I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE AND IT'S FEATHERED

Wonderful news! Four pelican chicks have just been hatched in London’s St James’s Park. Four! Think of that. There are hours, since the football doesn’t grab me much and I am not in love with Andy Burnham, when I can think of nothing else.

Four!

Forgive the grandfatherly delight. As a rule, birth is not my subject. Death is more my cup of tea. I’m too mordant to do hope. But for me, pelicans change the landscape of affection. They come from somewhere else. You could say that everything newborn has made it across from some strange mute citadel, trailing clouds of mystery and glory. But pelicans even more so. Pelican who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee?

Of the questions I used to ask as a child the most pressing was ‘Where did I come from?’ The second was ‘Where will I be going to?’ I wanted the same answer to both questions: Home. There is great comfort in the idea of return. We come, we go, and to hell with everything we do wrong in between.

There won’t be pelicans, wherever I’m going to. I wish it wasn’t so but home for them isn’t home for me. You can look into the face of a baby human and recognize your Uncle Arnold, but stare as hard as you like at a pelican and you don’t see anyone you know. And they clearly feel the same about us. Pelicans will hop unafraid onto a park bench beside you but won’t nestle their beaks into your shoulder or ask you to throw them a ball. Occasionally they bestow a look of distant pity on you. But unless you are in obvious distress or pain, they ignore you. Still - if we share pity, who knows what else we might have in common?

Pelicans are significantly different to us in other ways, too. At least the ones in St James’s Park are. They don’t procreate, for starters. That’s to say they haven’t procreated in this park for 350 years. Yet now, suddenly, there are four of them. Who the parents are is not clear. This is another way in which they don’t resemble us: they don’t get possessive over parenthood. It’s almost as though the chicks are children of the group and belong to everybody. Call me odd, but I even feel they belong to me. They won’t acknowledge me as family I know, but though I have as yet only glimpsed the dark shapes of the new arrivals in the distance, I am already wishing they would make an exception of me - Grandpa Howard . . .