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December 2016

DECEMBER 2016

 Georges Michael was another pop idol that left us too young too soon. One of the many. Aging may actually kill people and it seems to have almost only disadvantages. Almost! Because I am a person that was so incredibly lucky as to experience the indescribably beautiful sixties. I often think about those years, about my first love and about the music in those days. I am not going to try and describe that, because I cannot. The sixties-feeling you have or you do not, you cannot learn it or pick it up. Elvis, Cliff Richard, Marty Robbins, the Beatles, the Stones, Paul Simon, Chubby Checker and others have shaped the subsequent pop music with a rebound in the 80's. Music from the past did not exist in the sixties. To-day you can hear almost only music from the past. As I said, many icons left us in 2016. If I were Paul Simon, or Cliff Richard, or Madonna or Bruce Springsteen I would not put one more step outside before the new year, have my blood pressure measured and urine examined. There are only a few days left.  

When I was young

SUPER?
I again put together ‘a super couple’.

COCK: 08-250, the father of my ‘006’ and that's a real good one. It won several firsts in the Fed and also a 1st NATIONAL Argenton z from nearly 4,000 birds at the greatest distance with headwinds. Provincial (Antwerp!) it was 10 minutes ahead.

HEN: The aforementioned 941 that won in one year time:

-Sint Quentin 3,799 p - 2nd (after loft mate).

-Saint Quentin 6,069 p - 2nd (after loft mate).

-Pihiviers NPO (National) 15,735 p - 2 (very hard).

-Orleans NPO 7,795 p - 2nd (again hard).

-Sens NPO 4,591 p - 18th. -St Quentin 5,842 p - 35th

There are not many birds like this!!!

IN VAIN
Both cock and hen are a bit older but I saw to my delight that the eggs were fertilized. I looked the babies almost out of the eggs as it were. Then, again to my delight, I saw that the eggs were picked, but……? They were still a day later. And that was NOT good!

Eggs should hatch real fast, if not the babies will be weaklings, and so were these: Too small, too wet and bald as it can be. The next day they were still the same and again a day later nothing was left. Killed by the weight of the mother, she is big, or because of fighting? Who cares? Certainly it is no loss. They would have become weaklings anyway that I possibly would not have eliminated them because of the lineage. Bad luck? No actually not. You better do not mate an old pigeon with an old pigeon, certainly not in winter. Some prefer not to breed from such birds at all. Fanciers who auction ‘all their birds older than’ know what they are doing.

Older breeders are not the future. I prefer them from younger birds, preferably from good racers.

 SIXTIES
Once before I wrote about the sixties and after that I got several mails from people who said they knew quite well that feeling that I could not explain..

"How I wish those years could be back again. Songs like ‘the sound of silence’ or ‘Hotel California’ they do not make any more. To-day’s music is all shit” some sighed. Such mails make me smile and mails that make me smile I do not get too often. Because to-day many people do what I did for too many years and that is: Take pigeons and pigeon sport too seriously. Not for a second did I mourn for the dead babies of that 'wonder couple’. Throughout the years I have put together too many couples of which I was convinced they would produce supers. Shit birds was wat they produced.

I have bred real supers indeed, but they were ‘surprises’ in most cases. They were seldom off the pairs that I carefully selected.

To-days music is crap.

 AUCTION
I was at the sale of babies from W de Br. Some were very expensive, others were cheap. I am 100% sure there were good birds among the cheap ones and bad birds among those that were expensive!

That is pigeon sport. Unpredictable and always full of surprises. I love it.

 

 Auction in Taiwan. 'And I still haven't found what I am looking for.' (U2).