John's Quavering Pencil

Dead pigeon on the lawn

I listened to Elton John’s song ‘Skyline pigeon’ the other day and very much enjoyed it. This morning, I found a dead pigeon on my lawn. I am a tad squeamish about these things. The pigeon no doubt provided a tasty midnight feast for its predator. Tennyson, in the mid 19th century, wrote:

Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek’d against his creed

I shall have to clear it up a little later today. Once bagged and binned I shall probably run the mower over the patch to remove all traces of death and agony. After all, that is not what one wants when sitting quietly in a deck chair, reading one’s novel and sipping a cup of tea in the gentle summer breeze. Of course, the topic of many a thriller or who-dunnit is, precisely, death and agony. Last night on TV there was a programme about the Normans. William, King of England and devout Christian as he was, apparently liked to chop the hands and feet off people who plotted against him, and then goug out their eyes. I think, on balance, I would rather deal with a decapitated pigeon than think about William the Conqueror.

This entry was posted on August 5, 2010 at 8:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.