One Young Fool in Dorset (22 page)

“Hey, man, I’ll have a go,” said Tony the Hippy.

He grabbed a fish, let himself into Gordon’s pen and
crouched down. Holding the fish firmly by the tail, he waggled it
in Gordon’s direction. Gordon eyed him warily from the other side
of the pen.

“He’s watching,” said Simon, “keep waggling!”

Gordon shrugged his shoulders, then started
lumbering towards Tony and the fish, his webbed feet slapping the
ground.

“Yes!” said Simon. “He’s interested! He’s coming
over! Keep waggling the fish!”

Gordon was gathering momentum and moving faster now,
heading for Tony and the fish, a gleam in his eye.

“Come on, man,” said Tony encouragingly. “You must
be starving, come and take a big bite.”

Gordon reached the fish, stretched out his neck …
and took a chunk out of Tony’s hand.

“Ow!” yelled Tony, jumping back with more energy
than hippies usually display. “Listen, you bloody over-sized
seagull, I was just trying to feed you!”

Tony needed first aid for the nasty cut that Gordon
had inflicted.

“Hey,” he told me much later, holding out his hand
for me to see. “I still have the scar.”

And Gordon still hadn’t been fed. Simon phoned the
vet again and told him the latest developments.

“Looks like you’ll have to force feed him,” said the
vet. “You’ll need to push the fish down his neck. About three or
four good-sized fish. Every day.”

This wasn’t good news for the staff or Gordon, but
it needed to be done. Simon and Tony worked out the best way to do
it, and it was a two-man job requiring sturdy gloves.

This was the procedure:

Using a board, herd Gordon into a corner of his
pen.

Grab Gordon’s neck with one hand, and his beak in
the other.

Kneel astride Gordon, to keep him still and his
powerful wings folded, whilst still holding onto his beak. (Gannets
have a wingspan of up to two metres, or six and a half feet.)

Pull his beak open, pointing up, so that the fish
will go straight down the neck.

Ram the fish down Gordon’s throat.

Poor Gordon. It was a terribly undignified operation
and can’t have been comfortable. However, it worked, and Gordon
grew stronger, although his temper never improved.

Simon and Tony hoped that, when his pond was filled
with water, Gordon might become more contented. They ran a hose
into the pen and began to fill the pond. Gordon backed away to the
far corner, glaring at the hose as though it was a vicious serpent.
Even when the pond was filled to the brim and the hosepipe removed,
he refused to come out of his corner.

“Hey man, what’s the matter with that dude now?”
asked Tony. “I thought he’d go and have a paddle at least.”

But Gordon hated his pond and wouldn’t go near
it.

The next surprise came the following day. Having
been force-fed several fish, Gordon was squirting all over the
place, and his pen was a mess. Tony decided to hose everything down
and pulled on his wellington boots and thick gloves in preparation.
He let himself into the pen.

Gordon glared at him and the hosepipe.

Tony switched on the water and aimed a jet at the
ground, washing Gordon’s messes away.

Gordon, shivering, shrank into the corner as far
away as possible. Tony needed to finish the job and did so as
quickly as he could, not wanting to distress the bird.

“Hey, you know what?” he remarked to Simon later. “I
reckon that gannet is afraid of water.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

Ridiculous it may have been, but Gordon the Gannet
turned out to be an anorexic, aquaphobic, human-hating, non-flying
seabird. How had he, a bird who wouldn’t fly and hated water,
survived in the wild at all? It was a puzzling question.

Gordon couldn’t be released; he had come to stay.
They drained the water out of his pond and he was much happier,
although he had to endure the daily hosing out of his pen. He never
fed himself and had to be force-fed daily.

Gannets live between 17 and 37 years so Gordon
became the longest staying permanent resident in the sanctuary,
even longer than Sandy the epileptic golden retriever or Pepper,
the limping, confrontational Jack Russell. When I arrived at the
sanctuary, Gordon had already been there some time, and he was
still going strong, slashing anyone who came too close, after I
left. I was never allowed near him as I was a casual worker and not
insured against his onslaughts.

