Fear and loathing in las Americas

I am American. By blood, I am more American than I am British. I live here of course, I’m officially British too. The UK and Europe (cough) are where I identify most strongly with and where I’m raising my family. But I also have a blue passport and I pay US taxes. My forebears are Mormons from Utah and immigrants from Yorkshire. They prospered and spread far and wide across the land, living and propagating the American dream. Today I have relatives from Maryland to California, from Ohio to Arizona, from Oregon to Pennsylvania. When I travel there I am welcomed home.

Over here we poke fun at America. Hicks, rednecks and good ol' boys. Obsessed by guns and allergies. Fifteen different kinds of milk. Neurotic, fat, stupid and uncultured. There is an element truth to all stereotypes, but almost all Americans that I have met are kind, decent and honest people. They are friendly and welcoming, when they say “have a nice day” they genuinely mean it. It is a magnificent country, beautiful and diverse. Blessed.

America, what have you done?

I have never been prouder to be an American as eight years ago. It nearly reduced me to tears as Obama accepted. This morning I was close to tears again. Distraught. What has my second country done? Fear and frailty have triumphed over common sense and decency. Traditional politics has failed. Just like Brexit here, the disenfranchised have stormed to victory on the back of a message of intolerance and a considerable amount of hot air. Just like Brexit, it no longer matters what is true and what is not – voters don’t care. People hear what they want to hear, and if you have conviction and pander to that, no matter how absurd or divorced from reality it might be, they’ll listen and they’ll believe. Donald Trump exploited that.

In a way both decisions, awful though they are, are triumphs for democracy. Whether I like it or not (I don’t, in case you were still on the fence about that), the USA will soon have a leader with a scary world view and all the grace of a toasted cheese sandwich*. But that’s what the majority of Americans wanted, they wanted change, they didn’t want traditional Washington D.C. and its elite. Americans are nice people, I can’t stress that enough. But large segments of their society are clearly hurting, and unfortunately that same demographic are also very conservative, narrow-minded and ill-informed – a dangerous combination. The Presidential election was a chance to vote for change and they took it. At least they sort of voted on their issues, something that didn’t happen for Brexit. Brexit was ultimately only a vote against the establishment and not really about EU membership. UK voters failed to distinguish between an election and a referendum. Referendums are one-offs, final, whereas elections come around again and you get a second chance. The Brexit decision that all the over 65s voted for doesn’t allow the young people whose entire lives it will ultimately affect that second chance. At least in America there’s an opportunity to vote for change in four years time, and that’s the only positive I can currently see.

It is scant comfort. The soon-to-be leader of the free world is a monumental cretin, a rich and volatile bully with a dangerous lack of experience and an incoherent/non-existent strategy. Just like Farage here, he has made it OK to be racist and bigoted again. Whilst many who voted for him are decent people with decent views who simply didn’t trust Hillary Clinton, he has also given voice to a small segment of under-represented society that have frankly appalling views. We should all be mindful that views like this were once over-represented, and look what happened then. The swing to the right has been as dramatic as it is terrifying. Hatred. Remember what Yoda said about that? Low-level racism and outright xenophobia have become acceptable again, and just like Brexit the polls got it wrong on the US election too.

I don’t know why we are all so surprised. The Leave voters and Trump voters actually find their choice mildly embarrassing, and rightly so. The surprise would have been if they had had the conviction to stand up and publicly state that they didn’t actually like their Polish neighbours very much and that yes, they were going to be voting to leave the EU. Instead they stayed silent or lied when asked, and after voting went back indoors feeling faintly smug that they had socked it to the establishment. It is obviously a lot more complicated than this. I am just a bird blogger and I don’t understand large parts of the dynamics that have led us to this point, both here and across the Atlantic, but I think it can be boiled down to a few key themes. Disenfranchisement, anxiety and resentment. The world is too big. I do not understand what is happening. It was better before.

It is the failure of successive governments – globally - to address this that has led us to where we are now. It spans every facet of government. Education, health, trade agreements, the environment, everything. Everything is interconnected in a massively complex web, and knowing where you stand in a world that moves faster than you or anyone else can stay current with has been a huge and incomprehensible shock. Voters – and the demographics are very telling – want a return to simpler times, to straight-talking leaders, and to an improvement in their lot in life. Trump and Farage, who let us not forget appeared on stage together, are the winds of change. The fact that neither of them has a scoobydoo is irrelevant.

