A decade ago I went to a racing pigeon club meeting with my boyfriend of the time, who lived in a bungalow on a farm in the Midlands and kept a loft of Janssens, checkered blue racing pigeons resembling town pigeons that had spent too much time at the gym. The meeting was in a Portakabin on what I think was a carp fishery in the middle of winter. There were stands of damp alders outside, and a ferocious easterly that rocked the cabin with every squall. Inside was a hissing Calor gas fire, steamy fug on the windows, and a crowd of men sitting on plastic chairs. Apart from my boyfriend they were all over fifty. They wore padded fishing waistcoats, tracksuits, tattoos and leather jackets with pigeon badges, and they talked at length of feeding regimes, wind directions, release points, the trials of flying the north road. Old personal scores were raised and not settled, much was made of the misguided love of bird protectionists for murderous bloody hawks, and I was silent the entire time. I was fascinated by everything I heard, but for all the contribution I made, I could have been a pigeon. Though of course then I’d have been of far more interest to the men in the room.
