A Somerset Lad

Is the collective term for pigeons a “flock,” or do they have something more obscure like crows and rooks and ravens?

Whatever the collective term, there were numerous pigeons sitting on the roof of a house. It was one of those local authority houses built in the 1950s; solidly-built with a good garden. It came from times when houses were built for people and not for profit. I suspected that had I gone around the house to the garden at the back, I would have found the loft that provided a home for the birds that were resting contentedly on the roof.

When I was young, there seemed to be two sorts of pigeons kept in lofts. There were the racing pigeons, bred for their stamina and speed, and the show pigeons, bred for their shape and plumage. At primary school, Mr Shield, who taught us art on a Wednesday afternoon and who had been a member of an RAF bomber crew in the Second World War, was a man who kept show pigeons. One week, he even brought some of them to school for us to draw, each in its own wicker carrier.

Once, when we were visiting a work colleague of my father, we were taken to visit the man’s loft. He talked to each bird as if it were human.

I remember a television play, perhaps as long ago as the 1970s or 1980s, because I remember preaching about it when visiting a church in Canada in 2001.

The play was set in the North of England, in an old heavy industrial area, and it was about a man who kept racing pigeons, something that was very popular activity in those industrial parts of England.

The man had worked hard all of his life, earning money, keeping his family, getting on with things. As he grew older he spent more and more time with his pigeons. When he finally reaches a crisis point his life he is challenged about the pigeons. He confesses that all through the years of his working life, it was in his pigeons that he found something that wasn’t just about work or about the house. In his pigeons, he had found a world outside of his ordinary daily existence. In the speed and the flight of his pigeons he had found a beauty he hadn’t found elsewhere.

Perhaps the pigeons on the roof bring a similar contentment to their owner.

Those of a certain age may remember the English folk singer Roger Whittaker, a distinctive voice with distinctive lyrics. One summer, as the end of the holidays approached, he annoyed my teenage self.

I could never ever feel as sanguine about cooler and shorter days as he did when he sang the song, The Last Farewell. His lyrics seemed to suggest autumn was something to be welcomed:

I shall watch the English mist roll in the dale

How could anyone enjoy watching mist roll through a valley?

On autumn mornings in our corner of Somerset, the mist is a blanket of greyness that lies across the low lying moorland. It spreads dampness over every surface it touches. It penetrates and chills and shows a reluctance to go elsewhere. If the temperature drops below zero, the mist might become freezing fog, making progress difficult and dangerous.

Perhaps Whittaker envisaged something gentler. Leaves of ochre, red and gold, the scent of bonfire smoke on crisp mornings, walks through lanes and smoke from cottage chimneys, seemed more the stuff of romantic notions of misty valleys. Damp November mornings in Somerset would hardly have inspired a song lyric.

Had Whittaker sung about mist in the summertime though, the song would have had an altogether different mood. If there had been mist rolling early in an early morning, it would have been the harbinger of a bright day with blue skies. Late summer mist along our Somerset lanes might be cool and damp but it will often fade to reveal lush green meadows or white fields of grain. Going through the mist, there might be glimpses of rabbits and pheasants running for cover from the oncoming car.

Mist can make familiar roads mysterious. Shapes change; houses passed every day have a different air about them. Concentrating on the way ahead, attention can be drawn to things that had been previously slipped by unnoticed. It seems odd that something that obscures things can sharpen awareness of their existence. Mist demands a sharpened concentration, an early morning drive on the M5 motorway can be filled with spectral shapes appearing from behind only to hurry ahead without thought for safety. Pale red lights can mark dark shadows ahead that take on the form of vehicles as you get near.

There is a paradox in the summer weather: mist is a shrouding, but also a foreshadowing of a glorious day. Autumn is just a foreshadowing of winter.

Cyclists going through the village now seem to regard the wearing of garish coloured Lycra as a necessity for riding a bicycle. Cycling is not the only physical activity that seems to require particular attire; judging by the high street stores, sportswear is a big industry.

An acquaintance from former times would have suggested no-one thus dressed could be considered to be participating in sport. He would have asserted that an activity could only be considered a sport if it could be undertaken wearing tweed.

While it was a comment that would always prompt smiles among those hearing it, there was always a suspicion that he was being serious. A young fogey, he delighted in wearing a tweed cap and jacket and corduroy trousers. He dressed  as writer P.G. Wodehouse’s character Bertie Wooster might have done if he had been invited to play a round of golf or to join a shoot.

If the wearing of tweed was the criterion for an activity to be considered sporting, then sport was the type of leisure that might be pursued by readers of Country Life magazine. The definition of sport would definitely have included hunting and shooting and fishing. Equestrian activity would be possible for the tweed wearer. Horse racing might demand silks for a professional jockey, how else might the riders have been told apart?  However, a country gentleman might have ridden in point-to-point in a tweed sports jacket and  a bowler hat.

Among other sports, golf would, of course, have been on the list, and bicycling would have been a possibility; as would have been the racing of motor cars.

Anything demanding the wearing of shorts would have been excluded from his idea of sport. He was persuaded that ski-ing was possible, but insisted that it could not be considered if it meant wearing luridly coloured, skin-tight body suits.

Indoors, snooker would have seemed a natural sporting activity, although he would probably have thought billiards to be a more appropriate activity for the tweed-clad gentleman. He never mentioned darts.

Definitions of sport vary, but if strength, speed and agility are the standards of the athletic skills that are required, how many activities considered to be sporting are really sports?

But if sport is not about speed, strength or agility, what is it about? If darts and snooker are considered to be sport, then is the definition about physical dexterity?  Is the potential for wearing tweed the real test?