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(Background noise might make this episode a challenging listen.)
Episode image is a detail from the cover of Schott’s Original Miscellany by Ben Schott, published in 2003 by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC.
For the 69th Second Hand Book Factory, Charles Adrian is joined at the Festival Hall in London by Tom Bowtell, who describes himself as a writer, actor, director and maker of adventures (and you can look up some of the things he has done with the company Coney here). Their discussion covers bold beginnings, the riches to be found in random facts and bird ‘jizz’ (entirely SFW, by the way).
Another book by Patrick Ness, The Knife Of Never Letting Go, is discussed in Page One 18.
How To Be A Bad Birdwatcher by Simon Barnes is also discussed in Page One 180.
This episode has been edited to remove music that is no longer covered by licence for this podcast.
This episode features a jingle written for the podcast by the band Friends Of Friends.
A transcript of this episode is below.
Episode released: 17th February, 2015.
Book listing:
More Than This by Patrick Ness
Schott’s Miscellany by Ben Schott
How To Be A Bad Birdwatcher by Simon Barnes
Links:
Episode transcript:
Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to the 93rd Page One. This is the 69th Second Hand Book Factory. I'm Charles Adrian and my guest today is Tom Bowtell.
Jingle
You're listening to Page One, the book podcast.
Charles Adrian
Hi,Tom.
Tom Bowtell
Hello, Adrian.
Charles Adrian
And I realised I don't even remember: are you Tom? Is that it? Or are you Thomas shortened to Tom?
Tom Bowtell
I am Tom but I'm... I was never christened. But my heathen parents did put Thomas on my birth certificate.
Charles Adrian
Oh, okay.
Tom Bowtell
So I'm officially Thomas.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] But they've never called... they never called you Thomas.
Tom Bowtell
No, it morphed very quickly into Tom.
Charles Adrian
Right. Right. I understand.
Tom Bowtell
I think the fay... The day when I was a toddler and ate my own poo, I think it was confirmed that I was definitely a Tom not a Thomas.
Charles Adrian
[laughing] Right.
Tom Bowtell
I think that really nailed down the Tomishness of my being.
Charles Adrian
So I'm going to ask you to describe yourself. You, kind of, already [laughing] have.
Tom Bowtell
[laughing] Yeah.
Charles Adrian
But how would you describe yourself today.
Tom Bowtell
In terms of what I do, I describe myself as a writer, actor, director and maker of adventures. I'm one of the co-directors of a company called Coney, who make adventures and playful theatre for all sorts of audiences. I guess I have a small speciality making work for young people, especially adventures that erupt in their everyday lives and send them off down unexpected rabbit holes.
Charles Adrian
Do you go into schools and youth clubs and...?
Tom Bowtell
Yeah, we... I mean, I go in quite a lot. There's one I do where late in the evening I break into schools but under... under...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Tom Bowtell
... they allow me to. They invite me in and I meet the caretaker and we bury fossils all around the gardens and flower beds at primary schools. Then, in the morning, I burst in with an absurdly beeping fossil detector...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Tom Bowtell
... and get Year One—who are very small six-year-olds—to go outside with me because I'm in a race against time to convince Angela Dawkins of the Natural History Museum that there really are fossils buried in Camden. And we find them. You know, we find them. The six-year-olds dig them up with tiny trowels. I bring some tiny trowels with me.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Aww amazing!
Tom Bowtell
And it's real fossils that we source so they are digging up real bits of dinosaur, which they get to keep.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] They're genuine fossils? Amazing!
Tom Bowtell
And then Angela Dawkins herself from the Natural History Museum bursts in at the end and confirms the veracity of their finds and I get the job. And sometimes they go on visits to the Natural History Museum later in the term and I'm there—working, apparently.
Charles Adrian
Oh brilliant!
Tom Bowtell
[speaking over] Well, actually, they see me heading just off for a new expedition.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Tom Bowtell
So I run down the stairs as they come up them and salute them and thank them for getting me the job. So yeah, so things like that. So...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Oh, that is fantastic. Yeah.
