It is no use hanging onto the shirttails of some long dead Englishmen or
some very much alive Irishman. You are landed with a consignment of Tipplers
and from day number one they are yours. The odds are that you will ruin them
because you will never have the dedication involved behind these strains.
The British Army administration knew how to deal with awkward soldiers.
Just a few soldiers would sometimes get together and become a nuisance and
dared to defy the authority of the officers. Brave men, they so often were,
good fighters, but as a clique they were unmanageable and they undermined
the discipline of the British army.
The Mecca of Tippler flying sport was Sheffield England. It was created in
Poverty and extremely hard times. Many men took to Tippler contesting
because they could not afford the expenses of the more lucrative sport of
racing pigeons.
It is written that when a man no longer does anything just for fun, then he
is tired of life. Men prefer "mumbo jumbo" rather than logic. There is no
logical reasons why men keep pigeons and there is no hobby that is more
afflicted with Mumbo jumbo and lack of logic than pigeon keeping.
My kit of 55 dropped all together after quite a good fly. There they all
were on top of my loft waiting for me to open the door and let them in. I
could have had them all inside in just a couple of minutes, but I had the
loft to clean out, the water to change. Anyway, it would do no harm to let
them bounce about in the warm sunshine at 9:15 AM in August.
The World is full of unhappy who do not know what they want but will never
be happy until they get it. Very, very few men are ever allowed the time to
become dedicated to a hobby. It is to my disgust that so many men want to
make a commercial enterprise out of what should be a simple hobby or just
flying for pleasure.
In more than 40 years of writing I have had many letters, conversations and
phone calls from men who were born and raised in countries far away from
England. The experience has mostly been good - even if conducted in broken
English.
It is remarkable how a simple request from Alvin Simon of Baltimore has
brought to my mind a wide range of experiences. The subject of relocating is
pretty well the same as locating and imprinting very young pigeons.
It is a great help if at the new location there are already a lot of pigeons
that are established and used to flying.
People of Sheffield, England, were evicted from so called slum properties
and re-housed in high rise flats during the 1950's and 1960's. Dwelling in
one of these flats, a family had no back yard or personal back garden.
Zoologically speaking, these flats were totally unsuitable for raising kids.
Where could a man or a kid keep a few pigeons?
A man does not need to be an Apache Indian to read signs. On my visits to my
old place, a smallholding well away from dwellings, I often detect the stink
of foxes or cats. Both are disgusting stinks and they remind me that these
predators are nocturnal visitors to my loft area. It would not be advisable
to leave any pigeons out all night down there.
