How Mum’s pigeons clipped my wings!

LIVING in Brighton in the mid-Fifties, I had just completed my RAF service and was seeking employment. As I was preparing for a job interview at Portsmouth, my doting mother helped me with the finishing touches, flicking around my best suit with a clothes brush and lovingly patting down my unruly hair.

As I left the house, I was targeted by the local pigeons, who splattered me all over.

I thought I knew my mother so well and believed she would say: ‘Oh, Jonny! Let me get a wet cloth and sponge your suit.’

But no! She said instead: ‘Oh dear, they’re cross because I haven’t fed them today!’

Then off she dashed with food for the pigeons — leaving me nonplussed. I did not get the job, but the pigeons got fed.

It was not funny at the time, but it remains a precious memory of my dear mother.

J. Bryant, Worthing, W. Sussex.

Follow-up

AS a boy, I lived in Bognor Regis and attended Minshull House primary in Middleton- on- Sea, West Sussex. When I left in 1959, age 11, for boarding school on the Isle of Wight I no longer saw my primary school friends. In 1967, I joined West Sussex police.

In 1970, I travelled overland to Australia with four friends. We went through Europe, working in Italy for a while, then carried on through Bulgaria, Turkey and Iran, where we stopped at a campsite outside Tehran.

We’d just arrived when a British-registered ex-ambulance pulled in. The four lads on board were on the hippie trail to India and Nepal. We began talking and found out they also came from Bognor and went to the same primary school as me.

The chance of meeting fellow pupils after 11 years on one night in Iran is small, I imagine.

Tony Smith, Battle, e. Sussex.