Smoothing Ruffled Feathers: The Charm of Chickens (and a small Dutch Quacker Duck)

August 29, 2020 / stidyatkusane / 8 Comments

Now that I look back on it, I see the one thing that has stopped me from sinking too deeply in to the Slough of Despond during the long, lonely, months of lockdown has been my chickens. At a time when the whole world seems to be going to hell in a hand-basket, they have continued to provide me with a sense of normality, comfort and reassurance. Quite indifferent to the great human drama being played out around them they have stuck to their daily routines – eating, drinking, sleeping, fornicating, scratching around in the straw, attending to their ablutions, egg-laying, crowing, clucking – with cheerful insouciance.

In fact, you can take it from me: kooky, sassy, loveable and sometimes just plain hilarious, chickens make wonderfully entertaining companions. Chickens are cool! Chickens rock (why else would one of my favourite old British Blues groups call themselves Chicken Shack?)!

Okay, so they may lack some of the attributes and superior skills possessed by other members of the bird world. They are not as big and strong as an Ostrich. They are not as stately and graceful or have the elaborate courtship rituals of the Grey-crowned Crane. They can’t sing like a White-browed Robin-Chat, nor do they possess the exquisite beauty of Narina Trogon. They can’t suck nectar out of flowers while hovering like sunbirds. They can’t fly or dive as fast as a Peregrine (in fact they are downright clumsy aviators who should be prohibited from taking off unless in an emergency) and – unlike the fierce, regal, Eagle – you probably won’t find them featured on any countries’ coat of arms. Nor can I imagine any Roman legion marching in to battle with their standard bearer carrying a stylised replica of a chicken mounted on a metal pole.

On the other hand, they do do make excellent weather forecasters which is why you often find them positioned on top of wind vanes. Chickens have other virtues and talents that might have escaped your notice – they are easy-going, respond to kindness, produce high-quality garden fertiliser and have an unmatched ability to lay prodigious quantities of healthy, wholesome eggs.

A lot of folk think chickens are stupid, with beady eyes and pea-sized brains. That is not my opinion at all. In their domestic arrangements and social gatherings they are actually remarkably organised. Like humans, there is a clear-cut, ladder-like, social hierarchy with the ones on top enjoying clear advantages and special privileges denied to the others – like prime position at the food trough and first choice of roosting spot.

Proof that chickens have aesthetic sensibilities…

The order of dominance is usually established by one hen giving another hen a quick peck. Hence the term “pecking order” coined, back in 1921, by the Norwegian ornithologist Thorlief Schjrelderup-Ebbe, a man who spent a lifetime immersing himself in barnyard politics.

When you introduce new members to an existing flock they usually spend couple of days sizing each other up. Once they have worked out who fits in where, they live in surprising harmony thereafter. President Donald Trump could learn a few lessons from a chickens ability to accept strangers and integrate with one other.

*Top of the pecking order – Rowdy the Rooster.*..

Chickens form alliances and cultivate social networks. They learn who to avoid and who to cosy up to. They pick special individuals to sit close to. My two beautiful Bosvelder hens, for example, always roost together in the same spot every night. They are clearly very fond of each other, affectionately huddling together and clucking contentedly before falling asleep.

It is very easy to slip in to the anthropomorphic trap of attributing birds with human emotions but I do think they are capable of friendship, empathy and grief. And who cares if the scientists don’t agree with you or look with scorn on such misdirected displays of sentimentality? I sometimes think the boffins would benefit from getting away from their test tubes and cold laboratories and getting a little more romantic in their theories…

Of course, I am talking exclusively about hens here. Roosters are another matter altogether.

I actually have two chickens runs. The first is the domain of The Red Brigade – the descendants of the Rhode Island Reds who formed the nucleus of my original flock. The second belongs to The Motley Crew – the non- Rhode Island Reds (although a few Reds have infiltrated their ranks).

