The Blackbirds : Part Two

WILY OLD BIRD : And then there’s the terrible child sex rings with prominent people involved, not least that scandalous Jimmy Saville and Cyril Smith. They’ve even talked of murder as well as sex abuse, but of course the culprits are simply denying it. Perhaps it even involved Satanic rites.

DICKIE BIRD : What on earth’s he talking about........... England isn’t a Dennis Wheatley novel acted out as a serial. Just as well the wife’s dead, he’s the type that’d give the poor old soul a heart attack just by suggestion. I’ll have to say a prayer for him and hope it calms his nerves. He’s a ridiculous alarmist and completely out of touch with reality. Much as I like him I think he’s showing signs of senility, poor old stick, nothing’s ever as bad as Stan says. You’d think the devil had possession of Britain. I’ll try to change the subject and talk about Timmy............... It’s getting a bit serious this conversation, Stan, something I’d feel more at home with is talking about Timmy. He broke his leg last weekend and because I’m fond of him I’ve been miserable. He’s been whining in his basket ever since. He’s my friend when I’m alone in my room, Stan. We can’t speak to each other of course but I feel we have an understanding that can’t be described. I’ve always liked pets and he’s a beautiful cairn terrier. Some people say he’s Greyfriar’s Bobby – I can believe it – he’s really faithful to me. It’ll break my heart if I lose him.

WILY OLD BIRD : It’ll be like losing the wife all over again.......... probably thinks more of his dog than people, but then sentimentality is a luxury an old man can afford. It’s all he’s got left...... it’ll die with him though and men like him. You can almost hear his pacemaker miss a beat in the dying of an already artificially-sustained heart. I can’t say I’ve felt that way, Dickie. The dog I’ve had for a long period in my life was a pit-bull. I used to kick the old sod around and he was still faithful. He was just something to take around the park so I got the exercise more than him and I didn’t look conspicuous weaving in and out of the swings and the tea-pot lid. He got fatter and fatter on Pal with marrowbone jelly, until in the end, I used to drag him from point A to point B with his arse scraping the ground. They said his big end had gone but he was just well-fed.

DICKIE BIRD : It’s not my sense of humour this. He doesn’t talk decently, he’s just crude and a bit sadistic. I don’t know what sort of life he’s had but it’s certainly not mine. He can’t have been happy. If he talks like this with anybody else here he’ll probably get insulted. I’m just glad there are no ladies present. I don’t like it when I get embarrassed. Already I’m getting a hot flush. I’ve never used bad language in my life. I’ll tell him so if he continues like this. Timmy was always active. I remember the time I took him to Morecombe on a day trip. He played on the sands like a child and my cousin Doris teased him with her candy floss. The pink cotton-like threads of spun sugar on his face made him look clownish and somehow happy, like a bairn would be. Ever since that day I’ve had a special attachment.

WILY OLD BIRD : I knew he thought more of that bloody dog than is normal. It’s going to be more important to keep its heart going than his, because somehow I think one depends on the other.

DICKIE BIRD : Then there was the Christmas my brother Perce bought Timmy a rubber bone. He bit on it for two minutes then barked at Perce for the rest of the day chewing on his chubby legs in preference to rubber and wanting the real meat of a retired pork butcher.

WILY OLD BIRD : I don’t have those sort of memories somehow, Dickie. When I look back I don’t think there was anything worth remembering.......my dog Jake never actually did anything... he never gave me pleasure like your Timmy. He looked as ugly as sin and frightened people away. He served that purpose and that was about it.......... he was a bit of a guard dog.

DICKIE BIRD : I love Timmy. I know he’s good luck.

WILY OLD BIRD : He might be that but he can be knocked over with a feather duster. If you get mugged he’s bloody useless and not good luck at all. Times we live in you want an alsation. It’s going to be a police state soon and we’ll all have to have them to leave the house. Malcolm McDowell and his gang from ‘Clockwork Orange’ won’t be deterred by a fucking cairn terrier called Timmy.

