My desired life - you can help!!

I work in a bank. In an ideal world I would not work in a bank, I would spend every single day behind a camera, taking photos of birds, plants, landscapes, cities. Anything but people. I could get quite good I reckon, practice makes perfect and all that. The reason I don't do this and that idealism is not reality is that I would be destitute. Utterly poverty-stricken. Over the years I have perhaps earned a few hundred pounds from bird photography. A couple of magazine covers, a few quarter pages, a handful images in books that more often than not get me a free book. You can't eat books. 

I am not sure how you earn a living wage from photography. I think you have to run tours, have to learn how to put the clueless in situations where they cannot possibly fail. I have not tried, but am not sure I could hack it. It is the stuff of waking nightmares surely? But you have to start somewhere I suppose. So....

For many years now I have had a separate website devoted to galleries of my photos, generally what I consider the cream of what I have taken. I am pretty ruthless as to what makes it on there, and I frequently have a massive self-critique session and cull a few more. No doubt there are a few duffers on there that I am too emotionally attached to to get rid of, but largely I think they represent the best of the last six or seven years of not inconsiderable effort. Taking photographs of birds is not easy, in fact I would put it out there that it is bloody difficult. Sometimes hours of planning fizzle out into nothing and you get up from the mud in depair. Equally sometimes five random minutes can produce something sensational and you have to pinch yourself that it really happened.

Up until now my website has just been galleries - a visual feast for the casual visitor. However I have discovered that there is a free add-on where you can market your work. I've decided to give it a go, nothing ventured and all that. I've spent a bit of time revamping it, uploading far larger files that will reproduce nicely in a variety of formats - most are 4000 pixels wide, that's massive. Now I know that birders are notoriously tight, fine, I accept that. But think about it? Only a small number of people need order a couple of prints and that could be just the start I need. Have you any idea how much my lens cost? It's ridiculous, honestly absurd. Quite how so many people seem to have one I just can't fathom. Anywhere you go and there are tons. Tons that are seeing a poor return on their investment - and I'm not just talking about the ones attached to people who haven't a scooby. I'm talking about mine - it spends almost all of its time in a cupboard gathering dust. It is aching to get out there and earn its keep. Trust me, I do actually know how to use it, and your generosity could allow me to stop working in Canary Wharf and to spend my days fulfilling my destiny. And I need a new camera - mine is five years old and a total wreck. It had a new shutter last year but there is only so much you can do. So, are you looking for Christmas Cards this year? What about a calendar for 2018? A mug? Or - and this is novel - a framed photo of a bird to hang on the wall? If you are, please visit the link below and go wild. My dreams thank you.

JUSTBIRDPHOTOS.COM

On being boring

Around that same pub table I described last week we also discussed the merits of being boring. All agreed that I was very boring indeed, true friends in other words, but that the advantages of being boring were there for all to see. As is often the case with discussions in pubs, I cannot precisely remember how this conversation came about, but it may have been to do with stability and family harmony. Whatever, though I am actually 40 now, I have been 40 since I was 20 if you see what I mean, and that has a lot going for it.

My mate Richard, whilst perhaps not meeting the same ‘boring’ baseline, an area where I truly set the bar, agreed he too was a pretty level-headed kind of guy and that he liked that. Neither of us will ever set the world on fire, neither of us will ever go on to achieve great things that are talked about for generations to come. And we’re both absolutely fine with that. Steady as she goes.

So what is good about being dull? Well, I am unlikely to ever spring any surprises on anybody, especially my family who know me best. Mrs L generally knows what I am thinking before I do, or what I am about to do. She catches me “tasting” in-progess cooking before I have even reached for the spoon for instance. My children have this talent too – this is good. Being predictable means that expectations are generally always met. Having a firm footing in an unexciting home life (by which I mean no fits, no screaming, no emotional angst) means that my kids are level-headed, sensible and nice individuals, who at this stage we feel will develop into level-headed and sensible teenagers, hormones not withstanding. This may have been the gist of the original conversation, but at this stage we can’t see where the “I hate you I wish I’d never been born!” is going to come from. Perhaps being boring also brings with it massive amounts of parental naivety? Time will tell.

In my case, being boring also means being risk averse to the point of paranoia, a trait I have happily passed on to my son. Bungy jumping? No thanks. Sky diving? Yeah right. Anything mildy exciting at all? No, I'm fine thanks. I find watching sport stressful, I don't need any additional bursts of adrenalin that come from the faint feeling that my life be in danger. It makes you feel more alive apparently. Well, being rational I feel perfectly alive already. Pulse? Yes. Another tax return to do? Yep, definitely alive.

