Low Flying Sparrows

Vladimir walked along the pavement carrying what looked
suspiciously like a case of wine. Samuel generally encountered
the old codger laden with bagfulls of beetroot for his bortsch,
or clutching a bottle of vodka in a large boney hand.
  "Having a party Vladimir?" Samuel questioned, smiling.
  "Hi Sam. N-o. It's for the birds."
  "Birds?" said Samuel mesmerised, unaware that Vladimir kept a
secret menagerie or aviary. Closer study of the box Vladimir was
carrying revealed it to be a case of Scotch.
  "Scotch, for birds?"
  "It keeps them quiet."
  "What do you mean, quiet?"
  "I feed it to them."
  Samuel paused to absorb the details of this unusual activity.
  "As in leaving out breadcrumbs and dinner scraps ?" Samuel plumbed,
in an effort to comprehend matters more clearly.
  "Yes."
  "What on earth for?"
  "So I can get some sleep in the mornings."
  "Right," Samuel nodded, unconvinced.
  In fact Vladimir had something of a reputation for mild
eccentricity, and this gem of news was little reassurance that he
wasn't a trifle touched in the head.

  It should be explained that Vladimir was one of those post-World
War Two septuagenarian expatriots who had never quite made it back
to the Russian Motherland, in spite of the demise of the Soviet
Commissars and Thought Police. Somehow Vladimir had remained stuck
in London, where he eked out a meagre existence teaching the Russian
language and the balalaika. It was a tough existence but then
Russians seem to thrive on hardship.
  After a night on vodka Vlad's pallor would turn a deathly white;
the two pink, sunken, eyeballs in his head staring out from their
sockets. This state of alcoholic after-glow was usually accompanied
by a bellicose attitude brought on by one tsunami of a hangover.
The mixture of red blood cells with Vladimir's alcohol stream also
caused frequent temporary lapses into irrational behaviour; such as
the occasion when he bit the ear off a dog which persistently barked
at his heels. Another time Vladimir consumed a pound of raw Spanish
onions after the landlord of The Drunken Peasant ran out of the
pickled variety.

  Vladimir lived in a tiny basement flat more suited to leprechauns
than human beings. Along with his balalaika, and shelves overladen
with books and papers on Russian literature, were two ancient relics
of typewriters; one for typing in English, the other for typing
cyrillic. The bedroom of his tiny domicile overlooked a long rear
garden occasionally trimmed back by the landlords when it took on
an overgrown Amazonian appearance. It was wonderful to have such
unkempt wildernesses and naturally wild space in London, but not if
you had to live with it. In Vladimir's case the wilderness had become
something of a nuisance; attracting all sorts of wildlife including
foxes, frogs, and flocks of birds which interrupted his morning
sleep. Normally this would have been of no great concern to the aged
Russian, since inebriation and teflon coated brain cells would have
kept Vladimir comatose throughout the bird chatter. However, Vlad
was currently earning an extra crust by strumming his balalaika in
a murky Russian night club somewhere in the vicinity of Highgate
or Hampstead. So sleep and recuperation meant everything.

  "So what do you do with the whisky?"
  "Well," said Vladimir pensively. "Just before I go to bed I take
some old bread and sprinkle the whisky over so that the bread is
moist. Then I lay the crusts outside my bedroom window."
  "Ah!" exclaimed Samuel, a comprehending smile crossing his face.
It was enough to make any self-respecting Scotsman turn in his
sporran.
  "I could use vodka," Vladimir continued. "But it would be a waste
of a good thing. No?"
  "Oh yes. Definitely," Samuel agreed, lying through his teeth in
deference to Vladimir's potential for lapsing into loopiness.
  So far as Samuel was concerned neat vodka was a tasteless liquor,
and one might just as well imbibe lighter fuel or surgical spirit.
Vodka was fine in potent cocktails which gave your head an evil
punch next morning. But to drink on its own? Not unless you were
desperate.
  Under the Commissars vodka had been a sort of staple to keep the
mind anaesthetised against the drudgery of a totalitarian existence,
and was conjoured up from anything the inventive distillers could
lay their hands on. Waste paper, old tyres, leaky rainboots, and even
potatoes and rye. As for the fat cat Commissars, they quaffed the
odourless lunatic juice alongside pudding basins of best beluga
caviar, while the general populace had to make do by accompanying
their bread and pork belly rations with vodka. That is if they hadn't
missed the queues for their food rations due to a blinding hangover.
  "Does it do the trick?" Samuel finally asked.
  "Y-e-s," Vladimir looked incredulousy. "Why you think I sacrifice
good Scottish visky to mere animals?"

