{"id":1866,"date":"2011-01-02T21:00:13","date_gmt":"2011-01-02T21:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/?p=1866"},"modified":"2011-01-02T21:00:13","modified_gmt":"2011-01-02T21:00:13","slug":"my-pheasant-horror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/?p=1866","title":{"rendered":"My Pheasant Horror"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunday 2nd<\/sup> January 2011<\/p>\n

Happy New Year to Poor Little Rich Gays here and throughout the world.<\/p>\n

I know you\u2019re longing to hear how I celebrated. I was at Reggie Cresswell\u2019s.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019ll have to wait. Do you remember those pheasants? \u00a0All over Christmas, the Gay Mother and I were harbouring this terrible secret \u2013 two complete dead pheasants hanging in the larder, a lovely surprise gift from the local shoot, brought to the door conveniently on 23rd<\/sup> December.<\/p>\n

\u2018What a treat!\u2019 we said to the bearer. Or rather I did, because the Gay Mother would have been quite capable of ordering them away.<\/p>\n

We managed to suspend the creatures from a shelf. Couldn\u2019t bear to touch them.\u00a0 Their heads and horrid sharp feet swayed menacingly. Then we played Pass the Parcel. \u2018You must take them,\u2019 the Gay Mother said. Me: \u2018I couldn\u2019t possibly.\u2019 In the end I gave in. Luckily it was so cold in the larder, they weren\u2019t going to go bad, although they\u2019re supposed to \u2018hang\u2019 for a week or more to gain flavour and succulence.<\/p>\n

Every time I went into that larder I feared that they would have committed some outrage before\u00a0 resuming a sinister pose of being dead. The night before I returned to London, the corpses penetrated my sleep. Would they somehow infiltrate my frockage when stowed in the boot of the car next to my suitcase? In London, they might be a source of embarrassment or a cause for arrest.<\/p>\n

Gingerly, at arm\u2019s length, we got them into a bag of death for the journey. Horrible imaginings: what if their necks had rotted where they were tied and their heads came off?<\/p>\n

In London the bag sat on the kitchen floor being avoided by me. It couldn\u2019t have looked more normal, but when you knew.<\/em>..At last I took a running leap, got them out and re-hung, the feathers brushing my hand in the process. Astonishingly, soft, like luxury goods.<\/p>\n

At least all that remained was to get them to a butcher to be plucked and drawn. Next morning I bowled into Theobald\u2019s in Theobald\u2019s Road. \u2018Wouldn\u2019t touch them.\u2019 \u2018You must be joking.\u2019 But no. Tried another. Health and Safety. Then a third: \u2018Haven\u2019t got a licence.\u2019<\/p>\n

Hysterics, then had to face it. Would have to pluck and draw myself. Invited Joshua Baring and Robert Nevil, who comes from a pheasant background, to dine. In the afternoon, awfully brave, sat in the garden with a bin bag and got on with it.<\/p>\n

Well, you can see how people become killers. You get used to it. Pull the bird to bits. Lop its head off. Scoop out its vital organs. Awful job. Took hours and unrewarding: very hard not to tear the skin.<\/p>\n

By the time, Joshua and Robert arrived I was a shadow of former and with a new murderous streak. But the birds made lovely eating.<\/p>\n

Some graphs are too horrific ever to be shown.<\/p>\n

\"The

The Pheasants in the Gay Mother's Larder<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Dunked

Dunked in Hot Water to Aid Plucking<\/p><\/div>\n

\"The

The Plucking Fields: Note Tell-tale Feathers on the Ground <\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sunday 2nd January 2011 Happy New Year to Poor Little Rich Gays here and throughout the world. I know you\u2019re longing to hear how I celebrated. I was at Reggie Cresswell\u2019s. But it\u2019ll have to wait. Do you remember those pheasants? \u00a0All over Christmas, the Gay Mother and I were harbouring this terrible secret \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adrain-edge"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1866"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1870,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1866\/revisions\/1870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}