15/06/2009
Alfred The Duck
Alfred was a duck, who hated being a duck.
From an early age, almost straight after his little beak broke out of its little shell prison he felt a resentment for the strange, awkward, bill-nosed waddling creatures he saw around him. As a young duckling, not content with the simple pleasures of pond life Alfred would look for more complicated pleasures, such as trying to climb a tree and jump in to the pond, or explore the woodland around his little Sussex pond. In fact, it was on just such an outing that he missed the day the vets came to the pond to clip the wings of that season's litter, so that not a week later when he jumped from his favourite branch of the big over-hanging yew tree into the pond, and gave his usual flail for balance, he never actually made it back to the pond. Ever.
Oh what joy he had, swooping high above the little woodland he had been intrepidly exploring for the eternal-seeming 2 months of his life, so high in fact that he saw it to be just that; for the first time he realised how little the woodland was, or, more specifically, he realised how big the rest of the world was. Not having any place in particular to go, or really understanding exactly what it was that was happening to him, he decided to head for the big body of water he saw to the south of him (although, obviously, he didn't know it was to the south). As he was enjoying swooping for the first time, relishing the feeling of the air streaming through each of his feathers, he was mesmerised by the glimmering white, blue and golden mass ahead. So mesmerised in fact, that he was taken quite by surprise at a sudden wave of exhaustion, and veritably crash-landed into a puddle in the car-park of a country pub. (Although, obviously, he didn't know it was a pub. If he had, he may have been endeared by the quaintness of this particular pub, set on the turn of a quiet country lane with a thatched roof and abundance of hanging baskets, and a pretty little hedged-in orchard by the car park).
After what seemed to Alfred like a short nap but was in fact a 13 hour slumber under an apple tree in the orchard, he set about working out how to get air born again. The main problem he had was that none of the trees were near any fences, or had any low branches, so poor little waddling Alfred had no hope of simply climbing up as he had at his pond. He searched in his memory for any clues as to what he was supposed to do, but as all the ducks in his pond had suffered the same fate as his brothers and sisters and cousins (although the links are quite dubious, for this very same reason) and had their wings clipped, none of them had ever even considered flying, let alone tried it. In fact, if Alfred had cared to look back as he flew off he would have seen the huge commotion his new game had caused in his former home, but he didn't. And here he was, with no idea how a duck is meant to get off the ground to fly without jumping out of a tree. He decided to have a look in the building next to his tree.
As with many quiet country pubs this one kept its doors open most of the time, and before long Alfred had shuffled his way in to the main bar, where the first thing to catch his eye was a row of shiny, somewhat fake-looking ducks similar to him flying motionlessly across a pile of burnt tree-branches. Strange, he thought to himself, they look like me, and that looks like what I was doing yesterday, but I'm sure I was moving a lot more when I was doing it.
'Quack, quack quack?' He asked.
Nothing. Not a peep out of them. Feeling a little offended and entirely confused he wandered around the bar and stopped, dumbstruck. In front of him, in all its moving multi-coloured glory was Alfred's first television, still on the sky sports channel from the previous night's enterprise. And even more surprisingly the images that happened to be on it at that moment were those of lots and lots and lots of ducks, flapping their wings and running across the surface of the water, faster and faster until their ugly webbed feet were no longer getting wet, and off they flew. What happened next was more than a little odd, it seemed to Alfred, but he was too excited about what he had learned to really figure out what the men with noisy, smoking sticks were pointing them at the ducks for, and he was already out of the door by the time the Labradors were retrieving the carcasses.
So he needed to find a stretch of water. He thought he maybe remembered seeing something as he tumbled towards the car park the previous afternoon, but had no idea what or in which direction, so he set off down the country lane in search. The first drama occurred when a small, square, very quiet little van came hurtling around the corner, with its white shiny cargo making a terrible racket, scaring Alfred half to death, but it was soon gone and he composed himself, and set off again. The sun was much higher in the sky, and our poor little friend was quite knackered by the time he finally saw a reasonable stretch of water on a small, secluded river. Barely stopping to breath or even have a drink he rushed to the water and began running as fast as he could, flapping his wings and generally making a lot of splash, but not really getting out of the water. Soon though, after a rest and a rethink, he got the hang of it and soared off into the sky, this time remembering to conserve his energy.