And of course I like birds. There's a boring badge right there. One of the best you can get in my opinion, my head full of useless avian facts, latin binomials, calls and songs, and a mental archive full of what rare birds I've seen where. I've been known to wear green, and I even have a camo hat (kind of). Not forgetting my ground-breaking musical tastes....

And no, no migrants yet since you ask.

On pacing myself

So in response to my last post where I mentioned I was a little tired of all the running around I do, a number of correspondents got in touch to say that this was all entirely my fault. I accept this a hundred percent, I am mostly busy because I make myself busy, and there are some conscious decisions that I could make (if I were brave enough) that would slow me down. The major one of course, and the route taken by at least one of these people, would be to turn my back on the stress of the rat race and go do something entirely different. Work, for better or worse, is mostly the root cause of all the running around. Not only because of the time it takes up during the day, but also because of all the opportunities it subsequently gives me to fill up my time with. Natch.

I had the opportunity before or course, and whilst I didn’t spurn it, perhaps I didn’t make the most of it. I had a lovely time though and will always remember quite how nice it was living a simpler existence, albeit still in London. Long summer days, still quiet mornings, a sense of calm despite small children.

Fundamentally I like to be busy, but I think the point I was trying to make was that it would be nice if sometimes, just sometimes, that wasn’t the default state. Bob made an interesting point on life continuing to speed by, but that people slow down, and I suspect his many years of experience ;-) are hitting the nail on the head here. I am getting older and there is no denying it. I am still trying to run around as if I were 21, but that the inescapable truth of it is that I’m a few years past that now and basically more tired. To be clear, I am not past it, whatever ‘it’ is, far from it, but perhaps I need to recognise that I have limits, and that those limits are coming in a bit. And that rather than increase the amount of things I do, I need to drop a few of them. That is the difficult part as I have a great many interests, none of which I really want to give up but some of which I may need to change.

So really this is another post about ageing, adapting to it, and how it annoys me that I even have to. But I have started in a small way, and I’m feeling sort of positive about it. This is because I was forced to buy a new camera bag, which is always a happy event. Camera bags are a topic for endless discussion because there is no such thing as a perfect camera bag. There are however many imperfect camera bags, another one of which is now in my cupboard! This one has wheels…..

Yes wheels. This is what I mean about ageing and it annoying me. I mean what camera bag has wheels? To be clear there is no hint of tartan, I have not yet reached that stage, but it certainly isn’t as manly and youthful as the backpack that it replaces. The sad truth is that neither am I, and after my recent trip to Arizona I realised I could not cope with the weight of my bag for an extended period of time. It contained a fair amount of stuff it has to be said, due to my pig-headed inability to choose between pure birding and pure bird photography and insisting on doing both. Hence a large lens, a large scope, two cameras, a few other lenses, a tripod for the scope, a monopod for the lens, chargers – you get the picture. The weight? 23kgs and there was barely a thing in it that I didn't use. There is no compromise possible in my mind on trips like this where I have multiple aims, but after lugging it around for a week I realised I can’t do it again, or rather I would prefer not to.  Hence the new old man’s bag. I have high hopes for it, and it doesn’t actually hold as much stuff so not only does it roll gloriously across airports and along pavements, but it will be lighter too. This is a bag for easy trips, worry ye not though as for hardcore bird photography trips I have a smaller bag that my poor wizened frame can still bear.

Ready to roll

Whilst on the topic of ageing, last night Mrs L and I met up with our university buddies at our traditional meeting spot, which is an old-school public house in London. A classic old boozer actually, utterly timeless, whilst those who frequent it gradually become more decrepit. Last night the starting topic of conversation was gout, which is entirely appropriate for our demographic. In a way this is entirely fitting, we have been going to this pub for years and gout is thus the natural conclusion. Not my gout I hasten to add, you would have definitely heard about it by now! We recalled how we had been sat perhaps at the very same table talking about buying houses and mortgage rates. Over the years the subjects have varied, through engagements and marriages, jobs, toddlers, children, school places, catchment areas. And now in a depressing yet totally expected progression we’re onto our ailments. Actually a couple of us are still talking about engagements and marriages, but they’ve held out long enough that they might get to do the ‘in sickness and in health’ part simultaneously! And I suppose if we all remain in London for the foreseeable future, it’s probably the place we’ll end up in talking about death too. Nobody said that last night but I wonder if we were thinking it? Or maybe it was just me, bags with wheels prompting morbid thoughts well before their time.

