Bird Level
On hidden lives and how to find them
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Dear Reader,
Regular readers of Monday Night Reads will know about how cold it can get on board my boat in the winter, and how much I embrace it. Last winter the marina froze over completely and I got to enjoy a whole Shackleton diversion as my boat creaked in the ice. The particular silence of a frozen environment is conducive to hearing my own thoughts.
Most of all, perhaps, I’m hardy as hell in the cold. When I travelled to Siberia to track wild tigers for my second novel and encountered temperatures of minus 36°C I was entranced by the natural effects this produced: the ‘white book’ of snowfall, the particular quality of the snow that held the tiniest animal track with the sharpness of an artist’s mould; the sensation on unguarded skin of the cold as a burn.
But I am afraid the heat reveals the limits of my adaptation. Over the last week, temperatures in London topped out around 36°C, and on my boat it was easily higher than this. The weather apps seemed incapable of predicting when the heat would break: the little precipitation cloud with its symbolic drops drifted tantalisingly along the timeline while the sky above my boat stared down, resolutely blue.
In such heat the air is uncannily still, as if I was a fly in aspic. Creatures cower from the sun: there is no movement, no evidence of the many secret lives all around me.
Last August, when temperatures crept towards 40°C I got mild heatstroke. A fan without a cooling system attached, I discovered, can actually increase the temperature, as if it was a whisk, increasing friction between the molecules, until the air slaps around like warm whipped cream. In desperation I’d blown my fan across plates of ice cubes; it worked for about six minutes until the ice melted. This year I swore I would be prepared.
Just in time I bought two swamp coolers, a tall thin one and a small cube that could sit on my desk. These machines use evaporation as the cooling method. This means chilled air comes out of the fan, instead of it simply mixing the hot air and sending it back out to you.
Proudly I trained both coolers on my skin. I rolled up all panels on deck and lay in a draught of my own delicious making, thinking of the ice cream I would later make*. But as soon as I stepped out of the coolers’ range I hit a wall of heat and became correspondingly clumsy. One afternoon, attempting the short journey across the deck, I managed to fall down the open hatch – well, most of the way. Somehow I performed a sort of involuntary semi-splits, ending up suspended between two levels of the boat. I have the bruises to prove it.
My coolers were undoubtedly a victory. They made the hottest part of the day survivable. Still, I mourned the disintegration of my concentration. Little did I know there was a discovery much more profound waiting for me.
The previous owner of my boat, the former harbour master, left me various treasures on board. Some I don’t even know the names of – mysterious boatie-things which I have been advised to keep. He also left me a brand new high-end and truly enormous inflatable dinghy, still in its box. It seats five and is absolutely perfect for bobbing around the marina.
It’s a huge undertaking to blow the rib up and so I have generally preferred my much smaller inflatable kayak. Readers may remember that last year a pair of coots built a nest in it, in what became a David Attenborough-worthy drama. This spring, when I finally came to inflate it, the kayak responded with a long melancholy hiss and promptly deflated. It had all been too much.
With the help of a young and fit fellow boatie, I pumped up the rib instead and we launched her.
As the sun dipped, I tied the dinghy to the transom at the back of the boat so I couldn’t drift away, clambered aboard, donned the sun hat I had bought in Italy for a heatwave at Festivaletteratura, and settled in with my book. After days of heat-induced torpor, I was determined to reclaim some of the thinking time the weather had stolen.
Then, an urge to set my book down came upon me. I lay back, almost hidden by the sides of the rib, able to observe close up the water birds getting on with their dusk-time activities.
With a background as a zookeeper and a groom, I have never really clicked about birds. Tigers and horses have an obvious fascination. They are also of human dimension. It’s not often you really get to bird level – but, I now realised, when you do, the richness of their lives becomes apparent.
The stretch of marina around my boat turns out to contain a surprising amount of avian real estate. There are coots, eiders, grebes and mallards, all apparently operating under their own zoning regulations. The swans patrol like a waterfront crime family. On summer evenings they conduct a stately circuit of the boats with their cygnets in tow, demanding tribute from berth holders with a hiss.
Over the course of several evenings I began to observe my local birds in their neighbourhoods. My binoculars (intended mainly for studying dockmasters clambering about the crane in hard hats and T-shirts) proved unexpectedly useful for this purpose. A pair of mallards are nesting somewhere between my boat and its neighbour. The male sailed out past me, glowing in his finery of greens and blues. He was entirely unconcerned by my presence.
A little further on two coots had a territorial dispute, brief and furious. They went at each other like spinning fans, water flying in all directions. Then, just as suddenly, it was over. The victor strutted away, hooligan fashion. For good measure he launched himself at an eider bobbing peacefully nearby, sending it flapping indignantly out of range.
The enormous rib, I realised, had rendered me almost invisible. Standing on the pontoon, I was always unmistakably human: a large upright creature casting a shadow. Lying low in the rib, I became another floating thing among floating things. The birds paid me no mind. We shared the same plane of water, the same cooling evening. It was less like watching wildlife than joining it.
As darkness approached, the air softened until it was almost indistinguishable from my own skin. I was simply a large dozing waterbird myself, peeping over the shoulders of my rib, bobbing in my own little territory. The marina, which had seemed empty in the heat, was suddenly full of signs. The sun bathed us all in orange.
Thank you for reading
Until next time
Polly x
* Polly’s ice-cream
Two thirds large pot Greek yoghurt
Tin condensed milk
Large pot double cream
Tsp vanilla essence
Large pinch salt
Mix Greek yoghurt, condensed milk, vanilla essence and salt. Whisk the double cream until it’s in peaks. Fold into the yoghurt mixture and freeze. This is no-churn, but it doesn’t hurt to stir it from time to time as it freezes.
Writing Group Publications
Huge congratulations to Ali Thurm and Dr Lynn R S Genevieve on their recent publications.
Both are founder members of my writing community, and it’s wonderful to see their books out in the world.
If you’re working on a writing project of your own, I offer both one-to-one mentoring sessions and my weekly writing group, Hour Club. You can find out more about both here.
I’m a novelist and TS Eliot Prize–shortlisted poet. Monday Night Reads brings a piece of thoughtful writing to your inbox each week.
My latest novel Ocean is out now in paperback, as is Afterlife, my New and Selected Poems.