Originally each run had it own rooster but in the end the combined racket became more than I – and our guests – could stand. Roosters can be incredibly competitive in their attempts to outshout each other. The principle function of this non-stop crowing is, of course, the proclamation and defence of territory, as well as impressing their multitude of wives. More than that, they seem to take an aesthetic pleasure in their own performances, always looking immeasurably pleased with themselves after another ear-shattering outburst.

Vain, pompous and boastful – and definitely not as smart as their female counterparts – it is very easy to see why many authors have chosen to satirise human society by endowing roosters with human qualities. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Nun’s Priest Tale, for example, the fox plays on Chanticleer the Rooster’s inflated ego and overcomes his instinct to run by insisting he would love to hear him crow, just as his amazing father did, standing on tip-toe with neck outstretched and eyes closed. Although he succumbs to this flattery, Chanticleer finally manages to outwit the fox by playing his own trick back on him.

Alas, Motley-Fool Too, the son of the original Motley Crew Bosvelder rooster, Motley-Fool One, was not nearly as crafty or as lucky as Chanticleer.

It happened like this. I had chosen to let the Motley Crew out to forage in the garden one glorious, sunny, afternoon. While all the hens were doing sensible hen-like things – hunting for seeds, chasing grasshoppers, pecking at invertebrates – Motley-Fool Too, as every bit as raucous as his late father, was staging his own concert under the Avocado Pear tree. Suddenly, there was an almighty commotion which cut him short right in the middle of what would turn out to be his Requiem to Himself…

By the time I got to where he had been standing, all that remained was a few fluttering feathers and a lingering cloud of dust demarcating the spot that Motley-Fool Too had just claimed as his own. After a search, Michael Ndlovu, our farm manager, found his lifeless body crumpled up in a nearby rock outcrop.

If I was a nature detective I would say the perpetrator of this violent crime was probably a Caracal as I have seen them around the chicken run before. Or maybe a Serval. We get them too. They like chickens in whatever shape or form they come.

Although he had plenty of good examples to learn from – including Maestro Rufus in the adjoining run and Nicholson’s noisy rooster, down the road, on the next door farm – Motley-Fool Too never quite mastered the signature Cock-a-Doodle-Do of his species. What we got instead was an abnormal, strangulated, high-pitched, almost unrecognisable version. Repeated again and again ad nauseum…

After Motley-Fool Too got himself snuffed out, in the very prime of his life, I often found myself wondering whether the culprit – whatever it was – found his hysterical banshee wailing as irritating as I did and decided to put a stop to them once and for all. Or maybe it just got sick and tired of Motley- Fool Too’s overweening vanity. Hubris and falls, and all that…

Having discovered a ready source of fast food, the predator kept returning to the scene of the crime putting my entire flock of some forty-odd hens and one remaining rooster in huge panic. This left me with no other choice but to place my chickens in Level Five lockdown, banning all movement outside their designated runs.

Unlike the late, unlamented, Motley-Fool Too, I must confess I have a real soft spot for Rufus the Rhode Island Red rooster, mostly because he is sufficiently comfortable in his own manhood not to feel the need to constantly assert himself (President Trump could learn from him too). Which means I get to sleep at night. He is also very protective of his harem. I approve of that too.

Holding up my end of the deal, I provide my little work-force of breakfast manufacturers with amusement as well as food. I relish my role as Chicken-Whisperer. It is very satisfying and helps keep me grounded, especially in the midst of the current anxiety. Way back in time – before the river of life started hitting all the jagged rocks and tree trunks and whirlpools and waterfalls – my parents handed me the responsibility of looking after their chickens. Thus there is a nice sense of continuity and coming home about what I am doing now. This is my heartland. I have returned to my farming roots.

Two of the hens in the Motley Crew run were acquired in rather unusual circumstances. My sister, a Social Anthropologist living in Mpumalanga, had been invited to attend a Xhosa ritual in Grahamstown. As part of her contribution to it, she purchased two bush hens from a seller on the side of the road, just outside Mbombela. While she was overnighting with me they laid two eggs. I decided to put them in the incubator. Abracadabra – 21days later out hatched two chicks who I promptly named Penny and Susan.

