PARROT WITH A PAST

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 863, 6 January 1930, Page 11

PARROT WITH A PAST

LIKES BEER AND ONIONS KNEW FOUR GENERATIONS High Wycombe in these days rather fancies itself as a manufacturing town, but there is an old lady living in those parts who remembers the place before it put on side. She lives in Great Kingshill. Great Kingshill and Little Kingshill are the sore of places that come as a blur to the 1929 motorist, even if he doesn’t overlook them altogether. Only the wise pedestrian knows them, and he knows Polly Nash, their famous centenarian, writes a contributor'to the “Star,” London. The Nash family has been established in the White Horse at Great Kingshill for 150 years, and Polly has survived four generations. True, she is only a parrot, but she is a personality. For a long time past she has been a celebrity. She knew Wycombe in her girlhood, when she patronised the Flint Cottage ; nowadays Wycombe is glad to come and pay her court. To be quite frank, she is a perfectly scandalous old lady, and her reminiscences at times do not bear publication. Her upbringing was against her, perhaps. She came to Aldershot via Southampton. She knew a thing or two when she joined the Army, but Aidershot considerably enlarged her culture.

After demobilisation at Aldershot, she joined the Salvation Army. There she did quite well, until she inadvertently mixed up a hymn with a Barrack Room Ballad, and she had to go. She went, with comments. A Cynical Bird

Perhaps these early experiences have made her cynical. When I called upon her she listened to my greeting, looked round the corner to see if I had anything in the way of eatables, and then made a brief observation, inviting me to go to a place which is not on the Ordnance map. “She likes you,’ said Mr. Nash. “It’s not everybody she takes to so quickly.” Polly, from the back of her cage, in a cold, dispassionate voice, then said that I was silly and old, and something else. “You’re getting on famously,” said Mr. Nash.

“If you were to give her a nut now,” said somebody, “she’ll be all over you.” “Ha! ha! ha!,” chotled polly. It was the sort of laugh that made one feel one was the last word in back numbers. But everybody was certain that I was making a great impression. The thing was explained to me in best Bucks dialect. "If she just sits and shuts her eyes, she hates the sight of you; and you’d better watch your finger. “If she says ‘Hullo,’ she means that seh has seen worse. If she swears heartily she’s taken a fancy to you. And if she laughs you can chuck her under the chin. She’s yours.”

“Oh, gorblime!” said Polly to this, and she seemed so horribly sarcastic that I decided not to take any irsks. Polly Nash is very feminine, not to say skittish. Her plumage today is as gay as that of any youngster of 50. Except that her wings are clipped and she cannot fly, she seems to be as active as ever, and looks as if she taill go on for another 50 years. She has her preferences, but she likes company. On cold nights she will sleep with the cat and the dog in order to keep warm. It is her sense of humour that is famous in the Kingshill villages. She has a fondness for onions, and sometimes they bring her an extra strong one to make her weep. She will see it through to the bitter end, and cry more copiously the more the villagers laugh at her. She has her pannikin full of beer every night, and saves a little till the morning, when she will soak a piece of bread, dipped in bacon fat, in it as an extra luxury. It was from her sea-going days that she has retained this passion for grog