Alfred Hitchcock - The Birds

It was like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's - The Birds.........

Parking at Crewe Railway Station has always been a bit fraught. To start with you can never be sure how long it is going to take you. It should take about seven minutes at the ungodly time in the morning that I was catching the Virgin Pendelino (overuse of the word "virgin" is always good for a few extra hits!) express train to Euston, but, I have known it take thirty.

I was particularly keen to get there in good time yesterday as this was the first time that I was parking my new car. The beautiful, black, sleek, sporty machine - my new Audi TT. Not only do you have to be in reasonable time if you are to avoid a ridiculously long hike to the station, but, you have to park strategically. The car park was clearly marked out in 1963 or thereabouts when your average Hillman Imp was about half the width and a third the length of your average modern car (let alone those great hulking Chelsea Tractor things). And, the TT does require quite a liberal sweep to open the door. I didn't want to suffer the humiliation of having to climb into the boot on my return, so, I was keen to bag an end of line position if at all possible.

I arrived at the car park in good time. It being Crewe it was dark, cold, windy, and pissing down. But, I found a suitable location and headed off for the platforms. It was at this point that I noticed the noise and looked up to locate the source. The source was the line of trees which borders the north-side of the car park. These trees were moving, and not as a result of the wind. These trees were alive with roosting starlings.

I was in a hurry, getting wet, and headed off without giving it a moment's further thought. That is, until returning to the station some ten hours later - of course it should have been nine hours earlier but we got diverted around Rugby. As I arrived at the queue for the parking ticket machine I found myself behind a technologically incompetent lady who struggled with the basic instructions: "Insert parking ticket; insert credit card". This gave me ample time to read the notice about the starlings. Basically it was an apology for the fact that these avian monsters were crapping over everyone's cars. The trees in which they are roosting is council land and, therefore, Virgin Trains were not able to nuke the little feathered bastards.

It was somewhat with trepidation that I trudged the few hundred yards through the dark, cold, wind and the rain to retrieve my car. My beautiful black machine was beautiful and black no more. Every inch of her was covered in guano. Bird shit. She was blotchy with starling crap from halogen headlight to chrome exhaust. I had to wrap my hand in a tissue to open the door. I did this rather hurriedly of course, because there was a veritable swarm of the flying crappers swirling ominously and noisily over my head and I was without an umbrella.

Parking at Crewe Station for the day cost me six quid. The car wash cost me £6.50. Flying vermin. Exterminate!

ps. Virgin, virgin, virgin, virgin, virgin

pps. Kat Deeley (another popular hit with the search engines! ;)