A budgie with a violent past

A budgie with a violent past
by Ged Backland

I should have known. 'Nothing for nothing' is what they say. I should
have known. The ad was written or should I say, scrawled, in green ink.
that should have triggered alarm bells, but it didn't. Green ink is the
ink of nutters and prisoners, anyone knows that. 'Budgie free to good
home.' 'Budgie'. Sounds so innocent .Little was I to know it was a
budgie with a violent past. The phone box outside the Post Office
window, where I noticed the ad, smelt of chips, ciggies and young lads
piss. Someone had burnt a hole in the middle of the a stock photography
picture of a happy middle class woman recieving some fake news on a
phone, that was sheilded by some thick anti vandal perspex. A wasp,
drunk by the october cold, crawled out of the phone card disposal bin,
that was stuff with a white tissue crisp with remnants of self abuse.
The phone was answered before it could ring. "It's about the budgie", I
said. there was a long silence, before a trembling voice replied, "What
about it?
"Free to good home," I felt compelled to apologise then added "Why are
you getting rid ?"
Another stony silence. I just about caught the address as the pips
went. The house seemed typical enough for an old person's house, apart
from a large 'Smiths' poster which proclaimed 'Sheila Takes A Bow'
which hung next to the crying boy. Joey, as he was called then, sat on
his perch and pecked at the round mirror and admiring his
reflection.
"There it is", the woman whispered as if not wanting Joey to
hear.
"Right", I said, "anything I should know about?" The woman looked
frightened. it was odd. it's not as if I was an 18 stone skinhead
saying, "Right Grandma, let's have your savings?" Twenty eight seconds
later, I was stood in the road with a budgie cage, a budgie, a half
packet of Trill, two sheets of sandpaper and a lump of cuttlefish that
a pterodactyl could have sharpened its beak on.I looked back and the
chintz curtains twitched back into place. I wasn't sure then but I am
now, that I heard a cry of 'Yeessss!'

I'd never really had a pet since uncle Peter killed the goldfish. He
transferred them into a kettle and unwittingly flicked the switch on
and boiled the lot. He'd used the kettle as a holding tank before
without fatal consequences. it happened when he and his divorced
friends came round to our house. they'd transfer the contents of the
bowl into the kettle of cold
water,fill the bowl full of vodka and dance the afternoon away to a
hits album that had a large- tittied girl in an Arsenal kit on the
cover. I buried four of them in a Swan matchbox, two in a tube from a
toilet roll sellotaped at both ends and I kept one and tried to bring
it back to life by pressing it into my forehead during a Uri Geller
Special. It didn't work, of course. it just disintegrated and smeared
across my forehead and I spent the rest of the evening with a scaled
face sitting in my Paddington Pi- Jams like 'Daughter From The Black
Lagoon'.

The fish were good pets not like the thing I had now the Reggie bloody
Kray of the budgie world. On the way home from collecting him I'd been
at the bus stop for about fifteen minutes when a nice old dear came and
stood next to me. You know the sort, blue hair and large new false
teeth that rattled whenever a lorry flew past. I caught her eye as she
fumbled for her bus pass. She smiled and nodded toward the cage.
"That's a pretty bird", she commented. "Yes", I agreed, "I've just got
him." The old lady, warmed by my friendly response, fumbled into the
pocket of her green cardigan and pulled out a salted peanut. She poked
it through the flaked chrome bar. It wasn't so much a
scream, as a gargle of pain. Joey had ignored the peanut and instead
hooked his beaked right through the nail of the pensioner, no sooner
had it done so than it unhooked its and ran up and down his perch like
Wayne Rooney after scoring at Wembley. It chirped and danced and shook
its little feathered shoulders like a proper little gangster. I was
mortified. I felt awful and couldn't apologise enough. I paid for a
taxi and lgave the bird a stern look as the old dear
was whisked away to Walton General casualty department. He seemed to be
smiling I was sure the
little bugger had a smile on his beak. I looked back at the house and
thought of returning it, but as I did so, the door opened and the old
woman almost ran down the path and scurried away in the opposite
direction, looking everywhere but at me. On the bus home, the finger
count increased to three. As I looked carelessly out of the window, two
schoolkids decided to feed Joey a tooty-frooty each. The screams
stopped the bus. A thirty-something woman provided the handkerchieves
and the bus driver detoured to Walton casualty. As they swept through
the automatic doors, I could see the old lady sat waiting. I swear she
gave me a look. Three people with budgie bites must be a record for one
afternoon. Joey looked pleased. The sand on the bottom of his cage
looked like a Jackson Pollock. Two months on and I'm at the edge,
staring out into the abyss. A six inch, blue and white terrorist has
ruined everything. Roger, the man who once shared my bed and the man
who fought bare-handed with Argentine soldiers during the Falklands
conflict and emerged without a scratch, now has, shall we say, 'less'
of his right ear. Stupidly, after a drinking spree, he decided to 'get
back to nature' and took Joey out of the cage and put him on his head.
Exit stage right my only decent shag in the last four years, (not
counting the young man who tried to get me to swap my gas provider -
all Brylcreem and rough hands, but that's another story). I tried to
starve Joey, but crumpled after half a day. I even took the advice of
an animal psychologist, who, through his haphazard column in a
What Bird? magazine, advised that if I put an egg in the bottom of the
cage, he might calm down a bit. I placed the small hens egg in the
bottom of the cage and waited for the transformation. I swear he just
looked at me and grinned. Of course, it didn't work, as the nice loft
insulation chap found out the next afternoon. He spotted the egg and
thought the budgie
had laid it. he was obviously thicker than the stuff he was laying in
the loft. He reached in and Joey took a strip of skin off the back of
his hand. His proud Borstal tattoo now read 'Mim and Dad'. He was none
too pleased.

