Animal Farm
On his wanderings around London, our Mayfair man stops to considers London’s green oases and their teeming wildlife
Column by Guy Shepherd
My bumblings around Mayfair are occasionally disrupted by the need to sleep and my journey home to my lodgings in the mean streets of Kensington is usually pedestrian. I have long since given up wasting my limited funds on gymnasiums and my sporting past and marathon aspirations are a somewhat distant memory. As a rule, I try to limit my forays onto London Transport but the 148 bus is a twenty four hour godsend at critical moments. Taxis are against my frugal religion. My phone’s health application informs me today that I am walking on average approximately eleven thousand steps or seven and half kilometres a day. Combined with a limited expenditure on healthy home cooked food and strong martinis, plus my insatiable appetite for dance and sex, this walking has made me physically leaner and financially meaner than ever in my forty something years.
A stout pair of shoes, a waterproof flasher Macintosh and my Chelsea hat are more than adequate protection against our foul winters. But now it is spring, nearly summer, and the vast green continent that is Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens bursts with life. Lush grass and bulbous trees boast flowers and blossoms and the dedication by the park keepers to their carefully tended beds is displayed with bursts of exciting colour. One of nature’s curiosities in recent years is the surge of an alien population of green parrots. Pretty things green parrots but there are now rather a lot of them. How the numbers of this once unusual visitor are controlled is beyond my remit but I only hope that it has a positive effect on the existing local wildlife population.
West of the park there are a cluster of green oases including Holland Park and the numerous private gardens which speckle London’s map. Flitting through the streets of Notting Hill is made more pleasurable taking in these islands of beauty. The crescent where I stay has one such garden. Designed over a hundred and seventy years ago, it is a place of great calm, next to the otherwise chaotic Avenue, where local residents lounge, kids play, barbecues sizzle and wildlife thrives. I make it back to the flat and sit by the window, gazing at our little paradise of pink chestnut blossoms and elegant iron pagodas but a curious sight arrests my thoughts and my mind drifts on a surreal tangent.
A flock of half a dozen green parrots are chirping noisily and flitting amongst the highest trees. I have never seen them in the garden before and it seems strange that they are here. A crow, dressed from beak to claw in his black uniform, is not happy about their presence either and attacks them, stooping aggressively on the wing and scattering them. They regroup and turn their defence into attack, confusing the crow to give up and he returns to his barracks squawking to his comrades to rally behind him. The sky darkens as grey clouds loom and the first skirmishes are hateful and desperate. “Go away! Leave us alone!” croak the angry thugs but the parrots, who have made it this far under intense pressure and with great difficulty, are resolute and well organised. There is an ugly standoff with neither side really understanding what to do.
The pigeons watch on cooing quietly to each other. They have been here a very long time and are proud of their garden island. Change does not come easily to them so they usually stick to the safer ground of mediocrity. They are park pigeons after all, plump crops with magical swathes of pink and turquoise break up their grey feathers, setting them apart from the filthy riff raff that beg in the street gutters beyond. They puff out their chests in a gesture of pride but don’t really understand why. The brown and white pigeon reminds them that is was the same when her family had arrived seventy years ago and surely they should welcome the parrots into the multicultural melting pot that the islands had become over millennia?
Way down below, the fox is hiding in the bushes, listening to the uninformed ignorance of the birds. He smiles. His plan to stir up fear amongst his subjects is working but will they fall for his ultimate double bluff? Hopefully, the squirrels have finished hording and hiding the unseasonal supplies and reserves that will be needed to consolidate then stabilise his power. He slinks to the grass pile where the snakes are hiding and cocks his head to listen to their whispered hisses of deceit and treachery. These unseen monsters are the only ones that will win when the aviators tear the feathers off each other. They will be defenceless against this slippery and conspired domination. The sun is dipping towards the roofline horizon so soon it will be time to wake up the rats. They have instructions to infiltrate the birds with their unique brand of dark and discreet night time violence. By morning, the confusion, fear and panic will be so complete that no animal will be able to make any form of rational choice. Even his token gesture of rolling out the now heavily depleted numbers of armoured hedgehogs to restore order will not assuage their bigoted stupidity. Soon he will be victorious.
On Thursday, June 23rd 2016, Britain will vote yes or no in a Referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union. Do be frightened. 