  Samuel thought nothing more about Vladimir's eccentric bird trick
until later that Summer when some inter-departmental manoeuvrings
meant that Samuel had to work a night shift for several weeks;
arriving back at Albert Road between two and three o'clock each
morning to sleep.
  It took him at least two days to get used to the idea of snoozing
while the rest of the world was going to work. And then there were
those bothersome interruptions like the morning milkfloat doing its
rounds; screaming children running to catch the school bus; and
urchins being hauled by their ears towards a day of education, their
mothers and fathers probably wishing they could swap parenthood
for a long-term prison sentence.

  On the third day Samuel was awoken at first light by the dawn
chorus, and birds fluttering in the back garden. He looked at the
clock and moaned. It was four thirty. The Dragon remained slumbering
peacefully while Samuel tossed and turned, and variously buried his
head beneath the pillow or plugged his ears with the odd digit.
Nothing really worked satisfactorily but eventually sheer tiredness
took hold and he drifted off to sleep.
  When he awoke Samuel had the demeanour of a sore bear deprived of
its winter hibernation. Guile and cunning were called for he decided,
and began to trawl his sleepy neurones for some inspiring way to deal
with the noisy birds in the garden. Poison? No, a neighbourhood
littered with dead birds might draw too much attention. He ruled out
electrocution too, on the grounds that the blue flashes of frying
sparrows might raise an eyebrow or two among the neighbourhood's
animal lovers. There was the possibility of an airgun too, but that
was dismissed since the process would require the abandonment of
valuable shut-eye in order to squint down the sights. And then the
penny dropped. Vladimir's masterful bird quietening technique.

  Before Samuel arrived for his evening shift on the fourth day he
slipped into the local off-licence and bought a large bottle of the
their cheapest McHaggis whisky. The type that boat builders and
decorators prefer for stripping varnish from woodwork, and which
spontaneously ingites in sunlight. Samuel also acquired a stale loaf
of bread from the sandwich shop, much to the amazement of the staff
who clearly thought the customer standing before them was absolutely
deranged. Especially when Samuel offered to pay.
  The little plain faced cockney girl looked at Samuel in wide-eyed
disbelief. After a moment's pause, which seemed like an age, she
called out to her manager:
  "'Eeya, Mista Cohen? I've got this funny geeza 'eeya who wants to
buy some stayl bread."
  A face popped round a distant corner of the counter and looked in
Samuel's direction.
  "Sugarplum, if the man wants to buy stale bread, then we'll sell
him stale bread. His money is as good as anyone else's." Then as
suddenly as the manager's face had appeared it evaporated again.
  "Customer's always right," Samuel grinned.
  As he took his change Samuel looked straight at the girl and with a
deadpan face advised her: "It's okay, my spaceship's parked round the
corner."
  "'Eeya wher've they let you arrt from? You ough'a be locked up."
  "Don't worry it's got padded restraints inside," Samuel added
finally as he walked out of the shop, leaving the girl close to
gobsmacked by her brief encounter with the Wimbush kind. Quite what
story the girl would tell her friends was anyone's guess, but
Samuel chuckled at the thought.