Like my sister, I can not help but think they were a gift from the ancestors (I am sure my parents had a hand in the selection). They both grew up to be exceptionally good mothers, forever going broody, so whenever I want to hatch a clutch of eggs, in the natural manner, I invariably use them.

There is another oddity in my flock and that is Plucky-the-Duck-Who-Thinks-He- is-a-Chicken. How he came to be in my run is a story in itself – his was the only duck egg to hatch in an incubator full of hatching chicken eggs. Chicken is all Plucky has ever known and all he wants to be. A brief attempt to reunite him with his own kind ended in dismal failure (completely traumatised by the experience, he flew off and hid in the bush for 24-hours before making his way back to the chicken run. When we repeated the experiment, he did the same).

Plucky hero-worshipped our original rooster, the larger-than-life and boisterous Rowdy, and followed him around with all the devotion of a religious convert. He has kept a much lower profile, however, with his two successors, Randy and Rufus. I think he is a little wary of them or else he thinks they don’t have quite quite the same charisma.

Plucky went through a brief but rather trying period when his hormones suddenly got the better of him. He became obsessed with the idea of finding a mate with whom he could mate. In his case: a chicken mate.

He is at a serious disadvantage in this respect because, being a Dutch Quacker, he is much smaller than the hens. Undeterred, he waited until one hen was flapping around in a dust-bath and then leapt on her and had his wicked way. He also developed a hopeless crush on another hen, trailing around after her with a moonstruck look on his face. He even insisted on sharing the nesting box with her whenever she wanted to lay an egg, getting very excited when she did so.

*Plucky has his wicked way. Note hens look of utter humiliation…*

For her part the hen grew increasingly agitated with his unwanted affections. In the end Plucky began to make such a nuisance of himself I was forced put him in the other run to give his passion time to cool off. Luckily, it did…

As he has matured and grown older, Plucky has adapted a more fatherly, protective, proprietorial attitude towards the hens. As a long-serving member of the Parliament of Fowls, I think he now sees his role as that of an elderly senior statesman whose job is to lend a guiding hand. He takes his duties very seriously. As the sun is abdicating each day, he stands at the hen-house door and waits until he has been able to mark off every hen, as present and accounted for, before entering the chamber himself. Usually, with much pleased-as-punch quacking…

Despite the fact he is clearly not a chicken (but don’t tell him that!), the rest of the flock have accepted Plucky’s presence with equanimity and good grace. For his part, Plucky is quite content to go on living in his totally deluded state. I envy him that ability. Every night when I go to lock them up I see him huddled up happily amongst all his chicken pals.

Once again, they provide a shining example of interspecies bonding and acceptance of social diversity. Chickens may not be as intelligent as some other birds – crows for one – but flock life has propelled the evolution of bright, adaptable creatures, teaching them how to co-exist peacefully, smooth ruffled feathers, gauge the consequences of their own actions (apart from Motley- Fool Too), manage relationships, care for their young, and share their space.

*Chickens and Helmeted Guineafowl- no xenophobia here…*

Chickens may be descended from slow-witted dinosaurs but that doesn’t mean they haven’t adapted to varying circumstances or learnt a few tricks along the way. Happily ensconced in their cooperative colonies, fed and cared for by humans (although I am not sure I would want to be a battery hen), in some ways they are smarter and more tractable then we are…

…

Mind-travelling in Lockdown

August 15, 2020 / stidyatkusane / 8 Comments

If there is one thing lockdown has done it is to force us to redraw the parameters of our lives. Suddenly, everything has shifted, the familiar signposts have been removed, the old sense of continuity has gone. Instead, I am faced with the difficulty of navigating differences over such issues as the wearing of masks, social distancing, how much contact to have with others and whether I can risk eating out?

In short, every decision I make is weighted in moral ambiguity. Cast adrift from my usual moorings, I find myself torn between the need to stay safe and a desire to escape.

