Horne - Birdwatchingwatching: one year, two men, three rules, ten thousand birds

Contents

About the Book

ONE MAN AND HIS DAD: A COMICAL TALE OF COMPETITIVE TWITCHING

Comedian Alex Hornes dad has always been an avid birdwatcher, a fact Alex could never quite come to terms with. But faced with the prospect of becoming a father himself one day, Alex resolved to get to know his own dad better and finally understand why (and how) he does what he does. The best way to bond, he decided, would be some father-versus-son competitive birdwatching. Over the course of one year, they would each attempt to see as many species of bird as possible governed by three basic rules: the birds had to be wild, free and alive; they had to actually see the birds; and they could travel anywhere in the world to do it. From Barnet to Bahrain, taking in a twitchy stag-weekend in Wales and an unfortunately birdless trip to the Alps, this is a hilarious and dramatic true story of obsessive behaviour, friendship and fatherhood.

About the Author

Alex Hornes first ever comedy gig came after winning a Christmas Cracker joke-writing competition. Since that inauspicious beginning he has managed to establish a remarkable reputation among critics, comics and audiences as a gifted gagsmith, prolific writer and one of the most creative solo performers at work today. He was nominated for the Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2003, and in 2004 he won the Chortle award for Best Breakthrough Act. He is married, has met Ken Dodd three times and the Pope once. This is his first book.

For Rachel, Beyonc and Shakira

Introductions

My dad is a birdwatcher.

Thats a sentence Ive struggled with for the last twenty years. My dad watches birds, often for hours at a time. Why?

Before I attempt to come up with an answer, theres one thing I need to get sorted right away. This is a book about me and my dad. But its also about me hypothetically becoming a dad, so I dont really want to refer to my dad as dad. That wouldnt do at all.

I also dont want to call my dad Hugh. That is his name (well, its his middle name, but for some long forgotten reason everyone calls him Hugh rather than the James his parents intended), but I just cant call my dad by his real name. Im sorry, but I cant write a book about Hugh when Hugh is actually my dad. And for those of you who are thinking ahead, yes, Hugh Horne is quite a funny name. Hes a GP, and so his full title is Dr Hugh Horne, perilously close to Dr Huge Horne, a nickname few of his patients were able to resist. (I should add that I didnt discover that my surname was a euphemism until I was fifteen years old, when a teacher who was also a priest got the giggles while reading out the register.)

Thankfully, my dad (thats one of the last times Ill refer to him thus, so enjoy) managed to rename himself without even trying. Like all dads, hes useless with modern technology. He cant text, for example. He tries, but consistently ends up sending messages filled with twenty-first century Freudian slips, devoid of punctuation, and more often than not using in instead of go and of instead of me, which isnt helpful when the text is meant to be about me going somewhere.

One particular text sent to my brother Chip (we wont go into his name just yet) was unsurpassed in its dadness. In capital letters of course, and unintentionally aggressive in tone, but with virtually no mistakes until the final three words:

LOVE FROM DUNCTON

Chip understood what he meant, but this was too good an opportunity to miss. He immediately forwarded the message to his brothers, one of whom (me) phoned up our father and asked why he had signed off his text DUNCTON?

I was trying to write dad, he offered apologetically. It must be this new predictive texting.

It doesnt predict that youre going to use a word that doesnt exist, I countered logically, if a little harshly. That wouldnt be a helpful system at all.

But Duncton does exist. Its a place in Sussex that my dad (thats the last time) occasionally frequents (youve guessed it) for birdwatching purposes. It turned out that hed typed the word Duncton more often than the word dad, which didnt make us brothers feel all that good. Still, Duncton he wrote, and so Duncton he became. And from now on, I will refer to him as Duncton, both here, at home, to friends, to family and especially in texts.

So, Duncton is a birdwatcher

But Duncton was never a particularly fanatical birdwatcher. He didnt watch birds with any regularity, or belong to any clubs. He didnt go on birdwatching holidays, attend birdwatching lectures or charter a plane to the Isles of Scilly to catch a glimpse of the UKs first recorded great blue heron. He was simply an everyday birdwatcher. More accurately, hes a birder. The word birdwatcher sounds too deliberate. It suggests that he only watched birds when on a birdwatching trip. Of course he did go on many such outings, but Duncton didnt devote specific time to birds, he was just constantly aware of them.

So, Duncton is a birder

I ought to introduce myself properly here too. Im a comedian. And thats a sentence Ive struggled with too, for the last seven years. As soon as you tell someone youre a comedian they ask you one of three things. Have I heard of you? Are you funny? Can you tell me a joke? Only the first of these has a simple answer, and that is no. Unless you have heard of me, in which case the answer is yes. Am I funny? On stage, yes. Thats why Im a comedian. But Im not funny all the time. That wouldnt be funny. And can I tell you a joke? I could. But Id prefer to tell you about Duncton.

During my childhood, his hobby manifested itself in small but persistent ways. The tedium of a long journey would be broken by Duncton suddenly squawking, jerking his head round and shouting Kestrel! Kestrel! Kestrels arent especially rare, but hed be so excited by the sight of one hovering above the motorway (Its as though its dangling on the end of a piece of string! hed cry) that he couldnt help but share it with his family, thereby putting us at risk with his erratic driving. On walks over the Downs near our home in West Sussex he would stride far ahead, clutching his binoculars like a child might a cherished bear. We would only catch him up when a particularly indistinct LBJ caught his attention, causing him to stop and stare at what looked to the rest of us like an ordinary bush. Mealtimes at home would be interrupted not by a programme on TV, but by a goldfinch on the bird table.

My Writing Book May 1984 aged 5.

I didnt think Dunctons behaviour abnormal, until my tenth New Years Eve party, and a brief moment my parents have probably long forgotten. Perhaps unusually, new year festivities have often been momentous for me. Before I was trusted to go out by myself, they involved a party at one of our friends houses in Midhurst, where we lived. Conveniently, every family we knew seemed to have three similarly aged boys, all of whom would spend the evening upstairs, playing games and then fighting, while the adults did what adults did at parties in the late eighties (probably playing games and fighting too) downstairs. I should make it clear that mine wasnt a scandalous childhood. This is no confessional memoir. The word fighting in the previous sentence should really be squabbling. But there are a couple of confessions Id like to get off my chest as the story unfolds, and which Ive never made before. The first is that it was at one of these New Years Eve parties that I first got drunk (as opposed to not really liking the taste of alcohol and pretending to be dizzy).