An avian observation post

I’ve only got two ‘Observer’ guide books but I treasure them.  I can’t fully explain why – maybe it’s the combination of them being pocket-sized (this always makes things which aren’t normally that small seem extra attractive for some reason) and also that they’re old.  They have an appealing vintage look, feel and scruffiness, like the Penguin paperbacks I’ve written about before on here.  So I’m holding on to my collection of two - well, it’s not as if they take up much room. 

‘Observer’ books were discontinued in the eighties, after 100 titles had been published in just over fifty years. There is even an ‘Observer’s Book of Observer’s Books’.    I’m not quite sure how they managed to fill two hundred plus pages on some topics: ‘mosses and liverworts’,  ‘sewing’ or ‘glass’,  for instance, but there are others about which I think the opposite, wondering how they managed to condense vast subjects such as ‘modern art’ and ‘wild flowers’ into relatively small volumes.  Birds and trees are just right for these little guides, though. 

‘The Observer’s Book of Birds’ was actually the very first in the series.  I’ve plenty of books about birds but I still refer to this one from time to time, it’s simple to use and it doesn’t go out of date.  It also has a notably endearing way of describing bird note/calls phonetically; for example, apparently the bearded tit makes the sound: ‘ “Cht, cht” and a twanging “ping” ’ and the tree pipit’s song is described as having ‘…a sweet rallentando at the end: “tweedle, tweedle, sweet, sweet, sweet.” ’ Well, I’ve never seen a tree pipit nor come across the term, ‘rallentando’ before, but I like the sound of them both already. 

I’m somewhat fanatical about birds. It’s just a love thing.  They make my eyes light up and my heart lift.   I’ve tried to analyse many times what exactly it is about birds which makes them special, but I can’t really nail it.  I love the fact that they are the only wild creature we share our lives with so visibly, so obviously, every day.  No matter where you are, whether it’s on a city street or in the middle of a forest, you’re bound to notice a bird at some point.  I love the way they are entirely free-willed but we can still find ways to interact with them – like the blackbird who comes to the back door for sultanas, or the robin who surveys as you do some gardening, almost seeming to urge you to notice him.  You can learn a lot about life just watching and trying to understand birds – recognizing all those behaviour patterns which are not so dissimilar to our own when you consider the basic motivations.  They get on with every aspect of their lives without fuss, clearly aware of us but relatively unperturbed.  The more time you devote to observing ordinary birds going about their business, the more you get out of it, and the more you get out of it the more you will want to share in their lives. 

Even when you can’t see them, you invariably hear them and once you’re tuned in it seems you become more aware of birdsong than any other sound.  Earlier today I could hear the jarring metallic clatter of a pneumatic drill somewhere up the road, but the sweet whistling of a territorial robin drew my attention away.  I think there may even have been a rallentando in his song somewhere.

For some reason my love of birds seems to be directly linked to my inability to represent them well on paper.  You’d think it’d make it easier as I spend so much time watching them, but it’s almost as if that’s all I can do: observe.  Observe and enjoy.  My drawings don’t do them justice; maybe I’m inhibited by the challenge of how to capture their spirit and essence, although occasionally I do I try the odd quick sketch…

 Images copyright C / Sun Dried Sparrows

But I’ll leave the proper pictures to the illustrators of my pocket guide. All I really want to do is see, hear and experience birds for real, and if I’m lucky I may get to hear the ‘ “fullock”…”chirrick” and “quark” ’ of a moorhen or the ‘ “whitz” and an explosive scream or groan’ of the water rail.

A musical tribute - Alan Ross: Blackbird (not the Beatles' song of the same name)

Not sure what species this is, but it isn't in my Observer's Book...

Image copyright C (aged about 8)

The worst clothes you've ever worn...?

Well, you might look at me now and suggest that the ill-fitting jeans and scruffy black jumper (with holes in the elbows) which I’m currently wearing would be good contenders – and you’d be right – but at least I’m under no illusion that they look any good.  What I’ve been thinking about today, however, is some of those clothes I’ve had and actually believed were decent at the time, but later realised to be the worst things I’ve ever worn. The worst things anyone could have worn.  I know it’s subjective, but I feel sure we can be unanimous about some items.

