The Times - UK (2022-04-30)

28 2GM Saturday April 30 2022 | the times

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Miriam Darlington Nature Notebook

the hearts of teenage girls the

length and breadth of the capital,

has surely come. Or they could just

fly his one over Woking, to be on

the safe side.

Then will come Gok Wan from

How To Look Good Naked, with a

thousand dancing fatties in the buff

cavorting behind him — oh,

England, my England! — and if that

is considered suitable, then a phalanx

of oiled Love Island veterans

shagging along to Jerusalem would be

a lovely extra touch. And somebody

dressed as the not-at-all-spooky Rolf

Harris-headed kangaroo. Plus, of

course, to celebrate our invention of

parliamentary democracy and,

indeed, the mother of all parliaments,

a row of middle-aged men in suits

leafing through copies of Razzle.

My only worry in all this is what

they can then possibly do with Tom

Cruise, who is slated to head up the

coverage on television. I guess he’ll

just have to jump up and down on

the sofa, shouting about how much

he loves the Queen, like he did about

Katie Holmes that totally normal

time on Oprah.

Not that I’m saying Cruise is a bad

choice of figurehead for the

proceedings. After all, as a

scientologist who believes that

Xemu, the dictator of the “Galactic

Confederacy”, brought billions of his

people to Earth (then known as

“Teegeeack”) in DC8-like spacecraft

75 million years ago, stacked them

around volcanoes, and killed them

with hydrogen bombs, Tom is at least

in no position to call the worship of a

national queen, chosen by God, and

born to rule without election, question

or accountability, anything but really

quite sane, rational and progressive.

guest for this great day, but for the

likes of Sooty and Sweep, Emu,

Orville and Gordon the Gopher, who

will surely dance alongside Basil on

the day, because this great nation of

ours is about more than just one

moth-eaten TV glove puppet, surely?

It is, at the very least, about all of

them. Which is to say, if Roland Rat

isn’t involved, you can forget it.

(Yeeeeeh, rat fans! Am I right or am I

right? Yeeeeeh.”)

Similarly, the C5 will surely not be

the sole representative of our glorious

Queendom’s long history of rubbish

car manufacture. I expect and

anticipate a fleet of Morris Marinas,

too. Along with serried ranks of

Austin Allegros, Reliant Robins,

Vauxhall Vectras and, of course,

DeLoreans. The only problem is that

the Mall is quite long. Few of the

above could be expected to make it all

the way in one go. But drive-pasts are

a bit Putinesque anyway. What price

a grand coronation tow-past, ideally

in the rain? That would properly sum

up 70 years of British motoring. As

would a fleet of caravans. And some

National Front skinheads in vintage

Fred Perry tearing up a motorway

service station in Derby.

And why stop at a giant helium

balloon of the Queen’s face? (I

assume they got the idea from the

very popular Donald Trump one a

while back.) Shouldn’t we have giant

balloons of the whole royal family,

bobbing above the capital all day?

It’ll remind everyone of that

previous peak of monarchal self-

congratulation, It’s A Royal Knockout.

And I think Prince Andrew has

done his time, don’t you? The

moment for his 100ft bonce to float

down the Thames, striking fear into

Winston, I had best brace myself to

my duty and so bear myself that if

the British Empire and its

Commonwealth last for a thousand

years, men will still say, ‘Ed Sheeran

was the best bit’.”

And he may well be. For Sheeran,

the stubbled crooner best known for

his endless planning battles with

East Suffolk council over weirdly

shaped swimming pools and giant,

inappropriate mausoleums, has

certainly been presented as the most

exciting feature of the pageant.

But for me — and I will certainly

be lining the streets from dawn in a

polythene poncho with my Thermos

of Bovril — I think the highlight will

be Basil Brush. Not so much for the

hand-up-the-bum fox himself, who

seems quite a random choice of

W

hen Princess

Elizabeth became

Queen, on top of a

tree on that glorious

Kenyan morning in

1952, her father having succumbed to

lung cancer and the pressure of

leading the world’s greatest country

through a terrible war against the

worst kind of perfidy, little could she

have dreamt that, 70 years on, her

mighty reign would be celebrated by

a 100ft zeppelin of her face floating

over the Mall, serenaded by a chubby

little ginger pop singer from Halifax

and his glove puppet lookalike,

Basil Brush.

If only she had known, as she flew

home to attend the King’s funeral,

riven with grief for the daddy who

named her Lilibet, that it would all

be OK because, after serving as the

English monarch for longer than

anyone in the 1,000-year history of

our island nation, there would be an

appearance by Gok Wan himself at

her Platinum Jubilee, not to mention

Cliff Richard and the Daleks

(presumably because the Shadows

will be otherwise engaged).

As she sat nervously waiting for

that first audience with her prime

minister, Winston Churchill, scourge

of the recently defeated Nazis, to

discuss how best to rally national

morale in the face of Soviet Russia’s

increasing militarism, how consoling

it would have been to think that,

when England eventually prevailed,

there would be BMXers doing

wheelies on their funny little 1980s

bicycles, a moving oak tree with flags

coming out of it and “a dragon bigger

than a bus”.

“Have no fear for the coming

years, your Majesty,” Churchill would

have been able to say to the young

Queen, if he had seen the

magnificent plans revealed this week

for the Platinum Jubilee pageant of

“national treasures” on June 5.

“Because at the end there will be not

only broad, sunlit uplands, but a C5,

some Bond cars and an appearance

from Bill Bailey, that bald comedian

who won Bake Off.”

