The gentle executioner.

I was recently in the country at my parents house celebrating my step-fathers birthday. I have tried to write about my time in the country before but whenever I do I find that whatever I have to say is boring and stilted and to be honest, it really is because nothing seems to happen in the country when I'm hanging out with my parents. It's a nice time, we do nice things, we might go for a nice drive, we might go for a nice meal, visit a pleasant little country market or a garage sale or two, drink cups of tea and smoke joints as we walk around the garden. It's lovely and I love it, but it is no way exciting and that is exactly what I like about it.

Although it can be very interesting. Things happen, but they seem to blend into everything and do not seem bizarre or out of the ordinary when sometimes, they really are. The 'Easter fair Dancing in the Street' for example, when they block off the main street with a truck and a guy with a sound system gets up and takes everybody through every popular dance routine that has ever existed, ever, and all the kids dance and all the adults drink and the whole town turns out and its really quite a scene come to think of it, you should check it out some time. I'd give you a blow by blow run down of what happens but its far too awesome to ever truly describe. Imagine hay bales and flannelet and 200 people doing Grease lightning, The Nutbush and the Macarena, drunk and badly. Wow, just thinking about it is blowing my mind.

But there's other stuff too, like how on my step-fathers birthday we did out traditional have a cup of tea and then walk around the garden when we found that the sparrow trap had caught some sparrows and then what came after.

Fist off, let me try and describe the weather, I have never been to the moors in Scotland but I imagine that they are like this. It wasn’t quite a drizzle and it wasn’t quite a mist (later I asked my step-father if there was a word to describe and he said it was a “drizzly mist” so, you know, thanks for that). How do I give you the impression of just how beautiful it was. I know, how about this? You know when you go outside and there seems to be moisture in the air but you don’t get wet and then a few minutes later you realize that moisture is collecting at the end of all your hairs and that all the loose fibers on your clothes are now adorned with a shiny new drop. It’s the kind of weather where if you were with someone you loved you would turn to them and notice that all the moisture is collecting at the end of their eye lashes and making them sparkle and you’d say to yourself “I’ll remember this for ever” and you would. It was that kind of weather. Beautiful, poignant and life affirming and all the plants glistened and shone like they were in a commercial photo shoot. The air was almost grey, but it was stunning, the temperature was just above bracing, crisp, but not cold.

Anyway, so we had drunk our tea and were walking around the garden smoking a joint. I had not been smoking any weed for a while so the beauty was flowing in and the pot heightened the experience no end. My parents ducks', Agnes and Madeline, were following us around. Presently we found ourselves down the back of their property where the ducks have their pen and where, at the moment, my folks were keeping their sparrow trap.

They have a sparrow trap because they don't like sparrows because they are over breeding and are threatening some of the local populations of bird life. The trap itself is a big cage with a trap door that they fly into but then can't fly out of. Four had flown in, and as it was meant, they were now trapped.

My step father went to get a plastic bag while I stood around and tried to help my mother scare the sparrows into one end of the trap. Presently my stepfather arrived and began reaching into the cage and grabbing the sparrows and stuffing them into the plastic bag. It sounds horrible and cruel but in fact he was gentle and calm, trying as hard as he could not to hurt them and was cooing at them, trying to calm them. 'Easy little fella', he'd say, 'You exhausted aren't you?' Soon he had all four in the bag so we reset the trap and walked up towards where the cars were parked. My mother suggested that we go and see of the corn in the veggie garden was ready to be picked while my stepfather started one of the cars and held the plastic bag of sparrows over the exhaust pipe. In about two minutes they were dead from carbon-monoxide poisoning. It was quick, clean and efficient.
He emptied the bag of now dead sparrows into the compost and we picked the corn.
The ducks followed us everywhere and they watched us the entire time. I couldn't help but wonder what they thought of it all.

The next morning I woke up to discover that my nephew had survived quite a serious car accident and we spent some time at the police station before we all went out to lunch. I'm not even close to joking.

And here's me saying that nothing ever happens in the country.