I was reading a new book this week – I know I could have said that any time in the last ten years and it would still have been true. I read a lot – period! Anyway this week I’ve been concentrating on Sarah Whild’s new handbook on biological recording and loving it apart from a creeping doubt whether I’d ever make the grade. Amateurs like me often face a Catch 22 situation where we find ourselves in an endless circular difficulty in which it seems (from reading this book) that the key to getting records accepted is to have a good reputation. How do you get a good reputation? Why of course by having lots of records accepted. We stand on the edge of the magic circle waving like a rapidly wilting wallflower; D listers in a school prom, and never being chosen.
I mean, I don’t mind too much because I’m not the train spotting type and I’m not even sure I’d like to be recognised for my botanical efforts alone. There are too many other non-wildflower subjects that I’m equally interested in. Sarah’s book is about the science of identifying and recording plants and goodness knows we need the science in this time of ecological crisis; but looking back at my long love affair with plants it seems to me that the true motivation was a combination of aesthetics and puzzles. When I first went to work as a very junior groundskeeper and school bus driver after leaving art school, I could easily identify Speedwells and Dandelions; enemies of the cricket square. However I learned very soon that not all Speedwells were the same, and more punishingly, that not all Dandelions are Dandelions. It was the struggle to tell apart and name the different members of their two families that really engaged me. It was a magnificent puzzle. The fact that almost all of them are extremely common and unworthy of the attention of the Magisterium made no difference – I loved the scruff-bags of the plant world, and I still do; probably because I’m a scruff-bag too. It also became apparent that Dandelions in particular are fiendishly difficult on account of their ability to clone themselves. I soon learned to walk on by!
So if I came to be a field botanist at all it was through trying to dig my way out of the slough of despond that all those Dandelion thingies inhabit, and when I hear one of the tweedies going large on their vast knowledge I retreat in case someone exposes my slim credentials. Imposter syndrome could have been invented just for me. I suspect I was a bit of a solitary from my earliest childhood and offering me a chance to do a course or take an exam would scare the living daylight out of me.
My real ambition is not to get an award or be recognised in the street. Years ago when I was doing a lot of slots and spots on BBC Radio, I was in the supermarket one day when a woman came around the corner after hearing me talk to someone and asked me – “are you Dave Pole?” – “Yes I am” – “ooh, I thought you were tall”. I am not tall. My only skill is as a communicator, although my several detractors would dismiss me as just being “clever with words.” Around the same time I was engaged on a project by the Bible Society who were recording the whole of the Bible. It felt less of an honour when I was told I would mainly be reading the devil’s voice. I’m quite sure that Jesus would have had a posh, English middle class voice but I never met my nemesis because I recorded alone in an empty studio and the editors joined all the bits together later. The only compliment came when I was told that my Gloucestershire accent went down a storm in Africa. A storm?
But this quest for a way of communicating hard ideas was the first glimmering of this blog. I was walking up on the River Severn when I found a row of abandoned concrete and steel barges hauled up on the banks at Purton. They were a sorry and desolate sight and I took loads of photos thinking how wonderful it would be if I could incorporate photos, text and HTML links in order to link the photographs as metaphors to illuminate the text. The links would be such that readers would be able to jump from place to place, choosing their own path through. I had to wait for years until the blogging technology came along and I’ve grown, along with the opportunities evolving programmes offered. My workflow always, without exception, begins with an image, a kind of Wordsworthian metaphor that acts as an armature for the writing. The hard ideas are what I’m really interested in and so my means are more creative than they are scientific. When I write about plants I’m often trying to shift a common misperception; to open up questions where there were once only answers. So I’m not so much offering answers to any particular questions but trying to suggest better ways of finding; better places to look for those answers. I use imagery from the allotment, the kitchen, the canal as well as our walks in which we are inevitably concerned with natural history not least plants; none of these in order to court celebrity but in the hope that readers can catch a glimpse of the power and the beauty of Nature. If I stray into the subject of Green Spirituality now and again it’s because I’m searching too.
Right now I’m experimenting with using my voice in some way, moving carefully towards video- who knows? I can blow the dust off my old devil voice once more or perhaps something a little less abrasive. There’s everything to play for.
This is a member of the Asteraceae but not a Dandelion.
