Simon Barnes

After a wonderful response to the post 'The Fat Fight', I decided that in fairness to anyone visiting my blog, I would post once a week, minimum. I follow several blogs myself and I love it when there's new 'stuff' to read. I thought Friday would be a good cut-off point.

Well, here it's Saturday and so far there's nothing but a resounding silence. But before you write me off, I have an excuse- I've had a cold. Not just a sniffle, of course. No, this has been one of those bone-aching, head thumping, exploding-nose type colds. You know- a bit like man-flu, really, but worse. Much worse. Oh yes.

So with a head full of what feels like insulation, my already limited ability to string thoughts together has been reduced to 'Where's the aspirin?', 'Who's got the Kleenex?' and 'What's the number of those nice euthanasia people?'.

As far as the blog goes, the temptation has been to slap up some photos, add a bit of text and slump back wearily in my chair. A bit of a cop-out really, but when you're this close to death, you just don't care.

And then I got the Saturday papers. I read the Saturday Times. I like it because it has a real range of topics, lots of puzzles and some great journalists. One of those journalists is Simon Barnes. He is first and foremost a Sports writer, and I'm sure he's very good at that; I'll never know because the only sports I follow are the famous 'Find the Chocolate Bar' hunt; and the 'Just how much can You Eat at the Free Buffet' event.

On Saturdays,though, Simon Barnes wears a different hat and contributes a column called 'Wild Notebook'. Usually he writes, quite beautifully, about wild life where he lives in the UK. He's a passionate consevationist. However this week, after a recent visit to India, he was reporting about the work done by the Wildlife Trust for India (WTI) which is the local partner of the World Land Trust (WLT).

Mr Barnes describes the WTI as being 'an organisation light on its feet' and ' punching above its weight' (you can tell he's a sports writer, can't you?) as they solve problems in a 'wholly Indian way'. He uses two examples. The first is the whale shark. Fisherman were catching these beautiful creatures, the biggest fish in the world, purely for their livers which were used for waterproofing boats. The fishermen of India are not wealthy people, so how would you appeal to them to stop this practice? The WTI went to a holy man and asked for his help. He thought about it for a while and then declared that 'the whale shark is a god', ' the first avatar of Vishnu'. The killing stopped immediately.

The second example concerns the Nyishi tribespeople in the remote northeast of India, a place called Arunchal Pradesh. The Nyishi value the beak of the hornbill. It's an integral part of the marriage costume and without one to wear, a tribesman cannot marry. As the numbers of the Nyishi tribe increased, the hornbills were being hunted into extinction. The WTI's solution (this is so clever)? Make fibreglass hornbill bills instead. And then colour them more gaudily. The result?Beak-making is now a thriving local industry for Nyishi artisans. And the numbers of hornbills have begun to recover.

So -while I may not have a single original idea in my stuffy head today, Simon Barnes certainly has some thoughts worth sharing in his. Not just about two worthwhile and valuable organisations; but about how to approach environmental problems creatively.

And now that I've hopefully spread his word a bit further- I'm off to endanger another bird. The chicken. Because there's only one known cure for a cold of these proportions and that's chicken soup. All those Jewish mothers can't be wrong.



In case you'd like to read more of Simon Barnes writing, here's a link for you to follow.
http://saturday.timesonline.co.uk/