The corvid was trying to settle on the lamp post in the twenty seven degree heat. Feathers ruffling, shifting its rump first this way then that. It appeared to want to lose balance and tip one way and the other to ward off the tedium.
***
There was a man; Allan Jones. Not the infamous not-so-crypto-fascist ageing shock jock, nor the all singing, all dancing actor of Marx Brothers fame, but another Allan Jones.
I interviewed him for Networking Action For Actors up in Sydney long ago. He fitted the bill of the wandering rapscallion as he regaled the crowded room at the top of the Arthouse Hotel with tales of Hollywood union thuggery and life through the 1960s looking glass when the star system was not only alive and well, but also militantly exalted by patrician and pleb alike throughout the known world.
***
The corvid saw the bug before I did and took off in pursuit. But the insect matched the corvid's every twist, every turn and avoided beak and claw with surprisingly alacrity. Avian ennui had given way to unmistakable agitation as the impudent little creature ran rings around the large bird in what should have been a dogfight with a foregone conclusion.
***
For me, though, the tale that stood out the most was one event that occurred during Allan's tenure as set designer/stage manager for the Benny Hill show in the late sixties.
Benny had wanted to do a slapstick sketch that he'd had in mind for some while with an old biplane.
A pre-war De Havilland was sourced and Allan was tasked with playing chauffeur on what should have been a one day shoot. Benny was waiting outside his trendy Kensington home by the time Allan got there and they made their way in the early morning light to the airfield somewhere in Sussex. The plane took off, the cameras rolled, Fred Scuttle emerged from the make up van and everything, according to Allan, went smoothly and precisely to plan.
Except it didn't.
Take after take was recorded on film (Benny shunned the use of the cheaper, much more flexible format of video) and the costs of hiring the Gypsy Moth alone must have been extortionate even by the standards of the day.
Benny wasn't happy; with the sound, with extraneous crew noises, with the lens flare on the playback, with the timing, with the height of the aircraft, with the costume, but mostly with his own flat performances.
And so that day extended into a second day with identical results, which in turn gave way to a third day - again with nothing to show but frustration and dissatisfaction. The fourth day -a Thursday - was canned because of rain but Allan showed up on the Friday at the usual time for a day's work that was hopefully ("Dear God, please!!!") going to bear fruit. Benny, unusually, wasn't waiting on the footpath, so Allan alighted, walked up the steps and rapped on the door. Benny appeared, still in his pajamas, and offered Allan a cup of tea while he went up to get dressed.
Allan was well aware that Benny invited no one into his rented house ever and now he came to see why. The only thing occupying the living room was an old fold out camp bed that seemingly doubled as a couch, and the only food in the cupboard besides a packet of loose leaf tea, were tins of potted meat and baked beans. One cup, one spoon, one knife, one fork on the drying rack. Allan was immediately reminded of the similar eccentricities of the composer Erik Satie.
****
The corvid in its blind pursuit nearly swooped inadvertently into the windshield of a Toyota soft roader and a heartbeat later almost clipped its wing on the edge of the awning.
I swear I could almost see the grim smile beneath the flying insect's proboscis as it bumbled off in the heat, free and none the worse for wear after the ordeal.
****
Even after the final edit, Benny wasn't happy with any of it and the sketch died an ignominious and all but forgotten death on the cutting room floor.
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