Wednesday, December 07, 2005
How to be a bad birdwatcher – Simon Barnes
How to pitch this? Too far one way and I’ll sound like a loathsome cynical urban arsehole. Too far the other and I’ll seem twee, or worse, an anti-rational Romantic. What the hell, I’ll just go with it, whatever the pitfalls.
I picked this up in Fopp for three quid while I was waiting for Marty and Gary – we were going to see Derren Brown’s stage show. I liked Simon Barnes’s sports writing in the Times, and as a lapsed member of the YOC I had previous. You know, Nick Hornby has a lot to answer for: here’s another middleclass man talking about himself through the prism of a hobby (ahem), with some bonding with his father thrown in. But Barnes has a real passion for birdwatching - a pastime I’d filed with stamp-collecting under “youthful indiscretions” - and a talent for conveying it. Crucially, he is not the cataloguing and obscurity-hunting type of (male) collector (how you doing, Pato?): he does it because it is fun, because it makes his heart soar. Before I’d read more than a couple of chapters my perspective on the world slightly shifted. Knowing that that bird over there was a jackdaw, not a crow, and that the distinction meant something, that it had its own character, its jackdawiness, added another dimension to the everyday. My eyes have been opened a little, I’ve begun to realise just how much is going on out there. Recognising the city as a habitat has made London a nicer place to live in; and looking at what happens as the seasons change has made the passing of time seem less depressing.
There’s now a bird table and feeder in the garden. This morning I stood outside drinking a cup of coffee, watching a robin bounce around and a blue tit twitch about the feeder, my mind completely clear of thoughts but at ease.
There, I told you it’s hard to find the register to talk about such things.
In a way, more than anything else I’ve read this year, this book has changed my life. This seemingly flimsy thing, the main message of which is “look out your window”, has altered the way I go about my business. Nothing major, but it has had an effect.
So books about hobbies can be good things: they need not be nauseatingly self-indulgent. However, I promise you this: I will never write something about karaoke. And there will not be a section near the end where an awkward night in the pub with my Dad ends with us on a stage singing Father and Son by Cat Stevens – it should have seemed cheesy but it wasn’t; we looked at each other and just for a moment, we understood, and we forgave.
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How to pitch this? Too far one way and I’ll sound like a loathsome cynical urban arsehole. Too far the other and I’ll seem twee, or worse, an anti-rational Romantic. What the hell, I’ll just go with it, whatever the pitfalls.
I picked this up in Fopp for three quid while I was waiting for Marty and Gary – we were going to see Derren Brown’s stage show. I liked Simon Barnes’s sports writing in the Times, and as a lapsed member of the YOC I had previous. You know, Nick Hornby has a lot to answer for: here’s another middleclass man talking about himself through the prism of a hobby (ahem), with some bonding with his father thrown in. But Barnes has a real passion for birdwatching - a pastime I’d filed with stamp-collecting under “youthful indiscretions” - and a talent for conveying it. Crucially, he is not the cataloguing and obscurity-hunting type of (male) collector (how you doing, Pato?): he does it because it is fun, because it makes his heart soar. Before I’d read more than a couple of chapters my perspective on the world slightly shifted. Knowing that that bird over there was a jackdaw, not a crow, and that the distinction meant something, that it had its own character, its jackdawiness, added another dimension to the everyday. My eyes have been opened a little, I’ve begun to realise just how much is going on out there. Recognising the city as a habitat has made London a nicer place to live in; and looking at what happens as the seasons change has made the passing of time seem less depressing.
There’s now a bird table and feeder in the garden. This morning I stood outside drinking a cup of coffee, watching a robin bounce around and a blue tit twitch about the feeder, my mind completely clear of thoughts but at ease.
There, I told you it’s hard to find the register to talk about such things.
In a way, more than anything else I’ve read this year, this book has changed my life. This seemingly flimsy thing, the main message of which is “look out your window”, has altered the way I go about my business. Nothing major, but it has had an effect.
So books about hobbies can be good things: they need not be nauseatingly self-indulgent. However, I promise you this: I will never write something about karaoke. And there will not be a section near the end where an awkward night in the pub with my Dad ends with us on a stage singing Father and Son by Cat Stevens – it should have seemed cheesy but it wasn’t; we looked at each other and just for a moment, we understood, and we forgave.
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