Curtain about to fall on Nature’s Pageant

REVIEW: Nature’s Pageant – The Walk on the Wildside Theatre Company Ltd (Beginning of Time to the present day).

Showtime! stars rating: * * * * *

DA-DAAAAN! Welcome to Showtime! with John Phillpott - come on everyone, please put your hands together, and let’s hear it for the farewell gig with a difference.

Indeed, this may well be a case of the last chance saloon folks, featuring a cast that used to run into thousands, but doesn’t any longer, for the curtain is about to fall on the greatest show on earth.

Oh yes, it’s the concert where there will be no encores, and probably not coming to a neighbourhood near you, anytime soon. So, there’s not a single second to waste, and you’d better believe it, good people.

Because unlike Agatha Christie’s Mousetrap, the once timeless production of Nature’s Pageant looks like it’s nearing the end of its run. Don’t miss it!

Apologies, correction, on second thoughts, you may well be too late, and will have missed it. Erm, sorry about that, he said, suddenly calming down, and abruptly stopping his Leonard Sachs Old Time Music Hall impression.

Right, it’s time for serious face. You may think that this is a flippant way to report on the Death of Nature in Britain, but even if I only convert a few people to my way of thinking, via the admittedly modest readership of Showtime! then I will feel that my time and effort will not have been wasted.

So, let us now examine a depressing litany of destruction, that is mistakenly being attributed to climate change rather than the real reason, which is human activity on a small as well as huge scale. Hold tight and here we go…

Massive damage to already rare birds, animals, reptiles and insects has been caused by the heathland fires that raged throughout Scotland, Cornwall and elsewhere during the recent dry spell.

This is not ‘climate change’. This is about human stupidity and people’s criminal carelessness with discarded matches, cigarettes and barbecues. In some cases, the conflagrations will have been caused by arsonists, the most appalling reality of all.

Meanwhile, the water companies allow untreated sewage to leak into what were once pristine waterways, formerly brimming with life, but which are now stinking ditches of death.

This is not ‘climate change’. This is about human cost-cutting and indifference to the environment upon which we all depend for that much overused ‘health and wellbeing’.

Not so long ago, when I used to walk the riverside hams near Kempsey, skylarks filled the air, sedge warblers, meadow pipits, the occasional curlew and redshank honoured me with their presence, and sometimes, a stonechat could be observed on the hedge tops.

No longer. Kempsey has grown substantially over the last few years, which means there are more people with dogs, many of which are allowed to run through the grass, disturbing ground-nesting birds.

And increased human activity on the Upper Ham in the form of a clay pigeon shooting club has not exactly benefited the bird population, either.

This is not ‘climate change’. The reduction in the numbers of bird species and the human effect on their habitats can be laid at the door of ignorance, unintended and otherwise.

Just over four years ago, a Worcester City Council ‘payback’ project stripped nearly half of Cherry Orchard nature reserve of its bramble cover, depriving hibernating small mammals, reptiles and insects of the vital protection required during a freezing British mid-winter.

Badly thought out, and even more badly managed and conducted, the loss of vitally important flora and fauna was probably incalculable. Thankfully, steps are now being taken to ensure such official vandalism can never happen again.

This is not ‘climate change’. Rather, it is misguided human activity that – had there been proper thought and supervision – could well have been avoided.

Right, so it’s now over to Malvern, that final frontier outpost encountered before one hits the trail into the wild west of Herefordshire. This is, of course, the lost land of the last of the hippies (pause briefly to say ‘yeehah’ in a halting, carefully enunciated middle-class accent).

It was here that the local council in its wisdom ‘improved’ the ponds in Priory Park, removing the sticklebacks – ‘diseased’, of course, except they weren’t – plus the reed beds where moorhens used to nest.

Result? No Jack Sharps (old Warwickshire term for sticklebacks), no reed beds, and therefore no moorhens. Laughably and tragically at the same time - some linguistic combination, that – a few ‘kingfisher perches’ were installed.

