The health food shop and the pigeon

Hey 2006! You crept on me rather quickly and to be honest with you I am kind of relieved. 2005 has had its fair share of traumas both personal and not, although to be fair it was also really wonderful too in many ways.

It heralded the start of a love affair with the Big Apple which i think will last a lifetime and it also gave me a chance to set foot on the creaking treadboards of the Edinburgh Fringe once more and for that i am indebted to the guys at Act Two. I have made some wonderful friendships with them which were firmly bonded in that one week of madness in Scotland.

And 2006 what do you have in store for me?! Well to start with the countries and places i plan to visit this year and in no particular order are Copenhagen, Germany, Rome, Lisbon, Jersey and Brazil too!!! Woo hoo!!! So a pretty good start all round and the rest will become clear as the year unfolds....

Anyway having not blogged for a little while something happened yesterday which really made we want to note it down. I was in Holland and Barratt (a health food shop buying some vitamin B complex stuff, my theory is that this not only calms me down during periods of crazy madness but it also really helps my migraines...) and was at the checkout paying for my goods when a pigeon flew in through the open door flapped about in a mad panic and made his way to the window display and proceeded to REALLY panic when it realised it couldn't get back out. The assistant who was serving me couldn't get out of behing the counter quick enough! She was so damn nervous about the pigeon and asked in a panicked and squeaky voice if anyone would help her.

Now i hate pigeons with a passion and I really didn't think that i was brave anough to hold onto it and get it outside so there was a few seconds of total silence amongst the reluctant shoppers until finally they were forced to speak and tell her they too were not brave enough to pick up the damn pigeon.

Anyway the shop assistant was told to get a towel and drape it over the poor animal - she got her coat and yours truly felt brave enough to throw it over the 'beast with wings' whilst extremely reluctantly the nervous man behind me (who was buying vast amounts of Zinc) volunteered to pick up the bird. Well the little rascal kept moving about (the bird not the man) and so the shop assistant 'helpfully' told me to lift the display boards off the window so i could get closer. In the end the bird calmed down sufficiently enough for the man to grab it and gently take it outside. It really surprised me how calm the pigeon became in his hands and how the guy actually stood outside with it in his hands for a few moments before releasing it into the air.

So from a normal setting where you go in and buy your stuff and walk back out, to a moment inside the shop where everything changes and a conversation with strangers sets in and you pull togther to make something work. I walked out of the shop thinking about whether anyone else inside would remember that very odd and slightly panicky moment when a pigeon flew into a shop.