Very Comfy
The Metasliders on this site have been designed by me and left to be manually operated. This is both climate friendly, i.e. less expensive! They may also be more interesting for visitors.
Billy 2nd
The picture above the slider is one of me and Billy the 2nd. Billy [2] is a false Parrot because he is a stuffed version. He does look very much like Billy 1st but Billy [1] was the real thing who sadly ‘fell off his perch, literally, some years ago’. Billie’s introduction into our family was less than auspicious but his longevity alone entitles him to a note here, in the annals of my family as I know and remember them.
I liked Billy [1] very much and did permit him access to walking about on my shoulders from time to time but punishment ‘bans’ had to be introduced occasionally, due to his painful interest in my ears. Now, Billy 1st was a small parrot just about the same size as Billy 2nd. His beak was quite small by parrot standards but if you had seen just what damage that implement could do to a Brasil nut you would then understand that his frequent attention to my ears led to him being relegated rapidly, frequently and un-ceremonially straight to the ‘naughty’ step, i.e. his cage, where he would sit glaring at anyone who approached him.
Firstly however and ignoring totally the ‘rule’ of precedence there is the back story of the arrival of Billy 2 ‘chez Kreit’. On 17th Nov. 2020 I needed to have surgery in order to amputate my right leg below the knee. I was awake during the surgery because my anaesthetic had been an epidural injection i.e. close to my spine. The surgeon had allowed me to take my mobile into surgery so that I could while away the time by playing games on it. I was also able to send text messages. Towards the end of the surgery I was becoming quite bored, feeling that the proceedings needed a bit of livening-up – And so; As the surgeon began to wind up at the end of the operation I chirped:- “Well then that’s done; where’s me parrot?” He did not understand the reference but some of his team knew the ‘Long John Silver’ reference and a quiet chuckle was carried around the Theatre. The story got somehow into the realm of my wider family and that was how I came to receive Billy 2nd, and very gratefully, as a Christmas present, from our younger son and his wife, a few weeks later. Billy 2nd is still proudly with me but my ears do not suffer when he sits on my shoulder.
Poor Old Billy 1st, on the other hand, was purchased as a Birthday Present by my Dad for my Mum, from a stall, one Sunday morning, ‘Down the Lane’ – that’s Petticoat Lane to you! I was about eight years old at the time. Mum took an instant dislike of her Gift and was very vociferous in expressing her dislike of the poor animal; it was very loud and very angry, was her dislike of poor old Bill as he was instantly named, Bill became Billy very rapidly but almost totally without any interest by Mum.
For me however Billy was an exotic being from a country, Senegal that, at my tender age of eight I had never heard of. Billy and I rapidly became friends. I allowed him out of his cage quite frequently. I preferred him to stay om my shoulder but he was, and remained for the rest of his life, firmly convinced that he was a complete and functioning bird. Tragically this was not the case because the unspeakably evil ‘bxxxxxxs’! who had trapped the poor old chap from his erstwhile home in the jungles of Senegal, had clipped or, probably, ripped the flight feathers from is left wing. Whenever he caught me unawares he would launch himself from my shoulder and glare at me when I stooped to collect him from his inevitably ignoble landing. Billy’s fight path was always clumsily downwards and it was clear, from his angry attack on me when I stooped to collect him, that he blamed me fully for his failure to do what every bird should be able to do, freely and very gracefully, Fly, Up! and Away! rather than to simply, BUMP DOWN!
As much as Billy clearly liked me he took an instant dislike to my Nan. He expressed that dislike very clearly and with no attempt at subtlety . Nan lived a mere hundred yards away from us in Winchester Road and was therefore a frequent visitor. She also had a favourite armchair when she came to visit. That armchair was in the kitchen, the main family meeting place. The front room always being locked, kept pristine and held for when any more important visitors might be greeted.