My life now vs my life then

22nd July 2015

REGULATION (EU) No 575/2013 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL, Article 285, paragraph 4

"If an institution has been in involved in more than two margin call disputes on a particular netting set over the immediately preceding two quarters that have lasted longer than the applicable margin period of risk under paragraphs 2 and 3, the institution shall use a margin period of risk that is at least double the period specified in paragraphs 2 and 3 for that netting set for the subsequent two quarters."


22nd July 2009

On balance I prefer then.

Belgium Minibreak

As if I have not travelled enough recently, on Sunday I made a last minute decision to visit Belgium. The reason? Heroism, pure and simple. Heroism comes naturally to me. As naturally, say, as wishing to have a large stock of excess Brownie Points available for twitching far-flung Hebridean islands. So it was a pretty easy decision to for me, on finding that Mrs L and two thirds of my descendants were stranded in Belgium, to mount an immediate rescue mission. The problem? Mrs L, handbag connoisseur and noted security expert, had had her car key stolen in Brussels. To be absolutely clear, it had not fallen out, unnoticed, from her massively-overstuffed handbag that does not close properly. Never in a million years could that ever have occurred, and I most definitely have never mentioned this ridiculously obscure possibility to her. No, stolen. Stolen by a heinous criminal gang who had used incredible guile and agility to somehow gain entry to her handbag - amazing that they weren't suffocated by Tesco receipts in the process.

After an afternoon of faffing about with the Belgian RAC, after which it was determined that they could not start the car, nor now lock it back up again, the obvious solution began to dawn on me. The quickest way to regain access to the car and thus return the family to Chateau L and domestic bliss would be for me, Superfatherhusband, to personally and immediately travel to Brussels with the second car key. The second car key is my car key. It lives in my pocket, which I pat approximately once every twenty seconds to ensure its continuing presence. I am not paranoid at all. I gave my pocket another reassuring pat. Yup, one car key, all present and correct. Amazing, and so the plan sprung into action. My brilliant neighbours could take Muffin overnight, so he packed a small bag. Meanwhile I retrieved my passport from its ultrasafe secret hiding place, checked that my wallet – on a CHAIN attached to my belt was still attached – and that the remaining Euros from Spain were still in it. Check. Ipod zipped up in jacket pocket? Check. House Keys in case Mrs L had lost them too had them stolen too? Check.

With the Eurostar website down, I had no choice but to go to St Pancras and chance it. Chance is a fine thing, and so I got a seat on a train leaving 20 minutes later. Not long after that I was in my fourth European country in a week, and under cover of darkness I infiltrated Belgium, my fifth. The location of the car was pre-set on the sat-nav on my phone – attached to me via ANOTHER CHAIN (OK, so I am perhaps a touch paranoid; then again, have I ever lost my phone or wallet?) and so also still present (for the avoidance of doubt that means that it hadn't fallen in a puddle, or down the toilet.... ) but in the event it proved unneccesary as Mrs L's good friend and object of Brussels visit, Jo, was there to meet me, probably in disbelief that I would be on the train and needing to check it out just to be certain. A taxi to the car, and we were reunited! Rejoice! And then Mrs L and the girls came down the stairs - more rejoicing!

The moment of truth. Did I still have my car key, or had the Brussels phenomenon struck twice! Hah! Of course I had it, one simple click and the car was ours again. Family in, seat adjusted, mirrors set, and we were off. Warp speed through northern France as, already approaching midnight we needed to catch the last shuttle before a serious gap in the schedule. We made it with quite a bit of time to spare. A scary moment when the car wouldn't start when we arrived in Kent; not because it  wouldn't start at all, but because in order to start it I had to entrust Mrs L with my key whilst I fiddled with the battery. Luckily she managed to keep hold of it for five seconds and we were off again, once again with me selflessly taking the wheel and guiding us safely to Wanstead. A great success, up there with the best of twitches!

I was in bed by 3am, and in work on time the next morning, though the coffee consumption was excessive by anyone's standards. So, a lovely little trip - I've never been to Brussels before, and I have to say that during my lengthy stay it looked pretty nice. Of note were the taxi driver not having the faintest clue where he was going yet driving at about 100kph through suburban streets, and a Nespresso shop where on another day I might have sourced some decaf, of which I have run out. Next time I have to rescue Mrs L from a foreign city I'll be sure to research the retail options before leaving.

In addition to the above heroic tale, I have three other pieces of news. The first is that I almost accurately predicted that Sunday would be a great day for Buzzards and Red Kites on the patch. Before I was called upon to don my cape and mask, I had scored three of the former, but the Red Kite came through the following day when I was at work earning money for Eurostar tickets.

