Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A countryman and naturalist.
On the island
Eight records
The Cry of the Curlew
I've got a curlew, which I would love to have on a desert island, because I'd hate the solitude of foreign parts. You'd never get me on a desert island without hijacking me there. But if I could hear a curlew, it'd remind me of the wild hills of home, which I love.
Because I'd like something that makes me feel that it's not quite so bad as I thought at first to be on a desert island. And one of the things I resent about this country is that so many villages are being built up by a lot of little houses, that so many people are coming in with urban minds and running the country with urban mines, that that's one of the things I'd like to escape from.
Partly because I I like their singing and uh even more I liked their sense of humour and it'd give me a wry smile, I think.
Because uh I think it's one of the most lilting tunes that, although unmusical as I am, it really gets me swaying.
What Have They Done to the Rain?
Because I think that one of the nicest things in England everybody goes on about the sun and getting away to the sun, but I love the winter and the autumn and I love nice soft ... lovely English rain. And uh I don't know what sort of desert island you're going to banish me to banish me to. It's not bad. But I don't think it'll have anything as nice as soft English rain.
because I should by now be feeling very nostalgic, and I know you don't let me take any animate objects there, but uh there's no harm in wishing my wife was there, is there?
The Song of an English BlackbirdFavourite
Well, I would want something that was really English, and I can think of no nice English sound nicer than a blackbird, and I should like a really good blackbird, because it'd remind me of my black country boyhood they sung well there, and it'll remind me of my present time living in wild woodlands.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:49Where do you come from?
I come from fairly unlikely habitat, really, for a naturalist. I come from the Black Country of Staffordshire, where my old man was a doctor. He got a mining practice along the edge of the Black Country. He was a doctor in the days when doctors knew their own patients, and his mining practice embraced quite a lot of farms, and a lot of his patients were our friends. And because of that, I got the freedom to run on so many farms that I had more acres to run over than if he'd owned a stately home, really.
Presenter asks
2:21Did you never have any leanings towards medicine yourself?
No, I didn't. I never wanted to be a doctor. I was expected to go into the family practice, but I never wanted to be one. ... Well, I went up to Oxford to read medicine and I found that I had a great liking for beer up there, but not much for medicine. And if I'd stayed there until now, I would never have been a doctor.
Presenter asks
6:28What did you read [at the University of London]?
I rent engine ... Engineering there for a stupid reason, about the silliest reason you could think of, because when I was in my teens I went through the whizkid stage of racing motorbikes and I've always had a sort of love-hate relationship with machines and I wanted to learn to tune a bike and for no better reason than that I thought that I'd go and read engineering.
The keepsakes
The book
Well one of the things I resented about school is that they wasted so much of my time doing integral calculus and stuff I've never used since instead of something useful. And I would like to have learnt shorthand and I would like the very best shorthand primer or instruction book or whatever you can get me. And I'd like plenty of paper to practise on because when I'd learnt it well enough I'd uh make enough notes to uh do a book when I got home and earn myself a pint of beer.
The luxury
a complete set of bird-ringing tools (numbered rings and pliers)
Although I'm a naturalist, I've never done any bird-ringing, partly because I don't agree with it unless there's a specific purpose. But I would like to take a complete set of bird-ringing tools, that's to say, numbered rings to put on their legs and pliers to put them on with. … I'd ring the seagulls and I would particularly try to ring any migratory birds because when they flew on, any that got recovered … they would send to my address so that my wife would know that at least I was alive and well … and she would then organise an expedition to rescue me.
Presenter asks
7:06What did you do when you came down from London?
When I came down I got a job in a factory at uh forty five bob a week in the tool room and I worked there for eighteen months. And then the chap who'd been passenger to me in my sidecar, he went abroad and I applied for his job, which was at another factory, Spring Works, and this was a really big step up in life. I got three pounds a week to go there, and this was soon stepped up to four, which is big time as far as I was concerned, unqualified, and I got married on that.
Presenter asks
10:21How did you set about [stepping out of the rat race]?
Yes, for the last seven years I was on the board of quite a large company, and anybody in industry gets a ... as a freelance I think paid more than you're worth, so that I'd had simple taste and I'd been able to put a bit by, so that if I didn't get a commission for six weeks, well, it wasn't death and disaster. And by doing a few books, and I was broadcasting for about once every three weeks for the last thirteen years in industry, so I'd got quite a connection on the old boy basis, so that I was able to step off without ... Starting right at rock bottom.
Presenter asks
18:55Would you try to escape [from the island]?
I would never stop trying to escape. I I wouldn't be on your island for very long. I would get off it by hook or by crook, and no holes barred. Uh I would try and lash things together to make rafts. I would keep silkworms and grow silk to make inflatable silk dinghies. I would do anything I could to get away.
“If I could think as quick as a rat in a tight corner I'd I'd be a tycoon because if there is one way of escape he will slip through it and uh if you're going to outwit a rat I think it is the sort of pinnacle of hunting, although socially not perhaps quite so acceptable.”
“Poachers particularly are the superb chaps to learn your natural history of. You learn it really the hard way in the field, and you get about so quietly. And this is the secret of seeing any sort of wildlife not thump about looking for it, but to wait about and let it come towards you.”
“I felt that it was a waste of life to work hard for five days a week to do what I wanted to do for the other two. And so eventually I engineered myself into a position where I could step off and work for myself.”