"With a little patience you can teach this bird to say anything" be added.

The young man winced at the price but he had a quick think! The girl of his dreams had been disinterested, but now an unusual and expensive gift like this - especially if he could teach it to recite a love poem - could have her falling into here arms.

He bought the bird and concentrated on teaching it to recite "How do I love thee!

He manoeuvred the girl into inviting him to her house for dinner and arranged to have the glamorous parrot delivered to her early that day. Just before leaving for her house on the night of the dinner invitation he rang her and said "How did you like my present?"

So let me explain that in those days, life centred around an area of a few square miles. People who lived twenty miles away were strangers - they even talked differently. So our Show Day was a time to get together, meet old friends, in general, anything goes.

I will always remember one of the last Shows I attended before I left home to conquer the world (one of my many failures). We held our Shows on the village church grounds - we had a couple of marquees erected for the birds, and around them in a huge circle were carts with farm produce, trestles set up with large cases of ale, others with cakes and sandwiches, and lemonade for the kids; not forgetting the gaily painted gypsy caravan with its polished brass fittings, black and white horses tied to the fence behind it, with their gleaming harness and all the bells attached..

And also there was the gypsy lady with the golden earrings and bangles to tell the ladies their fortunes.. Sixpence for a pocket full of dreams.

It was a beautiful English Mid Summer day. People were arriving in motor cars, horses and buggies, some walking, and even a horse drawn charabanc from a nearby village. The girls had on their new summer dresses and straw hats tied with coloured ribbons and the boys with their new corduroy trousers and black shiny boots. Despite the warning from their parents "Don't do this of don't do that" they were going to do it anyway.

In the marquee all the birds were being prepared for the judges. Firstly, were the parrots of all descriptions; of course this was in the days when there was no restrictions on bringing parrots into the country - Britain being a country of ports with a tremendous Merchant Navy. Sailors always brought parrots home with them. They bought them in places all over the world. Sometimes the birds had to spend six months in the foc's'le with the ship's crew and would gather a vocabulary that would peel the paint off a brick wall.

We had pigeons of all shapes and sizes - some with so many feathers over their heads you could not see their eyes or beaks - incapable of rearing their young, Racing pigeons, Doves, Pouters, others I cannot remember.

Poultry of all kinds - heavy breeds, light breeds, red, black, white, speckled, name it and it was there. Then the beautiful English Game fighting cocks - a mixture of black, red and gold feathers. Yet for all their beauty, the breeders still fought them. Even though it had been illegal for decades, fighting them was all so matter of fact. I don't think the village Bobby knew it was unlawful. And then what seemed most important at the time, the Budgie...

At that time we were divided into two groups - the Purists who wanted to breed the standard and the Heathens who wanted to breed a bigger bird. Sinless Syd, the Vicar, was a Purist - he said it was wrong to try and alter the shape and size of something God had created. Then there was the Heathens. I was one of those who, in our ignorance and perseverance, bred some of the oddest shaped birds you have ever seen.

We all knew from old Mendel that elements worked in pairs. Prior to 1880 when he wrote it down for the world to understand, an element was a single unit. Twenty years after his death that was accepted and the name 'element' was changed to 'gene'.

So we called the two genes Plus and Minus. So when we mated a large headed cock to a small headed hen and bred a big headed bird, we knew it carried the normal headed Gene which we called A Minus.

You can imagine some of the strange birds we bred. Still, if you bred a bird with a big head and a small body, someone would always have a small headed bird with a large body and you had a sale.

I put a dozen birds in just for sale. Old Sinless had a couple of very nice standard birds for show. I did ask him if he had soaked them in holy water overnight - he wasn't having any and he just muttered something and left.

10a.m. and the Judges started work. The ladies headed for the Gypsy Caravan - the men already being into the amber fluid. So except for a screaming oath from the parrot section, all was quiet. I wandered over to the Fowler Brothers, Jim and Sol, who were having a go at my old mate Nobby. It was at a time when a lot of breeders were suffering a lot of feather loss. Nobby was one of them. They said he was making a feather pillow every morning. Sol was telling him he had a cure for all feather problems. In fact with the recipe he could make it possible to grow feathers on a concrete path.

I didn't believe him but wasn't going to argue, (he owed me one pound Stud Fee for a mating to my Champion Labrador Retriever Dog) - what we do for money ! But Nobby was desperate. Sol said "Just ask Jim here - his wife had alopecia and her hair was dropping out in clumps - her head looked like a doormat with holes in it. I made up a batch for her and in six weeks she looked like a "yeti". He couldn't leave it alone, he had to destroy old Nobby. He said "Just ask the shearer - he was shearing and had to stop because he had two safety pins, a yard of elastic and a bra strap in his shears - that's when he knew he was shearing Jim's wife.

"The judging was over and I went to sell my birds and there was an excited Vicar - he actually spoke to me. He said "I've won!" I asked him "What was the going price for a Judge?" I was just selling my birds and the Judge turned up demanding to know what I had said about him.

I sold my birds for thirty bob, minus two shillings and six pence for the Church. The kids let Sol's half a dozen Rhode Island Red hens out of their pen - last seen screaming across the Village Green being chased by five little villains and three dogs. If Sol ever got them back they would have some funny shaped eggs!! (to be continued) (Courtesy
African Lovebird & Foreign Parrot Soc of Qld Inc Box 425 PO Nanango  Qld. 4615 Australia)