The second is that also on Sunday, I had a first winter Gull go over the Flats with a very clear black "W" starting on the leading edge of the upper wing. Distant, I could not pick it up with the camera for an ID-clinching shot, and in my excitement I didn't think through the options very clearly and am thus forced to concede that I cannot assign it safely to either Kittiwake or Little Gull, even though it was undoubtedly one or the other, and I need both for the patch. Upon reflection, the flight mode was that of a Gull and not a Tern, though this is hardly a concrete ID feature. So, elation tinged with bitter regret on that front.

The third piece of news is that during a short break from saving the world, I have managed to find time to put together a post of gratuitous photos of Lesser Kestrel from my second-most recent European trip. You can find it here, meanwhile I am off to check on the progress of the Telephone Box being installed outside the house.

 

Where my liver went

If you were hoping that this might be about birds, hope again. I am afraid that once more I have virtually nothing to say. This has never stopped me before, and won't stop me in the future. If you want proper entertainment, I suggest you visit here, which is altogether a lot more fun. If you look very carefully at the very end, I actually feature, which was somewhat of a surprise, but there you go. If you put yourself out there to a certain extent, this is what can happen. Be warned kids. And grip, don't dip, obviously.

Er, where was I? Ah yes, no birding. So, in lieu of actually leaving the house, I did a spot of tidying. The object of my affections this time around was the big cupboard under the stairs, which over time has degenerated into a repository for stuff we no longer wish to see around the house. I pulled the whole lot out, recyled masses of it, went to the dump with a pile more, and shoved what was left back in. In doing so, I found these.

This is almost every single wine cork that I have pulled in the last, gosh I don't know, five years. Why have I kept them you might ask? Because I'm really really cool and well-adjusted. I don't actually have a good answer, or indeed any answer. I think I once harboured designs of doing something artistic with them, but that never happened and it's now getting to the stage where a Tern raft isn't totally out of the question. As a displacement activity, rummaging through a mountain of corks proved pretty good. Much better than cleaning at any rate. I didn't count them, out of deference to my doctor. And anyway, Mrs L is equally culpable. Or maybe a third culpable - that's the usual consumption ratio round here. Looking at this enormous pile, it's hard not to feel very very unhealthy indeed. No, I didn't go for a run today, it was raining.

Whilst poking through them it occured to me that this was very much June July material, especially the wettest and most bird-free July since 1682. By far the majority of the corks say "Mis en bouteille a la propriete", which is posh-speak for saying that the wine was bottled at the same place the grapes were grown, rather than shipped in a tanker to a massive factory in Antwerp and bottled alongside Pepsi, before hitting the shelves of Happy Shopper at £2.99 a bottle.

But digging a little deeper I unearthed a few that were recogniseable. A pleasing half-hour therefore passed, during which no tidying occured, and it turns out that there were quite a few more interesting* ones in there. I feel obliged to feature a small selection, clockwise from top left, and ending in the middle, as I have nothing else to say**.

1. Chateau Batailley, a Chateau L staple. Left bank claret, decently priced. I drink of a lot it. Not that you could tell.
2. Chateau de la Variere. In the Loire somewhere, we visited whilst on holiday. I would never be able to find it again, but I remember it being quite nice and doing dessert, which this is. Was.
3. Domaine Olivier Leflaive. White Burgundy - as popular as water round here, possibly drunk more frequently.
4. Wirra Wirra, an Aussie departure.
5. Bonneau du Martray. Oh yes.
6. Domaine Bruno Clair, Chambolle Musigny - Red Burgundy and Ribena substitute.
7. Cote de Nuits of some description. Likely delicious.
8. Domaine du Vieux Telegraph; wonderful Red Rhone that I can't afford any more because Kim Yong-Un has bought it all.
9. Indeterminate and forgotten celebration.

So where are they now? Recycled? At the dump? Errrr, almost. They're now in the loft. And guess what I found up there? Yup, the previous five years. I am nothing if not consistently sad.

* lies
** true

Sad but True

The ultimate Birdforum thread seems to have petered out. This is entirely my fault, and I apologise. I had been attempting to stoke the fires with snide comments about quite how pitiful it all was, to no effect whatsoever, and so had even gone so far as to suggest that they were in with a chance of beating the Slender-billed Curlew thread, which rolled for months and months and topped 1000 posts. This appears to have been the last straw, and there hasn't been a new post since Sunday. Oops. Perhaps I should create an anonymous username, "shitstirrer2127" springs to mind, though it might already be taken, and write "Lee Evans/Steve Webb (delete as appropriate) you are a big girl's blouse!" or "Has anyone on this list seen a Southern Pochard?" and see if it miraculously springs back to life. Or perhaps not, and the fact that it is sinking into the depths of the web is in fact A GOOD THING.

