This is a series of articles from the Fantail Club members (I hope!).
I have always kept various forms of livestock since I was a lad, rabbits and poultry for the table, dogs and cats as pets, etc but never pigeons until about 20 years ago (is it really that long ago). I was working next door to a house (I was a painter and decorator by trade) with a pole cote with a pair of black saddle Exhibition Fantails as residents. I was taken with how smart they looked and they were very tame. I got talking to the owner and he said they were very easy to keep and on enquiring where he had bought the birds from he said there was another chap in the next road with a pair in a pole cote which had raised their own. I went and knocked on the door and asked if he had any Fantails for sale, to which he replied that a pair of eggs had just hatched so they would be ready in about six weeks. As I was going on holiday at that time I arranged to pick them up in eight weeks.
The date duly arrived and I picked up the birds and on the way home I stopped at a farm shop which sold greengrocery. I came out with a ginger tom kitten - not the best combination I know, but we have had him for 13 years and he never attacked anything in the garden and even used to come in the pigeon loft with me, but woe betide anything outside the garden - even dogs. Anyway, back to the pigeons. I got them back home and, because of the pressure of work, I had not got round to building a pole cote but I had an old wooden lean-to greenhouse. I took out the opening windows and put some wire mesh across and the same with the door, and they seemed very happy in there. As time passed they turned out to be two hens so I managed to get an address of the Fantail secretary, a Mr Sidney Clayson, who told me of a Mr Lowe who lived about 40 minutes' drive away. I arranged to pick up two cock birds the following Sunday between 9 and 9.30am. I arrived just before 9 o'clock and after a few minutes a lady answered the door looking a bit upset, she said Mr Lowe had gone to church but the birds were round the back in a cardboard box. I paid her the money and took the birds, on the way home I noticed a church clock that said 8.20 and I realised why the lady was upset - it was the Sunday the clocks went back but I had forgotten about it.
