The Times - UK (2022-06-11)

26 Saturday June 11 2022 | the times

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Miriam Darlington Nature Notebook

Covid one will be a success; that

England will win the World Cup in

Qatar with Rashford, Sancho and

Saka scoring eight penalties each;

that Sir Keir will be spared a fixed

penalty notice as long as he attends a

day-long drinking awareness course

in some grisly municipal building in

Hendon; that Zak Crawley will stop

driving at rising balls outside off

stump when the ball is still moving

about like billy-o and become a

genuine Test match opener; that

America will introduce slightly more

rigorous gun laws (something

Republicans can get on board with,

like, maybe, making angry teenagers

who go into a gun shop and say

“gimme an AK so I can wipe out a

school” wait for a cooling-off period

of at least seven or eight minutes

before handing over the weapon);

and that smoking really will be

stamped out for ever by this new law

that aims to raise the minimum age

for buying cigarettes by one year,

every year, so that, as in New

Zealand, nobody born after 2008 will

ever be legally able to purchase

them.

This last, you see, would create

the utterly delicious situation

whereby, in the year 2103, a person

aged 95 would be allowed to buy

fags, but a person aged 94 wouldn’t.

So if a 94-year-old wanted a ciggy,

they would have to loiter outside the

Food and Wine for a 95-year-old to

come along and then, proffering a

fistful of grubby coins (which I am

optimistic will still exist) say “’ere,

mister, I forgot me ID, can you

go in and get us ten Lambert &

Butler?”

And that really would be worth

living long enough to see.

summer and have marvellous

holidays on planes with enough

staff, flying out of airports with

plenty of baggage handlers that we

travelled to on trains that were not

on strike, or in cars that were quite

cheap to fill up.

And I am confident, above all, that

Boris will not split up with Carrie in

the near future, ceding her the title

deeds to Downing Street as agreed in

the prenup, nor turn out to have

fathered 19 children with all the

Downing Street cleaners that I am

equally optimistic he hasn’t been

boffing in a back office with the

curtains drawn, on the optimistic

basis that “a bird in the hand is

worth two up the duff”.

Indeed, now that I know my

pessimism was killing me and that a

more Panglossian Weltanschauung

could get me into my tenth decade, I

have to say I’m optimistic about

pretty much everything.

For example, I now firmly believe,

like Boris (and his ideological fellow-

traveller, Scarlett O’Hara), that

tomorrow is another day, and not, as

I had previously thought, just

yesterday all over again, except

worse. That the glass is not half

empty, nor even half-full, but topped

up to the very brim and, indeed,

overflowing. Or will be, just as soon

as I’ve unpacked this suitcase full of

supermarket booze, filled my glass,

emptied it and then left it on the

floor for the staff to clear up.

I am also optimistic enough to

believe, now that the length of my

life depends upon it, that climate

change really is just a hoax dreamt

up by George Monbiot to get himself

a Guardian column; that this new

cancer vaccine modelled on the

And if he is going to live for ever,

then I want to, too. Although I do

appreciate that many others, upon

hearing that Boris is going to live for

ever, would prefer to die this

afternoon.

But not me, for I am optimistic

that Boris can change. I am

optimistic that he will now, at last, do

something useful with his huge

Commons majority. I am optimistic

that with the Northern Ireland

protocol finally abolished, or

strengthened, or changed, or

whatever it is Boris wants to do with

it, everything will be fine with Brexit

and the immigration queues will

disappear, and France will go over to

pounds and ounces to make

importing cheese easier, and we’ll all

get our passports in time for the

I

cannot tell you how relieved I
feel, now the prime minister has
drawn a line under this week’s
near-catastrophic confidence
vote so he can move on to
talking about the things that we, the
people of this country, really care
about.
It was important to do that.
Drawing a line under things is such a
great way to deal with bad stuff and
move on to the broad, sunlit uplands
where everybody is totally confident
in you again.
It’s like when he drew a line under
partygate, after the Sue Gray report,
and moved on to the broad, sunlit
uplands of nobody caring any more
that he presides over a Downing
Street culture of drinking, shagging
and law-breaking, where we were
able to talk about the things that we,
the people of this country, really
want to talk about. Which is the
weather. And also boobs, cricket,
craft beer and, in the case of ladies,
shoes and handbags.
Or when he drew a line under the
Downing Street wallpaper scandal,
and another one under failing to
wear a mask at that hospital in
Northumbria, and two or three
under the Barnard Castle affair, and
then, furiously shaking his special
green underlining pen because it was
running out of ink from all his earlier
line-drawing, under such questions
as who paid for his 15-grand holiday
in Mustique, those very important

and final lines under the humiliation

of Matt Hancock, and under the

Owen Paterson cluster-cock-up, oh,

and the big thick Sharpie stripe he

bravely drew under the decision to

fly 173 cats and dogs out of Kabul

instead of people...

Because the ability to draw a line

under all your recent lies and failures

and betrayals, and then write a whole

load of new lies in the fresh white

space underneath on the off chance

that more people believe these ones

than don’t, and genuinely cannot see

all the old lies written above them, so

it’s like they never existed — that is

the sign of a true optimist.

And optimists, as we learnt this

week from a study by Harvard

University, live 4.4 years longer than

other people, on average, with a

great chance of getting to 90 and

beyond.