Tom Bowtell
They know me as Albert. If I go back in the next year for the next year's group they all call me Albert, you know, in the second year. Things like that. It's really interesting,
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Oh, brilliant. But we need to talk about...
Tom Bowtell
We should be talking about books.
Charles Adrian
... books. What's the first book that you brought? The book that you like.
Tom Bowtell
This is a book that I like. It's More Than This by Patrick Ness.
Charles Adrian
[interested] Uh huh?
Tom Bowtell
Do you know Patrick Ness?
Charles Adrian
No, I've... Somebody else who was a guest on my show brought a Patrick Ness book but I hadn't heard of him before that.
Tom Bowtell
Was it one of the Chaos Walking ones?
Charles Adrian
It might have been. It was The Something of Never Letting Go.
Tom Bowtell
[speaking over] The Knife of Never Letting Go. Yes.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] The Knife of Never Letting Go. Yeah.
Tom Bowtell
About all the thoughts when...
Charles Adrian
It sounded really great.
Tom Bowtell
It's wonderful. Well, he writes these books... I guess they're Young Adult but I, sort of, see them as a... as a [indistinct]. This one I didn't know until, sort of, about two thirds the way through when I thought, ‘Okay, it probably is for young adults’...
Charles Adrian
Right.
Tom Bowtell
... that it was. And I, kind of... I like that.
Charles Adrian
That's nice, yeah.
Tom Bowtell
Yeah. And I read his books purely for adults and they don't grab me as much so I don't know what that says about me but... But yeah, I'm much more drawn to the... There's a kind of vibrancy and he's quite... really unfettered in the worlds he makes for his Young Adult fiction. And Knife of Never Letting Go was part of this big award-winning trilogy he did. And More Than This is a standalone—which is his latest one—and it's, yeah... it's really, really good.
Charles Adrian
Do you want to read the first page for us?
Tom Bowtell
I think it's one that's worth reading the first page before we talk about it so I'm going to do that. So:
Here is the boy, drowning.
In these last moments, it's not the water that's finally done for him, it's the cold. It has bled all the energy from his body and contracted his muscles into a painful uselessness, no matter how much he fights to keep himself above the surface. He is strong, and young, nearly seventeen, but the wintry waves keep coming, each one seemingly larger than the last. They spin him round, topple him over, force him deeper down and down, even when he can catch his breath in the few terrified seconds he manages to push his face into the air, he is shaking so badly he can barely get half a lungful before he's under again. It isn't enough, grows less each time, and he feels a terrible yearning in his chest as he aches, fruitlessly, for more.
He is in full panic now. He knows he's drifted just slightly too far from the [sic] shore to make it back, the icy tide pulling him out farther and farther with every wave, pushing him towards the rocks that make this bit of the coast so treacherous. He also knows there is no one who'll notice he's gone in time, no one who'll raise the alarm before the water defeats him. He won't be saved by chance, either.
Charles Adrian
Amazing.
Tom Bowtell
There we are.
Charles Adrian
That's really... We're right in media res there. Plunged in.
Tom Bowtell
It's good, isn't it?
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Tom Bowtell
It's a great start. And he dies.
Charles Adrian
Oh, wow. Yeah. That's an amazing beginning.
Tom Bowtell
He dies. He drowns. And he wakes up. And we find out very quickly that he's a 17-year-old from the States but that he was born in England and had moved at some slightly unclear point in his past. But when he wakes up he's in his bed—which he hadn't been in since 1989, say—back in England, in a kind of Buckinghamshire, sort of, middle-class suburbia. And he wakes up in his childhood bed in his childhood house...
Charles Adrian
[interested] Uh huh.
Tom Bowtell
... inside a coffin—but a sort of metal coffin with lots of tubes coming out of it—and he doesn't know where he is. Well, and he's the only one there—there's no other humans around—and it's, kind of, as if it was left in 1989 when he left it. His last... It's almost like he's waking up in his last memory of the place he was brought up.
