London North East One From a well-known unknown corner of London

Kakapo

The Kakapo. Nuttier than its own poo.

It's the time of morning where I can finally catch up on things I need to do. Aside from work, obviously, which I should be doing but can't quite muster the imagination or logical construction required to write a script, so some mindless drivelling blogging shall suffice. I will justify it as an attempt to get my mind working in the way it should be, and cast aside the lack of sleep and general confusion. The boy is suffering constipation at the moment, so a long period of uninterrupted sleep is a luxury ... the Mrs very kindly told me to take a nap at 5pm, and let me sleep until 10.30pm, so now I'm completely confused although slightly less tired than I have been. The process of looking after a newborn - well, any parent will tell you of the sheer terror and fear that it will instill in you. Up until now, of course, I never believed it - surely, the vast majority of people on earth will have an offspring at some point in their life - it must be the most natural thing in the world. What becomes clear is that collectively none of us have a clue how babies work because there's no way of asking them what the problem is. General common sense is required - something a lot of us (myself at the head of the list) lack these days. We have the internet and books, though, to freak us out about the irrelevant details, whilst ignoring the big ones. Part of the fear was described in slightly different terms by Stephen Fry this evening, although he was referring to man's ability to utterly fuck up an environment in next to no time, whilst having to take 100 years to clean up the mess. "... the melancholy fact from when you were young was that it took you five minutes to mess your bedroom up completely but a whole day to tidy it".

I actually came here to write about the Kakapo, because it I have distinct memories of my late youth, being fascinated by radio and hearing Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine rummaging in the New Zealand undergrowth to record the unique 'boom' of the Kakapo calling for its mate - never having seen the bird, I was overjoyed to see it this evening, even if in this day and age the climax of the show (as it were) is when a critically endangered species attempts to shag Mark Carwardine's head. Such is television nowadays.

The circular point being, of course, that there is so much we don't understand that nonetheless we instinctively have this desire to protect. Why also the desire to destroy? Which came first?