Victorian toilets and another pigeon destrung

Last Friday I was wandering around Aberdeen city centre checking out venues for the North Atlantic Fiddle Convention as I’m a volunteer lead organising the busking trails for the event. One of the venues we booked are the Victorian toilets beneath Union Street. They’re obviously no longer toilets and indeed smell a lot nicer than they once did but all the original tiles are still in place and it’s a very cool space.

These are the original urinals, made from marble with glazed green tiles on the wall and terrazzo mosaic tiles on the floor. There are sinks off to the left which you can’t see in my photo. They don’t make toilets like this today.

The Wild Goose Café just above the toilets manages the space and holds regular events there.

While I was wandering about I visited the flock of pigeons on Harriet Street. I saw one with a tangled foot and happened to have my net with me so tried to catch it. Amazingly I caught two pigeons at the same time in the net but in my clumsy stupidity I accidentally let the tangled one out while releasing the one I didn’t mean to catch. Rookie mistake. I felt bad about it all Friday and Saturday so Ben and I returned today.

This time I was successful but not in catching the one I spotted on Friday; instead I caught a different one that was not only tangled but his legs were actually tied together. I don’t know how it ends up wrapped around their toes so many times like this.

I’m really happy about this one as the string wasn’t so tight yet that it had cut off the blood supply but it would have become tighter over time with the pulling from each leg so I feel we made a big difference for this pigeon as he felt young and strong – there was quite a bit of struggle from him in my hands – and now he’s completely string-free, has all his toes and a long pigeon life ahead of him.

Ben recorded some video.