'What did he look like? It's probably one of her friends from the shop that I know and have met before and there's nothing in it really,' I said, trying to convince myself, rather unconvincingly.

Kramer closed his eyes and thought. 'Tall, blond, athletic, well dressed, very good-looking. Not a bit like you.'

It was Neil Curtis.

'When did you see them?'

'As the shop was shutting.'

Normally the time I would be meeting her before she caught her bus home but tonight I hadn't. She'd said she'd got a prior engagement she couldn't get out of.

'What sort of prior engagement?' I had asked.

'Oh, a really dull one I'd do anything to get out of!' she said, pulling an upside-down smiley face.

'Why don't you just not turn up?'

'I wish it were that easy,' she said, and I loved her more for using the subjunctive. Then I said something which surprised us both.

'Are you seeing your other boyfriend?' How dangerous! How daring! Suppose she'd said 'yes'! 'Yes' would mean she had another boyfriend but that, implicitly, I was her boyfriend as well. If she said 'no' that could mean she did have another boyfriend but she wasn't seeing him tonight. But that I was still therefore the other boyfriend! Or worse: 'yes' or or 'no' could still mean she had two boyfriends, neither of which were me. She answered neither 'yes' nor 'no'. She just spluttered out a giggle and said, 'You arewwwy!' then she leaned over and gave me a small but perfectly formed kiss on the cheek. 'no' could still mean she had two boyfriends, neither of which were me. She answered neither 'yes' nor 'no'. She just spluttered out a giggle and said, 'You arewwwy!' then she leaned over and gave me a small but perfectly formed kiss on the cheek.

And now later I hear from Kramer that there is another boyfriend. If not the only one.

'Neil,' I said.

'Are we going to pray?'

'That's his name. He works with JJ. I've met him. Critchley introduced me to him.'

A deeply unpleasant feeling unconnected to Aunt Sadie stabbed me in the guts. 'Critchley was about to tell me something. Something serious, but I didn't stay to find out what it was. I had to go because Degsy and Lobby were hanging around.'

Kramer sounded sympathetic. 'I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news. It may be nothing.'

I was feeling suddenly empty and alone. Kramer walked over and put his hand on my shoulder.

'You know what you need, my friend. Some soup.'

BUDGIE.

I put down my pint on the corner table of the empty pub. I sat down. I stood up again and started pacing up and down. It was hard to relax. I was thinking about Neil and JJ. I was trying not to think about Neil and JJ. That was why I couldn't sit down. I sat down. I sipped the lager and shuddered. It was ten to twelve and it didn't seem to be lager time but I'd asked JJ if we could meet early as I had something important to tell her. Ask her. I bit my nails for a few moments then I stood up and started pacing again. put down my pint on the corner table of the empty pub. I sat down. I stood up again and started pacing up and down. It was hard to relax. I was thinking about Neil and JJ. I was trying not to think about Neil and JJ. That was why I couldn't sit down. I sat down. I sipped the lager and shuddered. It was ten to twelve and it didn't seem to be lager time but I'd asked JJ if we could meet early as I had something important to tell her. Ask her. I bit my nails for a few moments then I stood up and started pacing again.

'You alright, mate?' asked the barman. 'You're like a caged animal.'

I sat down again.

'h.e.l.lo, Charlie!' said a piercing voice from the other side of the room.

I looked up. A caged animal. A mynah bird, in fact.

'h.e.l.lo, Charlie!' it said again. And again. The accuracy of the diction was amazing, but I soon gathered that I had heard the full extent of its conversation. I did not like caged birds, but I was glad of the distraction and I walked over to it.

'h.e.l.lo, Charlie,' I said. Mynah birds can only repeat what they hear, so I a.s.sumed this one had heard the phrase 'h.e.l.lo, Charlie' more than any other and therefore it was called Charlie.

'h.e.l.lo, Charlie!' it said back to me.

'Sorry to b.u.t.t in, chaps!' It was JJ. She looked more stunning than I remembered her. I sensed that part of me wanted her to look less than perfect now. Now that she was going out with Neil. Possibly.

'You look great,' I said.

'Ah, thanks. Hey, amazing speech that bird's got.'

It was a beautiful bird: glossy black, with stunning yellow flashes on its wings. It hopped neurotically from perch to perch in its cage.

'Fantastic to teach a bird to speak so accurately.'

I disagreed. 'I think it's terrible. And anyway it's not speaking, it's imitating. The mynah bird is in the starling family and they're all good mimics; but it's not speaking.'

'It sounds like pretty good English to me.'

'It has no capacity for language like humans have. You can teach a bird to say 'cat eats bird' or 'bird eats worm' but it will never be able to say, like a human could, 'bird eats cat' or 'cat eats worm'. It can't produce language. It can't make up things that it's never heard before. That's why it only says 'h.e.l.lo, Charlie'. Eventually someone called Charlie is going to walk in and that bird is going to make his day. Otherwise it's pretty dull. It hasn't got language pre-wired in its brain like we have.'

