Sitting under my mother’s cherry tree in my garden taking a breather clutching my one coffee a day, I was enjoying the Swifts swoop and soar for insects in a Kingfisher sky. In the middle of London these annual visitors from Africa, four mating pairs and their recently fledged young, join the Wood pigeons, Magpies, Robins, Blackbirds, Tits and the promiscuous Wren along with our resident Sparrows and the random visits of the Greater Spotted Woodpecker. Oh, and also those exotic interlopers that are invading the south of England, the parakeets, migrants not visitors, they scare the small native birds off the feeders and they have a piercing shriek and live in brash mobs, but their vibrant colour and aerial acrobatics cannot fail to stop you in your tracks to stand and stare.
It always amazes me what can trigger a memory or random train of thought good or bad. I haven’t always had a passion for our feathered friends. In 1963 whilst in Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, I was asked out on a date by a boy who I met at the youth club. He was older than me but we had a lot in common, dancing and The Beatles. He suggested we go to the cinema, or should I say the ‘pictures’. He asked me what would I like to see? I love films and 1963 was a good year: How the West Was Won, Cleopatra, It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, Dr No, Tom Jones, The Sword in the Stone and quite a few more. I said anything as long as it wasn’t a horror film, violence and scary have never been my idea of entertainment.
Come the night, a late Autumn Sunday, Mini skirt, white vest with yellow daisies and red shoes. I wasn’t quite a ‘Mod’, I always craved a leather jacket with metal studs. The Beatles had started out wearing black leather before the iconic Pierre Cardin suit and the mop top haircut. My only claim to fame was that they were thrown out of the ‘Dance’ I was attending because they were wearing leather and no tie. You cannot imagine the frisson of excitement that caused.
We met under the Town Hall clock and not giving me time to ask about the film, we hurried off to join the queue snaking along the High Street. It was a chirpy crowd with a feeling of high anticipation. When the queue started to move I caught a glimpse of the poster, Tippi Hedren in a fur coat and head scarf with love birds in a gilded cage.
Hitchcock was the master of suspense and his benign intro gave us our sophisticated heroine and Rod Taylor, whose smile makes him a perfect romantic leading man, 
verbally sparing, we knew where this was going. What can go wrong in a pet shop? The dark brooding sky as our heroine takes her love birds gift across Bodega Bay should have warned me but I’m an optimist and I was looking forward to the happy ending. I usually can anticipate film plots but from the off, the slow reveal left me wondering; I found it unusual that there was no background music. The first vicious sea gull attack made me realise where this story was going and I sat transfixed clutching my handbag and my white knuckled anxiety watching the horror unveil. The terrifying growing legions of birds, which our protagonists seemed totally unaware of, the vulnerable girl in a small-town community looking for a scapegoat. This was truly horrifying, no candle lit crypt with creepy zombie-like monsters stalking a screaming virgin, or colossal blob or reptile bringing death and destruction. Hitchcock, in the full light of day and in an everyday scenario that we could all relate to, gave us images and events that left nothing to the imagination. One of the few characters that I warmed to, was dead with her eyes gouged from their sockets. Even the end, not a happy ending, left us unsure as the landscape through which our protagonists fled was increasingly occupied by massing, malevolent birds.
What my erstwhile beau had thought about taking me to this film I never knew, maybe he thought I would clutch his arm and throw myself onto his manly chest. Whatever it was he was disappointed. I barely spoke as he walked me home and I declined his invitation for a late night coffee.
I slept badly, jerking awake with images from the film, grim eyed birds, sharp claws, beating wings and empty eye sockets haunted my dreams.
Monday morning dawned and I was up at 5.30am to catch a bus out of town. I usually enjoyed the twenty minutes ride often chatting to my fellow passengers and savouring the peace of the lovely countryside, but this day I felt wretched my thoughts just obsessed on the film.
The bus dropped me off just before the end of the lane I had to walk up. I had set out in the dark but now the morning sun was rising, a silver peach rind on the horizon. I 
turned into the lane my feet leaden, my mind tired. Almost at my feet a huge black crow was drinking from a puddle and his companion flew up, oily black pinion feathers beating, at my approach. It gave me a start. And I stopped and watched it fly away. Head down I continued walking, on one side of the lane was a fence and trees and on the other a fence with telephone poles and hanging wires. As I walked I became aware that there was fluttering, squawks and chirps all around and looking upwards I saw the trees, fences and wires were festooned with birds, silhouetted black against the dawn light. 
Starlings, resident birds and also visitors for the winter. I had never seen anything like it in my short life and I was totally unnerved. As I walked clouds of birds took flight and the sky became dark as they swirled and circled a massive murmuration. This was more than I could stand and I took to my heels like a frightened rabbit my imagination in nightmarish free fall. I’ve never ran so fast in my life, my heart beating wildly and my mouth dry. Of course I arrived safely gasping for breath but it was a good hour before I started to find peace and I spent the whole day worrying that I might have to run the avian gauntlet again but thankfully, the roosting Starlings wouldn’t return until dusk.
As I sat under the cherry tree, a gift from my mother all those years ago, remembering my teenage fright, I had to smile. I can even laugh about it now, how I would enjoy seeing such a Starling murmuration now. I still have a problem with birds today but only in May when we have a running battle to see who can eat the most cherries on my tree. The Birds always win.
I hope you enjoyed my memory, thanks for giving your precious time to read it.
‘A writer is a writer not because she or he writes well and easily, because of their amazing talent, or because everything they do is golden. A writer is a writer because, even when there is no hope, even when nothing we do shows any sign of promise, we keep writing anyway.”
Junot Diaz Professor of writing, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction 2008
If you enjoyed my story please consider purchasing one of my books:
Novels by Angela H. Moor
‘Reflections of the Old Past’ as an Amazon paper back and a Kindle
‘Red Sky at Dawning, The Time Oak’ as a Kindle ebook
‘Charlotte Deanfield: Of a finer ruth.’ As an Amazon paper back and a Kindle ebook
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