Packham - Fingers in the sparkle jar: lessons in life and death

Contents

TV presenter, photographer and conservationist Chris Packham is one of the nations favourite naturalists. He is best known for the BAFTA-winning The Really Wild Show and fronting BBCs Springwatch and Autumnwatch. Packham is president of the British Trust for Ornithology, Hawk Conservancy Trust, the Hampshire Ornithological Society and the Bat Conservation Trust and vice-president of the RSPB and the Butterfly Conservation. In 2011, he was awarded the British Trust for Ornithologys Dilys Breese Medal for his outstanding work in promoting science to new audiences.

Packhams partner Charlotte Corney owns the Isle of Wight Zoo, and his step-daughter is studying zoology at Liverpool University. He lives in the New Forest with his two dogs, Itchy and Scratchy.

Every minute was magical, every single thing it did was fascinating and everything it didnt do was equally wondrous, and to be sat there, with a Kestrel, a real live Kestrel, my own real live Kestrel on my wrist! I felt like Id climbed through a hole in heavens fence.

An introverted, unusual young boy, isolated by his obsessions and a loner at school, Chris Packham only felt himself in the fields and woods around his suburban home. But when he stole a young Kestrel from its nest, he was about to embark on a friendship that would teach him what it meant to love, and that would change him forever. In his rich, lyrical and emotionally exposing memoir, Chris brings to life his childhood in the 70s, from his bedroom bursting with fox skulls, birds eggs and sweaty jam jars, to his feral adventures. But pervading his story is the search for freedom, meaning and acceptance in a world that didnt understand him.

Beautifully wrought, this coming-of-age memoir will be unlike any youve ever read.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Epub ISBN: 9781473529427
Version 1.0

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA

Ebury Press is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

Copyright Chris Packham 2016

Chris Packham has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This book is a work of non-fiction based on the life of the author.
While a handful of names of people and places have been changed solely to protect the privacy of others, the vast majority remain correctly identified.

First published by Ebury Press in 2016

www.eburypublishing.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781785033483

IM SORRY, I havent got change of a ladybird.

The ice-cream man had opened the matchbox expecting a sixpence but instead found a six-spotted beetle that was now scuttling manically over his counter, defiantly refusing reinterment in its crisp little cell despite repeated repositioning. He gently pressed his cupped palm down on the fugitive and as it squeezed free of his fingers managed to flick it back into the box. Green juice specked his nail. He tutted, wiped it on his trousers and stretched over to hand the doomed specimen back to the beetle-keeper just as a girl he knew as Anna simultaneously thrust a thick wodge of bubblegum cards at the little mush and demanded, Why dont you let it go?

The boy ignored her, shook the box next to his ear, fanned through his worn wad of Batman and Tarzan cards and then wrestled them into the bulging pocket of his shorts.

You wouldnt like it in there, she snapped before she looked up to Mr Whippy and said, Hes had it in there for days and he never lets them go until they die. Id like a Sky Ray.

Yellow chin lights speckled her freckles, radiating from three daisy chains, her mornings work. Ghostly grey eyes and pig pink cheeks cuddling close to the grubbiest teddy bear. She had sunblown blonde play-curled hair that flopped in tattered curtains over her milky brow and tickled those tickly arcs of soft skin beneath her eyes. The boy was skewy-fringed and silent, gazing at the pavement in mandatory scuffed sandals, and both wore too-tight over-washed T-shirts, hers with a smiling foxs face, his with fresh pearls of Airfix cement constellating its front.

Please. Id like a Sky Ray please, she repeated to be sure her manners would be recognised.

The suns flaring from the side of the van lit the scruffy waifs up like camera flash as they squinted hard at the pictures of lollies in awe of Strawberry Splices and Orange Sparkles. Her fist unfurled into a cup of sweaty pennies that would smell of bitter money till bedtime and when she came to lick the melted lemon as it dribbled down the stick that metallic taint would bite back and make her wince and spit and her big sister would scoff and giggle.

The bloke picked out six coins and handed her the Sky Ray, which she unwrapped fiercely, leaving strips of paper glued to its frosted sides. She sucked at its cherry red tip and after a pleasurable pause poked the boy, who flinched and magically produced a thrupenny bit for his thrupenny ice-lolly. As they left a gang of panting nippers with rattling trolleys charged up. These dad-made pavement racers rolled on rusty wheels scavenged from dumped prams and pushchairs and were clad in garish strips of threadbare carpets and daubed with the sticky dregs of their parents house paint pots. They steered them roughly with their rope loops into the wall and all at once told him thered been a massive crash in the woods over by the council flats yesterday and that Axell had broken his arm and been taken to the General by his mum. On the bus. He was their hero, king of the juniors. They brandished their scabs, which they squeezed to get fresh blood, and without a shilling between them stormed off to kick a ball against a wall until teatime and Crackerjack.

With the kids gone the ice-cream man had a quick fag and picked himself out a Woppa. When he slid the freezer shut he saw the ladybird boy standing staring at him from the lawn beyond the wall. From each hand dangled a shiny jam jar and it was painfully obvious that he had returned with these trophies because he wanted to share them. The man checked his watch, then flicked his head to beckon him over. The boy snaked across the grass to the gate, put both jars down, clicked the latch, moved them outside, setting each gently on the tarmac before dragging the hinge-less flaking panel shut behind him. He then carefully laid out the string handles and picked up the pots synchronously and slowly so they didnt swing. These were sacred things.