How did I know Gordon’s story in such detail? I knew
because I had found my first ‘proper’ boyfriend, a fellow member of
staff at the sanctuary.

21
Tony the Hippy

Quick and Easy Sausage and Mash Pie

A
lthough Bournemouth was, and still is, a
favourite destination for the retired, it is also a centre for
language students. My school friends lived in the Poole district,
and I lived even further away, in Wareham, but Bournemouth was
where the action was, and where we could go to discos and meet
boys.

We had a number of favourite haunts where we’d go on
Friday and Saturday nights. Top of the list was probably Le Kilt,
where admission was often free for girls. We spent all week at
school planning and discussing what we were going to wear, then
arrived dressed up to the nines. There, as the music blasted out
James Brown and the Bee Gees, we met and danced with an assortment
of students from all over the world.

As Le Kilt was in Bournemouth, it was difficult for
me because I lived so far away. Luckily, Jo often invited me back
to her house and we would get ready together. Sometimes I stayed
the night, or I caught the milk train back to Wareham in the early
hours of the morning. It cost me nothing as I had a season ticket
because I caught the train to school every day.

We met a huge variety of foreign boys. I remember
one Libyan boy, who I dated once, giving me a present. I was really
pleased with it and took it home.

“
Ach,
what is that terrible smell?” asked my
mother soon after.

I sniffed the air.

“What does it smell like?” I asked.

“It smells like a very big old dog has sneaked into
the house and died,” she said.

I raised my eyebrows in surprise.

“Yes, like a very
smelly
dog,” she said,
wrinkling her nose. “You haven’t brought home a stray dog?”

“Of course not!”

“Humph! Something is making that smell.”

She prowled around the house, sniffing the air until
her nose led her up the staircase.

“It’s getting stronger!”

She quickened her pace then sniffed her way into my
bedroom.

“I found it!” she crowed in triumph, then pointed.
“What is that on your bed, may I ask?”

All heaped up, it
did
look a bit like a big
scruffy dog, or some other large animal. But it wasn’t. It was my
new Afghan coat.

For those who are unfamiliar with the Afghan coat, I
will explain. It is a sheepskin or goatskin coat made with the
fleece on the inside and the soft suede-like leather on the
outside. It is often exquisitely embroidered with highly coloured
silk thread. Afghan coats were first sold on London’s Kings Road in
1966, where they were discovered, worn and made famous by the
Beatles.

Good Afghan coats are cured and tanned
professionally. However, numerous bad imitations flooded the
market. These were coarsely embroidered and poorly cured. The
Afghan coat I was given was definitely one of the latter. Most of
the time it was inoffensive and smelt of nothing, but woe betide if
I wore it in the rain. Then it became a reeking, fetid monster. It
smelled so bad that my mother made me hang it in the garden shed;
it wasn’t allowed in the house.

I wonder whatever happened to that Afghan coat? It
became so lively after getting damp that it may well have walked
itself back to Afghanistan.

I had other colourful boyfriends who also gave me
strange exotic gifts, but I lost my heart properly for the first
time to Tony the Hippy, one of the permanent workers at the animal
sanctuary.

With hindsight, it was all very one-sided. I would
watch Tony as he mixed Sandy’s dog food, and my heart would lurch.
But Tony never noticed me.

“Hey, give this to Sandy,” he would say, passing me
the bowl.

If our fingers touched, it felt like an electric
spark had arced between our hands. I froze, savouring the
moment.

“For Sandy,” he repeated, looking at me as though I
didn’t have both metaphorical oars in the water.

“Yes. For Sandy,” I repeated.

I gulped and turned away, my face on fire.

Tony the Hippy wore his dirty blonde hair long and
he sported a bristly moustache like Peter Starstedt. Beads swung
around his neck and his jeans were flared and tattered. His floral
shirts bore slogans of peace. I thought he was wonderful. I would
find any excuse to work in the Special Care unit so I could be near
him, but he never noticed me.

Being a permanent member of staff, Tony lived
on-site in an old caravan. It was propped up on a pile of bricks,
knee-deep in weeds. When Tony was off-duty, I would hear the
strains of Bob Dylan or Joan Baez floating from his window, along
with wafts of strange-smelling cigarette smoke. Sometimes he’d
strum along to the music on his own guitar, and I would listen
mesmerised. But he never noticed me.

