Tag: Trafalgar Square

September 20th

~ coronet22 ~ Leave a comment

Sad, sad. Our period of near-ish normality is over. Covid infections in Central London are rising rapidly and I suspect we’ll be in full Lockdown again before long.

Despite the new rules about mask-wearing, those serving in shops and restaurants round here, if they weren’t wearing masks before, are still not, risking the £200 fine. The NHS Covid app. downloaded yesterday, tells me we are at “Medium” risk level in Soho and pulses away, assuring me it is “active and scanning”. So far, it seems to have encountered nothing untoward.

On our walk to St. Jame’s park, we become aware of massed police vans, full and obviously waiting for something to happen.

On our way back, a rally is coalescing in Trafalgar Square.

Although it’s billed as Anti-Lockdown, it’s a rag-bag of protestors, some of whom will surely be surprised to find themselves hugger-mugger with those whose views are anathema to them. What does the advocate of Bitcoin share with the man telling us Jesus will save us, for example? Calls for the jailing of Bill Gates and Matt Hancock intermingle with ernest, muttered conversation about world conspiracy . The police, most of whom have not been wearing masks over the past weeks as they patrol the Soho streets are now wearing them as a badge of affiliation with the law and, as they banter good-naturedly with protestors, they are seemingly unfazed by those nearby carrying banners protesting against “Gestapo Policing.”

False statistics -and no doubt some real ones- vie with crazy predictions. It’s a Covid carnival, ignorance is King and nuance is the first casualty.

Resting against the wall before entering the fray, one woman carries her clear and uncompromising message on a banner obviously too heavy to carry for long. Not for her sophisticated slogans. or the subtleties of statistics………

So far, the crowd is small and calm. We will have to wait to watch tonight’s news to discover whether it stays that way.

As we leave the square, I glance at my NHS Covid app, expecting it to be bleeping ( or whatever it does) to tell me I have been close to any number of infected people – but it is still quietly pulsing its pastoral shade of green – and then I remember, none of these protesters will have succumbed to the tyranny of downloading it.

June 25

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Well, I promised no more pigeons but I have learned from a certain government we all know, that promises are made to be broken. So, I am going to introduce you to Harriet the Hawk.

I have on our terrace three, thriving, gooseberry bushes, bearing hundreds of berries ripening nicely. Imagine my surprise (as they say) when I opened the blinds a few mornings ago, glanced out at the glorious sunshine we have now come to expect – and stood rooted to the spot. Until that moment, I had thought that “eyes widening” was an uninformative literary cliche , that was until I actually felt my eyelids touch my eyebrows.

I had gone to bed safe in the knowledge that it wouldn’t long before I could make my signature gooseberry fool. (I think the idea of “signature”carries the assumption that, although it is the speciality of one expert, other people might be clamouring to eat it. However, in the case of gooseberry fool, I don’t care. I’m happy to eat the lot)

Anyway, beyond the open blinds, this is what greeted me:

Looks OK, you might think. Perfectly healthy. But what you can’t see is that IT WAS THE ONLY ONE LEFT!!!!! The pigeons had plundered them all in the night.

I phone the trusty Mark,our gardener, worried about losing the tomatoes next. He suggests a bird scarer – simple, to rig up, he says, and very effective. How I managed to stop myself wondering aloud why, then, he hadn’t suggested it before the pigeons ate the gooseberries, I don’t know.

Harriet arrived yesterday- two grotty pieces of plastic that wouldn’t fool a pet budgerigar, let alone a feral pigeon, we thought. “The writer” jammed the wings onto the body , then removed them and jammed them on the right way round with the crudely painted feathers on the top. We were then presented with the dilemma of where and how to hang it. It has to move, apparently, as a plastic hawk, stationary over a load of tomato plants for six months seemingly fools no-one.

A mechanism for attaching it was the first problem. I have a belief that the wire coat hanger is the greatest aid to man and woman ever invented. I have them all over the house stretched out into long implements with the hook on the end for fishing out things kicked under the bed and dropped behind cupboards, for lowering the blinds whose cord I can’t reach, and pulling jars towards me from the back of too- high shelves. Sure enough, “the writer” had only to exert massive force to twist one into a serviceable hook.

and now, the time had come to launch Harriet:

Safely ensconced on her hook, swinging languidly in the faint breeze she refused to look anywhere other than at us instead of fixing the pigeons on the roof behind her with her plastic glare. So unconvinced was “the writer” that Harriet would fool anything, he suggested it would be just as effective to prop up a copy of Helen Macdonald’s beautiful book, H is for Hawk, on the table in front of the tomatoes, the jacket illustration knocking Harriet into a cocked hat for fearsomeness.

Anyway, we agreed to give Harriet a go, mainly on account of our reluctance to untwist the coat hanger.

And I have amazing news to report. NOT ONE PIGEON has been within at least 100 metres of our terrace. So unless they are all socially distancing to excess, Harriet is doing the job!

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As though to mock us, on our early morning walk this morning, we again encounter the Hawk Patrol, ridding Trafalgar Square of pigeons.

Eat your heart out Harriet!

May 25

~ coronet22 ~ 1 Comment

I have news :

My husband has formed a deep relationship.

Those of you who read my previous post about our decision to attack the marauding pigeons on our terrace with water pistols, may remember that we hadn’t actually scored one hit, despite lying murderously in wait for hours, mainly because the pigeons were, suddenly, nowhere to be seen. We decided they’d been put off by he noise of the re-started building work so this weekend, a bank holiday, seemed the ideal time to show them who’s boss.