“Well, that is very consoling,

Winston,” the Queen would have said,

forgetting for a moment her worries

about the crumbling of Empire, the

march of communism, smog, Mosley

and declining public support for the

monarchy. “But it wasn’t Bake Orf he

won. It was Strictly.”

“My mistake, your Majesty,”

Churchill would have said. “But if it

helps, I can also confirm that Tom

Cruise himself has been lined up to

take part.”

“Wait, what? Tom ektual Cruise?

At my little old Plettinum Jubilee?

You’re hevving me orn?”

“It’s 90 per cent confirmed, your

Majesty. He’ll be in London anyway,

filming Mission Impossible 12, so his

agent thinks it’s on.”

“Oh well then,” Queen Elizabeth

would have said. “In that case,

I’ll be lining the streets

with polythene poncho

and Thermos of Bovril

Giles

Coren

“Boom boom” Basil Brush has swept

aside competition from Sooty and Emu

Jubilee joy is Roland Rat in a Reliant Robin

Britain has a world-class collection of moth-eaten glove puppets, along with enough rubbish cars to fill a royal tow-past

this one on Dartmoor, but also

heaths and moorland, as well as

warm sheltered chalk downs and

valleys all over the UK, where nectar

sources are easily available.

Radiant attraction

T

he male hairstreak perches in a

prominent position, in this case

a topmost bilberry leaf, but also

loves scrubby hedgerows with

blossom such as hawthorn. Attracted

to rock rose, bird’s-foot trefoil and

broom as well as gorse, you can see it

feeding from April to June. Territorial

males alight high on favourite shrubs

and wait for passing females to chase.

While they wait, they regulate their

body temperature by tilting their

wings to catch the sun, and a

distinctive dotted white line or

“hairstreak” can confirm the ID.

Close up, the exquisite green

underwing is edged with gold, and

the downy body tipped with large

eyes and long-clubbed, gold-tipped

stripy antennae. The thrill of radiant

green, intense in its iridescence, is

mingled with shimmering tones of

green-blue and, all around it, a

smouldering edge of gold.

Miriam Darlington’s latest book is

Owl Sense

@mimdarling

liqueurs, such as bilberry gin and

crème de myrtille.

I was once told there is not a child

in Finland who isn’t brought up on

bilberries and porridge for breakfast.

Return in July and August, with the

berries warmed and ripened to their

full thunder-cloud blue, and there

will be mouthfuls of the sharp-

tasting fruits that explode on the

tongue — more than enough for a

pie or two, or some bilberry jam, or

some such mouth-watering delight.

There’s something about bilberries

that fills my heart with hope. And

here was the promise of many, many

bilberries, enough for everyone; for

the birds, mammals and insects and

whoever else would feed on them.

It’s been a tough year, with

awfulness crashing about our ears:

hard news, difficult times at work,

heartbreaks and grief at home, but

here at least was a scattered surprise

to be happy about — not berries but

pre-berries: frail, heart-red and

shivering in the wind.

Bright green gem

A

mong the host of pollinators

flitting over the berry blooms,

unidentifiable as dust-motes, a

leaf that was not a leaf twinkled.

Deftly concealed in the varied greens

of its habitat was a butterfly as green

as a jewel. I could easily have missed

it. But when I saw it I forgot all about

gorging on bilberry tarts — this

emerald gift was something else: a

green hairstreak, left, Callophrys rubi.

Always settling with its leaflike

wings closed, displaying its dainty

green undersides and faint white

dotted wing-streak, this iridescent

creature is dazzling. Its special

optical effect is produced by the

structure of its wing scales, and the

vivid green colouring, part of its

display, is presumably to combine

camouflage with attracting females.

Experts tell us that if the wings are

moistened the green vanishes. No

true green pigment exists in British

butterflies, although it does in

emerald moths. The green hairstreak

is widespread and local colonies

inhabit sunny scrub and hillsides like

A hill of bluebells and garlic lay to

our left but, ignoring them, down and

down we went, toward the watery

roar that silvered its way through the

gorge. The glades closed in as the

slopes steepened, replaced by a

broken open forest of slim oaks, some

felled, some sprouting tall. Beneath

them, as the gradient of the path

wound through this new section, a

bright carpet rose and the forest floor

shone with a shimmer of new green.

The velvety, acid-green woodland

floor was undulating with a mini-

forest within a forest, its deepening

shades and shadows beneath the oaks

making a city of delicate little shrubs.

They came in at the height of a deer’s

nose, or just about calf-height.

Bilberries! Putting my face in, and

lower still, I found each was be-rubied

with tiny blooms; not fruit but the

promise of it. The berries were not

yet formed but the berry-like

flowers, so similar to the fruit,

hinted at them.

Bilberries grow all over

northern Europe

and a special

comb is used in

France and

Scandinavia to

harvest the tiny wild

berries in their

thousands to make

tarts and jams, or

even delicious boozy

S

unlight splashed through

new leaves as we rambled

among the many pathways

of Hembury Woods on

Dartmoor. The scent of

loamy soil in my nose, the grass

starred with dog violets and bright

yellow gorse, I was beguiled by the

sloping flanks of the high hillfort

and its glades dotted with rowan

and holly.

My collie chose which track we

would take, trotting with one

aim in his nose: to get into the

clear rushing water of the

river Dart far below. What

did he care about the

inevitable uphill climb

after the highlight of his

day? So we hurtled

downward, me tottering

on dodgy knees, he with

one desire for that wet-

fur-shake that would soak

my face.

I found my

heart-red

thrill on

bilberry hill

Bilberry bushes provide food for birds,

insects, humans and other mammals