Bertie and the Kinky Politician

The Curious Chronicles of Bertie Gordon, Part One

By Mike Vickers

I’m straying from my normal path in this article. This is not about any of my travels but is instead a shameless plug for the first novel in The Curious Chronicles of Bertie Gordon trilogy, which has recently been republished on Amazon UK. Actually, travel and books are intimately linked – the more novels I manage to sell the more pennies flood into our holiday coffers, opening up the possibility of visits to such exotic places as Mexico, St Lucia, New Zealand, even Swadlincote!

I’ve been working on these books – on and off – for a little while now. Actually, quite a while, but other things got in the way, such as trotting off to Turkey to run the Yakamoz Hotel with Jan. Then marrying Jan. In the meantime, Bertie was still stubbornly wandering around in the back of my mind, but now circumstances have finally led me to announce the publication Bertie and the Kinky Politician.

I first had the idea for writing the Bertie trilogy way back in the last century after watching a particularly interesting BBC programme on parrots and macaws. The programme examined the intelligence of these birds and frankly it was a bit of an eye-opener. It’s been known for a long time that macaws and parrots possess remarkable cognitive powers. They are superb mimics and can, in some cases, actually converse with humans.

Now, stop what you’re doing and think about that for one moment. These are clever creatures.

So, I thought, why not write a book where the main character is a macaw. I had a look at the various species – call it a feather-based audition if you like – before finally settling on the hyacinth macaw, or Anodorhnychus hyacinthinus to be exact, the largest of all the macaws and a creature of  notable magnificence. Hyacinths are a dazzling blue from end to end but for sunshine yellow bill patches and matching spectacle rings around the eyes. They possess enormously powerful bills that can easily crush the hardest Brazil nut – or, in my slightly weird world, remove the occasional human ear – and are very long-lived, with lifespans over sixty years. It’s obvious really – if you live that long you’re bound to accumulate some useful knowledge along the way.

With a length of up to forty inches and a sixty inch wingspan, this is a formidable creature, especially when you throw in this surprisingly complex intellect. It’s all to do with neuron density, apparently, and while I would like to point out that we, as humans, certainly do have a large brain, our brains do not have a particularly high neuron density. Macaws, on the other hand, have a small brain with a high neuron density. The result is a measurable IQ, generally regarded to be on a par with that of a child of four or five years. As I’ve already pointed out, these are clever creatures.

That’ll do nicely for our hero, and so Bertie Gordon was born. He came from an egg in Brazil but eventually ends up living in Gloucestershire. As you do.

Well, come on, it’s a novel. A work of fiction, a combination of humour, satire, farce and ludicrously unlikely coincidences. After all, I live in Gloucester – and you have to write about what you know! An author has unlimited latitude. I can write whatever I like, and I do very much like the odd, the queer and the quirky. Humour has always been a constant companion all my life, so naturally I combined all those fine qualities, eventually ending up with Bertie and The Kinky Politician. Natural bedfellows, politics and sex, as many incidents in the real world have indicated over the years, and the juicy details of such encounters have always remained perennially popular with the public.

So what’s the plot?

Well, not to give too much away because I really would like you to buy a copy so Jan and I can afford to put our feet up on a Caribbean island for a couple of months every year, but the title is aptly descriptive. We start with Celeste, Bertie’s mum, enjoying one of her outlandishly entertaining evenings with James Timbrill, the kinky politician of the title. Their love life is, well, somewhat unusual, and is inclined towards the generous application of exotic leatherwear, ropes, straps and handcuffs. James is MP for Gloucester North and if he ever existed in reality, I’d vote for him in an instant!

But, as in all good yarns, there’s skulduggery afoot. We meet some distinctly dodgy characters along the way, including a Prime Minister who is more cunning than cunning cousin Connie from Cunningham. There’s burglary, spying and official ineptitude on a catastrophic scale. So, just like reality then, but it takes Bertie to sort things out, and the result of that puts the very existence of the government in peril. Will it survive or not?

So, to whet your appetite, here’s an extract, where Bertie first meets Detective Constable Wilfred Thompson in a cell at the local police station. You need to remember Wilf – he’s important:

‘Hello. My name is Bertie and I’m very pleased to meet you.’ He was glad Celeste had taught him that difficult sentence and really appreciated the way people responded. He’d employed it before on many occasions and as a result, his diction was near perfect.

Wilf raised an eyebrow. The words were clear and concise. He became aware of that appraising stare which Cath and many others found so disconcerting. Wilf’s police training took over. The art of interviewing now came as second nature after seventeen years in the force. Rule one: act cool. Always.