And anyway, I feel that this blog has been sailing a little close to the birding wind of late, you know, talking about current affairs and stuff, not really what I'm aiming at. What am I aiming at? Er, other than total weboland domination, not much really. Write a bit of nonsense here, write a bit of rubbish there, get paid in Swarovski binoculars on a per-post basis, that kind of thing. With precious little to say, I'm feeling a weekly roundup coming on, what do you reckon? Scintillating? Almost.....

Saturday afternoon
School Summer Fete. Yours truly mans a "Name the Fluffy Owl" stand, whilst simultaeneoulsy running a "Find your own bug and have it identified!" stand. Total sales of name the owl tickets, £2,132,092.50. Total sales of bug-pots, £6. Or maybe £5. And three of those were my own son and two of his friends. Total bugs found, two 22-Spot Ladybirds, a beetle whose name I forgot, an aphid, and an unidentied tiny fly. Sorry no refunds. I spent most of my time admiring the real owls on the stall next door, as did everyone else. And I still don't know what the fluffy owl was called.

Saturday evening
Howard's BBQ for friends, Rainham volunteers and bird bloggers. An entirely sober affair, much jollity is had with an ex-RSPB collection Robin, and Howard definitely does not stick Christmas Tree lights up his nose. Devastating news of an ID faux-pas, and that my Lesser White-fronted Goose photo shows a Pink-footed Goose. I attempt to explain it away. Later on, we do a spot of mothing, and Muffin outclasses us all in the ID stakes. Top moth award goes to the six Swallowtail Moths. Sorry, five Swallowtail Moths, as I accidentally crushed one whilst losing my balance fairly late on.....

Sunday morning
Arise with immense headache; blame beer. The morning passes slowly to say the least.

Sunday afternoon
Still feeling like shit, I assess how many beers I drank, conclude not enough, and decide that I am ill. We watch Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Birdforum en famille, and then with a temperature of 2,345 farenheit I go to bed at 6pm.

Monday
My headache has gone, and the fever has reduced fractionally to 98.6 farenheit. However I have god-awful stomach cramps and lower back pain like I am 39 weeks pregnant. It is all I can do to take the children to school, then I come home and collapse. But only for a moment, as I then have to spruce the house up as we have a visitor. The list of Brownie point-earning tasks is long and varied, and I even clean up the desk that Mrs L has been promising to clear up for approximately fifty-thousand years. It takes me fifteen minutes, but blogging about it loses me all my Brownie Points.

Tuesday morning
As the sharper amongst you will have noticed, that's today. I'm feeling a lot better, and have done some shopping, repotted Pie's sunflowers, done a couple loads of washing, and photographed some Hoverflies. I'm guessing you're sick of insects, so instead.....

Dealing with Fame

Today was my big day. The day I broke into television. I’m not counting the dead birds on Wanstead Flats, that was hardly the grand entrance I wanted. No, today is where it is all going to start. I don’t yet know what it is going to be called, but I believe the working title is Wansteadbirderwatch.

I arrived at the London Wetland Centre and was met at the entrance by no less than Sir Peter Scott. Carrying on past the statue, I ended up in a room at the top of the visitor centre where Simon King was waiting for me. He was of course absolutely thrilled to meet me, though true professional that he is, he managed to mostly conceal his utter delight and acted perfectly normally. Like it was something he did everyday. As if! I did my bit of course, putting him at ease by pretending to be totally amazed at meeting him, a bit of fawning and so on. I think it worked! Eventually they managed to drag him away from me, and so I was able to get on with my program-making. Honestly, the people I have to deal with…

Arriving on the set of Wansteadbirderwatch, the cameraman and sound guy were both ready and waiting. Unfortunately Air Traffic Control had been unable to agree to my request that all Heathrow-bound planes divert to Gatwick for the day, so the filming was interrupted about every forty-five seconds by the roar of jet engines. This is why my thirty second segment took fifty-five takes, rather than any other reason such as gross incompetence. Just wait until I get hold of Willie Walsh. Throw in every school child in west London and a few aimless plastic duck-strokers, and it took forever and we were unable to move onto the main segment of me expounding my thoughts on twitching and dog-ownership levels in the southeast. Nevermind, I’m sure that will be the next part to get made just as soon as I have a chance to get back there.

I ambled back to the visitor centre in the company of Sula, a local birder and blog acolyte, where it was no surprise that Simon was hanging around waiting for me. I put him out of his misery and sat down opposite him at a table, and proceeded to have a good old chat about many things. Mainly about travel and Shetland, which he wanted to know all about as I think he is planning a trip there soon. Hopefully I was able to pass on a few tips.

