Albert Gets Me Into Trouble Again

Albert Gets Me into Trouble (again)
(1000 words approx.)

Albert and myself leaned backwards watching the workman climb unafraid
to the roof of the bell tower on St Patrick's church. We had only ever
seen antics like this in the circus. The workman pretended to slip then
laughed heartily at the squeals of terror from the local Skerries
people standing far below on the path. He smiled down at them and
continued to scramble along the tiles like a circus monkey.
We had heard that the bell tower on St Patricks Church was having a new
top put on it and had come to ask the workmen for pigeon's eggs. Albert
had seen a report on the BBC about incubators. He explained that an
incubator was a kind of oven. If you put eggs in it, and heated them
up, they would hatch into fluffy chicks in no time. I was stunned to
think that new life could be created with nothing more than an oven and
a few eggs.
We knew that the bell tower was full of pigeons so it stood to reason
that it would also be full of pigeon's eggs. We pestered the workmen
until they came down with half a dozen scruffy looking eggs. The eggs
were stone cold and had probably been lying in the old bell tower for
years. This didn't matter at all to us. Our delight would have been no
less had we been given gold nuggets to carry home. I wondered if this
incubator thing would work the same for pigeon's eggs as it did for
hen's eggs. Albert assured me that the man on the BBC had said that it
would work for any kind of bird's egg.
We had seen the local pigeon fanciers release pigeons for the Saturday
afternoon race; seen the explosion of feathers, heard the great noise
of beating wings as they headed skyward to lands foreign and strange.
Now we had our own dreams, right here in our hands, inside these eggs.
We couldn't wait to get home to put them in the oven.
Albert's mother was ironing that afternoon, so we couldn't go to his
house. My mother always went to visit Granny every afternoon. I knew
she wouldn't be home 'till six. We had a whole hour to hatch out our
very own pigeons.
We arranged the speckled eggs on a baking tray placing them on the top
shelf of the oven where my mother always put the apple tarts. Turning
the knob to 100 C, we slammed the heavy door and headed for the living
room to watch TV. Thursday was the best day for TV. The Lone Ranger was
on at five o'clock and Skippy at half past five.
Completely wrapped up in the episode of the Lone Ranger and Kimo Saby
(his indian sidekick) we forgot about the eggs. Once the Lone Ranger
had spoken his famous last words "Hi Ho Silver Away!" and ridden into
the setting sun, we dived into the kitchen fully expecting to hear the
chirping of six healthy pigeons .To our great disappointment the eggs
remained silent and unhatched. I thought they looked a bit swollen but
Albert said they were fine and not to worry because he knew what he was
doing.
Albert reckoned that at this rate though, the eggs would never be
hatched before my mother came home. We reasoned that there were two
parts to this experiment, one was the amount of time it took to hatch
the eggs, the other the amount of heat applied to the hatching eggs. As
we had only a fixed amount of time, there was only one thing for it, to
turn up the heat. We wound up the heat to 500 C and the lamp glowed red
on the big oven knob. Off we went back to the telly, happy to let
nature take it's course.
Skippy was just explaining to the park ranger the whereabouts of the
lost boy in the mineshaft, when we heard the blast. For a second or two
we stared blue eyed at each other, then raced for the kitchen. The eggs
had exploded! The glass oven door was splattered with a mass of yellow
and white gunge mixed with pulverised eggshells. A pall of sickly smoke
filled the kitchen. What was really horribly, sickeningly awful though,
was the smell. Those eggs had been lying in the belltower for years
rotting away. The smell of rotten eggs was truly awful. We stumbled out
of the kitchen gagging for air. It was then I heard the key turning in
the front door. Mother was home!
My mother stood rigid in the kitchen doorway for a second then dropped
her shopping bags in a heap on the floor. Bottles tins and tubs went
rolling everywhere. I doubt if I will ever hear such a terrible scream
again. She stared open jawed as the two terrified experimenters tried
to explain how they had turned her once spotless kitchen into a scene
from a horror film. I was grounded for a week.
Albert arrived a few weeks later wild about something else he had seen
on the BBC. He thought they called it "hang gliding". He swore that all
you needed were a few sticks and a bit of old sailcloth. You could make
a wing, strap it to your back and fly from cliffs with it. While he was
rabbiting on about how we would jump off the cliffs at Barnageeragh, I
slipped quietly away. Sure enough a few days later I saw him and Barney
Mc Grath heading for the Balbriggan Road with strange contraptions
strapped to their backs. They may have flown, I never found out, but I
very much doubt it!