It begins

By rights I should be a great field naturalist. Thanks to my father's obsession with boats, my mother's obsession with being outside and the magnitude of the family dogs I spent most of the first 16 years of my life immersed in the environment. The birds of the air and the voles of the field were my friends and companions. Or something.

I studied Biology at University and, slightly I think to everyone's surprise, was awarded a degree in the subject. I spent three years in a field centre in mid Wales studying amphibians. I can still answer every question you've ever had about amphibians and this won't even scrape the surface of what I know about the blighters. Sadly I failed to communicate this information in the form of a Thesis.

By this time I had developed an important secondary interest in beer and fags. This heavily reduced my inclination to spend time with nature, restricted the hours I was available for naturalism and scared many animals off (bats, to name just one group, don't like it if you smell like an ashtray).

My field skills slumped from poor to non-existent. My belly expanded from firm to floppy and I began to view nature as a curious phenomenon from my past (like fluorescent yellow socks and the Scout Law).

And now as I face middle age dubiously I find that not knowing what the things are called turns out to be one of my regrets. Couple that with a healthy booze and nicotine free lifestyle and a dog who never tires and suddenly I find myself trying to work out what that tiny white flower spread across the Long Mynd actually is (I'm guessing it's a bittercress but I'm a bit rusty on terms like glabrous which seem to be crucial to a proper identification of it).

So this is me, playing catch up, gently and on-line.