I just can’t remember a time before insects

I inherited my interest in natural history from my father. When asked, he would claim to be ‘just a botanist’, but he always carried an insect net, and during his lifetime he amassed a large collection of insects across all orders. He also knew a thing or two about snails.

Even before we moved to Newhaven (in May 1965), I remember being out with Dad, or with the family, walking in the Surrey woods or along the North Downs. My first taste of fizzy orange juice was at the cafe near Box Hill railway station, surrounded by crowds of mods and rockers. I didn’t like the bubbles on my tongue, ‘hot’ I thought. The motorcycle policeman suggested we get on the train with the mods, rather than the more unstable and possibly more violent rockers.

I don’t quite remember this though.

Two-year-old me.

It seems the indoctrination had started early. This was from our holiday to Selsey Bill, in May 1960. Even before this I was apparently dragged about the countryside, literally, in a large-wheeled push-chair, adapted for rough terrain by the addition of a stout pulling chain to the front axle, when extra power was needed to get along muddy bridleways.

My earliest insect collection (mostly butterflies, dragonflies and bumblebees, if I remember right) no longer exists, but a few surviving specimens linger  in the drawers today. According to my old catalogue, specimen 1a was the giant weevil Liparus coronatus from 1967 . Some of the memories are there though. Around the time of our first arrival in Newhaven I chased clouded yellows across the cliff-tops at Telscombe. A short walk over the downs to Bishopstone and it took several bites from saucer bugs (Ilyocoris cimicoides) and water boatmen (Notonecta species), before I worked out that I had to be carefully picking things out of the pond-dipping net.

I grew up thinking it was perfectly normal to spend every sun-lit weekend hour squelching across the marshy meadows of the Sussex river valleys, scrambling up the stepped sheep-rutted scarps of the chalk beacon hills, and pushing through the dense woods and copses of the Weald; then to sit down at a desk in the evening to pin insects onto setting boards, or fair-copy write-up my nature notes.

This picture is from much later, July 1983, when I was visiting my parents, but similar images from the previous 25 years would have shown the same thing — a shared interest in natural history. Thanks Dad.

Father and son.