And that was it, I bade my farewells and headed back to my limo. It’s a long red one, I don’t believe in black. Although I had told my driver what time I was finishing, he must have misheard, because he was between twelve and fifteen minutes late.

I’m back home now, and I have to say that cooking dinner and dealing with squabbling children is a bit of a come-down after my day of televisual feast-making. Soon though I expect that to be a thing of the past, and my personal assistant(s) can fetch the children and bring them to the trailer if I’m on set....

PS Anyone who takes this post the slightest bit seriously needs to get out more. Out against a wall to be precise, where they should arrange for someone to then shoot them.

Actual Birding

This week has been fairly quiet on the actual birding front (though obviously never a dull moment on the cyber-birding front). For late September, I've seen very little on the patch. Part of this has to do with not actually getting out on the patch for more than about three hours in total, most of those when the birds had not yet woken up. I've seen a single Brown Spotted Flycatcher, and of course the Wryneck is still here, but other than that I can't think of anything even moderately exciting in Wanstead.

However, it is coming up to Ring Ouzel time, or at least I hope it is. I missed them all in the spring, bar a probable that I had to let go, and they are amongst my favourite birds, so I hope I can find one. I'm basically down to weekend mornings only at this point; there is not enough time in the morning prior to Mrs L leaving for work.

Still, I have it pretty good, what with not being stuck in an office or anything like that. I was reminded of work just today, when I received a pay-slip from my ex-employer. Like a child on Christmas morning, I excitedly ripped it open! Was this the big one, the one that would irreversibly change life in the Lethbridge household? El Gordo!

£2.07

Guess not then. Stock dividends from shares I still have in some executive incentive plan or other, and that I still can't sell. Well, whoopee. Do I sound incentivised? That life seems so far away now, though if I don't pull my finger out I could be headed back to it. I had to wear a suit the other day for the first time in ages, and felt almost professional again. I won't say I strutted down the street, but I felt like a different person. Funny what clothes can do. You would think they were meaningless, and I am of course not remotely embarrassed by my customary bedraggled birder appearance, but in a suit I felt more confident, more assertive, with a positive spring in my step. The funeral went fine.

My youngest has been a bit poorly this week, a nasty chesty cough, so we've tended to stay in, hence no birding of any note - a trip to Oare to twitch a White-rumped Sandpiper aside. Instead I've been concentrating on the watching the sky from the terrace, with some success as it happens. The lack of Ospreys and Honey Buzzards has been disappointing, but almost as exciting has been not one, but two garden ticks. TWO!! I mean, wow.

The first of these was Meadow Pipit. At this time of the year the breeding population on the Flats is augmented by passage birds, and the numbers are building steadily, so I was fairly confident. How in the five years or so I've lived here I've not managed to get a Mipit from the garden I'll leave up to you, but it took an hour on Sunday morning, viz-migging from dawn, before two typically bouncy and squeaky birds went over. Played for and got, and a pathetic gap plugged.

Prior to this stunning success I hadn't had a garden tick since May, so I was fully expecting that to be my lot for the forseeable future. So it came as a pleasant surprise on Wednesday when a Great Black-backed Gull flew over the garden. This species is rare on the Flats, I'd expect to see perhaps two or three annually, and whilst I knew that I'd get one over the garden eventually, I'd put it to the back of my mind. I'd just been watching a pair of Lessers when a comparatively enormous gull flapped lazily over with slow wingbeats and a whopping great bill. I'm afraid I don't have even a poor quality picture to aid constructive discussion, so you'll have to take my word for it. I am well known for being highly competent at Gulls, so I'd image automatic acceptance is likely.

Like this, but bigger. And with a darker mantle. And pinkish legs. Just call me Klaus.

Evolution at work

A month ago

Two weeks ago

30 minutes ago

Happy Friday! Now what?

It is the end of the working week, offices have emptied, relieved young workers are in pubs the length and breadth of the land, and older workers are perhaps at home renewing acquaintance with their families. I never used to go out on Fridays, I always went straight home. Generally Mrs L & I would open a bottle of something nice, eat some extravagant food, and moan about work. I don't have any of that any more, so my contribution to the weekly "God what a shit week I had at work" conversation is pretty minimal. Instead I listen and nod, or switch off and think about birds instead.

"blah blah blah blah....and it will probably be a major comment, which won't go down well. What do you think I should do?" asks Mrs L, Audit Queen.

"The Arctic Warbler showed well", I say, brightly.

