Procuring Swans (Day Seven of The Days of Christmas)

High Treason, blisters on my hands (no, not from doing that!) and property damage involving a JCB – all this is the result of the seventh day challenge, i.e. procuring Swans-a-Swimming.  A toughie!

From the get-go, it seems there are two problems with Day Seven:

Problem One: Can you actually own swans? The British Crown retains the right to ‘ownership of all unmarked swans in open water’, so giving a swan as a gift is opening my true love up to prosecution as a fence of stolen property, a charge of High Treason and a little bit of hanging, drawing and quartering at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

However, trying to forestall her potential incarceration and execution, I have done a bit more research on modern custom and practice. According to http://www.Royal.Gov.uk  (yes, it really does exist), the Queen only ‘exercises her ownership on certain stretches of the Thames and its surrounding tributaries’.

In reading up on this, I also discovered that there is an annual ‘Swan Upping’ ceremony, a census of all the swans too stupid to hop out of the Thames and avoid slavery. Apparently, the Queen needs to know how many of the things she owns.  No, they don’t ask the swans to fill in forms; it’s more bizarre than that.

Dressed in their traditional scarlet uniforms, the Queen’s Swan Marker, the Royal Swan Uppers and the Junior Swan Uppers set off rowing six skiffs (adorned with appropriate swan-upping flags and pennants) up river for five-days searching for swans to count. There’s even a brochure to explain it all. (Really there is…  http://www.royalswan.co.uk/sources/)

When swans are spotted, a cry of “All up!” is given and the boats circle into position like a wagon train. Presumably, they all count as many as they can as the swans swim around them and compare notes afterwards. I’m guessing they count a disproportionate number of blind swans, because any that sees that lot coming will be making a beeline for the nearest clump of bulrushes.

Blind or not, I can’t help thinking that this process is flawed. It’s like one of those old school photographs where the camera panned slowly from one end of the assembled group to the other and, if you were clever and willing to risk detention, you could run around the back and get in the picture twice. My mum never thought those photos were any good, despite me pointing out she was getting two of me for the price of one.

Problem Two: Assuming we can find a few renegade swans who have escaped the Royal grasp, there’s this requirement for the swans to be provided ‘-a-swimming’. How do you present a gift in ‘-a-swimming’ form? A goldfish, yes, but we’re talking about swans. An adult swan weighs 15kg and has a wingspan of 2.3m. You can’t exactly present seven of them in a bowl.

After some consideration, I decide that the only way to overcome these difficulties is to adopt a ‘field of dreams’ type approach. Dig a big hole in my true love’s back garden, fill it with water and put down some swan-bait. ‘If I build it, they will come.’

At dawn, I take my shovel and start breaking ground. I mean, literally breaking ground, because it was minus two around our way last night and trying to dig a hole is like trying to push a 3B pencil through double glazing.

By mid-afternoon, I’m f#cked and frantic. I call the local plant hire depot, get a JCB and knock down her back fence so we can get the proper kit in there.

As I’m writing this now, it’s early evening and I’m sitting watching the garden hose gently filling the hole we’ve dug. It looks nice. Still no swans, though, so I’ve sprinkled some juicy weed around the edges and, later, the local duck hunters club have promised to come round with their Duck Commander whistles. I’ve told them not to bring guns; technically, the Queen could still claim anything we shot, or order the disembowelment of the shooter.

If you haven’t done so yet, check out the rest of the series…

• The Partridge in the Pear Tree
• The Two Turtle Doves
• The Three French Hens
• The Four ‘Corley’ Birds
• The Five Gold Rings
• The Six Geese-A-Laying