‘Hello, Bertie. I’m Detective Constable Wilfred Thompson.’ Bertie sat in silence, perched on the back of a chair weighed down with several hefty legal tomes stacked on the seat. A saucer of water and a digestive biscuit lay on top of the books. Bertie had ignored the biscuit. He only liked the chocolate ones. Jammy Dodgers were another favourite, but it appeared the station catering budget didn’t stretch to anything so exotic. ‘You can call me Wilf.’ Wilf emphasised his name, repeating it several times. He felt a complete tit interviewing a parrot. Yates was going to suffer for this.

‘Wilf. Your name is Wilf. My name is Bertie.’ This came back straight away, spoken again with cheerful competence. Amazing!

Wilf slid onto the hard bunk and thought for a moment. He knew very little about parrots but this bird was bright, that much was immediately apparent. He’d seen Attenborough on TV, crawling around in some bug-infested jungle, inveigling the viewer to observe some bizarre, multi-legged mating ritual which always ended in a spot of post-coital cannibalism. The man was undoubtedly the greatest voyeur on earth! Still, he made some damnably interesting programmes and Wilf vaguely remembered one on parrots. They had a keen intellect and some were excellent mimics so with careful questioning he might – just might – get all the answers he needed to enable him to return Bertie to his owner. Now wouldn’t that just wipe the smile off dear Tristram’s vacuous face.

‘I’m going to ask you some questions,’ he enunciated slowly. ‘Who owns you?’

Bertie regarded him with a doubtful eye. ‘I’m Bertie.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Bertie.’

‘Good. Great.’

‘Wilf. Your name is Wilf.’

‘That’s right. Now Bertie, tell me, who looks after you?’

Silence.

‘An owner? The name of your owner?’

‘No.’

Wilf pursed his lips. That was obviously not true; someone cared for this bird, and cared very much. He was in beautiful condition.

‘How about a mother then?’

Bertie tipped his head on one side and regarded him with an unwavering stare. Wilf was conscious of a sharp intelligence dwelling behind those lively brown eyes; his formal introduction proved he was able to speak complex sentences. It was more than a little unnerving. ‘Yes,’ he said eventually.

‘You have a mother. Excellent.’

‘Pieces of eight,’ said Bertie dutifully, embarking on a familiar course. People always seemed to expect this inanity. Sometimes, they clapped.

‘Quite.’

‘Land Ho!’ Another favourite.

‘What a relief.’

‘Shiver me timbers. Pirates off the starboard bow!’ This, being his third nautical offering, completed the trilogy of topical parroty phrases he’d gleaned from the television. Members of his species tended to be typecast by Hollywood.

Wilf waited to see if Bertie trotted out any more gibberish but the bird now seemed content. He started again. ‘Bertie?’

‘Hello.’

‘Tell me about your mother, your mum.’

‘Mummy?’

‘Yes,  your mummy. You have a mummy?’

‘Mummy. Oh, yes.’ Bertie’s head bobbed vigorously up and down and he chuckled and trilled away to himself quite happily at the comforting thought of Celeste and her beautiful copper plumage.

‘What’s she called?’

‘I love mummy.’ This was delivered with certainty. ‘Oh, yes, I love mummy. Mummy. I love.’

There was no doubt Bertie loved his mummy.

‘Mummy,’ he repeated again. To Wilf it seemed he drew great comfort from the word.

‘Yes, wonderful.’

‘I love mummy best.’

‘Great! What’s her name?’

‘Name?’

‘What do you call her?’

‘Wilf?’

‘No, no, my name is Wilf.’

‘Bertie?’

‘No. You are Bertie, remember?’

‘My name is Bertie.’ Bertie was beginning to enjoy himself immensely. Here was someone new to dominate, someone so dense he couldn’t see he was being played. Celeste would never fall for a trick like this. Having established a satisfactory psychological ascendancy, Bertie pressed home his advantage. ‘Nuts. I want nuts.’

‘Are you hungry?’ Wilf took the untouched biscuit, broke off a piece and popped it in his mouth. He offered the remainder hopefully, holding it up gingerly between finger and thumb, well aware such a viciously hooked bill could do some serious damage. Bertie reached out and with infinite gentleness, took the biscuit with his claw, then crushed it and scattered the crumbs onto the floor with disdain. ‘Yes. I want nuts,’ he announced firmly. Then remembered his manners. ‘Please.’

‘Oh, very well.’

A packet of Brazil nuts arrived ten minutes later. The cell echoed to the steady cracking of shells. Wilf was fascinated by the expert co-ordination of claw and bill; Brazils possessed iron-hard husks and were notoriously difficult to extract without breaking, but what Wilf witnessed was impressive; the big macaw juxtaposed both strength and dexterity to a delicate nicety.