It is not the being alone that bothers me so much as having my freedom taken away from me. I have always been happy to embrace solitude provided it was on my terms. With lockdown that has all changed. Now it is being imposed by decree from above with the government taking increasing control over things and placing limits on our movements

While I can understand the need for some of them, being bogged down in this murky mire of regulations has bought out all my anti-authoritarian tendencies, as well as my fear of being trapped. Suddenly it is like I am back at boarding school where all the rules are designed with the naughty boys in mind. For example: because there are quite a few delinquent drinkers in south Africa, a blanket ban is imposed on alcohol sales which means all of us are collectively punished irrespective of own behaviour.

With the pandemic shrinking our horizons, my fear is finding myself confined to a cramped, parochial lifestyle. I worry about sliding in to passivity.

I have always lived a fairly nomadic life, ready to hit the road whenever I have felt that familiar build up of stress and anxiety, like a smoldering fire, inside me. I think this restlessness can be attributed, in part, to a childhood spent among the beautiful Nyanga mountains and a deep-rooted urge to retrieve that part of myself in a far-off place. Also, I like to feel I still have some control over my life. That I am able to exercise my skill in being free.

As lockdown progresses I have found myself fantasising about trips I want to make, as well as recalling some of the ones I have made in the past. I play them over and over again in my imagination, remembering bits I had forgotten.

I pour over my old AA maps planning possible new routes. I formulate plans which will probably never come to fruit. I look at photographs of trips I have made in the past. Because of the circumstance I now find myself in, their memory suddenly seems more precious than ever. There is a sadness too. In some cases the pristine places the photographs have captured are disappearing. Others I will never see again.

It is hard to pick a favourite journey but, if forced to do so, I would probably settle for the Great South African Traverse, I undertook in September, 2003, with my birding partner, Ken, just because of the sheer diversity of countryside we passed through.

Umhlanga Rocks, Indian Ocean. Pic courtesy of Mark Wing.

Wanting to do it by the book, we started off by dipping our feet in to the warm waters of the Indian Ocean, at Umhlanga Rocks, and then drove across the breadth of South Africa and did the same in the freezing Atlantic, at Alexander Bay. Along the way we stopped at Vaalbos National Park near Kimberley and also at the Augrabies Falls.

I had never been to the Northern Cape before but the first thing that struck me about it was how straight and long and empty the roads are. Much of the landscape between Kakamas and Springbok is flat and featureless too but the N17 does take you through Pofadder which is a place I have always wanted to visit because of its quintessential South African name. There is not much to the town apart from all the huge communal nests of Sociable Weavers on either sides of it but I did buy a lump of rose quartz, in the local café, just to prove I had been there. I still have it.

The further west we drove the drier the countryside became and the fewer trees there were until, finally, we entered a landscape that consisted mostly of stones. This was the Richtersveld, South Africa’s only true desert – or rather mountain desert.

Wedged right up in the north-western most corner of the country along the border with Namibia it is a wondrous place, a truly mystical landscape of moulded, multi-coloured, rock and drifting sand. The sky is a strange intense blue, limitless and criss-crossed with lazy scrawls of thin, vaporous, cloud.

For our first few days we camped at Pokkiespram on the Orange River. It is an enchanting spot with the water idling languidly past while the mountains on either side rise up to naked peaks of rock.

Next on our itinerary was Kokerboomkloof. The road to it was marked on our map as 4X4 only but we decided to risk it in our small blue Ford sedan, heading up through the Helskloofpas – the name should have tipped us off as to what we could expect – in to Tatasberg mountains. We were probably foolish. It is not the sort of country you want to break down in because there is no water, no communications and you never know when the next traveller might chance along.

Also, our spare tyre had a puncture.

The road snaked its way between colossal boulders, around cliffs, ravines and barren gullies until, finally, on the other side, we found ourselves looking out across a vast, pale, plain, that appeared devoid of all vegetation. Along its horizon stretched another range, perhaps even higher that the one we had just crossed. Certainly the peaks seemed steeper and more pronounced and as desolate and devoid of life as anything we had seen. I was obviously not the only one to find them scary and intimidating. Consulting the map, I discovered some early cartographer had named them Mount Terror.