'Blimey,' said JJ. 'You did go to a lecture once!'

I realized that I was sounding heavy and stressed. I needed to get this over with quickly. I needed to get out of this cage.

'What would you like to drink?'

'Just an orange juice, thanks.' She was radiant this morning; her brilliance made me feel increasingly like a shadow.

'My parents always had a budgerigar when we were young,' she was saying.

That reminded me. It's true. When we were young and we would visit neighbours or friends of my parents, I was always intrigued by the number of houses that had a pet budgie. What was it about the budgie? They are brightly coloured. They sing. It seemed quite innocent then. But birds sing to attract a mate. They sing for love; for s.e.x. And then they sing to defend everything that goes with that: the mate, the nest, the eggs, the chicks, the territory; the future of their genes. They do not sing for fun. They do not sing for our enjoyment. And they fly. They fly long distances. They cross continents, they cross oceans. They are creatures of the sky. They are not creatures of the cage. I find it hard to think of anything that symbolizes 'wrong' as neatly as a caged bird. A small, brightly coloured creature flitting helplessly back and forth on an endless two-foot-long journey. A creature that could fly thousands of miles.

The energy of a bird, its colour, its sound and its movement confined behind metals bars is such a potent image of repression it's not hard to see why art and literature have used it so much. Flight is escape; flight is liberty. How often when I've felt imprisoned have I looked upwards, scanning the sky for a bird, a symbol of freedom? Invariably, of course, it's a pigeon. In towns, a feral pigeon; anywhere else, a wood pigeon. Boring for the birdwatcher: it's the bird you can't fail to see, the bird that is so common you can hardly count it as a wild animal. And yet so many times I have felt miserable and confined but been suddenly heartened to see a pigeon flying over with its strong, fast, direct flight, exuberant with a sense of freedom and s.p.a.ce. A symbol of hope.

Robert Franklin Stroud was not a nice man. Disruptive, apparently, and divisive. And very violent. How else would you end up in solitary confinement in the island prison of Alcatraz?

Tantalizingly close to San Francisco, the 'Rock' is cut off by fierce sea currents of freezing water. Stroud is immortalized in film as the Birdman of Alcatraz Birdman of Alcatraz. A sanitized and sentimentalized story of his life tells of how he kept insanity at bay by looking after birds, curing injured and sick ones and selling them to fellow inmates or letting them fly off to freedom. The idea of a caged man freeing birds is compelling, and despite its distance from the truth the film became very popular. Stroud himself was never allowed to see it.

There is a strange irony that the 'Birdman' should be the most famous inmate of this h.e.l.lish prison. Alcatraz Alcatraz is the Spanish for pelican. The island is named after the enormous flocks of the bird that early explorers observed there. And it is no longer a prison. It's actually, listen to is the Spanish for pelican. The island is named after the enormous flocks of the bird that early explorers observed there. And it is no longer a prison. It's actually, listen to this this, a bird sanctuary; home to many rare species.

The aborigines of Australia are closer to nature than we are. For thousands of years they have lived off whatever has been provided by the land. Or the sky. A brightly coloured parrot, small but super-abundant, is a protein-rich meal. Undeniably 'good food'; or, in their own language: betckyerrigyar betckyerrigyar. They would be surprised to see the betchyerrigyar betchyerrigyar (or 'budgerigar') pointlessly caged in so many urban locations. Do the keepers of caged birds perhaps think this is a link to the wilderness, a little piece of wild nature in the city? (or 'budgerigar') pointlessly caged in so many urban locations. Do the keepers of caged birds perhaps think this is a link to the wilderness, a little piece of wild nature in the city?

Does it make them feel less caged in their human habitation? Surely, a bird flying wild and free is more uplifting? A caged bird in the city to me is a symbol of misery.

'You look miserable,' said JJ, putting her hand on mine. 'Is something the matter?'

Here we go.

'Yes...er, I wanted to ask you something.' My insides were knotting up nicely. 'Well, the thing is-'

She cut me off instantly. 'Ooh, hang on. I must tell you something first. Sorry to b.u.t.t in but this is really exciting.'

'Oh, yeah?'

'It's about Neil who works with me. You've met him, haven't you?'

I was beginning to feel sick.

'Er...I think so. Good-looking bloke?'

'Yeah, really dishy,' she said, a bit too enthusiastically.

I took a deep breath. 'What about him?'

'Well, I went out with him the other night.'

'Really?'

'To the theatre. It was brilliant. He is amazing.'

I took a swig of lager and swallowed hard.

'In what way is he amazing?'

'Well, him and his boyfriend do this brilliant stand-up act. In drag, of course, and camp as you like! But it is funny. You should see it!'

I was dumbstruck.

'Are you alright?'

'Yes.' I was beginning to chuckle. 'Yes, I was just thinking that I should see it. It sounds fantastic. I haven't been to the theatre for ages.'

We hugged and I felt deliriously happy as I left the pub. A bit of a prat, deep down, perhaps; a right idiot, in fact.

