I was writing about the gannets of Bass Rock. I visited them last summer, part of a project for the Wildlife Trusts, which I’ll be able to tell you about in a few weeks. It was a wonderful trip to what is probably the most spectacular wildlife site in Britain.
So I was blasting away at the keyboard in my efforts to describe the way the birds plunge from one hundred feet into the sea, and I was doing so with immense enthusiasm. But I have a problem in such circumstances: I go far too quick and fill the screen with typos. So then I bring in the spell-corrector and all is well. Or almost.
In my frenzies I had spelled gannets as ganets or ganest or gnets. I read through the piece as soon as I had raced through the corrections – and discovered that, though I had achieved consistency, I had lost the gannets. Instead, I had described – vividly, dramatically, compellingly — the way genets dive from dizzy heights into the ocean.
Genets are great favourites of mine, animals I know well from my obsessive relationship with the Luangwa Valley in Zambia. They’re small spotty carnivores, cat-like but with a nose like a glace cherry. They’re not actually cats though; they’re viverids, from a group of nearly 40 species that includes civets. And genets are the most wonderfully winning little things, generally seen at the top of tree, caught in the beam of a spotlight and looking down at you in so captivating a manner that you long to take one home in your baggage.
My friend Gid, who lives in the Valley, adopted an orphaned genet kit and called it Pippin. I had the honour of meeting Pippin: he was the most entrancing animal you have ever seen in your life and he moved like a ripple moving across a bolt of silk. Pippin eventually adapted himself back into the wild; it was all rather a triumph, in a quiet way.
But the idea of poor Pippin plummeting into the sea with a bemused expression on his spotty face, hitting the waves with a great splash of his cherry nose, has been troubling me for a week. Still, the idea
of Bass Rock standing proud of the sea and home to 150,000 genets is something to savour.
Anthony Bird says
23 November 2015 at 3:08 pmTwo in one day, how lucky can we get, cheers, Simon.
Mrs Andy Lloyd Williams says
23 November 2015 at 4:51 pmI think Peter Brooke in The Times (if I dare mention the word!) could draw a wonderful cartoon of your “Genet’s”!
Simon Barnes says
6 December 2015 at 12:42 pmI would be right up his alley, that’s for sure!
Brian Goldfarb says
23 November 2015 at 10:16 pmBut do gannets (or even genets, come to that – love the typo) necessarily dive from that high up, always? We were at Cley-Next-the-Sea in early autumn time and watching the sea birds migrating in. It was misty, so they were following the shore-line (the following day it was clear, and they were further out, nearer the wind farm and less identifiable), and I was idly wondering which of the many sea-bird/gull-types those two were, drifting eastwards along the shore, about 25 feet up, when one of them suddenly up-ended and dived straight down! Gannet, I said out loud, involuntarily, but pleased that the bird had identified itself through typical behaviour.
We had last seen them when we were heading out of some tiny port north of Cairns to visit the inner Great Barrier Reef (a truly “one-boat harbour”); the sea was rough, but dolphins were surfing the surf and gannets, loads of them, were dive-bombing the water for food. Made me forget how sea-sick I was feeling…for a bit. Herself was and is a far better sailor than I am. The reef was dead calm and the discomfort was truly worth it…for everything, including the trip out!
Simon Barnes says
6 December 2015 at 12:41 pmIt depends how deep they need to get for their first because they carry on underwater for some distance when they plunge dive from a height. I hate boats and I hate the sea but I love marine life and I’ve spent hours of my life on boats doggedly staring the horizon trying to keep discomfort at bay. I have learnt that the best cure for sea sickness is to sit under a tree.
LJ Simon says
24 November 2015 at 12:25 pmI’m so pleased to have found you online after years of enjoying your pieces in The Times and elsewhere. This genet piece made me smile. As a copy-editor of nature and medical publications the rampant spell checker is there to provide me with the occasional smile when the ‘correction’ has gone unnoticed. And I love the sight of gannets fishing – they are something I look for whenever I am at the coast. Thank you
Simon Barnes says
6 December 2015 at 12:38 pmOne day I plan to complete a work in which I use the spell checker quite uncritically, in a sort of William Burrows search for authenticity.