The road skirted the edge of the plain before winding its way up a rock-strewn kloof amongst which grew the strange-looking Kokerbooms – or Quiver Tree – that had given the place its name. Because of all the twists and turns and the numerous humps which, for some reason, had been put across the road our progress continued to be heartbreakingly slow. When we finally reached the top I felt a mixture of relief and exhilaration and was only too happy to stand there, absorbing the silence and sense of solitude.

With its dead, dry, moonscape setting, Kokerboomkloof is as about as far as you can get away from the cooped-up space of the cities. When the night closed in around us, I really did begin to comprehend my own insignificance in the vast scheme of things. Curled up in our sleeping bags under an enormous star-studded sky, you could hear no sound other than the occasional gust of wind blowing from nowhere to nowhere.

Kokerboomkloof, Richtersveld. Note Quiver Trees.

Another journey I would rank high in my hierarchy of ones to be remembered is the trip I made with my sisters and their kids, across the arid, thorny badlands of the Great Karoo and then down the West Coast to the mountain wilderness of the Cedarsberg.

Once a vast lake, the Karoo is now a place of extremes, hard and waterless. The early Trekboers who settled here – and those who followed – had of necessity to be tough for it is a harsh, unforgiving part of the world.

The white population has thinned out over the years, as the younger generations has drifted off to the cities. Many of the old farmhouses stand abandoned, there presence demarcated by a few ancient gumtrees, the skeletal remains of a windmill and the rusty wrecks of cars.

This particular trip was to have a spiritual dimension to it. My sister, who was then working on her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology, was keen to visit the Doring River, hoping to find out about the local belief systems, especially those pertaining to water. I volunteered to join her, driving on the dusty road that crosses the Pakhuis pass and then descends through ever drier country down to the river.

Strangely enough, there was a donkey dutifully waiting for us when we arrived on its banks, like he had been ordained as our designated guide. As soon as we got out the bakkie it turned, as if signaling us to follow, and proceeded to lead us down a hoof-pocked track, past fleeting pools that reflected the blue sky above until we came to one large, reed-lined one where it stopped. This, my sister decided, must be the spot.

Leaving her to make contact with the mythical giant snake and the mermaids that might inhabit its depths, I set off to explore the surrounding sun-blasted, cave- riddled cliffs.

On a knoll overlooking the river I came across one that had several faded San paintings on its wall.

Sitting in this ancient cave where, a few hundred-years ago, members of a vanished race of hunter-gatherers also hunched up I could feel the great stillness of this African landscape seeping in to me. A sense of place is often bound up with the history of the people who once lived there so it was saddening to think of the areas former occupants who had been hunted down or driven to even harsher climes.

In a continent the size of Africa you would have expected there would be space for all.

The Little (or Klein) Karoo, which falls mostly on the eastern side of the imposing Swartberg – and which I am much more familiar with – has a similar lonely, sparse, windswept feel. Like its larger neighbour, it is a haunting landscape of low trees, flat plains and ranges of lavender and purple mountains.

Back in the times when the Karoo was mostly lake and swamp, millions of reptiles lived and died here leaving their fossilised remains behind in the shale to give the palaeontologists lots to argue about much later. The Karoo is manna to such scientists.

Although I am not from these parts I have always felt a strong connection with this parched and ancient land too. It fills some unarticulated need in my soul.

I get a similar feeing whenever I visit the Langeberg, in the Western Cape, although, in this case, it could be imprinted in my DNA since my Orkney Island ancestors settled here back in 1817 and their descendants still farm the land.

The Richtersveld, Boesmanland, the Hantam Karoo, the Plains of Camdeboo, the Valley of Desolation, the Suurveld, the Langeberg – all have lodged themselves inside me. There is one other place, though, that has prior claim to my heart – the Bushveld. Each time I go there it is like a nostalgic journey in to my past.

