hardly discreet font.

‘Of course you are,’ smiled the man, his eyes flicking briefly southwards. ‘May I have a word with your wife, Mr. Dale?’

‘I’m not married,’ I said and again gestured to my thong as though it’s the answer to everything. Which, of course, it is.

‘Oh, but I was told Mrs Gabby Dale lives here…’

I shook my head. It’s not the first time that Gabby has been using my surname. She claims it gives her a cloak of anonymity in her business deals but I think she gets tired of trying to spell her surname.

‘She’s in the bath,’ I explained. ‘But she’s not my wife. She’s my Romanian girlfriend.’

‘In which case,’ said the man. ‘I’ll wait.’ And with no more ado, he brushed me aside and entered the flat.

No sooner had the man seated himself on the sofa than Gabby came out of the bathroom, walked straight through the flat, heading to the bedroom. The bird followed her, as did the man’s eyes. He’d clearly never seen a naked Romanian followed by a cockerel before.

‘With you in moment, birdman,’ said Gabby. ‘Chip make you drink. Chip make drink for birdman.’

‘Whisky if you’ve got any,’ said the man, looking a little flushed.

‘Can’t say I don’t blame you,’ I replied, going to fill two glasses.

‘I’m here about the hens,’ explained the man. ‘My name is Green. Graham Green.’

‘Ah, like the writer,’ I said, ready to tell him about my FE classes in English Literature.

‘Without the terminating e,’ he explained and then added. ‘I’m not a writer. I’m in the poultry business. The young lady is interested in buying hens to compliment her cockerel.’

‘A cockerel like that probably needs a lot of complimenting,’ I pointed out.

‘Oh, aren’t all men the same, Mr. Dale?’

I again gestured to my thong. He nodded his head in agreement.

After that, business was concluded quite quickly. Gabby returned and agreed to buy twenty three hens, to be delivered to the allotments that afternoon. I kept pretty quiet until the end when we were showing Mr. Green out.

‘One thing,’ he said, pausing in the doorway. ‘I suggest you don’t leave these hens alone for a night or two.’

‘Surely we shouldn’t bother them on their wedding night,’ I observed. Gabby elbowed my in my ribs but I felt the pain in my thong.

‘You should be around until you’ve tested your defences,’ explained Green. ‘A fox could kill them all in an evening.’

And that’s where Gabby is now: arranging to have a double wire fence put around the allotment and buried to a foot below ground to stop any foxes from tunneling under. The hens are to be delivered this afternoon and I’m to expect a phone call anytime now to tell me to take the cockerel to its new lodgings.

The most significant thing about the whole episode is that it turns out that Gabby has to travel to Glasgow this evening, and since the birds can’t be left alone, I’ll be guarding them for the next couple of days. I’ve got myself a sleeping bag, a camp bed, a torch, and more potato gin than is totally sensible to give a man when he’s feeling a bit down.

So, tonight, as you sit blogging by the fire, spare a thought for me and the chickens.

Fear and Trembling

There’s a time in the day, for usually about eight thirty in the morning, when the mind is most receptive to bad news. It’s usually before my first drink, when my body’s juices are at their lowest and no amount of effort can get them flowing. That’s why I usually turn on the TV as soon as I wake up. I give myself over to what Kirkegaard would have called ‘the strength of the absurd’. And of course it doesn't do any harm in helping to drown out the sound of a certain Romanian who snores like a bison.

I’m fanatical about knowing the day’s headlines. Knowing how much worse the world has got while I was asleep allows me to decide if I’m going to go through the day fearing something large and unimaginably evil.

Which makes it a bit odd that I head straight for something large and unimaginably evil.

Murdoch owns Sky News but it’s still the first channel I seek out, though these days, perhaps for nothing more than my notorious infatuation with Kay Burley. I find my sympathies towards Sky are lessening with each passing week. They have become too caught up in an endless cycle (or should that be recycle) of the same four or five stories. Which is why I usually then turn on BBC News 24.

The BBC might have their bias but at least it’s varied bias.

Then it’s onto the minor channels, which includes the best news channel of all. EuroNews should come with a guarantee that you’ll see something there that won’t have seen anywhere else. Unfortunately, most of it’s in French and they have too many pieces about Belgium street artists but I do enjoy the variety.

Which brings me on to my point.

Irrespective of the channel, today’s headlines were all about bird flu. It put pay to my usual hard-boiled breakfast. It was Alpen and a freshly squeezed orange for me this morning. Yet as I was chewing my mouthful the sawdust and berries, I began to realise how much of my fear was put there by the media.

The difficult bit about fear is that it happily fills the huge gulf that sits between ‘possibility’ and ‘actuality’. It’s that great imagined somewhere were we get struck by asteroids, the Chinese decide to invade, or Simply Red decide to bring their tour to Bangor. I suppose it’s an indulgence of people who don’t live with the immediacy of a real threat. I can’t imagine what it was to live in London during the Blitz with the real chance of sitting under a bomb sights. What should happen if Mick Hucknall decided to take the flat above?

But I guess we don’t know until it happens. And we can’t know. We shouldn’t know. And people shouldn’t make us feed our fear so they can also provide it’s tonic in the form of hours and hours of reassurance.

For the moment, we should live our life taking some comfort from the insanity of it all. Hucknall probably wouldn’t be able to find Bangor on a map of North Wales. And I should live happy with that fact and the million others they never tell me on the news.