The worst part of it all has been the family. no longer are Uncle Jack
and his young window dressing male lover, the family shame. It's me and
'Mad Joey' that get talked about between the double brandies and tough
chicken legs at funerals. 'The Thug', I heard him being called at the
last family gathering. Uncle Albert,
Preston and district pigeon racing champion, three years in the
seventies, who incidently wouldn't get excited if he saw a chair walk,
was foaming at the mouth and gesticulating how he would ring Joey's
neck like a 'scrag mick' if he ever bit him. There's no chance of that.
I'd never let him through my door again. Not after the incident with
the knickers and bra underwear, hear this. Two in the morning, one
February, they rushed him away with a suspected heart attack. When the
nurses undressed him, he was
ashamedly sporting a pair of ripped Camay knickers and a peephole bra.
It was all very hush-hush. I only got to know because Veronica Procter,
who I went to school with, was a staff nurse on the ward. They said
they all had a right laugh, especially when one of the
young nurses with a wicked sense of humour, put on his notes, blood
pressure '60 over 20', 'temperature - normal', 'knicker elastic -
tight'. He doesn't know that I know, but when I told him to calm down
and not to get his knickers in a twist, he went the colour of the
beetroot on his tongue sandwiches.

A year on and things are no better. The valium helps, as does the
holistic nerve remedy. Someone told me that if I ever got hot and
bothered, to run my wrists under the cold tap. It didn't work, and as
I'm on a water meter, it added ninety quid to the annual bill. I toyed
with crushing a valium and putting it into the Trill, but decided
against it, as I wasn't going to waste eight hours tranquillity on the
swine. I bought a cat to try and scare him, but it took three hours for
me to drag the poor thing, stiff with fright from under the sofa. It
had bounced up to the cage like Olga Corbett. I don't know what 'mad
Joey' chirped, but it did the trick. I had to fold her back into the
cardboard cat carrier and return her to the animal rescue people. They
refused to believe my story and threatened me with prosecution and
RSPCA blacklisting. I asked would they like a budgie and they
threatened to call the police. From then on I made a determined effort
to make 'Mad Joey' as uncomfortable as possible. I lined his cage with
copies of The Watchtower; I played the birdie song continuously; I
tried locking him in the fridge but he created such a fuss he covered
the entire contents with Trill and sand, not to mention vandalised a
chunk of Wenslydale I was saving for the following sunday. One night
after a bucket of homemade elderberry and banana wine, I even blew
smoke from a large Cuban cigar that Roz brought me back from
Havana straight into the cage. I managed to set off the smoke alarm and
turn myself pale green in the process. 'Mad Joey' didn't even cough,
although I swear I heard him whistle the chorus of 'Smoke Gets In Your
Eyes' as I hugged the toilet bowl. That pushed me over the edge. I must
have passed out and when I awoke, vowed to take some positive
action.

The Samaritans hung up twice. I managed to get to 'end of my tether',
then as soon as I mentioned Mad Joey was a budgie and not my partner, I
got a mouthful of abuse the first time and a 'very funny' and hang up
the second. I'm not surprised that they hung up, I mean they're privvy
to some of the most heart breaking situations, people on the edge of
suicide,
desperate weeping men cuckolded by best friends, people who have lost
loved ones in tragic circumstances and then there I was. What was my
desperate tale of woe? A middle aged woman slurring on about being
bullied by a budgie. I must have sounded really sincere.

Oh, excuse me, there's the phone. "Hello... yes that's right he's a
lovely little bird, why?

Health reasons, I've developed an allergy. The address? Yes, 14
Cresswell Street. That's

Great! See you in five then.Bye. Yesssssss!

The End.