They lied through their teeth.

Trump literally made it up as he went along. He could have said anything, frequently did, and it did not matter at all in the end. He was the outsider, the alternative, shouting long and loud what people wanted to hear. That the rhetoric was mostly and shamefully untrue ultimately meant nothing, we live in a post-factual age. There will not be a wall built along the Mexican border, that exists only in la-la land. 11 million immigrants will not be sent back to their home countries, it's simply not feasible. Muslims will not be able to be banned or monitored, it’s unconstitutional – the same constitution that preserves the right of citizens to own machine guns, and which regularly results in mass shootings of innocent people. But that’s what people wanted to hear so that’s what he said. They didn’t want to hear about liberalism and the reality of globalisation. I can’t remember who it was that said during the EU debate that the world was sick of experts, or even what side of the political divide that they were on, but they were dead right. Common sense, science, empirical fact and the truth have all gone out the window. Trump and his ilk saw that and they capitalised on it. The traditional politicians didn’t see that and they, to use an American phrase, have been run out of town. They played it wrong and they lost.

And ultimately we have all lost. All of those smug brexiteers behind their lace curtains in middle England are probably just as confused and scared as they were before, as the level of uncertainty in the world is now off the scale. There are no easy answers to the issues that are worrying people, and electing Trump doesn’t change that for Americans either. The only thing that has changed is that we will now have a dangerous buffoon in the White House next year, an unstable, uncontrollable and uncompromising man who is not fit to hold office. This is America’s new leader, the one on whose personal sanity we all in part rely, and he is a car crash waiting to happen. Sensible things like climate change deals could be ripped up, human rights will be trampled over, diplomacy will recede and militarism will increase. He will have a global impact, possibly in very very negative ways, but that irony is lost on the isolationists who voted for him. But that’s OK, because it’s America first from now on, and who cares about the rest of the planet? Or indeed the planet itself. All the jobs are coming back, all the foreigners are getting kicked out, and it will be like it used to be back in the 1950s when life was good.

Except it won’t as that isn’t the way the world works any more. American manufacturing will not come back, as when the same voters who have just sent Trump to the highest seat in the land realise that they have to pay more for their trucks, fridges, TVs and almost everything else they currently enjoy at prices cheaper than they have ever been, they will be up in arms. Hang on, we didn't vote for this! The vast majority of all the things that this odious man has said and promised are complete fiction, just like most of the empty promises made by the Leave campaigners. Remember that bus promising EU contributions shifting directly to the NHS? It’s that, but a lot bigger. Trump won’t make America great again, he’ll push America off a cliff. Just like the true implications of Brexit are only now beginning to be hinted at, job losses and financial black holes, inflation and rising prices, America can only begin to imagine the tragedy that could now unfold. God Bless America, the greatest nation on earth! Wait, whaddya mean we’re at war with eight countries? This is Britain, we’re independent, free at last from the shackles of Europe! Wait, why is my summer holiday more expensive now, and why can’t I find a cleaner? What do you mean Walkers Crisps cost more?

And that’s without considering the human cost. This impacts relationships and families. This impacts where people can go and what they can do, it restricts individual progress and mutual cooperation. It wrecks dreams. I am sounding preachy I think, but consider the opportunities now unavailable to my children following the decision to leave Europe. Think of the doors that are now closed. The answer to globalisation is not to retreat and become more insular, it is to understand it, embrace it, and make it work for you. Brexit and President Trump are steps in completely the wrong direction, and the UK and the US are rapidly heading back to the 1970s. They have set themselves back 40 years.

Elvis left the building a long time ago, reality has now followed.

*croque monsieur

Coronation Chicken

I am blaming the Coronation Chicken for all of my recent hardship. It is said that mass-catered events and airline food are the number one sources of dodgy tummies. I do enough of the second one to know that this isn't true, but I did go to wedding on Thursday and this is when my troubles began. Registry Office gallop at four, at the feeding trough by half past, Coronation Chicken down the hatch by five, some odd gurgling by eight.

