Innuendo and/or explicit images were also a mainstay of the Carry On and Confessions of movies that were popular in the 1980s and before. The table near the back of this book which lists the Top 10 listers in Britain and Ireland in 1987 and now (two names appear in both lists) is fascinating.

No doubt some twitchers who started birdwatching long after me will have seen more different birds than myself and of course I’ve noticed the boasting by some and it’s not just me that’s noticed.

He is clearly something of an obsessive, and his other past hobbies have included plane spotting and stamp collecting. The child died and subsequently my friend has spent a lot of time dealing with mental health issues – that it wasn’t his fault makes no difference and it won’t be something his own kids will forget either he had just picked them up from school. Driving an unnecessarily large and heavier car to keep up with the Jones’s isn’t just an added burden re inflated air pollution it means any accident involving them will be more serious than it would have been – especially for cyclists and pedestrians and obviously children – a bad situation being made even worse. He has spent tens of thousands of pounds and travelled tens of thousands of miles chasing rare birds.

But mostly, and overwhelmingly, this is a book about twitching – the fieldsport of rushing around trying to see rare birds to add to your lifelong list of wild birds seen in Britain and Ireland. You would have been at the top of the list in 1987, aside Ron Johns, if you had seen a paltry (I jest! Credit it to GB also, for his determination and enterprise in publishing the title at his own risk without the comfort of an advance payment or the prospect of royalties from an established publishing house. What further marks out his book as special is that the illustrations are all by Garry himself - not photographs but exquisite colour artwork which beautifully captures the spirit as well as the plumage of such species as varied thrush, indigo bunting, American redstart, common nighthawk and song sparrow. And who cares that Garry Bagnell has seen 553 bird species in Britain and Ireland (which puts him way behind Steve Gantlett on an estimated 590 species)?The human fallout and carnage from this reverence for the supposed personal freedom brought by a car (often to sit in a traffic jam with all the others enjoying their ‘freedom’ of the road) is horrendous and really deserves to be brought up alongside the environmental cost. I had never heard of a foam party until I read this book – maybe I should get out more, or maybe not.