Friday arrived on horseback, in the saddle bag of an itinerant trader. I was six years old and living in northern Nigeria. We’d had pets before, but Friday was different – a handsome African grey parrot with a bright-red tail who swiftly claimed a place in the family pecking order. Only Mum ranked above “him” – as we assumed her to be, until she hit puberty at around seven years old and laid an egg (an existential shock for us all).
Her relationship with each family member was different: she would box, beak to knuckle, with Dad; bill and coo with Mum (sicking up nuts was the height of passion); fight viciously with my younger brother, yet welcome him excitedly back if ever he went away; and condescend to go walkabout with me on a good day.
Nobody who met Friday could ever again believe that parrots were mere imitators. When we were young she would get the entire household running in circles by calling out names in different voices with varying degrees of urgency. Crash-landing accidentally in a neighbour’s garden, she yelled for mummy.
She was a vandal who chewed up books, curtains, record sleeves, and had to be banished from her night perch outside the loo when guests came to stay because of the loud raspberries she blew every time someone went in. If she was cross, or wanted some downtime, she would clamber back into her cage and close the door behind her, then fluff herself and sit with her back to the room.
When the corporate summons came to return to the UK it was beyond question that Friday would come too. She flew back in a customised bucket, only semi-legally, clanking like an accident about to happen (promiscuous in her auditory interests, she noticed sounds that the rest of us didn’t and always enjoyed the squeaks and grinds of metal on metal).
England clipped her wings, and she spent most of her time sitting glumly in the front window, observing the street life. She would throw herself into delighted paroxysms of coughing whenever one bronchitic friend showed up – starting before he even got out of his car. In the summer she could be heard warmly (if a little patronisingly) coaxing sparrows into her cage.
On outings when there was nobody to parrot-sit, she became a speed freak, clinging to the front of her cage, which was always strapped into the passenger seat, urging the car to go faster, faster. When she died of pneumonia in my mother’s hands, in her mid-teens, it felt like losing a brattish but beloved younger sibling. She is survived by a single red feather in the family photograph album.