  Back at Tweedales Mrs Platt, Samuel's superior, did not approve
of the naked bottle of amber nectar perched on his desk.
  "Samuel, Sir Hector would not approve of that."
  "Is McHaggis not to his taste then?" Samuel grinned.
  "I wouldn't know. But you and I know what he's like about employees
who take to the bottle."
  Indeed, one could have been forgiven for thinking that Sir Hector
was an evangelist for the temperance movement, such were the Company
missives and memos about alcoholic intoxication, and its effect on
work and morals. Undoubtedly Sir Hector's worries on this count were
based upon experience of his idiot nephew Algernon Bailey; the
fribblesome public-school twit who was heir to company's corporate
throne, and currently banished to a distant corner of the Tweedales
empire where he could do the least possible harm and keep out of
Sir Hector's way.
  Momentarily Samuel thought of explaining to Mrs Platt that the
whisky was not destined for human consumption or the medicine cabinet,
but for an entirely different humanitarian purpose. But trying to
explain such unorthodox happenings would probably have phased
straight-laced Mrs Platt completely, so Samuel let matters rest and
hid the bottle of McHaggis from public view without more ado.

  As Samuel journeyed home at the end of his night shift - in a taxi
generously supplied by Tweedales - his mind turned to the grand
experiment he was about to perform. Who would have thought he'd be
trying to drug animals with booze, and that the answer to his sleep
deprivation problems would come from an aged Russian emigree ?
  In the kitchen the loaf fell from its plastic wrapper with a heavy,
tell-tale thud which screamed: 'I'm well past my sell-by date, don't
buy me.' With great difficulty Samuel sawed off three slices the
size of family bibles and placed these on a dinner plate to be
anointed with whisky. The bread was so stale that it took a while
for the McHaggis to soak in, after which Samuel opened the kitchen
window and placed the slices on the sill.

  So successful was Vladimir's anti-avian knock-out trick that Samuel
didn't awake till ten o'clock next morning, by which time school
brats were banished from the streets, and bird-life seemed to have
vacated itself from the environs of the Wimbush residence. Indeed,
for the next few days Samuel felt wonderfully refreshed after his
slumbers and began to feel that he was a match for any negative waves
Tweedales could throw at him.
  To keep the birds away from the house Samuel erected a make-shift
bird table on a post in the middle of the back garden, and each
morning he inspected the remains of the bread to gauge his success.
And then the tide seemed to turn. Gradually Samuel found himself
adding more bible sized slices of bread every few days, and the
contents of the McHaggis began to dwindle alarmingly too.
  The Dragon, who had supported the adoption of Vladimir's ingenious
idea, began to report that the birds were becoming more active each
morning, and Samuel would be wakened annoyingly at around six
o'clock by bird chatter. He began to wonder if the whisky was potent
enough for the job. Or could it be that Dulwich's bird population was
becoming immune to the alcoholic snacks served up by the Wimbush
household for breakfast each day ?

  For a week Samuel switched to vodka and gin without any noticeable
abatement of bird song, or improvements to his morning sleep. The
whole thing was becoming an expensive exercise too, and the sandwich
shop - believing that Samuel truly was a lunatic who needed humouring
- now donated its stale bread for free. In desperation Samuel tried
some sickly sweet sherry for a week. He toyed with miniature bottles
of liqueur - Schnapps, Sambucca, Tia Maria - but all to no avail.
  The last option was a bottle of crusted port given to Samuel the
previous Christmas by a work colleague. He'd been saving the port
for a very special occasion; crusted port being highly palatable and
moreish. The search for a good sleep, however, was more pressing
and Samuel sacrificed his precious treasure; staining eight thick
slices of bread and placing them on the bird table before retiring
to slumber.

  At about seven o'clock he was awakened by a tremendous commotion
from the back garden. Seething with frustration Samuel launched
himself from the bed and threw open the bedroom curtains in a mad
rage. Before him was a flock of birds sqauwking and squabbling
drunkenly over possession of the bread. Every bird in Dulwich must
have been present, and the scene would not have looked out of place
in Hitchcock's film The Birds. Those birds that couldn't land on the
crowded bird table circled, filling the sky with darkness. The ones
which had eaten their fill hobbled and flopped round on the grass
inebriated. Here and there low flying sparrows that couldn't make it
over the privet hedge lay comatose, waiting for the effects of the
crusted port to wear off. And still more birds were arriving in the
garden by the minute.
  "Be off, the lot of you!" Samuel screamed, opening the window and
waving his arms furiously. "Shoo! Shoo!"
  The birds continued to do chirp and sing, just as they had done
each morning since the dawn of history. And neither Samuel Wimbush
nor alcoholic beverages were ever going to stop them.

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