The Great Transformation

Sunday January 31 2016 at 3:12 pm · Filed under Chickens, Obituary and tagged: animal welfare, chickens, food, Life

It’s been a while since I wrote a blog. I got fed up with it being like a chicken obituary column. But suddenly I’m moved to write again.

Al is plucking Ted in the vestibule.

It’s problematic naming your chickens after the dearly departed. In some ways it can help with the grieving process. I was missing my old friend the painter and matriarch, Monica Sjoo; likewise my recently deceased friend Marta Lombard, another very fine painter and a great inspiration to me. So I found some comfort in naming two of our Gold Laced Orpington Bantam pullets after my them. It seemed to bring them closer, to give them new life.

It’s odd, in a way, that Marta grew up to be a strapping cockerel. But the journey to the afterlife is a great transformation, which is likely, surely, to transcend gender. Incidentally, Marta’s youngest, my ex-lover Charlie Kiss, being an impatient soul, in my opinion, underwent that transformation within a single life-span. Bravo, Charlie.

That one’s former mother-in-love should turn out to have a commemorative cockerel is one thing. But naming a chick after one’s ex-husband, what’s that about? Of the six Orpington chicks we bought last summer, four turned out to be cockerels. Of the four, Marta is the butchest. Rupert and Giles (ask Al) come a close second. Ted was always a bit runty, poor chap. Once, he looked at me sideways, as only a chicken can, and that look seemed to reach out to me from a very far away place and time, to penetrate my soul.

Well, Ted and I had no contact for some thirty years or so, until one day, he gave my daughter a lift home to Wales – following a visit to London for some anniversary, celebrated with a pub gig, of course: a reunion of the Bozo Brothers. Ted was the lead guitarist. I’d admired his nimble fingers from the first moment I heard him play and that love of his music never left me.

Thirty years is a long time. Now here he was standing outside my house. I was surprised to find how much his appearance had changed with age. I might have walked past him in the street without recognising him. It was his voice that I recognised, and that brought the memories flooding back. I was more surprised still to realise how (almost) completely healed were my wounds; how much forgiveness and compassion I could feel for him – alongside the clear memories of the transgressions, on both sides, which ruined our marriage. There is a difference between forgiving and forgetting.

It’s important to observe appropriate boundaries. This said, due to the miracle of Facebook, we were able, thereafter, to explore a tentative dialogue over the ensuing months. I proceeded with very great care, for myself, for him, for my daughter to whom he was Daddy, and especially for my partner, Al. She is not the type to be jealous of the past, but neither am I willing to risk allowing the slightest doubt to overshadow our relationship. I’ve learned that lesson.

Ted had an unshakable belief in the metaphysical realm, synchronicity and his own clairaudience. I like to think I’m open-minded; not a great believer in anything much, if I can help it. I’m with Grayson Perry on this. “Hold your beliefs lightly”, he said. “But what does all this have to do with chickens?” I hear you ask.

Well, coming up for two years since Al’s Aunty died, and with these things on our minds, she mentioned to me the other morning that an acquaintance was out of hospital following surgery for cancer of the oesophagus. As is my careful habit, at first I said nothing, but then soon had to admit that I felt angry and sad that such a cure was not possible in Ted’s case. Whether it was a different part of the oesophagus or what, I don’t know: his proud jutting chin; his wispy beard; beer-swilling throat; his beautiful, fag-addled voice box; or deeper, in the lifeline to his stomach? In any event, he died last summer, shortly before Al’s 50^th birthday and his 62^nd – there was 12 year’s between them, to the day.

(A digression into Chinese astrology could be inserted here.)

Then yesterday morning, having let the poultry out of their houses, Al woke me cautiously saying, “I have to tell you, Ted’s neck doesn’t work.” After breakfast I went to see. He did not have a full range of movement in his neck and it was affecting his ability to see, manoeuvre, feed etc. He could make a lot of sounds, but he could not crow. What the use of a cock who cannot crow?

Come to think of it, I had heard a bit of a kerfuffle in the hen house the night before, and I hate to say it, but I think he may have been the victim of attempted fratricide. We kept him safe through the day in the ‘hospital’ in the greenhouse, while we discussed his fate. By the evening he was still unable to do a full range of normal cockerel behaviour, and clearly unhappy. He stumbled out of the seclusion ward to make his way to bed, but his brothers jumped on him and Al had to break it up.

So after dark, we took him to the woodshed, where terrible things happen. It makes us cry at the best of times, having to draw back the veil. To do so at this time of year – Imbolc, Candlemas, the feast of Saint Bridget, Gwyl San Ffraid, the quickening – as an offering to the memory of an archetypal maiden aunt –

Then we had a bath, and went out to hear Latitude play at the Mulberry Bush in Lampeter. We skipped the vegetarian meal. (Al’s food intolerances are so complex as to rule out eating out altogether.)

There’s no better way to bridge the Cartesian gap than to eat food. Central to my personal spirituality is a reverence for the nature of life – we all eat one another. This is what makes us a part of the great dance. How much closer can we hope to get with another being that to eat, or be eaten by them? Still, today I’m not much looking forward to my Sunday dinner.

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