‘’He’s so excited, he’s like a coked-up Meerkat on an
electric fence.’’
Thus spoke James Nesbitt (below), in character as Police
Commissioner Richard Miller, from Channel 4’s dark, dark, realistic but dark
comedy, Babylon, when presenting the First Prize in the 2014 SFYL Challenge - a unique pot, kindly sponsored by Armitage Shanks - to this year’s winner, Mr Stephen Captain Blain.
The awards were held at Travelodge Marston Moretaine, in
front of a boisterous audience of between eight and nine people - who had
mistakenly attended - and Stephen Northwood, a vagrant, who wandered in because
he couldn’t remember where he’d left his bike.
Accepting the award, Mr Blain commented ‘’Thank you James, I
am truly honoured to have beaten my less than prestigious... or should that be prodigious?...opposition this year, and
picking up this award.’’
He continued, ‘’some time during
early-April next year, I am planning to pay a gang of Albanians to track down my
fellow competitors, kidnap them all, then strip them naked, nail their bollocks
to a wall, and spin them round continuously – sort of like human Catherine
Wheels, if you like - until Spring passage finishes in June. ‘’ That’ll put
paid to any thoughts they have of bagging a spawny southern overshoot. The
bastards’’
Amongst the audience of A-list and 1st-division birders, was
Leonard Godiva Rasputin Heavens, Chief Executive Listmaster of the UK Flying
Objects Association. He declared ‘’Steve
has been chiefly responsible for me having recorded 183 species in the English
County of Bedfordshire during 2014, including Eurasian Western Pink-legged Reed
Warbler, which has now been admitted to the UK400 Official List as a full
species, after thorough consultation with my elite committee of easily-swayed
and impressionable young birders who are desperate for new UK ticks and
half-pints of snakebite.’’ ''Personally, all I found this year was a rather damp copy of Penthouse in a layby at Brogborough and a shivering, hyperthermic Andy Grimsey at Pegsdon Hills.''
Also present was
Martin Palmer - veteran local birder and self-findist - who lives in a hobbit
hole on the edge of Stewartby Lake. Trimming his beard with the sharpened
offshoot from a nearby willow, he said ‘’I have known Steve since we was six,
and he fully deserves the recognition we won’t be giving him.’’ He continued, ‘’but
we’ll see how big his balls are when a tricky 2cy Baltic Gull turns up at dusk
on a damp February evening from my veg patch.’’
Also present was José Mourinho, Honorary President of the
Bedfordshire Self-finding Committee. He belicosed ‘’for me, Steve has
demonstrated the qualities I like in my players: big character, big ambition,
big list, big cahunas. He reminds me a bit of John Terry, but unlike JT, he possesses
high-end optics and and an i-Phone and lacks John’s blood-soaked head bandage
and extra-marital affairs. If he wants to up his game another notch and be
considered one of the all-time greats, he will have to acquire a serious head
injury and start knocking off at least one of his competitors’ wives during
2015.’’
Richard Bashford, who came outside the top three for the
first time since 1973, graciously observed to a transfixed crowd - ‘’I have
enjoyed some truly memorable birding moments with Steve this year ‘’Lapwing at
Broom, Dunlin at Broom, Chicken Sandwich at Sainsbury’s – the banter has been
incredible. Ideally, I would like to relate to you some of the many anecdotes
and bloke-moments that have passed between us, but unfortunately, half of it
isn’t fit to repeat...and the other half isn’t fit to think.’’
John Lynch - a man of few words, but great deeds - from
Grovebury Sand Castle, near Leighton Buzzard, rounded off the evening, and brought
the house down with his closing comment - ‘’finding the Barred Warbler at Blows
was definitely, definitely, my Ulrika moment. ‘’ he Freudian-slipped.
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