Bearded Tit by Rory McGrath

Author:Rory McGrath
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Autobiography, Humor, Science & Technology, Comedians, Great Britain, Natural History: Animal & Wildlife, Birdwatching Guides, Wildlife: birds & birdwatching, Nature, Birds & Birdwatching - General, SCIENCE, Entertainment & Performing Arts, Birds & Birdwatching, Personal Memoirs, Bird watching, Ornithologists, Life Sciences, Ecology, Humour, General, Biography & Autobiography, Biography
ISBN: 9780091924607
Publisher: Ebury Press
Published: 2009-02-15T08:00:00+00:00

Part Two

Flapping Around A Lot

BIRDING FOR ADULTS

Twenty-five years’ worth of dark, bright, deep, shallow, murky and quirky water had sloshed under the bridge between the day I first laid eyes on the JJ and the day when I found myself on stage in a civic hall in Cheltenham addressing a room full of ‘twitchers’—serious birdwatchers. I was taking part in a ‘forum’ discussing a recent bird book. I felt that I was out of my depth and that somehow I was an interloper who shouldn’t really be involved in matters ‘bird’. I think the audience sensed this and more questions than I expected were directed at me. A middle-aged man in the fifth row put his hand up.

‘So, can I ask, Rory, when did you first start twitching?’

‘Well, it started as a nervous tic when I was at school,’ I explained.

Laughter engulfed a twentieth of the auditorium.

Twitchers are serious birdwatchers. They take it seriously. They don’t want ‘upstarts’ from the telly making jokes about twitching; especially a joke they’d heard so many times before; especially the most obvious pun available, a pun that faintly ridicules the whole world of birdwatching.

‘Oh, when did I first start birdwatching? Oh that’s easy,’ I continued with a well-rehearsed h’e. ‘Well, when I was sixteen I was in this bookshop and I came across a book called The Easy Bird Guide and I think I must have misunderstood the title!’

At least double the laughter now. About six people. Yes, that’s more like it. That’s birdwatchers for you, you see. They’re usually of an age when the word ‘bird’ still has a dangerous double meaning. Apart from ‘feathered flying animal’, the word is racy slang for ‘girl’.

‘Bird’ is good for ‘girl’ though. I think it would be a shame to lose it. It’s neutral. Not too patronizing or demeaning. It’s safe. Bird. I mean, compare the word ‘chick’. A chick: something lovable, small, sweet, perhaps vulnerable, needs looking after, nurturing and cherishing. And girls have ‘hen nights’, do they not? And the Scotsmen use ‘hen’ as an endearment without any social or political repercussions.

My teenage children tell me that ‘bird’ for ‘girl’ is not quite as common amongst their peers, and their friends don’t use it at all. I attempted to verify this as part of my research.

‘So when you and your mates go to a party, do you say things like ‘Mmm, some nice birds here’?’

‘No, Dad,’ says my son as if he’s talking tactfully to a person with mental-health problems.

‘What about ‘chick’? You know, ‘I like the look of that chick over there’.’

‘You’re a perve,’ says my sixteen-year-old daughter.

Totty?’

‘Totty? Ha!’ says the boy-child. ‘Yes, we use that word if we’re taking the piss out of repressed middle-aged people.’

‘What about ‘babe’? Would you say to a girl, ‘Hiya, babe’?’

‘Babe is a fictional pig, Daddy. I wouldn’t advise it,’ warns my daughter, shaking her head.

‘When I was a boy growing up in Cornwall, we used to say ‘maid’. You know, ‘She’s a nice maid’ or ‘Have you got a maid at the moment?’’

‘What did they call you?’ asks my son.

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