WHO?

The World Health Organisation has made a huge difference to the world, saved and improved countless millions of lives.  But there is a big question-mark. 

Actually, I'd like to throw a bucket-full of question-marks into this blog.  Things to agree with, disagree with, or better still just to chew over.  But most importantly, let's not bury our heads in the sand and ignore them.

So, back to Coronavirus (sorry!)  WHO has recently told us that "the worst is yet to come".  And there is news that another powerful virus has emerged from pigs in a slaughterhouse in China.  No doubt there will be more.  Are we surprised? 

Global warming is now on the brink (over the brink?) of being out of control.  As a result the world is already over a degree hotter, and warming further.  Doesn't sound much?  Good for summer holidays?  Some environmental scientists like Mark Lynas, author of Six Degrees, believe that after as little as another two degrees world agriculture will be terminally damaged, causing widespread famine.  Only one degree beyond that the Sahara desert will be encroaching over Iberia and southern France.  And just a degree higher still, human life will be fast dying out.  Much above that all life on earth will be unsustainable.  Why?

Amazing that all this damage has been done to the planet since the Industrial Revolution, and most in just the past 60 years.  Only in the last 40 years about 60% of wildlife has been destroyed.  Things are happening fast.  Why?

Not only are wild creatures dying out.  Coronavirus is now killing us too.  As for our planet... recently we have seen terrible forest fires, storms, floods and mud slides engulfing villages, droughts, locusts and now a new pandemic.  Is that because we haven't obeyed the rules and have upset the natural order or balance in the world?  Is a Creative Power or Balancing Force over-riding us? 

Isn't it time that we began to think of ourselves, the wild and domestic creatures and even the plants, as all part of the same 'us' that must be considered together in our attitudes to the world?

As long ago as 1962 Bob Dylan wrote "About a funny old world that’s a-coming along / Seems sick and it's hungry, it's tired and it's torn / It looks like it's a-dying and it's hardly been born."

Organisations like WHO and our own wonderful NHS have been doing a magnificent job looking after us, but who's looking after the planet that we rely on?  A few lonely organisations like WWF do the best they can.  But are we the planet's main problem?  Along with rats and cockroaches are we unstoppable breeding machines?

Every farmer knows that if any crop (animal or vegetable), is closely grown in vast numbers it breeds pests and disease.  So they increasingly have to use all kind of chemicals to control it.  None of which are good for the health of the final consumer... normally us.  And completely alien to the balance of life on earth.  But is this now a necessary evil to feed the increasing numbers of our own species?  Why?  Are there just far far far too many of us?

If the numbers of Homo sapiens were indiscriminately halved, would there be half the disease, half the famine, half the destruction of the environment, half the loss of wildlife, half the crime, half the industry and half the vehicles?  Half the pollution?  And half the global warming?  Sounds like a golden age?  So what's gone wrong?  Politicians wouldn't dare suggest reducing the numbers of their voters who will be tax payers buoying up the economy.  Businesses are equally reticent because more people means more consumers, more investors and more wealth.  So does the wheel spin faster and faster out of control as humanity races to the bottom?  Taking everything else with it?

In past years before modern medicines, mortality, particularly amongst infants, was much much higher.  So families needed to be huge.  Even in this country, as recently as Georgian and Victorian times, eight or nine children was not unusual.  Poor mothers!  But here comes the WHO again.  Good for them, they hugely reduced infant mortality rates.  But the world went on breeding... and surviving.  And expanding exponentially.  Where does it all end? 

We all have a right to life... don't we?  But Richard Meinertzhagen and Wilfred Thesiger both said, "I have no belief in the sanctity of human life".  Were they right?  Are we too cosseted and self obsessed?  Our generation has fortunately not experienced a World War.  Have we grown soft?  In my book Walks on the Wild Side I describe being pursued by bandits determined to kill us.  They weren't bad people.  They just lived in a society with a different ethical code.

After WWI the Spanish Flu infected about 500 million (one third of the population of the world in those days) and killed over 50 million.  (Source: CDC click here)  Have those figures been conveniently forgotten?  Coronavirus is also a flu.  A very dangerous one.

So what can we do about it?  What should we do about it?  And how could it be done?

I don't know.  What do you think?  Something certainly needs to be done.  We are hurtling towards catastrophe.  What?  How?  WHO?

Sorry to be so bloody depressing.  I promise to loosen up in my next blog!  But question-marks are terribly important things.

When is a chicken not a chicken?

Anyone who keeps chickens knows what intelligent, cheeky and individual creatures they are.  Nothing to do with the sad imprisoned birds killed at less than six weeks old, a billion a year in the UK, to recycle into fast food.  So when we lived on Dartmoor with plenty of space, we decided to keep some hens.

We read the guides to keeping chickens and learnt that we must have a hen house with a pop-hole entrance and straw-lined nesting boxes.  We must choose what breed we wanted; rare breed chickens come in all sorts of beautiful colours. First get the hens, as a cockerel is not a necessity (although the hens may disagree with that).

Nearby in Hatherleigh was a wonderful traditional livestock market (sadly no more) which had a weekly poultry auction, always well attended.  Inside the large shed it was bedlam, chicken crates everywhere, a deafening tannoy blasting the auctioneer's high-speed patter over all the chatter and crowing as his three-fingered assistant opened cages in turn, waving startled birds above his head.  The ancient farmers were even more interesting than the chickens, relics of a former age, wellies caked in slurry, threadbare gaberdine raincoats tied up with baler twine, and weather-beaten faces untouched by soap and water, often with ears that would have made an elephant envious. This was glorious old Devon, long since gone.