Maybe the seventies threw up the best (worst?) examples, and I use the phrase ‘threw up’ without irony.  I’m not talking about my punk/DIY clothes – I’ll always look back at them fondly no matter what anyone says.  But there was that time between being a kid and being a punk, and it really was a pubescent fashion wasteland. For instance, I had a pair of white flares.  White.  Flares.  And with my thighs!  I chose to wear these frequently with a fetching, knitted, collared, zip-up cardigan in cream with a black zig-zag pattern.  This woolly monstrosity was loosely based on something I had seen David Starsky wearing in ‘Starsky and Hutch’.  ‘Nuff said.

Then there were those wedgy platform shoes I dared to wear for the walk home from school.  They were too high to be permitted in school (a place where the height of heels was actually measured by a teacher if they looked to be above one and a half inches, and thus a major breach of uniform rules).  So at the 4.15pm bell, I’d change into this pair of brown, lace-up shoes that were attached, somewhat incongruously, to high wedge soles which were covered with some kind of woven, beige, hessian type stuff.  They were like some strange hybrid of footwear and flooring.  The toe area must have been raised off the ground by about two inches and the heel roughly four.  I hobbled and wobbled home in these stupid shoes, and found I had great difficulty getting up hills. This was unfortunate as I lived at the top of quite a steep one.  In order to make it all the way to my front door I had to compensate for the gradient in the shoe with every step, which meant leaning forward from the ankle joint in a most unnatural manner.  Perhaps I should have tried walking backwards? 

Some years later I discovered the joy of buying my clothes from charity shops and I got some wondeful items – big old coats, the occasional fifties dress and little suede ankle boots, all of which were a thrill to find and a bargain too.  I couldn’t believe my eyes one day when I saw a pair of black PVC trousers in my size hanging on the rail in Oxfam.  I’d always wanted some PVC or leather trews, but they just weren’t a viable purchase on a student budget.  So, without any hesitation I bought these second-hand ones and started to wear them at the first opportunity. Only problem was, they were a bit, well, cracked, just where the shiny coating had got a little worn away.  It seemed an obvious solution to simply apply a coating of Kiwi shoe polish and give them a bit of a buff with a cloth until they were nice and shiny again.  Easy. It wasn’t until some time later that I realised the black smudgy marks on the furniture (and the bus seat) corresponded exactly with where I’d been sitting earlier….

Talking of charity shops and second-hand trousers, what about these, though…?

In vivid turquoise cordurouy, complete with a wide plastic multi-coloured belt, these little beauties cost me a mere £2.99 just a few months ago.  How could I possibly resist?  I will admit, though, that I’ve only worn them once, and that was to a fancy dress party.

Can't stop the work...

Seems like ages since I last posted.  It’s been - and continues to be - a bit of a busy time for me with work, so here's something brief just to keep things moving. Sandy Sarjeant's frantic leg work seems strangely appropriate to the way I feel right now…

Sandy Sarjeant: Can't Stop The Want

A soul thing for a Sunday morning II

It's a fine, sunny Autumn morning here, and I'm up against a tight deadline with an illustration project, which means I'm off to work in a minute.  But first:

I think this Sunday morning soul thing may become a series of occasional posts...


And here's a sneak preview of the book I'm working on at the moment, just part of an early rough of some polar bears.  A North Pole thing for a Sunday morning?

Image copyright C / Sun Dried Sparrows

Playing along with the art school boys, part one

When I left school at sixteen I had one ambition - I wanted to design record covers.  It seemed like it would be the perfect job, to create pictures to go with the music I loved.  Going to Art School would be my direct route to this nirvana.  Simple.

Of course the reality was always going to be different.  The Foundation Art course I embarked on at that tender age was perhaps not always as exciting as I’d hoped.  There were definitely some fun moments, but ironically many of these were outside the curriculum – drunken afternoons at the end of term and  adolescent pranks with studio props (a favourite being to wrap up lumps of cow-gum glue in Toffo wrappers and pass them off to a hapless friend as real sweets…)  But a lot of time was spent on  more prosaic practices such as the rules of perspective, drawing from life and understanding the colour spectrum.  I didn’t get to design any record covers at all.

Some rather embarrassing college work from 1980.  Who needs the great masters when you're making pictures like this..?!

With the benefit of hindsight  I think I might have tackled that first year differently.  I might have paid more attention to the technicalities and spent less time pondering on what I was going to wear each day (ooh - Siouxsie T-shirt or holey jumper? Leather jacket or charity shop raincoat?)  Perhaps I would also have taken more of an interest in the Art History lesson which we were obliged to attend once a week.