Opinions differ as to where it actually begins. Some say it is where you start seeing Marula trees. Others, a particular bird (in my case it’s the White-crested Helmet-shrike). Mostly, it is just an instinctive, gut thing.

Marakele, where I also went with my friend Ken, certainly feels like it is in it. The park falls in part of the Waterberg and is dominated by the pyramid-shaped Kransberg. An interesting fact about this mountain is that the architect Gerard Moerdijk, who had a farm nearby, is said to have based the Voortrekker Monument on it. There is also a butterfly that occurs only on this mountain.

You can actually drive to the summit via a narrow, twisting road, the views from which are superb. It is a road you need to go carefully on. We had the harrowing experience of being chased down it, in reverse gear, by an enraged elephant bull. How we didn’t end up, a crumpled wreck, at the bottom of the valley I shall never know.

When I go seeking the Bushveld, my favourite escape route is, however, the Great North Road although we usually skip the freeway and take the old main road. This way you don’t miss out on the old platteland towns.

If you branch off at Polokwane on to the R521 you follow roughly the same route the Pioneer Column took on its way up to what would become Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). When you reach Vivo, my advice is to take a left turn at the crossroad, taking the road that leads to one of South Africa’s hidden gems, the Blouberg Nature Reserve. If you love plants as well as birds this is the place to for not only do its step mountain slopes contain the biggest colony of nesting Cape Vultures in the country but also probably the widest variety of trees for a reserve of its comparative size.

Blouberg. Vulture colony cliffs. South side of mountain..

Here, as much as anywhere, you feel you are in the true heart of the Bushveld.

Rejoining the R521 we then usually head north through Alldays to Mapungubwe where an isolated stone-working community once lived amongst the red sandstone cliffs that border the Limpopo river. Their civilisation was linked to trade routes that stretched all the way to the Indian Ocean and beyond. Mapungubwe is now a game reserve but driving through the hot, dry, strangely eroded countryside you still get a fleeting sense of its former inhabitants ghostly presence.

There are many tall, beautifu,l trees along the Limpopo as well, but move a few hundred yards inland and they are replaced by miles and miles of scrubby mopani, that accompany you eastwards all the way to Pafuri and beyond.

But the Kruger, the rest of Limpopo province and Mpumalanga, where I also often go, are a story in themselves, a tale for another time…

Sentenced to no more travel for the duration, it often feels those journeys were undertaken by someone else; or perhaps it is my life in some parallel universe. Longing for beautiful scenery (not that there is anything wrong with the view from my balcony) but unable to take a holiday because of Covid-19, I am forced to do the next best thing. I delve in to my collection of travel books.

I gain a lot of comfort from them. The older I get, the more it occurs to me that I am not going to to be around forever. I no longer have the time to visit a fraction of the places on my bucket list. This is my way of short-circuiting that. Reading about other peoples travels and adventures, is a fun way to live vicariously through them by snooping on journeys you are probably never going to be able to make.

Plus it is a lot cheaper and you don’t have to worry about leaving any carbon footprint…

A Whole Lotta Fun: Zoning out to Led Zeppelin

August 1, 2020 / stidyatkusane / 16 Comments

“Mellow is the man who knows what he’s been missing.” – Led Zeppelin.

“Been dazed and confused for so long it’s not true…” – Led Zeppelin.

In 1974, I was living in London, sharing a damp, dingy, mouse-infested room with two young English drop-outs and earning about 13 pounds a week.

The facilities were basic. We did our cooking on a hot plate while the ablutions were in a small cubicle at the end of the passage-way. I used to go to the launderette down the road to do my washing.

I dressed in a style I thought appropriate to the then emerging “underground” culture: mostly grandpa vests and bell-bottom jeans. I sported a pair of sideburns and a moustache (inspired by Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) while my hair curled coquettishly around my ears. On top of it I wore a Donovan cap.

*Waiting for a bus to London at Hunton Bridge, with my brother, Pete. This picture was taken during my turkey-plucker phase*.