Kingfisher perches? Why would Shakespeare’s much-celebrated halcyon want to hang around a fishless, and generally stagnant stretch of lifeless water?

This is not climate change. This is ill-conceived, under-researched, albeit well-meant vandalism of an eco-system in the heart of Malvern. So, where were the old hippies when they were needed, then?

Are there no good old country boys among their bearded and kaftan-clad number? Too busy listening to scratchy, vinyl copies of the Grateful Dead’s Greatest Hits album and smoking ‘reefers’, I’ll warrant.

Meanwhile, down in Enfield on the outskirts of London, an oak tree that had started life as an acorn in the reign of Henry VIII was felled by a major pub chain on the grounds of ‘public health and safety’.

All the available evidence seemed to indicate that the tree was perfectly healthy, yet it was condemned to destruction on the off chance that it might fall on someone’s head, a logic that could well apply to the other several million trees that this overcrowded island still miraculously possesses.

This is not ‘climate change’. This is about human insensitivity, bureaucratic box-ticking, mindless management jargon and – crucially – unproven, probability theorising.

And have you also noticed that whenever trees are felled by officialdom or otherwise, they are always ‘diseased’? A bit like the aforementioned sticklebacks, yes?

And so, it goes on… and on. Elsewhere, the HS2 white elephant has trampled ancient English woodlands to lay a railway line that in this internet, homeworking age, will barely be used.

In East Anglia, and no doubt other areas soon, Miliband is covering perfectly viable, fertile farmland with solar panels in a country where the sun hardly ever shines, while Rayner’s aiming to suffocate what greenfield land remains with a million-and-a-half new houses, plus the required infrastructure.

Never mind about the newts and bats, she chirrups, in a burst of intellectually verbal brilliance. Yes, welcome to the Great Britain of 2025.

This is not ‘climate change’. This is political expediency, short-termism posturing, virtue-signalling and moral grandstanding that further impoverishes an already degraded environment and the remaining wildlife that – for the moment - amazingly somehow still manages to just about hang on.

The truth is that none of the above is caused by ‘climate change’. Britain is now the most Nature-depleted country in Europe, a situation we ourselves make worse every single day of the week when we pave over more of our gardens, grub up hedges and lay down artificial grass. All that’s missing is a sign that reads: ‘Nature not welcome here – please keep out.’

For 'climate change' and the destruction of the natural world in Britain by human activity are not the same thing, they are totally separate issues. Yet time and again, they are compounded and therefore confused.

But hey, why worry, when we can all talk to like minds with carefully composed serious and so-concerned faces, about ‘climate change’, this nebulous and moral middle-class construct that has the added benefit of conveniently being able to be forgotten about whenever it’s time to replace the 4X4, or go on that long-haul holiday?

My problem with the ‘climate change’ mantra, which has now reached the status of being the nation’s official religion, is that the issue is so overwhelmingly dominant in people’s consciousnesses that it obscures the day-to-day, sometimes petty destruction, of the natural world that accumulatively is causing the real damage to Britain’s flora and fauna.

By faithfully parroting from the same hymn sheets, too many of us are blind to the reality of a natural world in deep, deep trouble. Basically, universal ignorance respects no demographics, which is why it’s now killing everything. Ignorance is anything but bliss.

And sadly, symptomatic of this crass and mass unawareness is your local newspaper, which periodically publishes stories trumpeting the presence – as if this is newsworthy - of everyday, common creatures, proof, if that were indeed required, that there is a now a wide-ranging disconnection with Nature among all sections of society, and especially in the media.

For the real damage is occurring everywhere around us, on mountains, in meadows, rivers, woodlands, parks and back gardens right across the country. We are fiddling while the heathlands burn… and this grim reality has nothing whatsoever to do with climate change, whether real or imagined. It’s down to common or garden, good old human ignorance, the sort you can find on any day of the week, and in any location.

So - roll up, roll up folks, and get yourself a front row seat for that former long-running blockbuster of a show, Nature’s Pageant, before the tickets run out.

It’s just about appearing somewhere near you. But not for long, I fear.