Charles Adrian
Yes.
Tom Bowtell
But time has passed so everything's overgrown. Everything... So time has continued but there's no signs of humanity. So he can walk around his house and there's just a thick layer of dust on everything. He can open the fridge and there's disgusting things rotting in it. He goes down to the supermarket and it's all there. Everything's decomposed so he survives on some tinned food that he finds. Some of it's not too bad. And he finds bottled water. And there's... you know, there's plants and things like that. He finds a train that's just stopped in the station. He goes on the train and it's all there but there's no...
Charles Adrian
There are no people.
Tom Bowtell
... no people.
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm.
Tom Bowtell
And, of course, he spends the first half of the book... Is this, like, some sort of afterlife? Some sort of purgatory? Some... Are these the last moments of death that then are drawn out for ages and you pop into some memory? Is there some quest that he needs to solve? And it really... It's a really nice setup because you just... Weirdly, when you first read it, you're just trying to think, ‘What is the twist? What is the clue or the key to this mechanic?’
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] ‘How is this going to be resolved?’ Yeah.
Tom Bowtell
And it's a very satisfying one and not... none of the ones... I've, sort of, given this book to lots of people and no one's guessed the actual one. And it's quite a... And it's a real one as well. There's no ‘woke up and it was all a dream’ so there's...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Right. Okay. Okay. There's something... Ah, very nice.
Tom Bowtell
The MacGuffin that they use is a really smart one.
Charles Adrian
Oh, beautiful. Oh, well, thank you. That's intriguing. That's...
Tom Bowtell
[speaking over] I can recommend it strongly.
Charles Adrian
Okay, good. Good. Good choice. Now, I'm going to play a track now. I've chosen the music today and this one is just... [laughs] I'm harking back to our university days.
Tom Bowtell
Of course!
Charles Adrian
You'll recognise this song.
Tom Bowtell
I look forward it.
Charles Adrian
You introduced this to me.
Music
[Make My Day by Labi Siffre]
Charles Adrian
So that was Make My Day by Labi Siffre. Which actually... I have to say I was—as I said to you while that was playing—I was very happy to find it. It took me a while to find it because I was looking for Smile For Me.
Tom Bowtell
Mmm. Of course.
Charles Adrian
But of course that was the name of the play that you wrote which had that as the theme tune. [laughs]
Tom Bowtell
Indeed. And it was an absurd play.
Charles Adrian
Here's the book that I'm going give to you. I don't know... You probably have this already but it's...
Tom Bowtell
I don't think. Well, from the back, it all...
Charles Adrian
... Schott's Original Miscellany.
Tom Bowtell
No, I don't.
Charles Adrian
And this is the only book that I can imagine giving to you.
Tom Bowtell
Right.
Charles Adrian
And... I just... I'm probably... I am... I'm thinking of a 20-year-old Tom Bowtell. I have no idea what you're like now because I don't see much of you.
Tom Bowtell
No.
Charles Adrian
But you... [clears throat] Sorry. You are somebody who... I think of you as liking random pieces of information and I think you like to make links between random pieces of information.
Tom Bowtell
[considering] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
That's, kind of, how I imagine your mind working: that you're like a pigeon feeding on on all kinds of crumbs and then inside...
Tom Bowtell
Or a magpie collecting little nuggets of something.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yeah, or a magpie collecting nuggets. And then somehow you construct things out of those nuggets.
Tom Bowtell
[interested] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
And I think you're... I think... I mean, I'm... I think Smile For Me was a little bit like that and what you're doing now is an awful lot more... what's the word? Consequent, my German director [laughing] would say. But, nevertheless, I think there's... I think that's... there's something about your brain that works with these, kind of, random atoms hitting it at different angles.
Tom Bowtell
And [indistinct] connections.
Charles Adrian
Something is connected and created. So... But I think... And I think you're one of the few people in the world who I know who might genuinely enjoy Schott's Original Miscellany. I don't know what to do with this book.