As an adjunct, I listened to a lot of loud rock music, treating it with all the seriousness usually reserved for classical music – all the while nurturing a vision of myself as part of a new generation of politically and socially aware young hipsters. The fact that I didn’t know nearly as much as I claimed to didn’t prevent me from persisting with the pretence.

Back then, Led Zeppelin were the King Kong of the genre, towering so large over the landscape they dwarfed almost everybody else. Naturally, I was a fan.

Fresh from the backwoods of Rhodesia, I had been first introduced to them during my varsity days by the rather mysterious young man who lived in the room next to mine.

The university I had enrolled in was primarily known for its agricultural faculty and, not too surprisingly, most of its students were fairly conservative in both dress and outlook..

My neighbour defied this image. He was part of the “long-haired revolution”, turning his back on conventional mores and wearing his outsider status as a badge of honour.

Because of his red mane, I called him the Little Red Rooster, after the old Willie Dixon blues song (later covered by the Rolling Stones). The name stuck.

I will always remember him, with affection, slouching down the road to and from lectures, his long hair enclosing a thin, pale face, his eyes broodingly directed in front of him. Occasionally he would nod as he passed a group of women among whom he might see a potential conquest.

He made quite an impact. It is hard to believe, in this age when anything goes, that there were folk, back then, who got so inflamed by the sight of men with long hair that they wanted to beat them up. They would drive past our residence and, leaning out their car windows and shaking their fists, shout: “You fokken communists” or “You look like bleddy girls” in their thick South African accents, revealing their rampant misogyny.

You could see the hate glowing in their eyes. It was quite unsettling.

The Rooster took his rock music seriously. Eager to learn as much as he could, he bought LPs by the dozen. To make sure the quality was just right he usually insisted on buying the more expensive “imports” in preference to the locally produced versions.

His extensive collection were arranged neatly next to his pride and joy – his Hi Fi set. Only he was allowed to handle them.

It was through the Rooster that I got my baptism in to Led Zeppelin. I was writing an essay one evening when he burst in to my room, glowing with excitement.

“I’ve got it!” he said brandishing an LP triumphantly above his head. My flat mates and I were all invited to his room to hear it.

The album was simply called Led Zeppelin

Allegedly named by Keith Moon of The Who, the band was essentially the creation of ex-Yardbirds guitar virtuoso, Jimmy Page and featured Robert Plant on vocals, bassist John Paul Jones – who had done session work with the Rolling Stones – and John Bonham on drums.

To get us in to the right mood, the Rooster insisted we all lie on the floor, in his room, with the lights switched off.

From the opening track, Good Times, Bad Times, it was a shock. The shrieks and demented guitar playing, overlayed with feedback and amplifier distortion, as well the excessive drumming, was more loud and overpowering than anything I had heard on record before. It was like an earthquake, opening up a whole new chapter in my musical education.

I was immediately hooked.

If the first album was an eye-opener, the second, Led Zeppelin II, which the Rooster duly bought, was the one that established them as the unchallenged premier hardcore rock band.

Blithely combining power-house melodies with industrial strength noise, the group continued to overload their songs to the point of explosion, creating a startling rush of momentum.

Nor was it all just raw noise, the band alternating between electric and acoustic instrumentation with a finesse few other performers managed. From Plant’s impassioned screaming on the opening track, Whole Lotta Love, to To Ramble On with it Tolkein-esque references to ‘the darkest depths of Mordor‘ the songs also displayed considerable variety and content and a unique chemistry.

In an era notable for its love of musical novelty, it was amongst the most novel of them all. Rolling Stone Magazine perhaps put it best when they described it as “rock as sculptured noise”.

This ability to alternate between ripping guitar leads and achingly tender melody lines was perhaps nowhere better shown than on their best known track, Stairway to Heaven, which would go on to become a staple on the radio and one of the most requested songs ever.

Not everyone reacted to their thunderous volume and edge-of-mayhem theatrics the way I did.

I remember, on one occasion, my brother Pete, a final year agricultural student, opening the door and looking on us with a mixture of bafflement and amusement as we lay there on the floor in the dark.