Sadly, I truly didn’t appreciate the relevance of learning a bit of background to a subject so vast - didn’t realise the benefits of opening up to the bigger picture (excuse the pun).  My world was small and self-obsessed.  So, I’m ashamed to say, the two hours a week watching a film about the Pre-Raphaelites, Surrealism or the Impressionists  became an excuse to do anything but learn or open up to such greatness.  I daydreamed in the soporific half light, and contemplated the latest episode of ‘Monkey’ or the thought of having a Findus crispy pancake for tea.  The most artistic thing I did during Art History was the occasional doodle in my notebook, in which only a few cursory educational notes had been jotted down : “Florence, 1400s, Botticelli.”   120 sleepy minutes would pass in which I barely even noticed his Venus.  And then it was home time (no doubt to watch ‘Monkey’ and have that Findus crispy pancake for tea.)

So I was totally unprepared when it came to sitting the Art History ‘O’ Level exam at the end of the year.  What was worse was that, somehow, I got the day of the exam wrong.  I thought it was on the Thursday, but it was on the Wednesday.  I’d presumed I had Wednesday off and the house to myself - such bliss.  So I stayed in bed for an extra hour.....only to be suddenly and unhappily awoken by a phone call. 

It was my Art History teacher. "Where are you??? The exam starts in half an hour...!” 

“Oh no…”   It felt like a large stone had been dropped inside my stomach as her words assembled themselves in my brain. “Oh NO! I’ve got to get the bus… I don’t know when the next one is… erm…” The rock in my gut felt even heavier.

“No, you’'ll be too late!  I'll come and pick you up in my car.  Now."

Oh shit.  College was eight miles from my home.  She’d be here in less than half an hour.

Not only did I have to face an exam and the wrath of my tutor, but I had to get ready.  Hair!  Oh no! Would there be time to spike it up? Oh hell, could I go to college with non-spikey hair?  Oh fuck.... could I?  And what about make-up?  And clothes? What was I going to wear?  I quickly rinsed my bed-curled mop, unsuccessfully tried to blow-dry it upright, smudged black kohl around my eyes and pulled a smelly, crumpled mohair jumper out of the linen basket where it had been awaiting a much-needed wash.  No time to even finish my bowl of Ricicles before Miss Art History pulled up outside in her Morris Minor Traveller. 

It took a long while, not to mention a lot of egg-white, to get my hair to defy gravity this way...

Anyway I got into the exam late – flustered, embarrassed and, worst of all, with floppy hair - and I was all over the place.  I hadn't a clue.  I tried to recall as much as I could - something about Florence in the 1400s and Botticelli? - but I knew it was doomed.  It was awful.  And when the exam was over all I wanted to do was go home (I had nothing to stay for) but - in the hurry to get out that morning and with not needing to catch the bus -  I only had 12 pence on me. 12 pence was enough to buy a whole packet of Polos, but only a tiny fraction of an eight-mile bus fare. So I decided to walk.

It took me nearly three hours.   I got offers of lifts from a very persistent biker (who kept turning round, coming back and asking again) and a rather pushy lorry driver who scowled nastily at me for rejecting the invitation of a ride in his cab.  I think he had a different kind of ride in mind.  I refused both, and continued on blistered feet – eventually getting home to be greeted by my mum, who was now back from work, with a cheery, “Good day at college, dear?”

I failed my Art History exam miserably.

An art history film with a difference.  The artist, Guiseppe Ragazzini, uses pieces

of masterpieces by Botticelli, Da Vinci, Giotto, etc. in this collage animation...

The first pet you ever had...?

(And no, I don’t mean in the 'petting' sense.  I’m not going into those kinds of ‘firsts’ on this blog.  At least not yet...)

I know it’s not very rock’n’roll compared to my previous ‘firsts’ posts (first album, first gig, first T-shirt) but it’s just one of those subjects that I’m sure a lot of people can relate to.  I think everyone I know had a pet when they were a child.  And, strangely enough, it seems like certain ‘types’ of pets go in and out of fashion - and may even be linked to certain eras.  So perhaps there are more resonances to albums, gigs and T-shirts than I first thought? 