‘Do you prefer Brazil nuts?’ asked Wilf. Bertie favoured him with a glance and did not reply, so Wilf urged on him a little. ‘Well? Do you?’

This was a phrase he’d heard plenty of times before. ‘Yes,’ he replied automatically, ‘I do.’

‘That’s nice. So, can you tell me about your mother?’

‘I love my mummy.’

‘Good. I’m glad to hear it.’

‘Good. I’m glad to hear it.’ Bertie’s mimic of Wilf was perfect in accent, diction and pitch. If nothing else, it indicated to Wilf the bird was linguistically accomplished, but he was also like a headstrong child and ignored all questions for several minutes while he preened and took a drink. Wilf sat with calm patience, intrigued by the macaw’s fastidiousness. This was an interesting diversion from the normal events of his day and Yates could hardly berate him for ignoring more important work, having set Wilf the task of interviewing Bertie himself. Now determined to conclude a successful interrogation, he was quite happy to wait until the bird was ready. After a final shake of his wings, Bertie gave his full attention to the detective again. He stared steadily at Wilf and announced casually, ‘Mummy. Her name is Celeste.’

A major breakthrough. ‘Celeste. Great, now we’re cooking.’ Wilf scribbled the name on his form.

‘Celeste, Celeste,’ he chirruped happily, exfoliating another Brazil with merciless precision.

‘Do you have a father?’ asked Wilf.

‘A father.’ Bertie seemed momentarily confused. He knew Celeste once had a father, but Ray had gone away a long time ago, before they came to this grey, treeless land of chills and noise and miserable crowds.

‘Yes, a daddy.’

‘No.’

‘Only a mummy.’

‘Yes. Celeste.’

‘Does your mum have another name?’ Wilf had to repeat this several times. It was like trying to coax information out of a very small child. Or an inebriate. Both seemed to have a similar attention span.

‘Another name?’

‘Yes, Bertie, another name.’

‘Mistress.’ The Kneeling Man used that one quite a lot. Wilf shook his head sadly and tried a different approach.

‘Where do you live? Where is your home?’

‘Close.’

‘I know it’s close. How close, do you know?’

This was a trifle too abstract for Bertie, who had better things to do than master the topography of London. He gave Wilf what could only be described as a withering look. ‘Don’t know.’

‘Is it a flat? A house, perhaps?’

‘House.’ He pounced on this quickly. ‘Yes. Big house. Big and warm.’ He thought fondly of his home, and of those who lived with him. ‘Barnstaple.’

‘Barnstaple! Good grief, you’ve flown a long way – no wonder you’re so hungry; I’m surprised your bloody wings haven’t fallen off.’

‘Yes. Barnstaple.’

‘Barnstaple in Devon,’ scribbled Wilf. He was getting somewhere at last.

‘Devon?’ Confusion again. Bertie tipped his head to one side and looked at him. What on earth was he talking about?

‘Yes.’

‘Hamster.’

‘Oh.’

‘Nice guy. Friend.’

Bertie didn’t even bother to mention Sebastian. The cat was the most contemptible form of life in the universe. He idly picked at another Brazil while Wilf sadly scratched out his notes.

‘I’m getting nowhere,’ he muttered, looking at his watch. Despite his desire to annoy Yates, he regretfully decided there were more urgent cases than having to grill a recalcitrant parrot just to satisfy his boss’s perverse sense of humour. Pity really, it would have made a pleasant change to cheer up this Celeste by returning her bird.

‘Bertie, I’m going now.’ He headed for the cell door.

‘Going? No. No. Where?’ Bertie asked suddenly. He was a sociable chap and didn’t like being on his own. Perhaps he’d overplayed his hand tormenting Wilf.

‘To get a cup of coffee and arrange for you to be taken to the zoo.’

‘Zoo?’ Bertie found most of the sentence too difficult to understand, but zoo was a great new word. Monosyllabic. Easy to say. ‘Zoo,’ he repeated thoughtfully.

‘Yes, the zoo. Maybe you’ll meet some other parrots.’

‘Not a parrot.’ The answer came back immediately and was very clear. Wilf could have sworn there was more than a trace of annoyance in Bertie’s answer.’

‘What are you then?’

‘A macaw. A hyacinth macaw.’

‘Well I’ll be damned!’

‘Now we’re cooking,’ said Bertie amiably.

If you find yourself tickled by an inexplicable urge to know more, why not go and get yourself a copy.

You know you want to…

Bertie and the Kinky Politician is available here on Amazon UK as an e-book, price £2.99 and also as an actual paperback, with proper covers and pages to turn while you relax in the bath with steamed up glasses, price £9.99 – and if you enjoyed Bertie, please don’t forget to leave a glowing review on Amazon.