“How about we burn the chicken on the beach this weekend?”
I’m glad I sent that text. I hadn’t worked out the logistics yet. But we had a huge chicken to be rid of and it was basically made of paper. Burning it in London would almost certainly bring George. “Excuse me, sir,” says George. “Do you have a permit etc etc.”
So. 3.45pm. We get the thing out of the boot.
By the time we get it out the boot we have already purchased FIREWORKS. At ASDA. ’tis the season. We purchase a huge amount of gunpowder for 43 quid. We also rather gingerly load up a wooden bed that had been chucked in Kemptown. I am very careful about potential bedbug contamination.
We drive to Ovingdean. We unload. We seek a discreet place.
Francis Bacon the essayist died after trying to demonstrate to Doctor Witherspoon, physician to the king, that freezing meat extended its life. This was the sixteen twenties. Doctors were idiots. Bacon was correct but he got pneumonia shoving snow up a dead chicken’s bum. It killed him, but the Pond Square ghost, reported most frequently in the blitz when such things became significant, was the ghost of the chicken. I love that it haunted the square for nearly 300 years and was only barely marked, and then we had no food so loads of people chased a chicken until it went through a wall and then cried “GHOST!”
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Siwan has kept this thing under her stairs for 5 years. She has flatmates. She’s used it twice in that time. It isn’t enough. It had to go.
We nestled it nicely between two rocks (above is prep). The tide was coming in. We then filled it and surrounded it with fireworks.
Fire happened. Littoral fire. The tide will cover this area. There are no homes with pets anywhere near. There’s no negative emotion about this chicken but for the fact it couldn’t be in my car or Siwans’s home.
I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t love fire. That’s our animal role. We keep the fire. No other adaptation of species understands how to create and guard fire.
We made a good safe fire. I was still worried about shitbrain FRIe MaRsHlAss saying “Dat Fnire iS BaDdd” Thankfully we respectfully burnt our chicken without Captain Me-dothing intervening. I’m thinking about the Hampstead Heath idiots who just go round and round forever achieving fuck all.
Shoe is already pretty much back in London. We did a good burning. I’m happy we left as little trace as possible.
AlBarclay 