was too highly developed to blow it through the pinprick hole. Better put it back and hope for the best.
The conventional way to blow an egg free of its white and yolk was to prick a hole at either end, a hawthorn or a wild rose thorn from the hedge was handiest for pricking, and then to blow through it, from the rounder âbig-endâ until its contents came out, over your fingers sometimes, over your chin if the wind blew, and sometimes back into your mouth. You could blow the eggs of larger species through a single hole about mid-way down the egg, through a fine straw or grass stalk. There was a coarse kind of grass you could find by the stream. Pull it and it came like a joint from its socket, and with a careful cut from your penknife you could get a treasured length of three or four inches with the finest bore to blow through.
You could wish for nothing better. But either method the hazards were the same. When what was in proved too thick to come out, you must blow harder, and the exertion might cause you to grip the egg too tight and so break it, especially if it was a small egg, like the delicate egg of a warbler, a whitethroat, a blackcap, or a wren, a dunnock or from up at the farm a swallow. Or you might suck the last of it out into your mouth. Or the embryo was too advanced to come out, or the egg was addled, a too-early egg, or the nest recently abandoned, perhaps because of prying boys, like that much coveted greenfinchâs that you came upon too late.
There was a code, never to take more than one egg from any nest. But two or three boys might together exceed it, boys being boys, nasty, brutish and short, with no savagery too base. So I remember being one of a righteous trio who found a young cuckoo in a dunnockâs nest. The sight of the decayed corpses of its fellow nestlings on the ground being consumed by ants and other creatures, inspired collective indignation. Until, like a crowd that has worked itself up into beating someone to death, we removed the fat cuckoo chick from the nest and killed it. I will not name the boy who sat on it. But it was not I. I daresay Iâd have killed it with a stick, or stamped on it. The RSPB would have found all three of us guilty. It didnât seem that way though. We werenât tender or squeamish. We were fighting the cause of the dunnock. But really we were murderous brutes.
* * *
As to tender or squeamish, I am sure there would be health and safety rules and regulations, and laws against it now, but in those early years, a special treat was to go with Dickâs father in the back of the van to the slaughterhouse when he had business there.
The extended family had a farm at Llysfaen. Their best meat was home grown and killed just down the road at Abergele. I can remember wandering around the slaughterhouse, while Dickâs father attended to business. Weâd see cattle shot with a bolt gun, great beasts toppling, suddenly weak at the knees, and sheep rolled onto a wooden cradle kicking their stiff legs as the gun was put to their heads. We saw their carcasses disembowelled â what a membrane sac a bowel is â steaming, hanging from hooks, all in a mayhem of bleating and lowing and bellowing and squealing and clatter and skid of hooves, and the shouts of men, and the rattle of crush bars and pens, and aisles, and urine, bowels and dung everywhere under foot and in the air, reeking healthily, before the purging hose.
It was life. It was everyday. So was the man in the basement back at the butcherâs shop, sitting on a stool in his vest, under a bare light-bulb that dangled from a long flex, plucking away in a room caged off with wire netting, surrounded by feathers and Christmas chickens and turkeys. When heâd finished plucking one, heâd lunge, arms spread, to snatch up the next one and wring its neck, as we stood by, feathers billowing everywhere, and a sudden cacophony of gobbles and squawks and frenzy.
Weâd
The conventional way to blow an egg free of its white and yolk was to prick a hole at either end, a hawthorn or a wild rose thorn from the hedge was handiest for pricking, and then to blow through it, from the rounder âbig-endâ until its contents came out, over your fingers sometimes, over your chin if the wind blew, and sometimes back into your mouth. You could blow the eggs of larger species through a single hole about mid-way down the egg, through a fine straw or grass stalk. There was a coarse kind of grass you could find by the stream. Pull it and it came like a joint from its socket, and with a careful cut from your penknife you could get a treasured length of three or four inches with the finest bore to blow through.
You could wish for nothing better. But either method the hazards were the same. When what was in proved too thick to come out, you must blow harder, and the exertion might cause you to grip the egg too tight and so break it, especially if it was a small egg, like the delicate egg of a warbler, a whitethroat, a blackcap, or a wren, a dunnock or from up at the farm a swallow. Or you might suck the last of it out into your mouth. Or the embryo was too advanced to come out, or the egg was addled, a too-early egg, or the nest recently abandoned, perhaps because of prying boys, like that much coveted greenfinchâs that you came upon too late.
There was a code, never to take more than one egg from any nest. But two or three boys might together exceed it, boys being boys, nasty, brutish and short, with no savagery too base. So I remember being one of a righteous trio who found a young cuckoo in a dunnockâs nest. The sight of the decayed corpses of its fellow nestlings on the ground being consumed by ants and other creatures, inspired collective indignation. Until, like a crowd that has worked itself up into beating someone to death, we removed the fat cuckoo chick from the nest and killed it. I will not name the boy who sat on it. But it was not I. I daresay Iâd have killed it with a stick, or stamped on it. The RSPB would have found all three of us guilty. It didnât seem that way though. We werenât tender or squeamish. We were fighting the cause of the dunnock. But really we were murderous brutes.
* * *
As to tender or squeamish, I am sure there would be health and safety rules and regulations, and laws against it now, but in those early years, a special treat was to go with Dickâs father in the back of the van to the slaughterhouse when he had business there.
The extended family had a farm at Llysfaen. Their best meat was home grown and killed just down the road at Abergele. I can remember wandering around the slaughterhouse, while Dickâs father attended to business. Weâd see cattle shot with a bolt gun, great beasts toppling, suddenly weak at the knees, and sheep rolled onto a wooden cradle kicking their stiff legs as the gun was put to their heads. We saw their carcasses disembowelled â what a membrane sac a bowel is â steaming, hanging from hooks, all in a mayhem of bleating and lowing and bellowing and squealing and clatter and skid of hooves, and the shouts of men, and the rattle of crush bars and pens, and aisles, and urine, bowels and dung everywhere under foot and in the air, reeking healthily, before the purging hose.
It was life. It was everyday. So was the man in the basement back at the butcherâs shop, sitting on a stool in his vest, under a bare light-bulb that dangled from a long flex, plucking away in a room caged off with wire netting, surrounded by feathers and Christmas chickens and turkeys. When heâd finished plucking one, heâd lunge, arms spread, to snatch up the next one and wring its neck, as we stood by, feathers billowing everywhere, and a sudden cacophony of gobbles and squawks and frenzy.
Weâd
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