As it got closer the huge shiny blue thing just got bigger and bigger, until it looked like it went on for ever. Although the idea of this eternity scared Alfred somewhat, he was still compelled to fly towards it if for no other reason than to bathe in its sparkle. As he got closer still he started to see buildings gathered around the edge of it, even closer and he saw that there were a great many more buildings than he had ever seen before, and a lot of them were bigger than anything he had ever seen. Among the buildings were dozens, hundreds of people walking around, zipping along on funny metal frames, driving around in an astounding array of shapes and sizes and colours of those noisy metal boxes he'd seen at the pond. Spying a nice-looking pond in the middle of a large field he made a slightly sloppy splash-down and caught his breath, looking about at his new surroundings.
The first thing that struck him was the dirtiness of it all. There were bits of coloured plastic and metal in all of the flowers, and around the trees, even just thrown down on to the hard dark grey surface that the humans walk along. The second thing he noticed was that all of the humans walking around this particular pond were boys. Not a single girl or child to be seen. Strange, he thought, as he had seen many families at the pond and thought that they always travelled so; A big boy, a big lady, and 2 or more children. He had never seen boys alone like this, and never ones dressed in such a colourful way. As he watched he saw two of them who had been walking around alone start to talk to each other, and shortly afterwards they disappeared into the nearby bushes, holding hands! Now, Alfred had seen boys and girls holding hands, and sometimes big boys holding the hands of the child boys, and it seemed to him like an act of intimacy similar to when his siblings would preen each others feathers, not something to share with a stranger. He decided to follow them into the bushes and investigate.
Ten minutes later Alfred was waddling down St James's street with his eyes wide open. These big creatures all around him – who incidentally were regarding him with a great deal of amusement as he passed – went to some pretty great lengths for pleasure, something he was quite interested in himself. The two men he had seen in the bushes, while using their bodies in ways Alfred would never have imagined, made sounds of pain mixed with pleasure that held him transfixed. They were clearly enjoying themselves, but the discomfort seemed to equal the pleasure and this is what Alfred picked up on. As he walked along one of the most bohemian roads on the island he was seeing the young people with bits of metal stuck into every available bit of flesh, the boys whizzing along on flat bits of wood with wheels, jumping up onto a bench, falling, and rolling along on the hard floor only to get back up, laughing, and start again. As it got darker he started to see people behaving very strangely, staggering all over the place and shouting what sounded even less like a language to Alfred than normal, though almost all of them apparently happy and enjoying themselves. Having found a nice shelter under a huge wooden structure that jetted out into a massive, scary, shiny black thing that reminded Alfred of the blue thing he had come here looking for, he settled down to a night of some of the strangest and most vivid dreams of his short life.
From an early age, almost straight after his little beak broke out of its little shell prison he felt a resentment for the strange, awkward, bill-nosed waddling creatures he saw around him. As a young duckling, not content with the simple pleasures of pond life Alfred would look for more complicated pleasures, such as trying to climb a tree and jump in to the pond, or explore the woodland around his little Sussex pond. In fact, it was on just such an outing that he missed the day the vets came to the pond to clip the wings of that season's litter, so that not a week later when he jumped from his favourite branch of the big over-hanging yew tree into the pond, and gave his usual flail for balance, he never actually made it back to the pond. Ever.
Oh what joy he had, swooping high above the little woodland he had been intrepidly exploring for the eternal-seeming 2 months of his life, so high in fact that he saw it to be just that; for the first time he realised how little the woodland was, or, more specifically, he realised how big the rest of the world was. Not having any place in particular to go, or really understanding exactly what it was that was happening to him, he decided to head for the big body of water he saw to the south of him (although, obviously, he didn't know it was to the south). As he was enjoying swooping for the first time, relishing the feeling of the air streaming through each of his feathers, he was mesmerised by the glimmering white, blue and golden mass ahead. So mesmerised in fact, that he was taken quite by surprise at a sudden wave of exhaustion, and veritably crash-landed into a puddle in the car-park of a country pub. (Although, obviously, he didn't know it was a pub. If he had, he may have been endeared by the quaintness of this particular pub, set on the turn of a quiet country lane with a thatched roof and abundance of hanging baskets, and a pretty little hedged-in orchard by the car park).
After what seemed to Alfred like a short nap but was in fact a 13 hour slumber under an apple tree in the orchard, he set about working out how to get air born again. The main problem he had was that none of the trees were near any fences, or had any low branches, so poor little waddling Alfred had no hope of simply climbing up as he had at his pond. He searched in his memory for any clues as to what he was supposed to do, but as all the ducks in his pond had suffered the same fate as his brothers and sisters and cousins (although the links are quite dubious, for this very same reason) and had their wings clipped, none of them had ever even considered flying, let alone tried it. In fact, if Alfred had cared to look back as he flew off he would have seen the huge commotion his new game had caused in his former home, but he didn't. And here he was, with no idea how a duck is meant to get off the ground to fly without jumping out of a tree. He decided to have a look in the building next to his tree.
