Years ago, when the legendary Terry Wogan manned the Radio 2 Breakfast Show, he invited listeners to contribute endings to the phrase “You know it’s going to be a bad day when…” One submission I recall was “you know it’s going to be a bad day when your child says Mum, did you know it was almost impossible to flush my teddy bear down the toilet.” Now, I knew it was going to be a bad day when I got home a couple of weeks ago and found this note shoved through the letter box:
Daisy and Mo have been at the bottom of our garden for about 3 years and I don’t think them leaving has got anything to do with the increase in feathered beings we’ve had in the garden since Lily departed for the great cat basket in the sky. I think it’s more to do with the fact that we’ve had a succession of wet and stormy winters. They’ve been sat outside the whole time, developing mouldy rashes in all sorts of scarecrow nooks and crannies, so I can see why a warm and dry French vineyard might seem a better option.
Anyway, true to the requirements of Scarecrow lore which decrees specific dates when scarecrows are allowed to wander, we got up on the morning of 1st of May to find the shed empty. Advertisements to fill the vacancy had been posted in all the best fields and it wasn’t long before we’d appointed Maisie Corncockle. Almost immediately her popularity was being indicated by beeping car horns from van drivers who were passing the garden and social media messages from adoring fans: “Wow – she’s a looker!” and “Will you bring her to Porthcawl so I can buy her hot chocolate with squirty cream?” being just two of the examples I had to stop Maisie replying to.
Were they disappointed I wonder to find that Maisie’s heart belonged to another? Ptolemy Corncockle arrived last week and for a few days all seemed well. The beans, peas and leeks are all planted and there has been no major crow activity so I was beginning to hope that the scarecrows might be effective and efficient members of staff. Experience, however, tempers my optimism.
We have had scarecrows at the bottom of the garden for about 20 years and in that time they have proved themselves incapable of simply scaring crows. They have appeared on television, been interviewed on the radio and featured in newspapers and magazines. The first incumbents, Trevor and Lucille, were given notice to move on when they kept producing baby scarecrows and the shed simply couldn’t accommodate all the offspring.
Rowli and Cati Puw regularly received postcards from abroad, letters from local schoolchildren and anonymous presents including, once, a Christmas pudding in July. Then Rowli was kidnapped one day by a man whose girlfriend had indicated she preferred Rowli to him. Even though he was returned to the garden sitting in the back seat of a police patrol car (with his seat belt fastened), Rowli never settled down again. There have been other residents of the shed and none of them have been content to lead a quiet life and just do their job. I have a feeling that there’s trouble brewing with Mr and Mrs Corncockle. Only today I noticed that Ptolemy has turned his chair slightly so he can glare at the drivers who are being less than respectful to Maisie, like the chap this morning who went even slower than the 20mph limit and shouted “Hello Darling – dump him and come home with me!”
Oh, Maisie.