Nan’s favourite armchair fitted very neatly into a gap between the dining table and the Welsh dresser. Billy’s cage fitted nicely onto the large, wide work-space which formed the top, of the bottom half of that dresser. Finally to the completion of this short tale within a tale we introduce the topic of Billy’s Bell. That object did begin life as a bell and was purchased as a piece of entertainment for Bill. The bell was not a closed bell it was an open dome with a diameter of about 2″ and depth of perhaps 1″. Once Bill decided that it did not need it as a clanging object and so he simply pulled off its short, weak, link chain, clanger piece included. He then took great pleasure in using his new construction for what he clearly believed was it’s intended use in the first place, i.e. as a water throwing device; at people and preferably at my Nan. And she always fell for it. No sooner had she sat down within water throwing distance of our lad and the house would ring with Nan’s tirade of abuse:- “You Old Sod!” “You rotten little Sod!” “You little bugger! and many more such came Bill’s way because Nan had really in-depth and firm grasp of the ‘Street Language’ of Dear Old London Town. Bill always seemed pleased with his work and no-one ever thought to take his bell away.
Then there was the cat…! We had just the one. He clearly thought that he was the ‘Jack the Lad’ of cats but, in fact, he was as thick as two short planks! He managed to lose, to painfully lose, many a battle with our Bill. The first should have taught him a lesson. Let’s set the scene then!
I had just opened Bill’s cage door so that he could stretch his legs and wings. I made my way out to the scullery to get a drink of water when I heard, first the thump of the not so soft landing of yet another of Bill’s unsuccessful attempts to imitate the Wright Brothers. I finished my drink and just as I put my glass down on the draining board I heard the scream of the cat, name Tom of course. I rushed the few yards back into the kitchen to see Tom, who had obviously felt that Bill’s hard landing was an ideal moment to gain for himself a Parrot for afternoon tea; that plan hadn’t worked, BIG TIME!’
Bill, dwarfed by the cat nonetheless had Tom’s tail held firmly through the gap between a chair seat and the median rail. The cat under the chair was too big to squeeze through the gap and his tail was held firmly in a tight beak and around the back leg of the chair so that Tom could not actually see the Parrot nor the beak that was clamping him firmly by the tail. No Mercy being Shown! Thus Bill won round one of the cat/parrot wars. It needed my intervention to relieve Tom from his predicament and the pain. There were more rounds of the struggle to come moreover. This cat was a slow learner:-
Tom seemed to resent the fact that he had been outwitted and shamed by a mere bird and quite a small one at that. He began to take every opportunity to ‘stalk’ Bill when he was still in his cage. There was a narrow space behind Bill’s cage, between the cage and the back of the dresser under the bottom shelf of its upper structure. Tom clearly felt that he would be able to ‘stalk’ Bill by intriguing himself into that gap. What he never quite seemed to grasp was that Bill was safe in his cage and he knew it. Bill was able to take advantage of the situation by grabbing the fleeting tail of the cat as it waived behind him and even, just occasionally, the tip of which could be seen, momentarily to waft just between the bars and into the cage. Bill waited for those moments to seize, capture and hold the whole tail firmly within the cage, gaining leverage around the wire ‘bars’ of the cage and which then provided a happy, comfortable chewing space, for our boy from Senegal, at the captive object. Tom learned a final lesson to leave Bill in peace when, one day his struggles to free himself from the pain of a serious piece tail-chewing became so violent that he brought the whole kit-and-caboodle down to the floor with a crash that brought people running from all over the house. Even Mum took Billy’s side in the evaluation that followed. She even laughed and smiled at Bill as she walked away, once we had set the cage back in its rightful place of course. All I heard her say were those wise words…”Parrot 10 Cat Nil”!
