Parrot

February 7th 2007

“Piss off,” I said.
Nothing.
“Piss off,” I repeated.
Again nothing.

“Piss off,” I said again, for about the fiftieth time.
The parrot, as it did on the other forty nine occasions, just looked at me dumbly.
We are looking after the parrot for the Parsley-Heys over he road while they’re on holiday. Usually when they go away The Trouble looks after the parrot by simply calling in at their house every day and topping up its water and millet or whatever it is that parrots eat, but this time she and Jill Parsley-Hey decided it should stay with us for the two weeks that the Parsley-Heys will be away, ‘to give it a change of scenery’. I pointed out that the scenery it would be seeing, i.e. our living room through the bars of its cage, would be more or less the same as the scenery it normally saw, i.e. the Parsley-Heys’ living room living room through the bars of its cage, unless of course she planned to take it on a tour round the house every now and then or open its little door and let it fly around free, but she told me not to be so pedantic.
I wouldn’t normally waste my time on trying to teach a parrot to say piss off but the weather has been so cold just recently that it’s hard to get out and I’ve been struggling for something to do. Plus the fact that when I tried to break a small piece off the parrot’s cuttlefish to see if I could use it as a substitute for French chalk it tried to bite me.
The parrot can definitely talk. It can say “Have a nice day.” and “Hilary Clinton for President.” (Jill Parsely-Hey is an American) And it is obviously still capable of learning new words, because until very recently it only said “Have a nice day“ and “Clinton for President,” Jill only having taught it to add a ‘Hilary’ to the latter phrase since Hilary Clinton entered the Presidential race a short while ago. But it can’t say piss off yet. I tried again.
“Piss off.”
Nothing.
“Piss off.” Nothing.
“Piss off”
“Hilary Clinton for President. Squawk.”
“Piss off.”
That last “Piss off” was me telling the parrot to piss off, not me trying to get the parrot to say piss off.
Just then I heard The Trouble coming downstairs and quickly sat down with the newspaper. The Trouble came into the room.
“Who were you just telling to piss off?” she asked.
“Tony Blair,” I said. I tapped the newspaper. “Lying through his teeth again.”
“Well try not to say it in front of the parrot, will you,” she admonished me. “It might start repeating it.”
“Piss off,” I said, under my breath.

Ignore this if you have already read it. My books Dear Air 2000 and Football Crazy are now in print. They are priced at £8.99 each and are available from Amazon, but readers of my blog can buy them direct from me for £7.50 including p & p. Just send me a cheque and I will send the book/books by return.

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Terry Ravenscroft, 19 Ventura Court, Ollersett Avenue, New Mills, High Peak, SK22 4LL

Dear Air 2000

Football Crazy

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Razzamatazz

Hi. I’m Terry Ravenscroft, I’m aged 67 and…..whoooah, come back, I’m not ready to have the lid nailed down on my coffin just yet. Anyway I’m a very young 67. (About five years ago I went to see Pulp at the Manchester Evening News Arena. I was older than everyone else by at least 35 years. The eighteen-year-old next to me asked me if I’d ever been to the venue before. I replied ‘Yes I saw George Formby here once’. She’d never heard of him.) This blog is going to be about my life and the way I see things. Before I retired I was a comedy scriptwriter for Les Dawson and Smith and Jones amongst others so there’s a sporting chance that some of the things I write will be funny. One of the reasons I’m writing this blog, although by no means the only reason, is because I have a website www.topcomedy.co.uk which I hope you will log on to occasionally. I have yet to meet anybody who doesn’t like Dear Air 2000…. My hobbies are walking, playing crown green bowls, watching football, birdwatching , cooking, and, according to The Trouble, moaning. Oh, and I have a thing about Kristen Scott Thomas. A couple of people I will be mentioning from time to time are The Trouble and Atkins Down The Road. The Trouble is my wife. I don’t call her The Trouble because it’s cockney rhyming slang for ‘wife, trouble and strife’, but because she has the habit of starting sentences, especially to me, with the words ‘The trouble with you is….’ Then goes on to complete the rest of the sentence with words like ‘you never listen when I’m talking to you’ or ‘you never see the other person’s point of view’ or some such other frivolous complaint. Atkins Down The Road is my best friend and lives, not surprisingly, down the road. I started a weblog a couple of years ago but stopped doing it to write a novel about golf called ‘A Good Walk Spoiled.’ If you want to read the weblog it can be found on my website, if you want to read the novel it can be found on my other website, Razzamatazz, at www.razza.fsnet.co.uk along with lots of other things. Hi. I’m Terry Ravenscroft, I’m aged 67 and…..whoooah, come back, I’m not ready to have the lid nailed down on my coffin just yet. Anyway I’m a very young 67. (About five years ago I went to see Pulp at the Manchester Evening News Arena. I was older than everyone else by at least 35 years. The eighteen-year-old next to me asked me if I’d ever been to the venue before. I replied ‘Yes I saw George Formby here once’. She’d never heard of him.) This blog is going to be about my life and the way I see things. Before I retired I was a comedy scriptwriter for Les Dawson and Smith and Jones amongst others so there’s a sporting chance that some of the things I write will be funny. One of the reasons I’m writing this blog, although by no means the only reason, is because I have a website www.topcomedy.co.uk which I hope you will log on to occasionally. I have yet to meet anybody who doesn’t like Dear Air 2000…. My hobbies are walking, playing crown green bowls, watching football, birdwatching , cooking, and, according to The Trouble, moaning. Oh, and I have a thing about Kristen Scott Thomas. A couple of people I will be mentioning from time to time are The Trouble and Atkins Down The Road. The Trouble is my wife. I don’t call her The Trouble because it’s cockney rhyming slang for ‘wife, trouble and strife’, but because she has the habit of starting sentences, especially to me, with the words ‘The trouble with you is….’ Then goes on to complete the rest of the sentence with words like ‘you never listen when I’m talking to you’ or ‘you never see the other person’s point of view’ or some such other frivolous complaint. Atkins Down The Road is my best friend and lives, not surprisingly, down the road. I started a weblog a couple of years ago but stopped doing it to write a novel about golf called ‘A Good Walk Spoiled.’ If you want to read the weblog it can be found on my website, if you want to read the novel it can be found on my other website, Razzamatazz, at www.razza.fsnet.co.uk along with lots of other things.

2 thoughts on “Parrot”

  1. A Miner Bird in St Agnes, Cornwall, circa ’72 sat on its perch in the doorway of a surfer shop near the beach. As people walked in it said “Fuck off”. I found this hilarious at 15. Even more so now. I spent 10 days there on a school surfing holiday. By day 9 it was trying to say “Bollocks”. It came out a squawky “Hollocks” but I was impressed with my teaching skills.

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