Or maybe it was the A3? This poor excuse for a road had me driving round Sussex and Surrey country lanes at 1am with nary a diversion sign to be seen, and contributed to basically having no sleep that night and thus my body getting out of kilter. I am a very regular person, but not anymore..... Dammit I hate being sick, and having stomach issues is my least favourite type of illness. Give me a cough or a cold any day of the week. Friday morning was kind of OK, bar exhaustion, but by Friday evening I was having the kind of cramps that I hitherto only associated with Polonium 210. By Friday night I felt like I was having a baby, and most of Saturday was spent groaning. Sunday and I am at least up and about and able to twitch rare ducks, but it's now Monday morning and it has all gone pear-shaped again. How on earth one (well, maybe two) sandwiches can completely destroy my digestive system is anyone's guess, but everything has all ground to a depressing halt.

It would be unkind of me to share with you my exact symptoms, however when I arrive in Glasgow I will be shopping for prunes, kiwi fruit, and pro-biotic yogurts. Plus pot pourri and a sari. Jesus. Somehow I have to get through a day of meetings that have been especially organised for a functioning me. Not that type of functioning... I simply mean that an in pain, groaning and dashing to the loo me is somewhat sub-optimal in terms of what lies ahead. Perhaps the answer is to hold off on the prunes until the afternoon, but I am in urgent need of relief and I cannot wait that long. I am already wondering what can be cancelled and what time the hotel check-in opens so that the extravaganza can start.

Being ill is the absolute pits, luckily I am stoic enough to suffer in silence.

Some Things

I just read this post by Emma Waffle. It is about nothing at all really (hope she does not me saying this) but is excellent nonetheless. That it contains a link to Peregrines helps perhaps - a closet birder if ever I saw one - but for a post that is essentially wittering on about stuff, well done. It probably helps if you have been reading the preceding waffle, which I have. Just as you have on here. So I am going to shamelessly copy the format, if not the style. Or the parts about lipstick, though I do have a skin tale to share. Oh yes.

Good things:

1. It is not raining, though this may change*. It has been raining almost non-stop for about the last week, and I am fed up with it. It was largely inevitable once Thames Water announced a hosepipe ban. The same Thames Water who lose a full 25% of all water they supply on a daily basis - this is used as a marketing tool, as in we only lose 25% of all our water every day. Before replacing however many miles of leaky pipes last year it was running at over 30%. Well done I say. Not that I need the hose now of course, as last time I looked a wader scrape was forming about half way down the garden. If the next time I look out I see a pair of courting Avocets I won't actually be that surprised. The rain has made birding all but impossible. Wanstead is sadly lacking in sea and south-west headlands. We have no alternative when the weather closes in. If I lived near the sea, I'd be down there like a shot. In fact, in good weather I'd probably be there too, but that's not the point. Constant rain equates to no birds. And to getting wet whilst not seeing them. All things being equal, I'd rather it were dry, though the downpours are helping the local ponds which are desperately low. And preventing the local youf from burning any more of the Flats.

2. This morning I saw a Ring Ouzel, or, I should say, another Ring Ouzel. That makes three this year so far, and is very pleasing. My Ring Ouzel cup overfloweth.  Verily. What great birds they are. This morning's was a female, and decided to plonk down in some broom only a few yards from Nick, Tim and I as we conversed about what a shit spring it had been. It then afforded us some of the best views of an Ouzel I've ever had for at least thirty seconds, before slipping into cover. Reaching for my ever-present camera, I discovered it had no battery left. Well that's excellent, what great planning. Honestly, my camera has one of the beefiest batteries I've ever seen - it's good for well over 2000 shots, even in sub-zero temperatures. I brag about it constantly, and then get caught short with a 2.5kg camera-shaped paperweight 500 yards from my house.

