David Bennett

The Cockerel That Knew

This is the true story of how a bantam cockerel learned to rule the roost after fleeing for its life.

I’ve written before about the chickens I used to keep, and about how they got red spider mite and how I cured them.

After I treated them with the medication, a neighbour said I should get a cockerel to stop the pecking starting again. So I went to the market and bought a cockerel and brought it home and lofted it over the wire fence into the chicken yard.

Except that I had bought a bantam cockerel (a white one) and my chickens were Rhode Islands and they were twice the size of the cockerel. So when the cockerel landed in the chicken year, it took one look at the chickens and they looked at it and then they just launched at it.

The cockerel took one look at them and dived under the ark, terrified.

A small digression for those who don’t know what an ark is. it’s a wooden shed on wheels that can be dragged around to fresh grass. At one end is the door for the owner to get in and out to clear it out.

At the other end is a box running the width of the ark with a lift-up lid. That is where the chickens lay their eggs. Inside the ark is a branch running crosswise, and the chickens roost on that at night.

Now in fact my ark was static and I had staked a high wire fence around it so that the chickens had a permanent patch of land to grub about in.

And the iron wheels had settled a bit and there was just a small space between the bottom of the ark and the ground. And out of this space the cockerel poked its head this way and that.

This went on for a while, with the chickens darting in when they thought they could get a shot at the cockerel, and I was getting a little agitated myself, because the chickens had a pretty mean look in their eyes.

Then the cockerel saw its chance and it darted from under the ark and scrambled vertically into the air and landed on the ridge of the pitched roof of the ark. The chickens were never able to do that – they were too plump, or maybe they weren’t adventurous enough. Whatever it was, the cockerel had a respite but only a temporary one, as it couldn’t stay up there forever.

And sure enough it flew with a mighty fluttering leap, right over the fence where it landed and then ran to the bottom of the garden, down into the little ditch that bordered the garden, through the straggly hedge and up the other side.

On it ran, across the field and down the ditch far away and up the other side and into the next field, and soon it was lost in the distance.

Late afternoon turned to evening and I went inside with a rueful feeling of having been pretty stupid not to have foreseen that a cockerel half the size of the chickens might have had a hard time of it.

The next morning I went out to the chicken run and there was the cockerel strutting around, and he had all the chickens treating him like the prince he was.

And I have thought and wondered sometimes what went on in his mind that evening.

I imagine him roosting in a hedge somewhere out in the fields, panting and bedraggled.

How did he know that he was supposed to be back with the chickens?

Did he sit there saying “I am not going to be defeated by a bunch of chickens – I won’t be able to live with myself if I turn tail and run now.”

And when he reappeared by the fence and leaped into the air and over the fence and in among the chickens, did they try to mob him or did they stand stunned and in awe at his audacity and bravery?

These are things I will never know.

This is a true story.

The Bulging Inbox

Written in response to complaints often heard that there are too many emails.

What’s the problem? Bulging inbox? Can’t handle so many emails?

Well how many of them are one-to-one emails from people you know? I bet a lot of them are ‘one-to-many’ broadcasts from organisations.

Organisations know that the inbox is a precious place. It is yours and yours alone. It is not a room you go to where you share space. It is yours.

On the downside, it can get lonely, all alone in your inbox. Especially if no one comes to play.

But you know, the room you go to has its problems too. It is ‘somewhere else’ on somebody else’s turf. So while it might be fun, it’s like going to a club or a pub – there comes a time when you just want to curl up on the sofa and read.

How did it come to this?

Part of the problem is human nature: Give an organisation a website and it will make a sign-up page.

But who could have foreseen ten years ago that every organisation would have a website where the sign-up page could be put?

You want solutions? You can’t go to the organisation’s website to view everything. Organisations are wise to that. They don’t put everything on their sites.

They put the special stuff in emails, and only in emails.

Therefore you can’t look at everything by doing a circuit of the websites or in an RSS reader.

You can unsubscribe, but then you’ve got nothing.

Here’s a solution: Use a different email for all your sign-ups. At least use it for the ones where you are unlikely to want to reply to as ‘you’.

Visit your second inbox when you feel like curling up on the sofa with a good book.

Oil Divestment

I am impressed that the oil divestment movement is doing so well, but while I applaud the commitment to divest, I argue that for every stockholder that divests there must be a stockholder that invests. In other words, quite simply there must be a buyer as well a seller.

The risk is that the ones who step in to buy are the ones who don’t care what the companies do – so the worst traits and behaviour are given more free rein – more shortcuts – more Gulf Of Mexico oil spills.

In other words, the unintended consequences of oil divestment may be worsen the situation, not improve it.

Or perhaps the tack is different – make oil the bad actor and thereby make it easier for businesses that are already in the oil business to move to green energy. That might work.

The Imitation Game

What to say about it. As a film it kept its pace and it worked overall.

The most deeply-flawed representation of a character was Cumberbatch’s Alan Turing. He has to take the rap because the film was built around him. He is obviously capable – highly capable. But something went wrong.

I had high hopes when he first appeared – a highly-intelligent person who did not suffer fools gladly and who was a cruel and expert swordsman with his words.

When we first see him being interviewed for the job at Bletchley he is sardonic and cutting – and when we see him being interviewed by the police about the burglary at his house he is the same.

But at times at Bletchley he is bumbling and hesitant in a way that he is quite simply, another person.

Yes, I know, people have more than one side to them – but not these two sides.

The moment in the film that I knew it was falling apart was early on when the original code breakers were first together and The MI6 man (Mark Strong) makes a parting remark about leaving the children to play with their toys.

That was bad enough, but then when the boys are left and wonder what they should do, the then team leader (Matthew Goode) says ‘Let’s Play’, my heart sank.

So much for the human interactions. What made it worse was the poor attempt it made to show what went on at Bletchley.

For example, can it really be that no one had thought what they would do when they broke the code? Did no one think the obvious – that they couldn’t go around forestalling every German plan because they would tip their hand to the fact of the code having been broken?

And what was anyone to make of the redcap who tips a drawer-full of Turing’s papers onto the desk and then announces – ‘Nothing here Sir.’ – meaning that he hadn’t found the secret codes and tools of a Soviet spy. Oh come on!

I think Matthew Goode was weak because he didn’t carry the conviction that he was a code breaker. Nothing about him suggested it. Mark Strong as the MI6 man was good, given the parts he has played recently where he has hammed it up a bit too much. Kiera Knightley was a bit patchy, and best in the opening scenes.

I wonder what went on during the making of the film? Did someone come the heavy and force a change of direction? Did the director lose control or interest? There was a real wealth of possibility in this film but it didn’t use it.

Final word for wonderful acting from the young Alan Turing (Alex Lawther). I would give him an intelligent film in which to act and let him get on with it.