But I know exactly where she is coming from, it is virtually impossible to switch off from work entirely. Although I was pretty good at mostly forgetting all about it, it was always there in the background. Even on holiday, you don't really start to wind down until it is almost time to go back. Mind you, I don't think I can remember a holiday where the office didn't call me, no matter where I was or what I was doing. They called during all my paternity breaks as well; you are always available, they own you. Now that I can look back at it rationally, I realise that none of it was of any importance whatsoever, yet it consumed my life for a decade. I remember being so pleased about making Vice President, it meant I was finally 'somebody'. I ordered 500 business cards with this valedictory title emblazoned below my name, and used about 10. These days we use them for shopping lists.

I was reminded about that period of my life twice today. Firstly, a guy over the road still works at the same place. He is on paternity leave, so I saw him today for the first time in ages. He looked shattered, unsurprisingly. We had a bit of chat, and naturally it turned to the office. He said it was mental, still, and that the whole place was crippled by a fear of screwing up, creating an odd atmosphere of frantic inertia. He is a Vice President too, or rather he is a Vice President, and I am not. I should invent a title for myself to use in the house. Standing there, talking about the daily grind, I was glad I wasn't there any more.

Later on, a good friend from the office called. How was I, and had I started looking for a job yet? He too described a manic environment of deadlines, bullshit, and fear. I remember it being a difficult place to work, and being highly stressful, but did I moan about it as plaintively? [yes - Ed.] Perhaps they are both being nice to me, exaggerating the horribleness of it to make me feel better for having been made redundant. I doubt it though, it was pretty nasty back in Feb, and probably hasn't changed much. But back to the job hunt question - a mum in the playground today also asked me if I was looking yet. Do I look like that much of a bum? Why is it expected that I should be looking to get back into a bank? Do people just look at the colour of my arms and think "Lazy bastard, he should be at work"? I'm quite happy at the moment thank you very much, I am very much enjoying being with the kids and not being in a highly-charged office. I also have extraordinary flexibility which allows me to twitch Bee-eaters and so on. Win win.

But I do have a constant nagging feeling, which is this: What am I going to do next? Looking after the kids is lovely. Being at home is lovely. Being outdoors and birding a lot is lovely. Right now, it works, but it is not exactly a long term solution. What am I going to do? How am I going to satisfy my intellectual curiosity? I have a number of ideas, and this is the big problem. I don't know which idea is best, or indeed if any of them are "right". And being 34 now, it has to be "right". I think it would be problematic to embark on one of these ideas only to find out a few years down the line I had made the wrong choice and that at roughly 40 I needed a third career. My favourite job of all time was driving a van round London one summer, delivering wine to rich people, but it paid something like £3.24 an hour, and seems a waste of my intellect. I am aware that that sounds (and is) highly pretentious, but I can't get away from the fact that I feel I would be wasting myself by doing something where I learn nothing and contribute nothing. But at the same time I don't want to learn any more about derivatives, equities, yield-curves, and theta-gamma. I'm all done on those things. It needs to be something new. At the moment - and you must understand that I have always been fickle, moving from one interest to another, but always most wholeheartedly - I am interested in birds, both in Wanstead and sometimes further afield. But actually it isn't just birds - being out and about looking for them brings me into close contact with many aspects of the natural world, and thinking back, this has been an undercurrent of my entire life, an interest in nature. As a child the books I enjoyed the most were the ones about natural history, be it real like Gerald Durrell and James Herriott, or fictional like Willard Price. I drew birds, I always remember drawing them, and I was a member of the YOC. When I lived in France as a kid I spent most of my time trying to catch lizards. My favourite TV programmes were the David Attenborough ones, and still are. As an adult my two main interests are birds and plants. I have devoured E. O. Wilson and Barry Lopez, I subscribed to National Geographic as soon as I had an address, and although my knowledge of many aspects of science is somewhat rudimentary, as each day passes I find myself wanting to know more about the world around me. I just find it all very very interesting. Maybe this happens to all thirty-somethings and there is a whole science devoted to it. Maybe I'm unique, I don't know. Whatever, can I make a second career out of it? I don't know. And this is the real problem, I just don't know. It is not a crime to not know what you want to do, I am sure many people don't know. But why on earth I took a degree in French, waffling about Picasso, Delaunay and Braque, and then spent ten years in an investment bank basically doing numbers all day long is anyone's guess. I suppose that when you make the initial choice of direction, you're 16 and clueless. You start applying for your first job aged about 20, and you're still clueless. When you think about it, the whole system is highly unfair on young people. I'm not young any more, but I still have to admit to being stumped, if not clueness like I was then. Mind you, listen to this song, also cleverly embedded below, a Wanstead Birder first. In fact, listen to it several times over, it is brilliant. Specifically take note for twelve seconds starting from 2:11. The song is 7 minutes of truth. You listen to it, and you nod, and you realise that every word applies to you one hundred percent. It should be on the national curriculum. Also, Bradders and other year-listers, listen out from 1:41 to 1:53 :-)




