Way way back. at post 693 actually, I wrote about finding, deep down in the depths of the junk heap which I think of as my office, a book that I bought about 1000 years ago in Cromer but then lost it and therefore never read it. It was another book about a " Big Year" ... here's that wacky front cover again ... ..... and over the last few days of our ecstatic reunion (?) I've been getting the flavour of it. And the flavour is .... MONEY, AIR MILES, MORE MONEY THAN SENSE, BITTER FEUDS, HOTEL ROOMS FAST CARS. In fact most of it is MONEY ! Spending a year trying to out-tick loads of other over-rich shits in a country the size of a small planet is quite a thing. And they're getting into the 700's here ! Deary me ! But .. it is gripping. And in an odd way, you get to feel sorry for the poor sods on a meaningless and puerile quest. And it certainly makes me feel less guilty about driving 18 miles to see an alleged obscure variant of Wheatear, or other odd activities. Chickenfeed ! Even my longest and most pointless twitches from the past now seem totally innocuous compared to that lot.... the Mad Black Lark Afternoon, the right dodgy icy-roads-in-the-dark lunatic dash to Montrose to "get" Ivory Gull, only for one to turn up a couple of week later 15 miles from my house .... the many Flat-Controller knuckle-gripping screaming-tyre-trips to numerous , often absent, birds ... all seem like picnics in the park compared that lot ! So .. if nothing else ... read it and get that smug feeling that you, dear reader, are not some Tick-Addicted Twerp, but actually a Paragon of Patchwork Propriety in a mad world of Wad-Waving Wankers !! So there ! Maybe it turned out to be A Very Good Year .... but somehow,I doubt it.
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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