Episode 129 Bird watching and other outings
Occasionally, Jos goes off to foreign parts with his bird-watching acquaintances.
Jos and I don’t go bird-watching together, or only very rarely at the most. Nor, to answer an earlier question, we don’t go out together wearing our SBR mackintoshes, but again it does happen, but also very rarely. As I wrote recently Jos and I have been (and are still) very chary and reticent about wearing our SBR mackintoshes at all anywhere near home or anywhere where we might be recognised by friends or work colleagues. However ‘very rarely’ then, we combine a trip well away from home, where we combine wearing our SBR’s with some bird-watching. In both cases I must say mainly to appease Jos.
For some years now, we have taken a holiday break together down in the Surrey-Hampshire area, staying at a lovely hotel south of Farnham for a few days. This year we went in the Spring. 18 months earlier, we had gone in the Autumn, 18 months prior to that we had gone in the Spring and so for some years back, even before our respective retirements. We both retired early, remember!
Jos has always been a bit of an Ornithologist, carrying on an interest we both had in our childhood days. He found it was useful knowledge to have when, for instance, accompanying Architects around on proposed redevelopment sites. More then once, a project has been delayed whilst awaitng some bird or other to finish their breeding and abandon their nests. Clients however, tended to get rather upset! And people might think he had enough kinks without he disclosing the important one! No-one knew of that one, of course.
So then, on these breaks, I spend at least one day or so faithfully following him around Thursley Common to catch a glimpse of merlins or other rarities and walk over to a more distant lake where there have been Bitterns even. You will be interested to know that one of us wears our SBR, usually me! On rare occasions, like today, curiously enough, when it’s thick mist first thing which thins out later but still hangs around, we really do both succumb to wearing our SBRs at the same time.
On one of the days down there, we usually spend a day elsewhere and drive south through Hindhead to the busy little town of Midhurst. There we park outside the castle and, just for once and whatever the weather, sometimes fine and sunny, sometimes grey and rainy, we both bravely put on our SBR mackintoshes and walk into the town centre. Why just then? Because in the main street there is the shop of Rainmac! (now taken over, we understand, by Evercreatures, Lincolnshire). It has been there for many years and we have therefore visited quite often in more recent times. It is similar to the rainwear specialist, -Weathervain’, now in Kew, but more friendly. We went together to the Kew shop once but found the man there at that time quite unfriendly, almost rude.
The lady at Midhurst pretends to remember us from previous visits and always says she is pleased to have old customers like ourselves visiting and showing off sensible rainwear. Amongst the big selection of different rainwear, there is always at least one SBR mackintosh hanging, usually a large man’s size and after a little chat, we explain that the mackintosh that Jos is wearing on that occasion and bought there some time ago for £400 (the spare one which he keeps in the back of the car) is too heavy for our tastes (as it is, in fact) and ask if it’s possible to have one made in the lighter SBR, like the one I am wearing. She carefully examines both and says regretfully she has not seen one like mine for many years. SBR, she says is quite hard to get nowadays, there being little demand for it! Even if we went elsewhere, they would have to go to the same supplier of the actual material and it is the only type and weight available. Well, we look at her stock and eventually, despite her urgings to try something else, regretfully edge to the door and leave. Feeling somehow more confident in our unusual garb (unusual to other shoppers perhaps?) we go to a nearby cafe that has a covered area outside where we can sit without feeling we ought to take off our mackintoshes. There we have some lunch.
Next stop, not far from Midhurst, is Chichester where we park at the Theatre just on the outskirts of the town centre. Jos changes into his older SBR, the one that matches mine in all respects, just like the one worn by the more-cheerful lady in our current favourite photo, (see below) and we walk from the car-park into the theatre grounds. Despite what must appear a little odd in these more modern days, again no-one appears to take any obvious notice of our rainwear and we have a quick cup of coffee, look at the events schedule and go to the box-office and buy tickets for whatever is on the evening. I had an unexplained feeling and Jos later said the same thing, unprompted by me, that walking around in our matching SBRs in the quite busy booking office, I felt more accepted, tolerated perhaps, by the sort of people who were buying tickets for a Shakespeare play, than I would have felt in the middle of the shopping area in the town. (No, we are certainly not snobbish!). I sat at the back of the booking office while Jos went and got the tickets, he still wearing his SBR, as was I.
No-one approached me – as is usual, thankfully I’ve found. As Jos says, only half-jokingly, I’m not the approachable type at the best of time, being rather large and even (he adds) matronly. I was never a matron, they didn’t have them in hospitals in those days. I was a ‘senior-sister’ on the wards, as I would respond to his jibes, but soon moved into administration as a Senior nursing officer (where I could write reports to my heart’s content.
Of course, we discarded our SBR’s before going to the actual performance in the evening. As much as both Jos and I ( and perhaps even you?) are attracted, even aroused, (more on the latter one of these days) by the sound of rustling rubber SBR, our neighbours in the theatre would certainly not be!
So, the SBRs go into the car until further required and that ends our mutual SBR holiday break for that year.