Then one day, a strange thing happened. It was
Tony’s day off and he was sitting on the doorstep of his caravan. I
passed, carrying a bag of fish destined for Gordon, the gannet. I
gave Tony a small smile, all I could manage being so shy.

“Hey, Vicky,” he said, “is that fish you’ve got
there? For Gordon?”

I nodded.

“What’s he got today? Mackerel?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, and tried to open the bag to
peer in.

“Gordon likes mackerel,” said Tony, making
conversation. “Well, as much as he likes any fish…”

Somehow, I was all fingers and thumbs and before I
knew it, the plastic bag had slipped from my grasp and the fish
spilled out and tumbled to the ground.

“Oh!”

Tony sprang forward and helped me capture the
slithery, scaly things and push them back into the bag.

We both stood up at the same moment.

“There you go, that’s the last one,” he said,
looking straight into my eyes.

For the first time, I gazed straight back,
unblinking.

“Has anybody ever told you that you have the most
beautiful, unusual green-coloured eyes?” he said, as though he’d
just made a new discovery.

No, nobody has ever told me that, but I’m not going
to admit it.

“Thank you.”

“Hey, I was wondering… What are you doing after work
tonight?”

I pretended to consider, but my heart was racing so
fast I was sure he could hear it.

“Um, nothing. I, um, I believe I’m free
tonight.”

And that’s how it all began. Romance blossomed over
a carrier bag full of mackerel. It wasn’t exactly how I imagined it
would happen; there were no sunsets, or butterflies, or birdsong,
just some smelly dead fish and a slimy carrier bag.

Tony and I quickly became inseparable. I began to
part my hair in the middle and even wore headbands and dangly
earrings. I embraced vegetarianism and wore faded flared jeans and
smocks. I would have taken up smoking weed in clay pipes but it
made me cough. On my days off and during my lunch breaks, I lounged
on the orange and purple geometric cushions in Tony’s caravan,
listening to Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.

Working at the animal sanctuary was always fun, but
now I just couldn’t wait to get to work every day. The first
pleasure of the day was opening my locker. Tony often scribbled
little notes, folded them in half and slotted them through the
crack in my locker door. Sometimes the note just had a silly joke,
like:

How do you know you’re in bed with an elephant?

Because of the ‘E’ embroidered on his pyjamas.

Hehehe!

Love,

T xxx

But other notes made my knees go weak, and I would
stuff those into my bra, next to my heart, to re-read a thousand
times that day.

Vicky, I couldn’t get to sleep last night thinking
about your green eyes.

Can’t wait to see you today,

All my love,

T xxx

Luckily, it was the school holidays, so I was there
most of the time. Tony and I held hands or embraced in secret, and
for a while, the sky became bluer, and the grass greener. I was
seventeen and in love, with the world at my feet.

Tony’s family lived in Birmingham, and I loved to
listen to the ‘Brummy’ twang in his voice. I teased him when he
used words and phrases unfamiliar to us southerners.

“Our kid is doing really well at school,” he
said.

“Our kid? You have a child?”

“No! Our kid is me younger brother.”

Then he’d tease me back when I used Dorset slang
words like ‘grockles’ meaning tourists.

Tony was several years older than I was, and
although he had qualifications, he didn’t know what he wanted to do
with his life. I was studying for my ‘A’ levels and planned to go
to Teacher Training College. I imagined Tony would stay in Dorset,
waiting for me to finish. Then I would come back and we would live
happily ever after.

Then one day, Tony dropped a bombshell that rocked
my teenage world.

“I’ve applied for university and been accepted.”

In those days, ‘Gap Years’ hadn’t been given the
name yet. Usually, when one left school, one immediately went to
university, college, or on to a chosen career. It was very unusual
for anybody to spend a year or more ‘experiencing’ the world before
they entered university or the serious world of work. Tony had
decided he needed some time out of education, which was why he was
working at the animal sanctuary, although I didn’t know that then.
I guess I thought that the animal sanctuary would be his
career.