Six Off The Same Crate

RIGHT. So they all went up out the same crate at the same minute — same minute, all of them, that's the whole point — and now everybody's stood on their own roof six or nine or eleven miles apart waiting. And you'd think first bird home wins. It doesn't. It doesn't! Because my uncle's loft is further from the liberation point than Mr Aldred's over on Sowerby Street, so if Mr Aldred's hen gets in two minutes before ours she's still slower, because — no, wait, start again —

Right. Yards per minute. That's it. That's the only number. You take how far your loft is from where they were let go, in yards, actual surveyed yards, and you divide it by how many minutes the bird was in the air, and whoever's got the biggest number wins the race. So a bird can come home ninth and still win it. It happens. It happened to Charlie Tinsley in April and he didn't know for an hour and a half.

And the clock. Bird drops on the landing board, you get the rubber ring off its leg — off, quick, don't chase it, never chase it — and it goes in the slot and you punch you strike the clock and that's your time, sealed in there, and nobody opens that clock till the officials do it at the club. Not me. Not my uncle. Nobody.

And the killer — the absolute killer — is a bird that drops on the ridge tiles and sits there having a look round. Sat there. Preening. And you're stood underneath rattling the corn tin like a madman because every second it dawdles is coming off your velocity. Doesn't matter how fast she flew forty miles if she spends ninety seconds on the gutter admiring the view.

ANYWAY. Six of ours are away. I've got what my uncle reckoned about the order they'd drop in — he scribbled it out on slips while the kettle was on, he does this, he can't help it — and I want the order worked out before they're in, so. Help us. Drag the ring-tags onto the perches. The slips go red-ticked when you've got them satisfied.