The big day has dawned
Post categories: Chris Packham
| 14:11 UK time, Friday, 2 October 2009
The big day has dawned with a chill and I met it with a yawn from the eighth floor window of a Bristol hotel. Yet somehow even the towers of bricks and concrete say 'autumn'. It must be the light, the sky, the late arrival of daybreak, a subtle complex of information which my sleepy senses subconsciously recognise as October.
Strange isn't it, how we try so hard to disconnect ourselves from our animal selves, to forget that beneath our battered and rejected senses there lurks a species that only yesterday would have needed to feel exactly when autumn was exerting its profound impact on our world. It would have prompted real changes in our behaviour, maybe our survival would depend upon it. Whereas now we just turn the central heating on, sit down and switch to 91Èȱ¬ Two at nine o'clock on Fridays!
If I'm honest with you, we did a really, really rough rehearsal last night and it ran over by... 20 minutes. We knew it would, we just wanted to workout just how much too much was. What's clear is that we have got a PACKED programme, with some good stories and some top species and great behaviour.
Gordon's been out catching up with all sorts of stuff and about Martin has some surprises in store for the Unsprung half hour. He won't let Kate and me in on them. I dread to think. I fear pain and embarrassment.
The highlight of the run through was Simon's 'ad-libing' to his lack of finished films. Without the edited material he filled the allotted time by enacting the story of rutting red deer by improvising, impersonating and imagining each scenario. It was brilliantly done, positively Shakespearean and highly amusing. It's a bit of a pity he won't be doing it tonight. The real deer have a lot to live up to!
Anyway, as I sit here waiting to have the Presenter Meeting (the hour- or two- or three- long 'creative discussion' that will finally determine the probable/maybe/perhaps content of the programme) the mood is good. We've been lucky with the weather, got some nice stuff to show you and everything is looking and sounding technically right. All we have to do is fuse it all into a thing of beauty and our job will be done.
Actually, I'm going to sign off as I need to speak to a man about some birds and I need to fiddle with some tricks I'm secreting up my own sleeve. And I need to retrieve a female and her cocoon which I put in a plastic container this week as I'm going to be angling for an opportunity to tell you about this species' amazing lifecycle. The geek cant wait to get going!
I'll be blogging regularly throughout the eight weeks of Autumnwatch so please be sure to come back for more.
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