My Life is Incomplete

What a great show to start the week Kid. I looked at Tommy my cat and said, "Tommy, what a great show that was!"

Tommy who was blowing up balloons for Christmas with plastic explosive looked at me strangely and said, "What radio station did that great show come from?"

"That great show came from radio Foyle," I said.

"Are you sure?" said Tommy.

"It sounded more like Radio Fowl to me. All that talk about roosters and hens."

"Tommy, Tommy," I said. "There comes a time in everyone's life when...."

"A little rain must fall," said Tommy.

"Yes, that too," I said. "But there comes a time in everyone's life, when they get broody. They mope about for days. Then they look at their spouse, partner, cat, dog or wardrobe and say,

"I really must have a hen. My life will not be complete, until I have six hens and a rooster."

Then their partner, if at tall understanding, will hug them and reply, "Then GO! Go and find a rooster and six hens. I love you and will always love you, no matter what degrading, perverted, obscene hobby you choose."

"Well, I'll be buttered and jammed and called a sandwich," said Tommy.

"My late daddy had a great love for hens," I said.

"My late daddy loved one hen in particular called Yvette. Yvette was more than a hen to daddy.. She was a friend, a confidant, the rock my daddy clung to when times were hard. And Yvette was the only one who could make my daddy eat brussel sprouts.

On Christmas Day, my late Daddy would sit at the head of the table with a stubborn look on his face. My late mammy and my 16 siblings would shout, yell, gulder and roar, "Daddy, dearest daddy, do please eat your brussel sprouts!" My late daddy would shake his head, maybe even pour a little gravy over it and yell defiantly,

"By the Lord Harry, no brussel sprout will pass my lips this Christmas day!"

"GET THE HEN!" darling mammy would yell.

"Bring in Yvette."

In would come Yvette, clucking and wheezing. She suffered from acute asthma. Yvette would stare at my late daddy with her gimlet eye and before you could say, "Merry Christmas President Ahmadinejad!" my late daddy would grab a big wooden spoon and throw brussel sprouts into his mouth, like a fireman throwing coal into a steam train."

"What a childhood you had!" said Tommy.

"I can see now why you turned out so disturbed, distraught, crazy and mad!"

I ignored the fly feline's taunts and went on,

"Every July my late daddy put the bunting up on our street for the twelth of July. If I close my mouth I can see him now, setting out with a big bundle of bunting and Yvette the hen sitting on his shoulder. He would tie a piece of bunting to Yvette's leg. She would fly to a lamp post and attach the bunting with her beak. Then she would do the same at the opposite lamp post and soon the whole street was strung with red, white and blue bunting."

"What a chook!" said Tommy. "What happened to her? What happened to Yvette?"

"The troubles began," I said, "and the Republicans took out a Fatwah on her, because of her part in the battle of the bunting.

On gable walls, you could see murals of Yvette, plucked, stuffed, both legs up in the air and surrounded with roast potatoes and Bisto gravy."

"The troubles have a lot to answer for," said Tommy.

"Did poor wee Yvette end up just another statistic?"

"Indirectly," I sobbed. "My late Daddy knew that Yvette was on a hit list, so, rather than let the Republicans fill wee Yvette full of lead, one day hey stole an Oxo cube and we ate wee Yvette for dinner. But after that, daddy was a changed man. No more did he whistle, as he threw a kilo of bananas high in the air. His laugh had a hollow, empty ring to it and from the day he ate wee Yvette to the day he died and even after, my late daddy never ate brussel sprouts again."

"What a tale," said Tommy.

"And what a film for Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks to make."

"Tom Hanks!" I yelled. "Only Dustin Hoffman could get inside the mind of Yvette the hen,"

"HEY! I'm clocking! Do you mind? I'm clocking here!"

All this and more have I seen, as Frank Mitchell signed himself into the Priory clinic, waving a list of ten good reasons why he should be there!