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]

           The hammock was more inviting than usual. Partly it was the absurd temperature and partly it was the dawn chorus. Now there’s always a good reason not to get up at half-past three, but today I couldn’t think of it. So as the first grey tinges were appearing in the sky I was up… [Read More]

           Where did spring go? A shame you can’t get a hammock with central heating. A thought that met with instant reproach: cuckoo! It wasn’t really warm enough for serious hammock-swinging, but as regular readers will already be aware, we hammock-naturalists are a tough lot. Cuckoo! I may have been grumbling in my hammock but… [Read More]

           The buds on the ash have burst at last, but the leaves are mere tufts: the long stems with their four (or so) matched pairs and the singleton at the tip, they’re still a week or so away. There was, then, plenty of sky available for the contemplation of a hammock-swinging naturalist. My new… [Read More]

          I climbed into the hammock with even more zeal than that of the the committed hammock naturalist. It had been a demanding morning. I had been at the Diss Cover Book Festival – at Diss in Norfolk, where else? – and I was  breaking in my talk. The one to mark the publication of… [Read More]

           What made me open my eyes? It was certainly the best possible timing. There, perhaps 30 feet above my swaying hammock was a perfectly enormous bird. It was one of those moments when something deeply familiar takes you utterly by surprise. I gazed at the sky thinking: that – is — huuuge! It was… [Read More]

           Stillness is as near as we can get to a cloak of invisibility and there’s no great call for rapid movement in a hammock. The life I had briefly disturbed as I climbed aboard reconstituted itself all around me. And buzzed. Sometimes very close. Sometimes with more than one buzzer. I’m not bad at… [Read More]

           A gentle bounce as the springy branch of ash briefly yielded, a modest swing before it steadied and the hammock was once again ready for the intense observation of nature. Words ceased to dance patterns in my mind, or at least slowed down. The Hammock Naturalist was hard at work again. I had hardly… [Read More]

           They were as comfortable in the air as I was in my hammock, and seemed to be using the same amount of energy. The afternoon was old, the sun was not far off actual warmth and the hammock was swaying easily under the big ash. They were St Mark’s flies. They’re supposed to appear… [Read More]

  It had turned chilly and you had to be the slightest bit brave to risk a hammock. But we hammock-writers are known for our courage so, down jacket well zipped, I once again lay at my ease beneath the boughs of the giant ash. A peal of mocking laughter greeted my ascent, but I… [Read More]

           I had to go to That London to spend two days in the recording studio – not my latest album, a new audiobook. But I still had time for a session of hard labour in the hammock. A rush of work before that had left me in a split-level state of mind: half-buzzing from… [Read More]