How to catch a pigeon
For me, when the earth was young and I was a brand new technical copywriter, life still retained some of the schoolboy spirit. Many will tell you it still does. Rubbish. I’m a very sober hymnwriter.
The other young copywriters around me were of the same mind as me and late Friday afternoons were seen as the legitimate time to loosen ties and have fun.
One of them, a lovely man who knew how to build amplifiers - and did so for me once - came out of the darkroom next to the office carrying a stuffed pigeon. It was a prop for some recent publication that had not yet been taken back to the studios.
‘How about,’ he said, ‘sticking this up on that pipe?’ He pointed up at the hefty bit of pipework that ran along one wall, close to the ceiling. ‘And then ringing Maintenance and saying we just noticed it and we can’t get hold of it. Then just sit back and watch the fun. Yes?’
Five minutes later we sat looking in awe at the smallest and most athletic one climb onto a small table and up onto a chair just small enough to stand on the table. Slowly he attached the bird with tape and adjusted it to a most lifelike attitude. He then found he couldn’t summon the courage to climb down again but, with some help, he did.
The instigator rang Maintenance. ‘We’ve just noticed - up on the ceiling - on a pipe, there’s a pigeon. Can you do something?’ They said they’d be round in a few minutes.
Two of them turned up, preceded by one end of a ladder. The younger of the two, a mere boy, appeared to be an apprentice. The older one, heavily moustached, looked up at the pigeon and rubbed his chin.
‘Ah, yes,’ he murmured to the boy. ‘We’ve had a lot of this sort of thing.’ Very slowly they positioned the ladder against the pipe and a couple of feet from the bird.
‘You hold the ladder. Now, see, we do it like this.’ He went on, half whispering, ‘We go very, very slowly like this so that. . .’ and he began gingerly to climb, his voice fading as he concentrated on the target, getting closer and starting move his left arm outwards.
We sat with hands clamped over mouths and not daring to catch anyone’s eye. He stopped, and his left arm moved closer and closer to the bird. Then he pounced.
For how long he stood there gazing at the cold lump of feathers in his clasp I don’t know. Eventually, he turned and looked down at us and gave us his opinion.
‘It’s stuffed!’ he said.
Fortunately, the boy produced such an explosive snort of laughter that it smothered our own and we began expressing to each other our disbelief at the lengths some people will go to for a laugh.