On a recent trip down to the Smoke, Liam and I decided on a post-matinee snifter. We headed towards Trafalgar Square to the stage of our inaugural meeting, a chilly evening in the spring of 2006. The chance encounter is best described in my first book:
The rest, as they say, really is history.
As we hurried past the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery, we were confronted by the biggest cock I’ve ever seen, glowing bright blue in the late afternoon sunshine. It caused quite a stir, I can tell you.
The puffed up rooster, by German sculptor, Katharina Fritsch, is the latest temporary exhibit on the empty corner plinth of the Square. The work is intended to poke fun at the vainglorious imperial statues of puffed-up men (Nelson, George IV, and generals Havelock and Napier) that surround it. There have been many fleeting displays on the podium down the years, from the daft to the inspirational, the profound to the whimsical. The reason there is no permanent statue has been an open secret for years. The plinth is reserved for an effigy of Her Maj after she drops off her throne. Given her mother’s longevity (the last Empress of India lived until she was 101), the chances are they’ll be a more temporary erections to come.
Back in Norwich, the cock of the coop theme continued.
Personally, I’d rather win a week in the Maldives but then, this is Norfolk, the nation’s bread basket and home to Bernard Matthews, king of the gobblers. It’s a funny old world.
Clucking mad 🙂
🙂
Sounds like you are surrounded by cocks just like me. I now have 4 of the blighters who crow every hour on the hour day and night and then let rip every 11 seconds (i count every morning) from 5am. The biggest and most beautiful of them is gay. Won’t go anywhere near the hens and spends his whole day wiggling his ample rear at the other cocks. If you win the chicken coop please send it to the Dominican Republic.
There is a joke in there somewhere about a gay cock but I’m damned if I can think of it 😉
If anyone around these parts won a chicken coup, they need to move out into the country. Chickens have been banned from the burbs, but not the eggs. 🙂
If they banned chickens in Turkish towns, there’d be a revolution. 🙂
Different strokes for different folks.
. . looks like the centre of Denizli to me – it’s famous for its big cocks too!
Are they blue too?
Yes but have you seen what’s next up on ‘The Plinth’? A skeleton and a thumbs up… http://www.london.gov.uk/priorities/arts-culture/fourth-plinth/2014-2015-commissions
Fabulous. I’ll take a look next time we’re in town.
I’d love to win a chicken coup – Can you enter for me?
And I suppose you’d want the wellies too?