I want to tell you about a friend of mine. Of course I can't actually call him a friend as such, he doesn't get on well with anyone, but I suppose I'm the nearest thing he's got to someone who can remain in his company and not lose an eye.
His name's Frank and he's a pigeon. Dead Frank, we call him. He's called Dead Frank because of his disposition and the fact that he's been hit by numerous buses and mauled by a rottweiller and, if you can believe him, a bear and is just too bloody stubborn to believe he couldn't live through all that.
He's not a handsome chap.
I'm one of the very few people he can just about trust and leave intact because we do each other favours. I let him sleep in my spare pigeon loft and get him food and beer now and then and he sometimes, when he's feeling generous, acts as muscle when I need to put the fear up those scrotes that try to rip me off in my "business" dealings.
He looks like a chewed rock. He's lost half his beak, all of his toes, most of his feathers and his sense of humour.
The other day, he swears blind, he discovered a lion limping and exhausted and on the verge of collapse. His instinct was to beat the living crap out of it but then he noticed that the lion had a thorn stuck painfully in his paw.
Feeling a rare burst of sympathy (if you knew him you'd know how rare that is) he refrained from the beating and instead said, "Grow up, you girl!" And left him to it.
Later that day Dead Frank was cornered by a gang of ravens (yeah, those ravens, Tower of London Posse) who "didn't like his face" or some such bollocks excuse and started laying into him.
"Fuckers had tools!" Dead Frank shouted at my face when he told me this ale. "Fucking shivs! Bastards!"
But then the lion showed up and a couple of ravens shat themselves but the lion just sat down and made no move to intervene.
"Help us out, mate," Dead Frank used his most friendly of manners. "I'll get you a pie and a pint, yeah? Be a pal?"
But the lion told him in no uncertain terms to "Fuck off".
The ravens grinned and started moving towards finishing their bloody work but they didn't realise one very important thing. No one, but no one, tells Dead Frank to fuck off.
The lion suddenly found himself facing an enraged, half-chewed, pigeon shaped rock and was kicked halfway down The Strand and beaten bloody.
The ravens were long gone by then and have avoided Dead Frank ever since.
But Dead Frank holds a grudge, see. That boy won't let anything go.
His first act of revenge is being carried out today. He's going to be perched on London Bridge waiting for The Queen to pass underneath and he's going to try and let one go, as it were.
He's been a bit constipated of late though so I hope he doesn't explode or anything.
So yeah, watch out for that on the news.
