Life is complicated.
If, for example, you were a seabird enthusiast seeking to differentiate between the Greater and Lesser Frigatebird, it would not be unreasonable to assume that the former might be a bit larger than the latter. A lot larger, possibly. You would be wrong. The Collins guide to the Seabirds of the World will tell you that both have exactly the same 2.3 metre wingspan, and that the other differences are almost indetectable to the layman.
We live in the sort of world, sadly, when the kind of intellect we allow to name our birds also happens to be the kind of intellect that manages, with the entire cornucopia of adjectives available to him or her, to be possibly the least good at it.
Covid is the reason that I know this, and many other things besides.
Ever since lock down, I have set myself five minutes after I get up each morning to learn about one new seabird. I have the time through travelling around much less, so why not? I’m on 263 now, which means I’ve done a few days with two of them. I can also now memorise the names of 162 of the 6,289 islands in the UK, and have lain on the grass of my lawn identifying eight different bumble bees, four hoverflies and any number of wildflowers.
Obviously, all this is of absolutely no practical use. It earns me nothing, wastes valuable time and, besides, it is not as if St Peter is suddenly going to throw open the Pearly Gates with a cry of: ‘Blimey! This one can tell the difference between a sooty and light-mantled sooty albatross. Let him in.’
One of the false badges of honour in modern life seems, regrettably, to be, and to be seen to be, very busy, and to have a diary that has less space in it than, say, Dominic Cumming’s car on a weekend break. We always felt a bit guilty that our children weren’t marching from music lesson to rugby training to scouts and back to the violin again like others seemed to be, just as it was always slightly disappointing when trying to put something in the diary with someone, to hear the words: ‘it’s all a bit manic. Shall we try next Spring.’
Covid has seen to all that, and will go on doing so until at least next March.
I suspect that one of the secrets of the next few months, unless you are a critical care medic or Rishi Sunak, will be to learn again how to elegantly waste time, how to reach the end of a day without the vaguest notion of having achieved anything more than having got through it all in relatively good order.
In the brave new world, wasting time will become seen as an essential life skill, just like on-line banking, or filling a duvet cover without doing your back in. Just like reading a novel that leaves no subsequent trace of itself in any level of your consciousness, in fact, or watching Only Connect.
All those hours that you were going to fill doing things that you can no longer do, you are going to have to spend instead inbeing the hominid equivalent of a jelly fish on a Hebridean beach, floating in and out at the behest of the wind and the tide. I think I was born for this kind of life.
I’m not looking forward to a huge amount in the next half year, to be honest, but I love the idea that, by the end of it, I will be able to tell my Ross’ Gull from my Franklyn’s Gull (pink belly on the male and little black ring round the neck in the former), and will have finally sorted out the old bottles of Green Chartreuse in the drinks cupboard.
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