The bird looked straight at me. 'h.e.l.lo, Charlie!'

LONG-TAILED t.i.t.

'Hey, I can't believe it!' I said to the girl in the toyshop. 'You have a long-tailed t.i.t.'

She looked confused rather than offended.

'There, on the shelf behind you. That cuddly toy.'

She looked relieved.

'Well, yes, that's part of our cuddly toy bird range, sir. We have a selection of different birds: common, like the robin, that's this one here, or rare like...er...whatever this one is,' she said waving a fluffy toy in the air.

'That's a hammerhead shark. No, this is the one I want. A long-tailed t.i.t. Amazing!'

The long-tailed t.i.t (Aegithalos caudatus) was JJ's favourite bird.

'If you squeeze its tummy it makes the right noise as well.'

Get away, no? Yes! How about that? Squeeze it in the right place and it makes a bird noise. Not every time. Back then I had no idea what a long-tailed t.i.t sounded like, but the noise coming from the toy's tummy was a shrill, tinny chirrup that could easily have been a bird. This was the nineteen-seventies, remember, and a toy like this was pretty d.a.m.ned sensational. If I could have my time on this earth over again, I might have a squeeze on the hammerhead shark's tummy to see what noise that made.

It was four forty-five. I was meeting JJ at five thirty to have a quick drink before she caught her bus at six thirty. I would have time to take it back to college and wrap it. The ideal present.

The long-tailed t.i.t. A fluffy pink ball on a string. A cat's toy. A charming sight, they are, as they move daintily through foliage in social groups. Their thin, needle-like song tinkles down from the treetops. A girly bird to have as a favourite, maybe. But undeniably sweet. And the nest, a masterpiece! A globular, domed, rounded or bottle-shaped ball of soft, springy, elastic moss, lichen and cobweb, that actually expands as the chicks grow.

My short cut back to college would take me through Debenhams department store. In the main doors and through makeup; (war-painted hags perched like vultures on stools), then into soft furnishings and haberdashery (prim, trim men giggling and nudging through the curtain material samples), up a couple of steps though the 'cafeteria' (and the unconvincing stench of freshly ground instant coffee), into sport and leisure (shaven-headed muscle-bound youths, inarticulately embarra.s.sed by all but the most basic human conversation), turn left into kitchen appliances (men with suits and gla.s.ses proudly demonstrating food-mixer speeds), down a few steps and out though the back doors into the bus station and twenty yards from my room. But things didn't turn out that way.

It was the dash through the cafeteria that was to change the course of this day. My eyes were fixed on the floor ahead as I wove in between tables, chairs and unattended toddlers when, on the outskirts of my visual field, there was a large, ginger blur. Something strong and warm overpowered me.

'Rooooorrrrrry! I don't believe it! The devil himself. Talk of the devil, hey? That's neat!'

Brigid the South African waitress from my first year. If I had a list of names of the people I did not want to meet at that moment, hers would have been on it. Possibly the only one on it. 'How are you?' she effused, treating me to a pre-Christmas boozy waft of warm breath and spittle. 'Let me hug you.'

There was no option. She clasped me and squeezed me hard and in my mind there appeared the worrying image of an alligator wounding its prey so it could be dragged underwater and moved somewhere else to be destroyed later. Firm against my chest I felt her bosom, which was still amazing, but amazingly unappealing. I remembered vividly why she had attracted me and why she had frightened me. She suddenly started kissing me hard, or possibly she was just using odd bits of my face to wipe her lipstick off. After a frenzy of girly gushing and vice-like requests to join her, I found myself sitting opposite the Amazonian Boer with a pre-cappuccino cappuccino in a very seventies gla.s.s cup, as if the coffee were showing no shame at its undrinkability.

All I wanted to do in the world at that moment was to go back to my room to wrap the long-tailed t.i.t and meet for a cosy drink with the love of my life. I felt kidnapped. The rasping voice and the overexcited, inconsequential drivel became familiar again. She was so, so different from JJ.

'I really can't stay that long,' I began feebly.

'Don't be daft. I owe you an apology. And,' she added disconcertingly, 'a lot more besides.'

'I must be going; I've got to meet a friend.'

'I'll come with you. Any friend of yours...'

'Er...'

'Is it a girl? Even better. Like to see what the compet.i.tion is!'

'No, it's not girl.'

Now, why did I say that?

'Hey, listen, Rors, remember that night last year? You didn't f.u.c.k up; I did. I was stupid and hysterical. We could have had a great night. We could be going out now. We still could. I mean, I was ready for you. I mean...h.e.l.l, yeah. I was there, man. There wasn't a problem. I dug you fine. And I know you dug me. And I know why!'

She thrust her b.r.e.a.s.t.s out towards me and then bit her lip coyly; though her 'coy' lessons had clearly been a waste of money. And where did 'Rors' come from?

I tried to stay focused. It was a quarter past five. I didn't have time to wrap the bird now and I had to start walking to the bookshop at once.