Java Sparrows and Peach Faced Lovebirds

At art college I had a platonic friend called Simon. He was impressive for two reasons- firstly, he had a strong aroma of freshly-ironed clothing. Secondly, he sat at the table one lunchtime (cottage pie and boiled cabbage followed by a rock bun*) and told me about this great band he'd seen called Joby and the Hooigans with a girl bass player, without realising that the girl bass player he was telling me about was me.
So we became friends.
He liked my birds (Toby the budgie who used to belong to Joby, two canaries and Peter Finch) so much he got himself a Parakeet called God. God flew away one day and Simon cried. He put postcards in lots of shop windows, till one day an old lady phoned and said she'd been riding her bike down the street and God had landed on her handlebars- so he got him back.
We hatched a plan to open a cafe in Brighton full of beautiful birds and we came to London to Palmers Pets in Camden to look.
I fell in love with the Java Sparrows- just like black and white penguins with go-go-gadget boy stretched red legs and feet, and a funny little private squeaky noise that they made between themselves.
And what about those weirdos, the peach faced lovebirds? All in a cage together, they followed each other in line in a one-by-one procession like coloured birdy sheep, along the bottom of the cage, very slowly, up the side of the cage, foot over foot, in perfect synchronisation, up across the underneath of the top of the cage bars, until they were all hanging upside down, and then, very slowly in turn, each bird turned its head round to peer at me and Simon, as though that had been the plan all along.
As I said,
Weird!


* What rock stars eat- did you know this?