Nonetheless Bill and I remained friends until I was forced to leave him under the less caring and attentive control of my Mum, when the Queen demanded my attendance in her Air Force. Now, my Mum was not unkind towards our Billy, he just did not ‘press her button’. She was also quite scared of him, perhaps he gave her good reason? Who knows? Whatever the case might be poor old Bill never came out of his cage from the time that I left home and for the many years afterwards when Mum passed away and Billy came to live with Joyce and me in Sittingbourne. I began to open his cage door again but it was weeks before the lad could summon up either the memory or the courage to leave his prison. When he did finally make the plunge and allowed himself to sit once again on my shoulders it became very clear that he had not forgotten old habits completely, neither my ears nor his feelings that he should be a veritable flying machine. My ears suffered and he went back to the “naughty step” from time to time. Billy still came crashing back to earth from his failed attempts at flight and so his world became ‘normalised’ after those long years of exile.
Bill remained happily with us for some years when came one evening when Joyce and I were watching the tele. There was a quiet bump, I looked over towards the cage and there was no sign of the poor old lad. On further inspection there he was, lying peacefully in his final slumber on the floor of that cage that had been his virtual prison for all those years. As we buried him in the garden I made myself a solemn promise that I would never, ever have another bird to keep it in a cage. Bye Bill, Shlof un Sholom!
I still have an almost daily memory of Bill’s stay with us in Sittingbourne because every time that I returned home I heard him screech a welcome at the sound of the car arriving. That at least that was the way that Interpreted the noise. It could of course have been a continuance of noises he had been making all day but this is my part of the story and I choose to interpret it my way! When all is said and done moreover I often feel that I hear those same screeches sometimes when I pull up to the house these days…who knows?
It is my aim to use the pages of this website for the promotion of interest in books that I am creating on Amazon. I created the website about eight years ago with the help of a very helpful Guy on YouTube. and following advice from one of my Granddaughters.
Advice on Book Searches at Amazon.
The searching for specific books by a particular author can sometimes be a chore, not a huge one but an irritation to say the least.
In the case of my books, if you are having difficulties, I would advise simply typing into the search box just My name; Tony Kreit books… plus the name of the book you wish to find. You may get more than one title of mine. Also, do not fail to look at the very bottom of the page where you might find your quest featured in a run of small images of your previous purchases.
This website is NOT a sales site it is simply a means of me making as many people aware as possible that I am an author on the huge and sometimes confusing site that is Amazon, to give you some information about my books and a few hints as to how to locate it on Amazon.
Up to this point in time I have published six books on Amazon, all but one of which were published since the beginning of Covid. I am in the process of writing my 7th book see the section heading ‘The Thought before Last’ for my recent decision to make the birth of that 7th book into the world as interesting as possible.
I can be contacted on the email at; [email protected]
You will also see me on Social Media as I develop this site for my writing.
Just a bit more about me.
I began my education seriously in 1985 at the age of 46. I began what became a five-year part-time Honours Degree with the Open University in Psychology and Child development. During those five years I also undertook a Social Work qualification, full-time at Bromley College. These were both completed in 1991. After a year or so I began, and gained, a two-year taught MSc. course on Psychology in Organisations at Goldsmiths College, London University. During the following years and up to my retirement from full-time work in 2004 I studied full-contact style Karate under my Sensei Phil Hayman. Under his instruction I achieved a 1st Dan grading in 2003. My final university degree was an Honours Degree in the Study of Foreign Languages with the O.U. This was completed in 2014 and ended with a degree ceremony in the beautiful French city of Versailles.
I also have experience in teaching for seven years prior to my final retirement from work at the age of 70 in 2009. I worked for those 7 years as an associate lecturer with the Open University. I also have experience of teaching English as a foreign language as well as in teaching adults to read.
Please note that it is my intention to donate any profits that I make from the sale of any of my books to the Charity ‘Cancer Research’ Tony Kreit 17-07-2024 I have recently opened a monthly bank payment to the charity that at this time exceeds my monthly income from book sales!!! 😊
Tony Kreit [MSc. – Ba Hons x2. – CSS.]