25 November 2009

I'm going to heaven

Today went a bit like this...
MISSING SEA-MONSTERS IN THE CHANNEL
A tragicomedy in one long drawn out (and ongoing) act
By someone who should really know better

Act I (continued), scene iii
Scene: morning in an early 20th century house, a phone rings once, twice, thrice...
Enter Me

Me: (picking up phone) Hello?
Voice of county recorder: There's a Black/White-bellied Storm-petrel off Severn Beach... (the voice is drowned out by high volume screaming and arrhythmic percussive sounds as the stage is drenched in buckets of fake blood thrown from the wings)

(the rest of the scene consists of five hours of abstract improvised freeform contemporary dance, interspersed with alternating mime and primal scream sequences expressing shock, a lack of milk in the fridge, manic phone calls, the hinderance of the M4/M48, being asked "So, what does one of these look like anyway?", plotting the untimely demise of the creators of TurdForum, the inevitable crushing gloom of the dip and the act of carving "Fregetta sp." into one's forearm alongside "Magnificent Frigatebird" and "Yellow-nosed Albatross".)

Exeunt Me
A dark work I think you'll agree, but just the latest offering in a long tradition of birding related art; did you know Francisco Goya's Black Paintings were produced as a direct result of dipping Spain's first Lesser Flamingo.

Birder and the wrong sort of petrel.

Pom Skua just after it harried a large yellow lorry on the Severn Bridge.

PS. And why am I going to heaven? One of my pre-leaving manic phone calls resulted in a colleague connecting with the flipping bird, I couldn't negate that sort of positive ornithological karma in a lifetime of trying.

No comments: