I stared at the page, knowing what I wanted to say, but unable to find a story, the right words, or some way to give form to the nebulous idea. I had written a few sentences and deleted them just as quickly. They weren’t right somehow. Eventually, I took the hint, closed the page and watched, once again, the video of my first waltz in decades. If I couldn’t write, at least I could smile.

Eventually, I decided to write about pigeons instead of what I’d had in mind. Not as odd an idea as it may seem. Stuart and I had been talking about them a while ago as he had not realised just what amazing creatures they are. I had held my first pigeon when I was very small. Great uncle Wilfred had a pigeon loft at the bottom of the garden and had let me hold a handful of squabs while he cleaned out their nest-box… baby birds with closed eyes and a few yellow tufts of down. I never forgot the feel of their skin, the dark smudges of their closed eyes and the smiling, open beaks waiting blindly for food.

Day-old squabs. Image: Krishnaraj Barvathaya at Wikipedia (CCS4.0)

Years later, my father kept racing pigeons and Waterloo Lofts had something of a reputation for breeding winners in the pigeon-racing world. The birds would be trained by taking them, say, thirty miles away in a basket before releasing them to find their way home. Apart from the odd bird who fell foul of guns, wires and poisoned grain on the way, they always came back.

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