3. Chateau L has a cleaner again, though not a fairy, and will shortly have a gardener. This may sound somewhat decadent, but I view it as job creation, a responsible move for a more robust economy. When I lost my job a few years back, our cleaner lost hers the same day, which was very sad, both for her and for us, but particularly for her. Well, and for us equally now I come to think about it, and especially for me, as her responsibilities became mine. I did my best** but really my heart wasn't in it. Whilst the house looked superficially tidy, underneath the surface lurked terrifying amounts of grime. When I went back to work, I resisted getting help - I thought we could do it ourselves, and the novelty of actually having money coming in, rather than just going out, well, I wanted to keep as much of it as possible to spend on optics. The house began to look like Beirut on a bad day in the 1980s, and so I have now seen the error of my ways, and launched my very own economic stimulus plan. In any event, it is impossible to have a nice house when you have three children, as they are able to trash it far more quickly that you can clean it. They are of course also able to trash it far more quickly than a cleaner can clean it, but there is that fantastic period between the cleaner leaving and the children arriving home from school when it looks amazing. The one flaw in my plan is that I'm at work earning money to pay the cleaner, so I don't ever get to see it in this state.

4. I have more wine than I can possibly ever drink. I can't tell you how good a thing this is. Somehow I have managed to plan ahead, which is something I rarely do. I got one of those lovely emails the other day which said something along the lines of "Dear Mr L, the delicious, drinking-now-but-will-also-keep-for-a-couple-of-years White Burgundies that you ordered two years ago and have entirely forgotton about have arrived in the UK and are ready to be delivered to you in exchange for a moderately small amount of tax." It's lucky these wine merchants are honest folk, as I had entirely forgotton about them. Happy days.

Bad things

1. I am not well. Specifically, I have an unspecified stomach complaint. This started this morning, on Wanstead Flats, though as I was looking at a Ring Ouzel I made light of it. I did mean however that rather than dice with death - or worse - on public transport, I decided that working from home might be the safest and least disgusting option. My stomach has never really been the same since a trip to Thailand in the late nineties, when I experienced the worst case of the runs in my entire life, up to and including now. Somehow I survived a flight to Sydney, and sought help straight away. I'd encourage you to look at this link about bacillic dysentery, particularly the symptoms bit. One of the syptoms is apparently death, so I suppose I got off lightly, but every now and again, and I have no idea what causes it - inferior Burgundy perhaps? - I get a bout of dodgy tummy, and today was one of those days. I like to bare all on this blog.

2. Unconnected to the above, but equally pleasant to anyone who combines blog-reading with eating dinner, I have a large spot on the back of my neck which actually hurts when I turn my head. I cannot see it in order to be able to describe it to you, but I suspect it is bright red and throbbing. I have not been a greasy teenager for many years, and I would like to think that my hormones are so calm now as to be practically dead, so it is highly unfair that I should have a zit on my neck that a fifteen year-old would be embarrassed by. At least it is not on my nose.

3. There has been some kind of birders tiff in within the publications section of the London Natural History Society. I have no idea what has happened, a friend merely told me that some acrimony had occured. Highly strung these birder types. But why is this bad news? Well, for two years I compiled a section of the riveting read that is the London Bird Report. This tells you that on June 23rd eleven Blue Tits were seen in Hackney, and other important things of that nature. Whilst I wasn't working, I felt that I ought to put a little bit back into London birding, and volunteered to write a couple of sections. Rarely, and this includes work, have I been so bored, but I manfully struggled on and only delivered my sections a couple of months late. I had tried to make my accounts of Blue Tits in the capital a little more pithy than my predecessor, and was ruthlessly edited. I do not like being edited, and after two years, and finding myself working once again, decided I would pass on a third year. I thought nothing more of it until I heard about this spat, and very shortly afterwards received an email from someone drafted in as an emergency editor, with a neat little table showing who wrote which sections in 2008, and who was writing sections in 2009. There is a nasty little blank space in the 2009 list where you can see my name against it for 2008; the implication is clear. So I am currently agonising about whether I should volunteer again. On the one hand, my conscience tells me I probably should. On the other, birding is about enjoyment, and I know I will not enjoy it.

4. I keep on getting letters from the tax man. Whilst unemployed I did not seek a single penny from the public purse. Now that I am employed again, I am being instantly and relentlessly pursued. You already know my feelings on how my taxes will likely be spent. Anyway, I have a neat little pile of brown and very governmental envelopes sitting on my desk. None of the ones I have so far opened have contained good news. "Dear Mr Lethbridge, we are pleased to be able to tell you that you have been opted out of the tax system, and will no longer need to pay us anything. Please do not reply to this letter."**

That is all.


* Before I even finished this post, this happened. Stair rods.