Tortoises, for instance.  Tortoises were very popular pets here in the seventies; unfortunately for them they were being shipped to the UK from more exotic climes in huge numbers, cruelly packed in appalling conditions – a great percentage never made the journey.  But the lucky few that survived were quickly despatched to pet shops around the country and bought by enthusiastic children, many of whom had been watching Blue Peter (the TV programme no doubt responsible for impulse purchases of border collies, tabby cats, parrots and, indeed, these slow-moving, land-dwelling reptiles).  Many of these cold-blooded characters must have been relocated to small British gardens where they somehow coped with our often chilly, damp weather. Many would have had their names (or owners’ names) painted on their shells and occasionally may even have had chains or ropes drilled into them (nobody questioned whether or not this process would have caused them any stress or pain).  So I was not unusual in being the proud owner of a tortoise in the seventies.  Timmy somehow managed to survive a few winter hibernations in a cardboard box in the garage (and his name was never painted on, nor his shell ever drilled into).   He enjoyed a diet of dandelion leaves and bananas and had a remarkably runny nose out of which he could blow the most impressive little bubbles of snot.  I could relate to him rather well at the age of nine.

But Timmy was not my very first personal pet.  My first was a goldfish.  During a trip to the local fair my sister and I each won a goldfish sealed into a tiny polythene bag of water.  I’d probably despair at the number of these ‘prizes’ that were flushed down toilets soon after being won on the coconut shy – but I’m happy to report that ours were relocated into a rather splendid tank with rocks and shells and all sorts of Neptunian items in it to make them feel a bit at home.  

As is the way with naming pets, you have to think of something which begins with the same letter as the creature itself.  Yes, we later did it with Timmy the Tortoise (and subsequently Toby and Twinkle).  But ‘G’ for Goldfish is not a particularly inspiring letter.  And our goldfish were definitely girls.  Eventually my sister decided on ‘Geraldine’.  Aged about six at the time, I was inspired by her lead.  But what other girls’ names sound like Geraldine?  Somehow I missed the point, and started looking for names with that soft ‘G’ sound, same as Geraldine.  Ah – got it.  G… G…. Guuuu...?  I proudly named my goldfish ‘Judith’.  (Oh well.  But you can understand my thinking…)

From inauspicious beginnings in a plastic bag at a small-town-England fair with its rock’n’roll soundtrack and dodgy dodgems, Judith and Geraldine went on to live surprisingly long (and hopefully happy) lives in their comfortable tank chez nous.  In summer they got a holiday in the little pond in the garden, where they got to mingle with tadpoles and the occasional newt.  The rest of the year they were safe and warm on a ledge in the bathroom where we watched them, and from which they had a fish-eye lens view of a human family as we took our baths and used the loo.    I think we got the better deal of the two.

A soul thing for a Sunday morning

Because it's just so good.

The first T-shirt you ever wore...?

I don’t know about you but I find I just can’t wear band-name T-shirts any more.  I can wear other logos, art and random images across my chest when I’m in the right mood, but band names - no.   The funny thing is that I don’t wear them now for exactly the same reason that I did wear them once: because the name you’re displaying immediately puts you into a very specific box.

The first T-shirt of that ilk that I ever had was one I loved wearing ‘til it was almost threadbare.  I even remember getting it - I had just turned 15 and I’d gone to London on the train (with my mum!) with the sole purpose of coming home with something special for my birthday.  The Clash T-shirt that I found in a little shop in Carnaby Street fitted the bill - as well as me - perfectly. It was special – and, yes, it put me into a very specific box. 

It was a tone-reduced black and white photo of the band standing in a street looking seriously cool, all zippy jackets and skinny trousers, with The Clash above (same typeface as on the first album) in a screen printed rainbow of neon colours.  I can remember looking through the rack, and even though there were several of the same main design, the colours were all very slightly different, so I could pick my favourite.  I wore that T-shirt frequently (if only I could have worn it to school…)  and thought it went very well with both leopard-print and paint-splattered trousers or those early straight-legged jeans which I wore over black monkey boots.

So that was my first…. I wish I had a photo with me in (or out of) it, and maybe someone else does somewhere, but sadly I don’t.   No doubt if I had kept it I could sell it on ebay now as a vintage item for an extortionate sum, but instead it went the way of all my subsequent band-name T-shirts, i.e. to one of three places – the charity shop, the rubbish bin, or the cupboard under the sink to fulfil a new role as a cleaning rag…

I have hardly any decent photographic records of other T-shirts either but there have certainly been a few since that one bought in 1978.   Here we have the rather mixed bunch of Crass, Bauhaus and the Dread Broadcasting Corporation (so not strictly a band  but it shouted to the world that you liked a bit of dub…)

Later I sometimes designed my own one-offs too, using Dylon and a fine paintbrush, or the basic screen-printing kit bought from a craft shop.   But whether bought or studiously painted, they all meant something important for a while.  They told the world who you were into - really into.  I mean, back then, wearing a Ramones T-shirt meant you were into the Ramones. You know what I’m saying…