DICKIE BIRD : My great grandson likes Timmy. He said to me, ‘when Timmy has babies, can I have one?’ He was only six then and unaware of Timmy’s sex. My daughter bought him a puppy because of it, a labrador from the next door neighbour because the bitch had just littered. Well, my great grandson was thrilled to bits but hasn’t taken it for walkies for three months. He cuddles it on the mat and even talks to it as an equal but doesn’t play with it. When he plays outside it’s football. As it’s getting big now it’s my grand daughter who has to walk it, feed it and keep an anxious eye on the settee to stop it mauling it to shreds.

WILY OLD BIRD : Kids can’t do right for doing wrong with him. The interests they have these days aren’t the ones we had, and if they are, they find a different outlet and are expressed in a different way. You’ve only got to take computer games. They develop dexterity, fair enough, but as far as I can see the only use for that these days is in the rent-boy racket.............. feel your way. Anyway, Dickie... how’s life at Senax? When I was there it was all very well but the hotel here is much better for the same money, or perhaps a bit more. I was lucky to get in here really.

DICKIE BIRD : Why he’s living it up here and I’m in Senax I don’t know. I was cold in bed last night. I’ve always been a Christian man but I don’t think you necessarily get a worldly reward for being law-abiding. Stan’s not bad, I’m not saying that, but I wish I was here and not him. I wonder if other people know there’s something selfish about me. That would go against me........I’ve let Timmy do a pee in the sink at Senax more than once, maybe the council know............. I don’t always wash my underpants regularly either. One thing’s for sure, Stan’s not perfect.  My Parkinson’s playing me up Stan. I was out today and I could hardly get the bus pass out of my pocket when the number nine pulled up. Two kids jumped off at the stop and almost knocked me over. I raised my stick to them and all I got back was ‘bugger off, Noddy’. But I know for a fact they come from a bad family on the estate past Canton Road so I wasn’t that surprised. They say the mother’s done Marks and Spencer for a thousand pound of food over two months with the open coat and false pregnancy. Later that day a group of their schoolfriends were walking past Senax and saw me sheltering from the wind in the portico. They were different again, Stan....... they expressed such concern for me. I gave them a fiver between them because I know kids only go bad if they don’t have the right example. Their heart went out to me and I felt warm inside. I was reassured and happy that they still had time for an old man, the same old man two bad lads could call Noddy.

WILY OLD BIRD : Noddy – more like a bloody Thunderbirds puppet in the electric chair.

DICKIE BIRD : Only time will tell, Stan, what the kids of today are really like. I wish I could live on, just to see the future............ fifteen to twenty years would do.

WILY OLD BIRD : He’ll be lucky to live another fifteen to twenty minutes the state his health’s in, apart from the fact he’d be one hundred and four in twenty years time. Truth is he’s the sort of bugger that never let’s go. The wife’s younger of course but the same type. You can’t get rid of the ones you really want to see the back of. As for the future, Dickie, I don’t want to know. I won’t say I’m pessimistic but I was at Blackpool last Sunday and I couldn’t steady myself on the promenade for reverberations from undersea testing..........Polaris is supposed to be docked in bloody Scotland.

DICKIE BIRD : It’s depressing to think like that, Stan and makes me sad for the kids, the innocent  people who worry. Whether the future’s happy or not there’s always the not knowing that causes pain. We never had that worry in our childhood. There wasn’t the destructive potential we have today........ that’s when I pray, Stan.

WILY OLD BIRD : That’s when I bloody stay in bed in the morning and turn up the radiator. You’re right, Dickie, we were better off. The fancy cars and the nice clothes they have today don’t count for much if you’re not happy. I looked forward to Christmas in a way no kid does today...... perhaps you did too. I saw no fear when I looked at other people’s faces on Christmas day..... did you, Dickie?

DICKIE BIRD : Times change, Stan......... nobody knows what the future brings.

THE END