I went on a trip to Bournemouth. It’s a long drive from home, something that I always think twice about doing these days. But I wanted to try and see a rare and exotic species of lizard for an upcoming book. It’s Bournemouth. Miles of archetypal golden sands and rolling surf. It’s even sunny. As long as you sheltered from the cool 8°C winds and ignored the typically British mix of flip-flops and goose down jackets, you could almost be …
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It seems that Britain’s -and perhaps the world’s – oldest cuckoo is back. According to Wikipedia, the oldest recorded cuckoo for Britain is just under 7 years old. At this point, you should hear inside your head the kind of quiz show klaxon favoured by QI or Family Fortunes. Because Colin is back. Who? Colin. The cuckoo. Colin is perhaps Britain’s most famous cuckoo. Every summer for what is believed to be nine years, the bird has appeared at Thursley …
Ever since the earliest days of man, people have set to sea in boats. I’m personally not good with boats or ships – my idea of the smallest thing you should go to sea in is the Isle of Wight – but I appreciate that others don’t share that view. I’ve often wondered how it must feel to be far out at sea with no sight of land, facing whatever the sea and wind can throw at you. How easily …
When I was a child there was a pub near our home called the “Fox and Elm”. It had an elm tree outside, with a rather unconvincing plastic fox in it. Dutch Elm disease did for the tree, and I never found out what happened to the fox, but both were gone after a few years. But the practice of naming pubs after animals is common. ‘The Swan’ is England’s fifth most popular pub name, while ‘The Fox’ comes in …
The topsy-turvy weather of late is reflected all around me. In some places the blackthorn is still flowering, in others drift of soft pink petals look like the late snowfalls that keep happening. Yesterday I took my coat off, put my coat on, took my coat off in a regular cycle as we veered from warm and sunny, to frigid winds and sleety showers. At one point hail lay sparkling on roads turned to sugar. Today feels like more of …
1961 was an auspicious year. The Beatles first sang at the Cavern club. Suicide was decriminalised. I was born. And a small bird was recorded in Britain for the first time, having slowly found its way over from the continent. Cetti’s warbler The Cetti’s warbler was named after 18th Jesuit Francesco Cetti who, it has to be said, bore a faint resemblance to the bird named after him, although that wasn’t why the bird was named after him: he was …
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