Germaine Greer

Friday

Germaine Greer

A wildlife notebook

From our UK edition

The morning is cold and dark but the orchard is thronged with birds. Moorhens dash from one side to the other; woodpeckers drill the damp ground for worms; fieldfares bounce from hawthorn hedge to apple tree and back again; magpies terrorise all of them. They freeze when the buzzard comes over until, crows and blackbirds having risen up to harass it, its great wings float it away. The red kites are a different matter. They slice through the air like thrown knives, before the other birds have had time to look up. One of the 50 doves that were wheeling above my workshop now lies panting feebly as a kite tires on its bloodied silver breast. All is as it should be.

Thursday

Germaine Greer

Wildlife Notebook

From our UK edition

The morning is cold and dark but the orchard is thronged with birds. Moorhens dash from one side to the other; woodpeckers drill the damp ground for worms; fieldfares bounce from hawthorn hedge to apple tree and back again; magpies terrorise all of them. They freeze when the buzzard comes over until, crows and blackbirds having risen up to harass it, its great wings float it away. The red kites are a different matter. They slice through the air like thrown knives, before the other birds have had time to look up. One of the 50 doves that were wheeling above my workshop now lies panting feebly as a kite tires on its bloodied silver breast. All is as it should be.

Thursday

Germaine Greer

My wild place

From our UK edition

When I suggested that I might build a little tin house in the subtropical rainforest of south-east Queensland, I was advised by well-meaning folk that this probably wasn’t a very good idea. The forest would close in over the house; mildew and algae would grow on everything including me; the sun would not get above the surrounding scarps on the eastern side till mid-morning, only to plummet out of sight behind the scarps on the western side halfway through the afternoon — not that I’d notice, being penned in perpetual gloom under the forest canopy. All true. And no one to talk to but spiders and snakes. There are certainly many spiders. I do talk to them, shout at them, actually, because when I do they flinch and try to run away.

Saturday

Germaine Greer

The man who made England

From our UK edition

My father was about as English as they come. Though he was born and educated in Australia, he talked like an Englishman, dressed like an Englishman, and behaved as he thought an English gentleman would behave, which was several degrees better than the real thing. His manner was as easy, affable and unflappable as any true-born Englishman’s. A homegrown Englishman would have seen through him in a trice, as my father found to his cost when he was seconded to the RAF during the second world war, but to Australians he seemed more English than the English. No one is born a cliché; you have to grow into it, as you do a moustache. My father had a moustache, flying-officer model. As an avid reader of Biggles books, I thought this perfectly appropriate.