Having now spent several days watching them, we discover there are three birds who regularly spend most of their time sitting on the roof several metres from ours. At intervals throughout the day, two of them journey to our terrace and sit below the feeder waiting for seed to drop from the beaks of the finches. The third remains on the roof opposite, looking on.

Writers being given to such fancies, my husband names the couple Leslie and Laura, decides they have been in love for many years, Leslie having stolen Laura from Lionel, her first love, who remains on the roof pining from afar, wracked with the pain of knowing she can never be his.

Leslie and Laura

Lionel

Despite having wound them them in this intricate narrative, “The Writer” is still determined to prevent the birds from visiting and continues to keep watch. Friday, gives way to Saturday and the pigeons become more adventurous as the builders’ din dies down. On Sunday, we watch their lumbering take-off as they obviously feel the time has come for them to leave their roof and venture further afield.

Leslie and Laura seem oblivious to the fact that they are living on borrowed time as they touch down on the terrace and he takes aim with the Super Soaker………

…….and misses.

…….and misses

……and misses again

Leslie and Laura evade shooting

Some time later, Lionel descends from his perch, presumably having decided that Leslie and Laura have gone for a jaunt – A nostalgic trip to Trafalgar Square, perhaps? Cooing about how crowded it used to be in the days of their courtship?.

Reckoning it’s safe for him to drop in to our place for a meal without enduring the agony of encountering the lovers, he descends onto our terrace.

There he sits, in full view, totally focussed on cleaning up the dropped seed. It’s clear he wouldn’t notice an army approaching. “Quick, quick”, I shout to “The Writer”, “There’s one here you can get”. He hurtles down the stairs from his study, grabs the loaded pistol and takes aim….. His arm stiffens in mid air, no stream of water issues from his gun and I watch his eyes mist over as he slowly and carefully lays it down on the table.

“What’s up?”, I ask

“That’s Lionel”, he says, shaking his head disconsolately. “I can’t shoot him. He’s too sad.”

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May 21

~ coronet22 ~ 2 Comments

Who could have guessed that my newly- discovered interest in wildlife would turn violent?

Inspired by tales of Amy and Peter’s blackbird who visits for mealworms and the sight of the two tiny green birds (greenfinches?) who chase each other around the skies above our terrace, I decided to send for a bird feeder and some feed. The feeder arrived and was duly sanitised, as was the bag of feed, a combination of seeds and nuts cutely called “peckish”. It had looked quite small in the picture but turned out to be about the size of a pillow and heavy as concrete.

My first dilemma was where to hang the feeder. I’m growing gooseberries and tomatoes on the terrace and we lost the tomatoes last year to blight. I don’t fancy losing them this year to a different predator. The feeder had to be distant from both, yet near enough for us to spot any visitors to it from our kitchen table.

I filled it, hung it and caused much amusement when the greenfinches arrived for the first time in the middle of a Zoom call with friends, who watched me become hysterical with delight. I’ve cracked it, I thought. All I have to do now is sit and wait for delightful and rare birds to turn up from all over the world.

(I had to pretend I didn’t have in mind my Australian friend’s visitors to his breakfast table last week.)

I HADN”T TAKEN PIGEONS INTO ACCOUNT!!!!!!!

They arrived in droves, shouldering the finches out of the way as they scavenged for seed the little birds had dropped from the feeder. I was reminded of what Trafalgar Square used to be like – hundreds of tourists delightedly buying bags of seed and stuffing it into scrofulous pigeons perched on their outstretched hands, shoulders and heads. Funny, we hardly noticed them go when the hawk patrol got rid of them once and for all – the pigeons, that is, not the tourists – though, of course, there’s no sign of those either, these days. But importing a hawk to our terrace wasn’t an option. We had to find another way.

It was ” the writer” who came up with the solution – water pistols.

Of course, we could have fun, get rid of the pigeons harmlessly and enjoy our greenfinches. Brilliant!

On line, searching for the perfect water pistol, I found myself in a parallel universe. with its own hyper-macho language:

“Stormblaster”, “Soakzooka”, “Floodtastic” “Hydrostorm big shot soaker”, “Barracuda”

I discovered that adults – male adults, mostly- actually buy water pistols – sorry, water guns – for themselves! I even read an article headed “Watery Warrier. Best guns for grown men”

In case you’re planning to join them- the favourite seems to be “The Mayhem” (See below.) Compensation or what!

The James Purdey or Holland and Holland of water guns appears to be a company called “Nerf” which, as yet, doesn’t seem to have progressed to the bespoke gun – making offered by the best English gunmakers. Perhaps Water Warriors aren’t prepared to wait the two years it can take to craft the perfect weapon for its owner. Nerf don’t even offer to alter their ready-made guns to fit the user like the real gunmakers do – a gap in the market perhaps?

Anyway, our “Stealth Soakers” arrived promptly.

We breakfast on the terrace, guns at the ready. Lunch is eaten inside, weapons placed casually on the sideboard near the open kitchen door. Supper is a nightmare of false sightings, each of us leaping up at different times to take aim. The only thing we succeed in hitting is our digestive systems, which, by the day’s end are shot to pieces. The pigeons which normally sit jeering at us from the railings or have to hoist their overfed bodies onto the back of the terrace chairs as a staging post en route to the railings, have vanished.

Could the noise from the re-started building work have driven them away? Could they have sensed our malign intent? Might they return on Sunday when it’s quiet?

Watch this space…………..