Tom Bowtell
[speaking over] So it's facts? It's things? It's..
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] It's an incredible collection of random facts and there is no order to it.
Tom Bowtell
Which—again—is good and important, I think.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] [laughing] Which is... Yeah, and they're... I mean, some of those...
Tom Bowtell
[speaking over] I saw semaphore come past then. Yeah.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yeah. Some of those facts are actually quite important.
Tom Bowtell
Winners of the Boat Race.
Charles Adrian
Winners of the Boat Race, different types of murder, London clubs with their addresses...
Tom Bowtell
[speaking over] Always important. Excellent.
Charles Adrian
... and when they were founded. I'm going to read you the first page, which will give you, I think, a very good idea...
Tom Bowtell
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... of the way that this book works. So, it starts with:
GOLF STROKE NOMENCLATURE
Double Bogey.... +2
Bogey.... +1
Par.... 0
-1.... Birdie
-2.... Eagle
-3 Albatross or [sic] Double Eagle
Tom Bowtell
Mmm hmm.
Charles Adrian
HAT TAX
Between 1784 and 1811, the British government levied a tax on the sale of hats. A graduated scale existed, ranging from 3d [/θriːpəns/]...
… or [saying it as written] 3d...
... [on hats costing less than 4s], to 2s [for hats costing more than 12s]. Purveyors of hats were obliged to purchase a Licence [£2 in London, 5s outside], and to display a sign proclaiming them a Dealer in Hats by Retail. To enforce this tax, duty-stamps were printed which had to be pasted into the lining of every hat. Evasion of the Hat Tax, by retailer or hat-wearer, was punishable by a fine; forgery of hat-duty stamps was ultimately punishable by death.
Tom Bowtell
Death?!
Charles Adrian
Death.
For some curious reason, the tax applied only to men's hats. Similar taxes at the time included: Glove Tax (1785-94); Almanac Tax (1711-1834); Dice Duty (1711-1862); Hair Powder Tax (1786-1869); Perfume Tax (1786-1800); and Wallpaper Tax (1712-1836). Perhaps the best-known duty of this type is Window Tax, levied first in 1697 to replace revenue lost through coin-clipping. Initially, nearly every house was charged 2s; properties with 10-12 [sic] windows paid 4s; and those with more than 20 windows paid 8s. These charges soon escalated, and consequently the practice of ‘stopping up’ became common.
Tom Bowtell
Mmm.
Charles Adrian
Windows were exempt from the count if they were permanently filled with materials matching the adjacent walls.
Tom Bowtell
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
Inspectors would regularly count exposed windows and ensure any stopped windows had not ‘broken out’. Over time, the tax grew more unpopular since it became increasingly iniquitous, and it deprived residents (especially those in already disadvantaged areas) of daylight. In 1851 the tax was abolished.
CHARACTERISTICS OF LIVING THINGS
Tom Bowtell
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
Movement . Respiration . Sensitivity . Growth . Reproduction
Excretion . Nutrition . [useful acronym: MRS GREN]
SHOELENGTH LACE [sic]
Pairs of holes...
... and then length in centimetres...
2.... 45
3.... 45 or 60
4.... 60
5.... 75
6.... 90 or 110
8.... 150
9.... 180
Tom Bowtell
That's amazing.
Charles Adrian
So there's your first page. And it continues like that.
Tom Bowtell
I like the almanac tax. I wonder if Schott's Almanac itself is therefore taxable under that.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] They may be. Maybe there's a, kind of... Well, I guess it's finished by now.
Tom Bowtell
Yeah. It's very exciting. Oh, that's wonderful. And the window tax thing is... It's interesting that it's if it's of the same material. So I guess you could have lived in an entirely glass house because then they couldn't...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] That's interesting.
Tom Bowtell
... that was untaxable. So you could have made a house that was a hundred percent window.
Charles Adrian
Or they would have taxed you just the once, perhaps, for one window.