** This might have been in a dream.

4,054,458,047

That’s me that is. On this glorious planet on which we blog, tweet and snipe on Birdforum, I am the 4 billionth, 54 millionth, four-hundred and fifty-eight thousandth and forty-seventh person to have been born. Whoa. How s about that for mind-boggling thought eh? Hope you were sitting down. How do I know this? It was on the BBC website, so it must be true. You can play too:

What's Your Number

The reason that this little gem of a stat exists is that the population of planet earth recently passed the seven billion mark. That is a serious number of people, imagine the queue at the post office, it would go on for ever and ever. I mean when I get up in the morning and catch the tube, I think that’s a lot of people, but seven billion! They wouldn’t even fit in an extra-long train!  Seven billion is like, loads. The other interesting stat is that, in the history of the universe and space, there have been 78,404,690,760 sentient human beings. And then add some birders. With seven billion alive (if not all well, necessarily) that means a lot of dead people. 71 billion to be imprecise. Where did they all go? Jeez. I’m alive though, one of the seven billion, and able to blog, tweet, and post inanities on Birdforum. Talking of which, I’m actually having a little love-in with Lee Evans on there at the moment, or rather he is, as for some reason he believes me to be on his side. I’m not on his side, nor am I on the opposing Lee-bashing side, but it didn’t prevent him declaring his adoring and eternal gratitude for something he perceived me to have done. Had there been a “hugs” emoticon thing, I would have used it in reply. Except emoticons are a load of crap, and I refuse to use them; they are a poor substitute for intelligent writing, and only exist so that stupid people can grasp simple sentences and get a vague understanding of their likely meaning. I didn’t reply, I couldn’t think of anything both cutting, witty, and genuinely inoffensive.

This bird is largely responsible for global warning. I hope it goes south via Malta.

Er, where was I? Oh yes, over-population. Not quite as important as which UK twitchers have seen the most birds and which grown men hate which other grown men, but worthy of mention nonetheless.  I read somewhere that by 2050 – this could be wrong, I refuse to actually conduct research - we will need two earths to feed the population, which by that time will be ten billion people. The trouble is we don’t have two earths, we only have one. Better hope somebody thinks of something, and fast. The good news is that by 2050 I’ll be on the way out, so won’t have to worry too much about, except perhaps over where to get buried alongside 71 billion other people, but it will be a genuine problem for my kids and my kid’s kids. I mean, what if they have to knock down Waitrose and grow turmips there instead? Where will they buy their imported green beans in December, or their Malaysian jumbo king tiger prawns? Like I said, genuine problems. Forget about where they might live, that’s blindingly obvious. They’re all going to be living with me and Mrs L until their early forties, possibly beyond. We will make weekly attempts to throw them out of course, but ultimately with starter houses by then costing a million quid, and starter salaries remaining exactly as they are today, and perhaps even less, what choice are they really going to have? I'm already resigned to it, but I suppose it will be nice to be looked after in my old age.

Seriously worrying statistics though, the cost of the weekly shop is only going in one direction. That said, it is a very clear case of SEP (someone else's problem), and I don't expect anyone reading the BBC website to do a damn thing except moan about the increasing cost of bread. In case you were wondering my preferred loaf has risen from £1.65 to £2.09. Yet another interesting stat. I am sure I can find more. Sorry this hasn't been about birds. I was going to go on the patch at the weekend and get the blog back on track, but instead I'm going to be planting spuds in the front garden and stocking up on canned food.

The King of First-World Problems

I bought it for the kids at Halloween, not realising that my mother had bought them one each. These were duly carved, and about three days later had started growing fuzz and collapsing. Three months on and this one is still in perfect nick. Totally firm, no soft spots. Given that it cost a quid from Tescos, this is pretty good going. Could it possibly last another nine months?

Probably not, so the question is, what am I supposed to do with it? The major sticking point is that none of us like the taste of pumpkin, yet it seems wasteful to chuck it away. Today is the three month anniversary of it sitting on the kitchen counter. It's lived on the right hand side near the fridge, and has also travelled down to near the toaster. I put it in the fruit bowl, but then there was no room for fruit. Perhaps we should just have another Halloween and then chuck the festering mass away in a few days? Or buy a sniper rifle and reenact The Day of the Jackal?  I just don't know what to do.

Honestly, my life is so stressful.