I
sometimes fantasise about how amazing I would be in an emergency situation: fighting
off terrorists like Bruce Willis in Die Hard or rescuing babies from a burning
house or flying a barely functioning space shuttle home. In my imagination I
always pull it off, but this month I was put to the test for real, when our
house was invaded.
I
was on my way to hoover up some crap that had fallen down the chimney in my
daughter’s bedroom when there was a terrible noise in the upstairs hallway. I
was pretty sure the family were all downstairs.
I
grabbed my vacuum cleaner like it was light sabre and prayed it had the suction
to imprison a burglar. Though the burglar might need to be a ghost for that to
work.
Suddenly
a huge crow, much bigger than they seem when they’re up in the sky, flew wildly
across the hallway. Even though it was nowhere near me I screamed like Ned
Flanders, dropped the vacuum cleaner and waved my hands in the air in despair.
Which was a shame as birds aren’t that heavy. I might have been able to suck it
into my Dyson. But only on Max suction and that really eats up the battery
life.
I
was beyond terrified. Something from outside was inside. The natural order of
things was disrupted and if a bird was in a house (that wasn’t a birdhouse)
then literally anything could happen. Unless the bird had unusual coloured
feathers and/or could talk. Which is
normal.
I
quickly reasoned, like a cleverer version of Sherlock Holmes, that it must have
come down the chimney – this explained the debris in my daughter’s room. And
also the fact that the bird wasn’t outside.
Plus
this had happened before. When we’d moved in we’d found a dead crow in the
attic. It had been my job to dispose of it. Every time I tried to pick it up, I
would recoil in horror, convinced it was about to come to life, burrow into my
skull, live in my brain and control me like a zombie to do its bird bidding.
Which would probably involve me eating worms, damaging crops and coming down
people’s chimneys, pecking open their skulls and turning them into my zombie
slaves.
It
turns out a living crow is even more scary than a dead one: the flapping wings,
the ever present danger that it might swoop into your hair, the chance that you
might get pooed on.
The foolish
bird flew into the nursery and I slammed the door. Checkmate. Arguably this was
the worst place for a huge disease-ridden, potentially-shit-filled ex-dinosaur
to be. But my son wasn’t in there (as far as I knew) and it was contained and
the terrified beast wouldn’t swoop down and peck off my nose, as black birds as
wont to do in their continuing war with humanity. Why they started this war, no
one knows. Some claim they were spurred into action by some past human leader
cruelly baking 24 living members of their brethren into a pie. But these are
the lies the bird terrorists tell to justify their actions.
Could
just keep the door shut and let the bird live in there from now on?
No.
You can not give in to crows. So I ran downstairs shouting for my wife in a
high-pitched voice. Which is pretty much exactly what John McClane did when he
first discovered Hans Gruber and his goons in the Nakatomi Plaza.
Luckily
my mother-in-law had just arrived, and she’s not scared of anything. She suggested throwing a towel over the bird
and like a man, I stepped up and got her a tea-towel from the kitchen. She
disappeared upstairs and I hid in the lounge waiting for the sound of defeated
bird or pecked to death mother-in-law. A victory for me in either eventuality?
No. I love my mother-in-law and she’s much better at baby-sitting than a huge
bird.
I
waited ten minutes. Surely one way or the other it was over. But no. My
mother-in-law’s towel trick was proving ineffective. She was now trying to open
a window, but couldn’t work the locks.
I
was going to have to go in and defenestrate my foe. And with barely a dozen
thoughts for my own safety, I ran in, found the key and opened the window. The bird
flew straight out, though gave me a look that suggested it couldn’t believe it
had taken this long to work out this solution. I don’t speak bird, but I now
know the squawk that means “human-brain”.
And
provided any terrorists I encounter are happy to jump out of the nearest window
(which is more or less how Hans Gruber was undone) I am still on course to save
the world.
I recently met the Greatest
Living Englishman: unsinkable
81-year-old Brian Blessed. I interviewed him for my Richard Herring’s
Leicester Square Theatre Podcast (available for free online on video and
audio). Well, I say interviewed him - I may have managed to ask three questions and
he didn’t really answer any of them. But
it was still one of the most astonishing hours of my life and his anecdotes
covered biting a stranger’s umbilical cord, toileting on Mount Everest and
throwing away a genuine Picasso. I felt like I had been hit by a lovely
steamroller. I heartily recommend the show and feel I can do so, as I am not
really in it.
I haven’t been out very much
as I am out doing my stand up tour or at home looking after my children, but
the other night I saw the most daring piece of experimental dance. It was
performed in the nude by my 3-year-old daughter to “All You Need Is Love” by
the Beatles. She sang and stretched and leapt and break-danced. It was magical.
And to add an extra layer of meaning, when I tried to sing along she shouted,
“NO, DADDY, JUST ME!” Maybe love isn’t
all you need after all.
There’s a lot of
controversy over where our new EU Passports should be printed and what colour
they should be. What about having a choice of dark blue or burgundy? The blue ones will be
printed France and the burgundy ones in the UK. And we then get to choose which
one we want, based on how patriotic we are?