As with many quiet country pubs this one kept its doors open most of the time, and before long Alfred had shuffled his way in to the main bar, where the first thing to catch his eye was a row of shiny, somewhat fake-looking ducks similar to him flying motionlessly across a pile of burnt tree-branches. Strange, he thought to himself, they look like me, and that looks like what I was doing yesterday, but I'm sure I was moving a lot more when I was doing it.
'Quack, quack quack?' He asked.
Nothing. Not a peep out of them. Feeling a little offended and entirely confused he wandered around the bar and stopped, dumbstruck. In front of him, in all its moving multi-coloured glory was Alfred's first television, still on the sky sports channel from the previous night's enterprise. And even more surprisingly the images that happened to be on it at that moment were those of lots and lots and lots of ducks, flapping their wings and running across the surface of the water, faster and faster until their ugly webbed feet were no longer getting wet, and off they flew. What happened next was more than a little odd, it seemed to Alfred, but he was too excited about what he had learned to really figure out what the men with noisy, smoking sticks were pointing them at the ducks for, and he was already out of the door by the time the Labradors were retrieving the carcasses.
So he needed to find a stretch of water. He thought he maybe remembered seeing something as he tumbled towards the car park the previous afternoon, but had no idea what or in which direction, so he set off down the country lane in search. The first drama occurred when a small, square, very quiet little van came hurtling around the corner, with its white shiny cargo making a terrible racket, scaring Alfred half to death, but it was soon gone and he composed himself, and set off again. The sun was much higher in the sky, and our poor little friend was quite knackered by the time he finally saw a reasonable stretch of water on a small, secluded river. Barely stopping to breath or even have a drink he rushed to the water and began running as fast as he could, flapping his wings and generally making a lot of splash, but not really getting out of the water. Soon though, after a rest and a rethink, he got the hang of it and soared off into the sky, this time remembering to conserve his energy.
As it got closer the huge shiny blue thing just got bigger and bigger, until it looked like it went on for ever. Although the idea of this eternity scared Alfred somewhat, he was still compelled to fly towards it if for no other reason than to bathe in its sparkle. As he got closer still he started to see buildings gathered around the edge of it, even closer and he saw that there were a great many more buildings than he had ever seen before, and a lot of them were bigger than anything he had ever seen. Among the buildings were dozens, hundreds of people walking around, zipping along on funny metal frames, driving around in an astounding array of shapes and sizes and colours of those noisy metal boxes he'd seen at the pond. Spying a nice-looking pond in the middle of a large field he made a slightly sloppy splash-down and caught his breath, looking about at his new surroundings.
The first thing that struck him was the dirtiness of it all. There were bits of coloured plastic and metal in all of the flowers, and around the trees, even just thrown down on to the hard dark grey surface that the humans walk along. The second thing he noticed was that all of the humans walking around this particular pond were boys. Not a single girl or child to be seen. Strange, he thought, as he had seen many families at the pond and thought that they always travelled so; A big boy, a big lady, and 2 or more children. He had never seen boys alone like this, and never ones dressed in such a colourful way. As he watched he saw two of them who had been walking around alone start to talk to each other, and shortly afterwards they disappeared into the nearby bushes, holding hands! Now, Alfred had seen boys and girls holding hands, and sometimes big boys holding the hands of the child boys, and it seemed to him like an act of intimacy similar to when his siblings would preen each others feathers, not something to share with a stranger. He decided to follow them into the bushes and investigate.
Ten minutes later Alfred was waddling down St James's street with his eyes wide open. These big creatures all around him – who incidentally were regarding him with a great deal of amusement as he passed – went to some pretty great lengths for pleasure, something he was quite interested in himself. The two men he had seen in the bushes, while using their bodies in ways Alfred would never have imagined, made sounds of pain mixed with pleasure that held him transfixed. They were clearly enjoying themselves, but the discomfort seemed to equal the pleasure and this is what Alfred picked up on. As he walked along one of the most bohemian roads on the island he was seeing the young people with bits of metal stuck into every available bit of flesh, the boys whizzing along on flat bits of wood with wheels, jumping up onto a bench, falling, and rolling along on the hard floor only to get back up, laughing, and start again. As it got darker he started to see people behaving very strangely, staggering all over the place and shouting what sounded even less like a language to Alfred than normal, though almost all of them apparently happy and enjoying themselves. Having found a nice shelter under a huge wooden structure that jetted out into a massive, scary, shiny black thing that reminded Alfred of the blue thing he had come here looking for, he settled down to a night of some of the strangest and most vivid dreams of his short life.
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