“We found that higher levels of

optimism were associated with

longer lifespan and greater likelihood

of achieving exceptional longevity

across racial and ethnic groups,” said

the report’s lead author, Hayami

Koga of Harvard’s TH Chan School

of Public Health, suggesting the very

real possibility — no doubt thrilling

to the likes of Nadine Dorries,

Michael Fabricant MP and a handful

of nutjob flag-wavers in the home

counties — that Boris Johnson,

based on his unprecedented (some

would say ludicrous) optimism levels,

will live for ever.

I’m confident he won’t

father 19 children with

all the No 10 cleaners

Giles

Coren

Scarlett O’Hara believed, quite rightly,

that tomorrow is always another day

Shades of happiness

T

his is what wonder feels like. All

you have to do is go to your

nearest pond, stream, ditch or

green space, and sit, and let it come to

you. It comes through the sensorium.

The surround-sound of smell and

taste and texture that June does

better than all other months. And

when wonder touches you, there’s no

mistaking it. You don’t have to know

the name of the frog, or what it’s

doing: just witness and be amazed,

drawn into the extraordinary now of

other creatures. The poets have it

best: immersing ourselves in the leafy,

nose-tingling world of other beings,

we are “Annihilating all that’s made/

To a green thought in a green shade”.

I drove home knowing the colour

of joy: it’s emerald-green. June green,

the jewel-green of chiffchaffs, iris

leaves; curiosity green, green of

duckweed and new creatures; bright

and exotic as hummingbirds and tree

snakes, damselflies and caterpillars;

aphid-green, bright as a new velvet

flash of moss to wash your face in;

living, breathing wet-kneed green, oh

wildness and wet, let it be left.

Miriam Darlington’s latest book is

Owl Sense

@mimdarling

are predated by our native grass

snakes and herons. Nine years old

again, if I’d had a jam jar I would

have been right in there up to my

knees, trying to catch one. Memories

flooded in of stickleback fishing and

running home with slopping jars of

larvae and little fishes, only to be

told to put them back.

As we focused on the verdant film

of duckweed, the light changed, and

there they were. A gleam of angular

faces, rising, sinking. Nostrils and

bulbous little eyes tipped upwards,

grimacing, belligerent. There! And

there! Boing! Another one. Plop!

Three! Five in a pile! It was Frog War

Three. No wait. Were they fighting?

Some of them were winning. Jump.

Croak. Snuggle. Grip. It sounded like

they were laughing. All of a sudden it

felt unseemly to be standing so close.

Nature needs its space, too.

The music of streams

T

he aptly named Cockshut, a

chalk stream that flows along

the edge of the water meadows

in Lewes, East Sussex, where I grew

up, was a pristine trout stream once.

Now it was a whole river of imported

frogs, blowing bubbles in cheeks that

expanded and contracted like

bubblegum — the “tympanic

membrane”, I found out later. But

the noise! Squeaking, rasping; sounds

emitted from vocal sacs swelling and

blowing all together in glorious

discord. A frog choir. The world

turned into an emerald frog-swamp

as we humans shrank, creeping, our

eyes peering through grass, ears

alert, as we tried to listen without

scaring them. Also to not topple in

with them. Down into the sumpy

ditch-gathering of amorous violence.

What is it about nature innocently

taking you by surprise like this?

When we witness something so

ordinary (for the frogs) and so

private — normally so hidden — and

yet so spectacular and strange, it’s as

though a veil has lifted. Just for a

short time, just a moment, we’re

allowed into this secret world.

camera phone in one hand and her

hand in the other, for my own

reassurance, and to lead her to the

correct ditch as if she were still six

years old. She gently wrenched her

hand free, moving in the opposite

direction to find a bit of ditch edge

that didn’t have me in the way.

We approached the zone

separately as if it were the rim of a

volcano. Who would spot one first?

A warm breeze lifted the willows and

swayed the tall grass. Deep in the

water meadows, run through with

drainage ditches, meadowsweet, cow

parsley and flag iris, we parted the

foliage and found them. Marsh frogs.

Not a native species, but introduced

to Romney Marsh in Kent in the

1930s, herpetologists tell us. (This

interesting name itself coming from

herpeton, the Greek for creeping

animal.)

These frogs, Europe’s largest native

frog species, in fact originate from

mainland Europe, their range

extending all the way to Kazakhstan.

In the UK they

have succeeded in

spreading along

the south from

Essex to Cornwall. Well

adapted to brackish

water, they can thrive in

salt marshes and have

wide, voracious

mouths. Equally, they

Y

ou could hear them calling
from the edge of the rugby
ground outside town. They
were as raucous as the
sudden cheer of a sports
crowd. We walked down, ears ringing
with the amphibian song. One or two
other people approached, equally
startled by the uncanny giggles,
croaks and burps. People looked into
the willows, cast about in the tall
grass, and finally frowned down into
the stream, pointing. And there were
the camouflaged culprits, their
bulbous sounds catapulting out at us.
Finding a stream full of frogs is like
setting off into another world,
outside human time.
“It’s them, it’s them,” I
called to my daughter,
and we crept forward
with the other
curious watchers.
Crouching low,
clutching my

Jump for joy

at frog choir

in a month

of wonders

Marsh frogs, left, as well as flag iris

were out deep in the water meadows

If optimism gives me more years, I’m all in

I believe absolutely that Boris Johnson will change, America will tighten gun laws and England will win the World Cup