'The London Pigeon Wars'
By PATRICK NEATE
Published: June 13, 2004
The unilluminable peepnik and the declaration of war
It might have been as much as two months after Trafalgar that the war began. Or as little as two weeks. You want to know the verity? Don't ask a pigeon. My memory fades like an airplane's puff into the clouds, and I scope that the peepniks don't say "bird-brained" for nothing.
Gunnersbury likes to claim that hostilities were commenced at the "battle of Trafalgar" (a battle named after a square named after a battle; isn't that something?). She says this because, accepting all her qualities of leadership and politics, she does like to be at the acorn of it all. An honest pigeon admits we are a vanitarious species, and Gunnersbury, with her wholesome white breast and pink toes to die for (even an old bird like me can't help but notice those), is surely the vanitariest. But the verity is that Trafalgar was just a skirmish, a starling-tempered flare-up of pointed beaks and posturing. How can it have been the beginning of a "war" when, as far as I remember, none of us had heard that word before, let alone spoken it? For me, therefore, the "war" began with its utterance, and that was two weeks or two months later, with the murder of Brixton23 above the Brixton Tarmac.
Can I illuminate Brixton23 for you? I want to, because, even to my bird brain, his good character merits a place in this history and illustrates the tragedy of our conflict.
Ask anybirdy and they'll tell you same as me: Brixton23 was well liked. Not a bad feather about him: a straight-talking, crow-flying sort of geez. He was a live-and-let-liver who died for taking sides, and isn't that a contradiction only civil wars can explain?
When most birds recall him, they talk about a genial, simple-minded soul who liked to spend his summers around the profligate wastebins of the Brockwell Lido, where all shapes of peepniks clucked like chickens and strutted like peacocks at the first signs of the sun. He was content, like we all were once; the kind of geez who let the sparrows take first pick at a best bit or a biscuit and stood back with a benevolent smile on his beak. He'd say something like, "Aren't we all birds of god's own sky?" Only I don't remember him speaking, of course.
He was also, by the geography of his roost, just about typical of the In-Out birds (as they came to be known). Caught in the no-man's-land between the Pigeon Front and us Surbs, he could have joined either side, and the other would have had no reason to grumble. But Brixton23 was a real pigeon-fancier, and, like a lot of us, he took a wholesome shine to Gunnersbury, and I hazard it was that, in the end, that cost him his life (that more than political or religious certainties, anyway).
That night we were flying back from a bin raid, keeping low on the Kennington Road to avoid the RPF spotters, who could see for miles from their lookouts high above the Thames. We were beaking on about our successful mission. It had been our most daring raid yet: Leicester Square, right in the heart of Pigeon Front territory, their proudest possession. Of course, a raid like that would be impossible now, because we'd be clocked before we made it across the river. But back in those early days, us pigeons (RPF and Surb alike) still struggled to tell one another apart so, with equal measures of planning and luck, we could swoop into an enemy stronghold like it was our god-given right.
We were talking as we flew, reliving the thrill of it, and the night-owl peepniks-minicabbies, drugsters, hermetic sexers, and the like-looked up in astonishment when they heard our chattering squawks overhead. Gunnersbury was telling how she swaggered up to that geez Garrick (only Regent's right wing, for god's sake!) and swiped the niblet right out of his beak. Not just any niblet either, but a six-inch squirm that wriggled all the way down to her gizzard. And squirms were a delicacy in the RPF Concrete; even if they were still two-a-penny on our Surb Commons.
Gunnersbury was at the apex of our formation as we passed Brixton Station, and began, with the confidence of proximate Surb territory, to climb high over Acre Lane. I had Gunnersbury's left flank, and Sutton9, a crude hulk of a pigeon and typical suburban heartlander, had the right. The rest of our party was made up of the usual suspects: radical young hotheads (all fly-by-night ideals and high-pitched calls) and older extremists who'd spent their whole lives waiting for a cause like this to follow (though they hadn't known it, of course). Brixton23 was right at the back-our tailguard.
We were just swooping over Sainsbury's when somebirdy-a mangy coochie called Finchley440, I think-spotted the peepniks in the car park below, and we had to stop and watch, didn't we? Hovering two hundred feet up, where any hawk-eyed pigeon could see us.
Let me tell you something: before Trafalgar, no peepnik ever paid us the blindest bit of notice, and I could have flown into the lobby of the Ritz in a top hat and a monocle singing the FTSE 100 at the top of my call and the most attention I'd have got would have been a shower of stale crumbs from the Korean sous-chef. But vice versa? These days us pigeons can't resist watching the peepniks. In fact, some coochie-mommas fear for their squibs who'd rather watch the most boring street scene from the comfort of their nest than ever spread their wings. When I was barely out of the egg, I liked nothing more than pussy-teasing or bird-bathing. But times change, and I don't want to sound like my oldgeez. Because it's not just the peepniks who say that's something they'll never do.
The action in the car park that night was a real humdinger, and we watched transfixed. There were about eight of them (a mixture: sweets and savories; graysens, blaxens, brownsens, and pinxens; even a babchick), and they were hammer-and-tonging it like you wouldn't believe. We couldn't tell exactly what was going on, flying in halfway through as we were, but one of the sweets, a tangled number with limbs like coat hangers and electricity hair, was wailing almost as high-pitched as a squirm in your beak. And the babchick was crying too, as only those peepnik babchicks know how.
Then, sudden like a thunderclap, a strapping cue-ball pinxen pulled back from the group and he was holding a shooter: a small blunt-snouted automatic that was cold and gray against his pinxen skin. One of the others, a blaxen with a penthouse manner, said "Goodness me!" even though there was no goodness about it.
"What you want them for?" exclaimed the strapping toter. That's what he said, all right, though I couldn't peep what "them" were.
Excerpted from The London Pideon Wars by Patrick Neate Copyright © 2003 by Patrick Neate. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.