Simon Barnes Author and Journalist

           He came out of the darkness. The spotlight picked him out but he didn’t care: young, male, preoccupied. He walked in a measured, confident stride straight towards our vehicle. At the last moment he eased to his right, my left, and walked past. I could have reached out and stroked him, but stroking lions… [Read More]

           There are times in every journey when you wonder if the destination is really worth the travelling… but on this occasion I had some excuse. The Elizabeth Line was plagued with delays. The air traffic control systems broken; 170 BA flights cancelled. But not mine. All it took was three hours of madness with… [Read More]

             Some tell you that the only way to meditate is with your eyes open. Others say you should always close them. No doubt both are right – and certainly there are two ways of operating as a top-notch hammock naturalist. Today I was working with eyes open: knowing I could always close them… [Read More]

            I’m always surprised by the power of peripheral vision: the way that you can sometimes see something without knowing you’re looking at it. It’s all about rods: the photoreceptors that pick out movement without the distraction of colour. I was swaying in the hammock and listening to the lullaby… [Read More]

           “I go to see Hamlet every ten years and I find Shakespeare has rewritten it in my absence.” That’s Dorothy Parker: and it’s certainly true that every time you come up against a genuine 24-carat masterpiece you find something new. No matter how many times you try. I was considering this matter in my… [Read More]

           Faint. Distant. Plaintive. Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Oh word of fear, unpleasing to a married ear. (I’ve been reading a lot of Shakespeare lately.)Perhaps he — the cuckoo, not Shakespeare — was as much as a mile from my hammock. Now in his seventh week. Or should that be the eighth? I first heard him on… [Read More]

           Stillness is a form of invisibility: and that’s the truth at the heart of all the hammock sciences. The hammock naturalist is aware of life going on in the world all around, but the world in not necessarily aware of the hammock naturalist. You will know the alarm call of the blackbird even if… [Read More]

           I sought the hammock with more than the usual naturalist’s urgency. My head weighed about twice as much as usual, and too violent a nod or shake would see it topple from my shoulders. I had picked up some minor infection and the hammock beckoned compellingly. The world was an easier place once I… [Read More]

           A sound I had never heard before penetrated my hammock-bound meditation. It was a sort of rattling growl, loud and clearly full of meaning, though not one I could interpret. It was urgent and it was serious: so much was clear. But I couldn’t even tell who was making the sound. Then I heard… [Read More]

           The notion of the hammock naturalist is clearly gaining traction: and not before time. Yesterday I was asked to talk about it on Radio 4’s PM programme. Here’s what I said:            The hammock is an essential piece equipment for any serious naturalist. It’s the portal to a million new ways of observing and… [Read More]