Tom Bowtell
[speaking over] So one tax for one massive window. But they said it's not taxable if it's...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yeah. That would have been a good...
Tom Bowtell
... the same as the adjacent material.
Charles Adrian
Well, yes, then then you'd have to ask yourself... Yeah, no, there would be discussions about ‘What's a wall?’ ‘What's a window?’
Tom Bowtell
[speaking over] I think you could loophole your way... I mean there's... I mean, I'm not saying that there wouldn't be drawbacks, Adrian...
Charles Adrian
[laughs] [speaking over] [indistinct] ... glass windows.
Tom Bowtell
... of an entirely glass... living in an entirely glass house.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yeah, no, exac... Yes, yes.
Tom Bowtell
Stone throwing would be very much off the agenda.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Tom Bowtell
But if we can sort out time travel I'm going...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yes. Test cases... Test cases galore could be brought.
Tom Bowtell
I think going back, building a greenhouse and then...
Charles Adrian
[laughs] Seeing how...
Tom Bowtell
... evading the window tax.
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Tom Bowtell
Perfect. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
[laughing] Now, what's the book that you're... that you've brought for me...
Tom Bowtell
Right. Well...
Charles Adrian
In theory.
Tom Bowtell
I've brought for you in theory...
Charles Adrian
It's electronic.
Tom Bowtell
And I will actually give it you because it's really good but it's currently electronic. It's How to Be a Bad Birdwatcher.
Charles Adrian
Oh! Oh, I'd forgotten that you were birdwatcher.
Tom Bowtell
Of course. By Simon Barnes.
Charles Adrian
Of course! Who writes for The Times.
Tom Bowtell
Who writes for The Times. But, um, it's a great book. But shall I just start by reading the start?
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Read the first page, yeah.
Tom Bowtell
And then I'll explain about it.
I am a bad birdwatcher.
On the other hand, and taking one thing with another, when it comes to enjoying birds I am world-class.
Where shall I start? With the carmine bee-eaters of the Luangwa Valley in Zambia? With the rhinoceros hornbill glimpsed through a gap in the canopy in the rainforests of Borneo? Or with the crested oropendola seen from the press box at Queen's Park cricket ground in Trinidad (where [sic] I was being paid to watch Ian Botham)?
No. Let's start in Barnet, on the extreme edge of London. I used to live there. I was going into the centre of London to meet someone, perhaps even to do some work. I wasn't looking for birds. I hadn't even got binoculars; you can't use them in a London pub, not without attracting adverse comment, anyway.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Tom Bowtell
So there we are. It's about this idea of bad birdwatching. And it's a really nice gift, I think, to anyone—and ‘gift’ as in something for you to do in your life—which is it teaches you how to identify birds. But not in a, kind of, twitcherish or obsessive way but just to notice them when they're passing by. And it's this thing that... Because here's a test for you: name... name ten birds that, if you saw them, you'd recognise them.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Oh goodness. Yeah. I don't think I could get as far as ten.
Tom Bowtell
[speaking over] I bet you can. I bet you can.
Charles Adrian
You think I can. Pigeon, magpie, blackbird, swallow, blue tit, starling possibly... How many have I got there?
Tom Bowtell
You've got six.
Charles Adrian
Swan.
Tom Bowtell
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
Duck.
Tom Bowtell
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
Different kind of duck. [laughs] No, okay...
Tom Bowtell
[speaking over] Not going to give you that.
Charles Adrian
... moorhen.
Tom Bowtell
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
Coot.
Tom Bowtell
Yeah. And what... But... And what this book's about, it's... There's a really nice quote in it, which I use every time I'm waiting for a train at a station—or I, sort of, remember this—which is: ‘Look up. See a bird. Enjoy it. Congratulations: you're now a bad birdwatcher.’
Charles Adrian
[laughs] That's beautiful.
Tom Bowtell
[speaking over] Because it's... And if you try—if you look out of a window—you'll see a bird fly past nine times out of ten. If you're at a train station and you've got two minutes for a train—and it's not an underground station. Underground stations it doesn't work as...
