Communing with nature
I've been communing with nature since I last wrote. Not hugging trees exactly, nor sleeping out under the stars. I don't know whether it's just a case of spring being in the air, those empty, silent Berkshire skies giving me inspiration, or an instinctive reaction against a month of introverted political talk. But I've been crawling around on all fours in my garden, laying turf, planting wildflowers and building a back-to-nature bird table.
As a journalist and broadcaster, I always enjoy elections - it's the one time we ordinary folk really ARE the boss of those Honourable Members, and the challenge is always there to get them to speak bluntly. Highlights for me? Starring in the election video (that's still on YouTube) put together by political bloggers and writers at TotalPolitics - encouraging people to get out and vote. I was alongside Buck's Fizz, Ann Widdecombe, Nigel Farage and even Alastair Campbell! Then it was fun to go along to the polling station with two of my sons who were first-time voters. It made me feel very proud and just a bit ancient. Oh yes, and Edwina Currie told me (on BBC Radio Berkshire) that she confessed her affair with John Major effectively to hurt him, Tony Benn told me the greatest orator he'd ever heard was Churchill, and Paddy Ashdown admitted he'd have given his eye-teeth to be Nick Clegg in that leaders debate.So yes, I love elections. But I also love to get away from all of it, too – and talk of other things!
In my series, “the people who run Berkshire” it was great to meet a man whose job affects any of us in the county who are parents, the Operations Director of Legoland, Ryan Brady. Amazingly – he hasn’t got any kids of his own – YET! He told me he and his wife are expecting this year, so pretty son he’ll know just how it feels to be a consumer, too. He started his career while still at university, taking a holiday job at Busch Gardens in Florida. He’s never looked back, and worked in theme parks ever since. At its peak, LEGOLAND Windsor employs up to 157 full-time but very soon that number will explode as they take on some 775 extra for the summer!.
And so I found myself in the garden, leaning back in a chair, contemplating those blissful skies without the slightest trace of a vapour trail, and listening to birdsong.
I was inspired by chatting to the RSPB's Sophie McCallum about the MayDay Dawn Chorus Walk at the Nature Discovery Centre in Thatcham, where early risers could listen to the overwhelming sound of Berkshire's birds welcoming the dawn. No, I didn't quite manage to get myself and two teenagers up in time for it. Next year, maybe. But it still inspired me to think - well, how's about attracting more birds into my own garden? When I saw the tackiness and price of commercial bird tables, I resolved to make my own - out of drift wood, fallen branches, old trees that I see lying around as I do my regular commute through Berkshire every day going to work at the BBC. But is it legal to simply pick up bits of wood? There's so much of it about, but who does it belong to? (And it's heavy, too, I discovered when I tried to do a bit of wood rustling!) In the end, coward that I am, I paid a quick visit to a sawmill near Caversham, paid £3 for a few branches and some slices of wood from a mystified man in dungarees, and drove my haul home, to build a something unique. I've even decorated it with home-made copper ivy, (taught myself how to use a soldering iron!) which I hope will turn green in time and add extra artistic value. The result? A whole family of robins, lots of great tits, green chaffinches, a baby blackbird twice the size of its mother, and even a blue-crested woodpecker. Oh yes, and several greedy squirrels. Those beautiful Berkshire skies may have filled up again with noisy planes, and I know that's important for local jobs and trade, but now I have created a noisy dawn chorus of my own, right outside my bedroom window! This article was written by Anne Diamond for Berkshire Life Magazine may 2010
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