Pete, being Pete, did not try and save me from myself. He may not have liked or understood the music but he realised this unholy din meant something to me and left it at that.

The Rooster hung around at university until the release of the fourth Led Zeppelin album and then dropped out of our lives in the same mysterious way he had appeared. Despite that, my passion for the band carried on undimmed.

For their part, Led Zeppelin continued to lead the pack, their wildly charismatic live performances, which often featured Page’s novel use of the violin bow, going on to cement the legend. Unfailingly energetic and vital they played with such verve and skill they outshone most everyone else – a fact that led to some lesser acts refusing to appear on the same bill as them for fear they would be found wanting.

In spite of their enormous success – or perhaps because of it – they received no small criticism over the years. The music press, at first, was decidedly sniffy; there were charges of plagiarism while Jimmy Page’s well documented fascination with the occult and openly expressed admiration for the writings of the infamous Satanist, Aleister Crowley (whose Loch Ness residence Page bought), led to accusations that they were acting in league with the devil.

Their off-stage antics also won them a great deal of notoriety. In true Seventies rock-star style, cocaine was consumed by the cartload and distilleries drunk dry. Between them they slept with literally thousands of groupies, hotel rooms were regularly trashed and their were several unsavoury incidents involving the band’s thuggish bodyguards.

With all this controversy still swirling around them Led Zeppelin still found time to make some of the most exciting, potent and powerful music of all time (Led Zepellin II, Led Zeppelin IV and Physical Graffiti are now generally accepted to be rock classics).

I, meanwhile, had left university and got drafted in to the army. Very possessive of my hard won independence, I did not react well to either the discipline or the highly restrictive, regimented military way of life.

Desperately wanting to get back to living life on my own terms, I fled to England shortly after I completed my National Service.

Having hitherto only listened to British rock and blues on records and tapes, part of my reason for going there was because I wanted to experience the music live in its natural habitat. As it turned out, however, I spent my entire year living so close to the breadline I never could afford to go to any concert.

The biggest disappointment of all was when Led Zeppelin appeared live, just down the road in Earls Court, in a concert that is now generally regarded as marking the pinnacle of their career. I was out of work at the time with not enough money to even pay my rent so I was forced to give it a miss – something I have spent the rest of my life lamenting.

Thereafter, the relentless touring, drug-fuelled lifestyle and the inevitable personality clashes took their toll and the band began to slowly unravel. Drummer John ‘Bonzo’ Bonham’s death, after choking on his own vomit – an inquest in to his death calculated he had drunk in the region of 40 measures of vodka – spelt the end, although the surviving band members did briefly reunite in 2008 in a much publicised, kill-for-a-ticket, live reunion concert.

After they split up there were rumours that Plant and Page were going to form a band called XYZ but nothing ever came of it. Instead each of the remaining members of the group that spawned heavy metal decided to pursue solo careers ( Plant and Page did go on to make an album together in in 1994). For me, though, much of the romance had gone out of it and thereafter I only took a spasmodic interest in their various musical journeys.

That changed in 2007 when Robert Plant released Raising Sand, his surprise hit collaboration with blue-grass singer, Alison Krauss, which would go on to be nominated the Sunday Times’s album of the year. As unlikely as the pairing might have seemed on paper, their disparate voices and backgrounds made a brilliant meld. Filled with lyrical love songs and gently strident social anthems it is a strongly affecting work, full of style and character and a worthy summation of his career.

I think it is a wonderful album. I play again and again.

Looking at the cover picture of Plant, a lot craggier than the Adonis-like, golden-haired screamer of yore, made me realise that age had caught up with us all. It also reminded me of the time when, like the poet Robert Frost, I too, stood at the crossroads of my life and chose to take the road less travelled.

Led Zeppelin formed part of that. For me, their music had something to do with freedom. It accompanied me out in to the world at a time when I felt a bit lost and had no real interest in making money or having a career. It helped me expunge unwanted aspects of my past and gave my life a significance it might not otherwise have had.

It was also a whole lotta fun…