We wandered round in our ignorance peering into cages.  Chickens are often sold in threes, two hens and a cockerel.  But everyone is always keen to get rid of their unwanted cockerels, so we learnt the old tricks like putting three young cockerels into a cage with a couple of eggs under them to catch out gullible newcomers.  One bird caught our eye, alone in a cage, the most handsome chap in the auction with beautiful dark speckled plumage and we kept returning to look at him.  But the auctioneer received no bids for him and passed on. 

As the sale finished we looked again, and a farmer came over, 'Ya like 'e don't ya?' 'Um, well yes he's very handsome'.  'Why don't ya take 'e.  I come 'ere today wanting five pounds for 'e, but ya give me four and ya can have 'e'.  'But we haven't got a chicken house yet.'  'Ya got a garage 'aven't ya?'  'Well yes.'  'That be fine for 'e'.  'But he needs something to roost on.'  'Ya got a broomstick?'  'Well yes. But we've got nothing to take him home in'.  'I got a cardboard box, perfect for 'e.'  It seems we had just bought a cockerel... what suckers!  The farmer must have chortled all the way home.  But he was a magnificent bird.

We named him Wellington after the Iron Duke and discovered he was a Speckled Sussex, a very old breed traced to Roman times.  We also later discovered that he was sterile.  More chortling from the farmer!  So our chicken history had started, just as it shouldn't.  Eventually we built up a flock of a dozen Speckled Sussex, and later added six white Indian Runner Ducks and six black Cayugas, for whom we dug a large pond in another paddock.

Hens occasionally go broody, so need to sit on eggs for 21 days to hatch them.  Lots of risks there, they are often clumsy and break them, they steal each other's eggs, and hens can even die of hunger and thirst unless forced to leave the nesting box from time to time.  So in the end we learnt to sneak to the henhouse during the night, take out her eggs and slip a couple of day old chicks under her wing.  In the morning triumphant squawking. 'A miracle!'

The ducks also gave us eggs in late spring and summer, but they were hopeless mothers and after sitting for a few days would say, 'I'm bored of this game, I'm going back on the pond'.  So one day we popped a Runner Duck egg under a broody hen.  They take a week longer than hens eggs to incubate as ducklings are a lot bigger.  When they hatch they seem enormous and far too big for the shell they have just broken out of, whereas chicks look as if they could be folded up and put back in the shell.  So within a few days her duckling was far too big for her to sit on, and while her chicks were all cosy under their mum's wing, the duckling would sit beside her with just his head under her!  But the danger is that whatever a duckling or chick first sees is 'imprinted' on it, and is accepted as its mother.  So our duckling thought he was a chicken!

This was amusing to begin with, but when he was an adult he started trying to mate with the hens who were seriously unimpressed.  He couldn't understand the rejection.  We decided he must learn to be a duck, and so carried him over to the duck house.  'What are those hideous creatures?' he screamed and ran for his life.  We thought that when he discovered the pond he would be overjoyed, so we lowered him gently into the water.  'Now they're trying to drown me.  Help!  Mum!  I'm off.'  And he ran for his life over a bank, across our carpark, round the cottage and under a gate, back to his mum. 

We tried several times, but impossible.  It taught us that you should never mess around with Nature.  But unfortunately that is precisely what Mankind has been doing for years, arrogant enough to think we can manage the world we live in, control its wildlife, crossbreed its crops and animals to suit our desires, spreading fertilisers and herbicides.   Look at the mess we are in now.  It doesn't work. 

The hilarious drawing at the top of this blog is one of the sketches drawn on the spot by my wife Mo who also did the wonderful illustrations for my book Walks on the Wild Side, about my lengthy treks in East Africa.  The book is worth having a look at for her drawings alone.

Anyway, the answer to the riddle in the blog title is obviously:  When it's a duck!

What were you doing 40 years ago?

What were you doing 40 years ago?  I went for a walk.  I'd read about a lake set in the volcanic desert of north-west Kenya nicknamed the Jade Sea which, in certain weather conditions, turned jade green.  The world's biggest desert lake with its densest population of crocodiles.  Lake Turkana.  I wanted to see it.  So I decided to make a walk on its west side in the lands of the Turkana tribe.  It was extraordinarily remote in 1980, a little-explored region where I even came across people who'd never seen a white man before.  I walked with some local tribesmen and loaded donkeys for 150 miles, blisteringly hot and digging in the ground for our water.  The area was also beset with bandits of different kinds!  It was an exciting time, and I was hooked.  Over the next five years I kept going back until I'd walked on all sides of the lake, covering about 1200 miles. It became more and more exciting, and more and more dangerous!

Eventually I had to write a book to describe it all:  Walks on the Wild Side published by Eye Books.  The most important thing for me was absolute truth.  It was exciting enough without any lily-gilding, and the story is told in great detail, including the killing of one of my companions.  But first I had my busy career in the Film Industry, doing Special Effects in movies like Alien and The Empire Strikes Back. So only after I retired did I have the time to write.

Those treks taught me a lot about our relationship with our world, and how penniless and often half naked tribesmen had a dignity which commanded respect.  In many ways they were more honourable than their wealthy Western counterparts.  Who has been destroying this planet?  Not them. 

And of course I leaned a lot about myself, my own reaction to danger and fear.  When planning a trip into remote life-threatening places, the most important lesson to learn is not how to get fit and strong (although important), or even how brave you think you are.  The most important is to understand your own mortality and to accept how small you are.  When we have left our Western props behind, we realise we have no more rights to life than the people we are amongst and we find ourselves absolutely equal to them.  Without that understanding we can never relax in extreme situations or be able to cope with the risks of death, dangerous thirst or sickening diet.  There is no sanctity of human life.