This is a charming book, but lest that sounds a bit condescending (it wasn’t meant to be) it is also a cracking good read.
Bill Meek is an ex-CEH ecologist who wrote a column for his local paper, the Cleethorpes Chronicle, for three and a half years. In that column he aimed to inform, entertain and to make his wildlife observations relevant to the locality. But this is not, in any way, a parochial series of accounts. I don’t spend much time in Cleethorpes but I very much liked this book. You probably would too.
The range of subjects is broad with a much fairer proportion of the words given to plants and insects than you will find on this blog or elsewhere in my writing and I liked that because it did educate me. Also, there is a fair amount about the seaside which is nice too!
I was fascinated to see how many of the subjects I cover were also covered by Meek – I guess those of us who write regularly only have so many subjects to choose from! So we go from farmland birds to the 12 days of Christmas and from Brexit to whether or not to capitalise species’ common names, and from froghoppers to feral daffodils and from Bitterns to predator control.
The articles are arranged by month of the year which is quite a good method for a book into which you are likely to dip now and again rather than read from cover to cover. Having said that, I’ve read most of it already and I’ve only had it a few days.
I think the former readers of the Cleethorpes Chronicle will be missing Bill Meek’s regular column but I also think his descriptions and thoughts are very worthy of a wider audience.
A Natural Selection: wildlife writings from the Cleethorpes Chronicle by Bill Meek is published by The Choir Press.
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It appears that the paper ceased publication in 2017, not I suspect a function of the wildlife column. Sounds like a book I will probably read.
A short life I fear 2008 – 2017. Small papers struggle to survive and are often bought out by the larger publishers just to get rid of competition and secure any lucrative advertising revenue.
There was a time when local communities got together to create their own and these can be funded in part by small advertisements.
It’s a shame because many of the contributions were made by local people, the various sporting aspects, a diary of forthcoming events, various aspects of village life across the area, yes natural history observations etc. and these were the elements valued by local communities and ignored by the larger regionals.
So, that it is collated and offered to a wider audience is good and in keeping with observers of nature on their local patch.
Perhaps the modern equivalent these days is the blog and many excellent ones there are too! Whilst I like the natural history observations I also appreciate thought provoking posts and campaigning ones which is why I suspect I like a lot of readers appreciate Mark’s endeavours – long may the mix continue.