Charles Adrian
[laughs] [speaking over] But even there you sometimes see pigeons. Yeah.
Tom Bowtell
[speaking over] You can get pigeons on trains, yeah. Or there's probably a man with a parrot. But a bird will fly past. And what this book... it's got an amazing chapter which is about bird jizz—which is very exciting—and that is the, kind of, ineffable essence of a bird when glimpsed. And he tries to teach you that. Because that means you can look up and play a game and go, ‘Oh, it's got a slightly flickery wing beat, it's about medium sized: it's a pigeon.’
Charles Adrian
Ah yes. Okay.
Tom Bowtell
Or ‘It's got big flappy wings, slower wing beat with sort of fingered wing tips, a bit raggedy,:it's a crow.’ And, kind of, the most basic things of looking at and then knowing the couple of aspects of jizz of a bird... A seagull: it's like a big W in the sky like in a kid's painting when they were three. And you see it and you go, ‘Oh well, that's a seagull.’ And almost... And you... With a tiny bit of just knowing those things it means anyone...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] You can start to identify them.
Tom Bowtell
And so suddenly you're... And you then... I guess now with... You know, you can then... There's some sort of interesting imaginative link between knowing it's a seagull and... but you can't really see it but, kind of, having a picture of it in your head. And then, of course, when something odd happens—a sparrowhawk comes in and attacks the pigeon or a peregrine... you know, you get peregrines in London—it means that you're just a tiny bit sensitive to an odd jizz arriving. I bet you've probably never had the word jizz used with quite such alacrity on this podcast. Probably a record of jizzes.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] No. I was... No. No. Absolutely. And when you said bird jizz originally I assumed...
Tom Bowtell
You were expecting this was going to go down an entirely...
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Tom Bowtell
No, but it is entirely clean.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Tom Bowtell
But I don't know where it comes from. But it's the... yeah, it's the essence, that zest. But... And it's exciting because you, sort of... And I... Because I'm not one of those twitchery bird watchers but I do go out to a place where I might see birds—not where I know a bird will be—and you, kind of, do this subconscious: ‘Pigeon, pigeon, crow, ooo!’ And then you zoom in...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Something else. Yeah.
Tom Bowtell
... and it might be a sparrowhawk or it might be a kestrel. Or you go: ‘Pigeon, crow, zoom, ooo!’ And it's a woodpecker. And so you just have these little checklists of... you... ‘Oh, it's not worth looking at because it's one of... it's very common’ but what a lot of this book is about is that actually it's the common ones...
Charles Adrian
They're also interesting. Mmm.
Tom Bowtell
[speaking over] There's something wonderful. You know, if you have sparrows. Well, sparrows are quite rare in London now. But if you follow... You can get to know... If you have sparrows in your garden you get to know the personalities and...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] [surprised] Uh huh?
Tom Bowtell
... and you can see... Or blackbirds are a good one because they often have little specks of white so you can... you know, you can...
Charles Adrian
You can start to really identify them.
Tom Bowtell
[speaking over] You can get to know that blackbird and see their behaviours. And another good quote is: ‘One of the great pleasures of birdwatching is the quiet enjoyment of the absolutely ordinary.’ And I think that's... It's a really nice, gentle book. And he, kind of, writes a lot about being in the city and... because birds are accessible animals, really. I mean, I guess you get foxes in the city but if you think about the wildlife that you actually see—well, animal rather than plant—it's... some insects, I guess, you know? But mainly it's birds.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Mainly birds. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah.
Tom Bowtell
[speaking over] If you walked around you would—without... unknowingly—probably see tens of birds every day. In London, you know, you probably see a hundred pigeons easily. And just getting to know the personalities... So, yeah, it's a really nice little book and it, kind of... It demystifies it but it also is, sort of, a bit of a rebuff to the geeky twitcherdom of it and this, sort of, core...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yeah. Right. The, kind of, competitive collecting.