So, a serious and largely non-flippant post. Unusual. It has taken an hour to write. The frivolous ones are far quicker, and easier. I was hoping that by writing it down, it might help me work out THE PLAN, but it hasn't. Though perhaps it may allow the people who ask me "started looking yet?" to realise that one of the reasons that I haven't is because I don't know what to look for. All I know is what not to look for, which is a start of course, but hardly conclusive.

A tale of two Es

The other day I went back to Canary Wharf, E14, to sign the final bit of "Goodbye" documentation. What an extraordinary place, did I really work here? In shorts and flip-flops, and with two children in tow, I was rendered miraculously invisible to the average Wharfer, and so was able to peer, unobserved, into their world, which used to be mine. Tall, blonde, athletic-looking men with swished-back hair talked a variant of Scandinavian at each other as they walked briskly by, no doubt it was highly highly important. A smartly dressed and very pretty lady clutched a three foot tall latte. A man marched by attempting simultaeneously to type on a Blackberry. The over-riding impression was one of a lack of time. Everyone seemed in a massive hurry. I knew my new life wasn't quite as pacy as before, but have I slowed down so much that it becomes that marked?

This scene contrasts sharply with Leytonstone, E11, today. As I walked to the Post Office, I passed a pub with some tables on the pavement. At one of these tables lounged a tatooed teenage bint, who, as I approached, took a large swig of lager, lit a fag, and then sauntered ahead of me to the Post Office. Laden with child, packages, and an additional 12-15 years, I ended up behind her in the queue. She proceeded to draw her benefits, in tens, and was back in the sun enjoying the remainder of her pint and a new cigarette by the time I passed by on my way back to the car. She didn't seem in too much of a hurry.

I have no point to make really, just that people adjust to whatever circumstances they find themselves in. I'd like to think I was never really one of the Canary Wharf crowd, but probably to an onlooker I would have appeared just like the people I saw the other day. Neither would I like to think that I have anything at all in common with the wastrel I saw today, but there are certain parallels. I haven't yet started boozing it up in the afternoons at the taxpayers' expense, but there are sunny days where I accomplish virtually nothing other than staring at the sky. Not today though. Today was a day of high achievement. Sainsburys, Beckton. The Biscuit Aisle, and a revelation:

Over the course of a year, the savings could be substantial. This packet also has "Scilly '09" written all over it.

Almost unemployed, so now what?

Well, only a week to go, and then I am properly unemployed. The last two months and three weeks have been absolutely ideal - no work, full pay and rare vagrants, but reality is about to kick in with the loss of the monthly pay packet. And in the depths of winter with six hours of available daylight, sub-zero temperatures, cold-sensitive children and no rare birds, and with the reserves dropping daily, it may all be rather miserable.

Which leads me to wonder what I am going to do with myself? Of course, being able to stay home and look after the kids is a rare privilege, and all the more so given the demands of my previous career, but the redundancy settlement won't last forever and I will need an income. I need direction. The longer I am out of the City, the more difficult it will be to get back in, and the less likely I am to want to get back in anyway. Right now I have no desire to work in finance ever again, and I expect my enthusiasm for it will only diminish. Which begs the question of what alternative employment might be suitable? I don't need a huge salary, my new lifestyle has quickly taught me that having stacks of money isn't really very important, but that sitting in the garden and looking at the sky is. With Mrs L now the main earner, I just need something relatively lightweight so that we can break even. Working from home, and for myself, would suit me down to the ground, but doing what exactly? I can't think many people are going to pay me for looking at the sky. My current interests are birds, more birds, photography, plants and wine. A few people no doubt subsist quite happily doing one or more of these things, but they are a minority; for every wildlife photographer who makes a living from it, there are probably a thousand who tried and failed. I'm slowly getting better, but I am a million miles away from the elite standard. Similarly, I am not a very good birder either - getting better, but not able to take up guiding, or to write about it and be taken seriously. My plants are too niche to make money from, so they are out, which leaves wine. Now here is one thing I am genuinely good at. In fact I would go so far as to say that I excel at drinking wine. So if anyone out there needs someone to come and drink nice wine for them, I am your man, and you will find my rates very reasonable, especially for Grand Crus.