In the livid nights when the sickness was on me at its fullest, I didn't even have to close my eyes to recall the beady eyes of my village elders. They were right there in my cabin, squawking and squawking about what a mistake I'd made.

So I clenched my talons and whispered a particular mantra to myself:
I'd rather be a sparrow than a snail.

Yes I would, if I could, I surely would.

I'd rather be a hammer than a nail.

Yes I would, if I only could.

I recited those same words over and over so often that they began to lose their power, however, so soon I began to rattle off - machine-gun like - my own version:

I'd rather twist a precious paving slab than offend a supermarket.

Yes ma'am, I would even twist my only childhood friend before I would turn my back on my ideals.

That was (and is) the type of condor I am.

The steamship spewed me up in a place named Plymouth, from which it was said the Pilgrim Fathers had once set sail to look for America. And in a very real sense I was a pilgrim in reverse. For weeks I wandered this new country, spreading my wings and finding my landlubber feet all over again. I took what is called in some circles a sabbatical, or a gap year, until the money for Walkman batteries ran out and it was decided by capitalism that I must needs discover for myself a job.

By this time I was in a city named Leeds. I'd made the white tower at the Parkinson Building at the city's University my eyrie and from it my eyes were cast down to the head office of the soon-to-be-Walmart-owned supermarket, Asda.

I applied for a job. Didn't necessarily impress on my interview. Nerves almost got the better of me. I kept clacking my beak, pointlessly, and scrabbling my talons on the floor of the meeting room which was known simply as 'APPLE'. When the interviewer turned-tables and asked me whether I had anything I wanted to ask them, my mind turned blank as the snow atop a mount in the Andes.

And then I asked them where the toilets were and looked all kinds of a fool.
But then as I stood to leave and they took in the full length and breadth of my wingspan, they must have had cause to reassess their opinions of me. For I caught sight of myself in the reflection in 'APPLE's' glass and saw myself a God of retail, wings a-quiver. And they must have seen the same thing for in days a job offer had winged its way into my nest.

I became an MP.

When I say MP I don't mean a parliament-wallah, nosireeBob. What I mean is a Merchandising Planner. What we do is we contemplate what goes on the shelves in your local supermarket. What we do is we decide what goes on those lucrative end-aisle-slots which get seen by all and sundry.

I could make or break a brand in ten seconds. Quicker. See that Levi Roots? If I didn't like the cut of his Reggae-Reggae jib, then his special sauce would never have touched a single lip, nor launched one thousand ships. But I put him on end-aisle and he made a bomb, I mean an absolute mushroom cloud.

(I called in sick once and a similar sauce was left to congeal midway down the lightbulb aisle until it stunk out all of our test stores and the inventor of the sauce was all like you've ruined my life, you condor motherfucker. And I made a passing gesture with my wings as though to say this is the way of things according to the mythology of retail.)

For 13 years, I performed my job as an MP to the very best of my abilities. I burned the candle at both ends. Burned it so the wax on my wings might have melted had I been but a humble human. Plunged me, Icarus-like, down five thousand roughly-hewn steps to massmarket level. But, remember, I am not human, and thus can cope with the slings and arrows of day-to-day capitalism.

I know I did a good job. I know I did because I still drew a salary.

But beyond that, my rewards were… perhaps not commensurate with the work I undertook for the multinational. I was… undervalued. Because I performed such a good planning job, they came to expect it should be done that way on a month-by-month basis. I had to flap my wings faster and faster in order to stay in the same place.

Fool such as I might be, but I kept expecting I would bump into Mr. Walmart again and that he would congratulate me on a working life well lived. I'd see him one day mooching past 'BANANA' perhaps, and he'd fix me with his love-light filled eyes. Tell me he knew I had it in me right from the off.

But I never did see him again.

And to tell you true, I missed him, just like I missed Wilson.

And to tell you true, I began to think that I had to do something magical, something which would spring right out from the Excel spreadsheets which contained our fabled forecasts and our piecemeal projections.

I had to take things up to another level.

I had my Eureka moment one day when I was talking, face-to-concrete, with the underside of a bridge. There, in amongst the muffled echoes of the pigeons, my voice reverberated back to me sounding so much like Wilson that… that I broke down in condor tears and I considered just how much everyone needs a Wilson.

And then the idea was hot in me. And I thought about how damned difficult it is to carry precious paving slabs about and how difficult it is for the common people, the all and sundry of the world, to find paving slabs in the first place.

Ah, and from there, it is just another few bumpy strides of the burro and you are climbing, clambering into the heady air of madness. I see it now.

I been an MP for 13 years, 4 months, 2 days and 3 hours, and this, at last, is the end of it. I over-reached. That's the sad truth.

I thought that plonking paving slabs on the lucrative end-of-aisle slots in five thousand Asda stores nationwide would be the kind of left-field thinking a supermarket needs. I thought it would be the making of my new reputation as a God of retailers after a few… might we say lean years. I'd thought the slabs would seem as precious to all and sundry as they were to me.

When in actuality, most saw the slabs as nothing more than large gravestones. They couldn't understand why a place such as Asda would sell gravemarkers, cheap and effective though they were. There, in that place where death is not supposed to exist, I'd reminded all and sundry of their own mortality, of the fact that at some point in the second class post, their death certificates were already winging their way to them.

I'd reminded them they soon would be unable to consume anything anymore.

I see now that, in the parlance of a game of chance such as Black Jack, taking a twist on the slabs - and not sticking on the everyday things I knew like tropical sauces and the new variety of Boost bar - was my downfall (by, say, two thousand roughly-hewn steps). I see now that bringing my mythical friendship with Wilson into things was another two thousand steps down which I should plunge.

And now, here I am, at the foot, surrounded by the stink of the massmarket. If I look up, I can see the layer of clouds which are at the height at which my old village used to be. And I don't know if I have another 13 years, 4 months, 2 days and 3 hours left in me to fly back up again. But at least down here I can't hear the mocking squawks of my village elders.

And at least I now have roughly five thousand Wilsons with which I can conflab to my heart's content. Asda let me take all of them. Every one. And now we sit, twisting our stony asses away listening to the greatest hits of one Paul Simon and one Art Garfunkel.
It's the way the condor passes.