Tom Bowtell
Yeah, which isn't really what it's about. And the subtitle's to the greater glory of life. And I think it is true that just a tiny, tiny speck of knowledge—or a tiny speck of... just knowing the jizz of those ten basic birds—means you look up and you say, ‘Oh that's big. Oh, it's a heron.’ And, you know, if you see a really big bird flying languidly over London it's almost always a heron. It's really exciting to know it's a heron and think where it's going. You know, it's going from park to park or something like that. And that little process of elimination... and that... Or parakeets you get now. I don't know if you've seen the parakeets.
Charles Adrian
Parakeets in London?
Tom Bowtell
Yeah, all over London.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] No, I haven't seen that.
Tom Bowtell
A lot of people have seen... There's... South London, South West London...
Charles Adrian
Okay.
Tom Bowtell
There's 30,000 roost in trees near Esher Rugby Club.
Charles Adrian
[laughs] Really?
Tom Bowtell
Yeah, and...
Charles Adrian
I hadn't heard that.
Tom Bowtell
... if you go to a park and just listen out there's a distinctive squawk, which I can't do. And they're... It's amazing seeing people who've not seen them before. Their jaws drop as suddenly they see a tree full of thirty parrots.
Charles Adrian
Yeah. I can imagine. Crazy.
Tom Bowtell
[speaking over] Bright green with pink rings round their neck.
Charles Adrian
Wow!
Tom Bowtell
But yeah. So: How to Be a Bad Birdwatcher. So, yeah. So I think it's a really nice... really nice book.
Charles Adrian
Oh, thank you so much, Tom. That's a...
Tom Bowtell
[speaking over] Pleasure.
Charles Adrian
... brilliant book. Yeah, I will look forward with anticipation...
Tom Bowtell
[speaking over] Indeed. Yes, I shall...
Charles Adrian
... to getting that.
Tom Bowtell
... festoon you with it.
Charles Adrian
And. So now... So this is the end of the podcast. I'm just going to play one more track and then we're gone. There's no major significance to this track except that... So I saw your show The Early Days of a Better Nation. Is that... That's what it's called?
Tom Bowtell
[speaking over] That's right, yup.
Charles Adrian
Yes, Early Days of a Better Nation, which is By Coney. And it struck me that even the title is optimistic and there's a... I found... You know, we had all this discussion about whether to invite this... the World Council in to sort out the nation on...
Tom Bowtell
[speaking over] Peacekeepers, yeah.
Charles Adrian
Peacekeepers. And then how to distribute the aid. And I felt like we didn't do a terribly good job. And [laughing] then the end of the show is essentially the news reader telling us: ‘Everything's great. It's all worked out very, very well.’ And I thought, ‘How wonderfully optimistic.’ Because that's not what I read in the news.
Tom Bowtell
[speaking over] Because there were nights of total chaos, you see.
Charles Adrian
Okay.
Tom Bowtell
Yeah. So you... you...
Charles Adrian
We just did very well.
Tom Bowtell
You tipped over. There was enough... I'm, sort of, doing a balancing act that stage, going...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Ah. I understand. I see.
Tom Bowtell
‘Well, they're good at that, they're bad at that, they aren't... He was horrible, she was lovely. They did wonderful togetherness. This was a big argument.’ So there's a, kind of, teeter of win or lose, which is...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I see.
Tom Bowtell
... which is a bit brutal but that's...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] And we were just inside the win... the win pocket. Yeah,
Tom Bowtell
[speaking over] You were just on the win. Based on how hard... [Because] we stacked the dice against you quite highly. So...
Charles Adrian
[laughs] So I'm just going to finish with Getting Better by The Beatles.
Tom Bowtell
Amazing.
Charles Adrian
That's all. And, yeah, thank you so much, Tom. This has been...
Tom Bowtell
Thank you.
Charles Adrian
... such a pleasure.
Tom Bowtell
It's been delightful. Thank you, Adrian.
Music
[Getting Better by The Beatles]
[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]