How Barnaby Lewis started twitching

The other three stayed in the car, but I wanted a break. We’d driven up the M1 for nothing. By the time we hit Yorkshire, the party rumours had died out, so we found a place to eat and then turned back. We were almost home when I had to stop, pulling into the M23 services at Pease Pottage.

I needed some time alone, so left the others snoozing and took a stroll. The sky was getting brighter, daylight on its way. The birdsong made me think of Bill Sparrow. A few times, we’d wandered away from raves for some quiet and Bill got curious about the different songs in the dawn chorus. I was happy enough identifying squawking seagulls, but Bill wasn’t. He bought a couple of CDs of birdsongs. They looked out of place next to the rave DJ sets.

I knew something had changed when me, K, and a couple of others were heading towards Winchester for a free party and Bill didn’t want to come. After some probing, he confessed that he was heading in the other direction, wanting to see some finch or other that had got lost while migrating and appeared in England for the first time. We teased him, and the surname Sparrow made it all the funnier.

You grow apart from people. When Bill was buying his first binoculars, I would have told you that I’d be raving till I died. When he said how much they cost, I thought he was wasting his money, while I was hurling my spare cash at powders and pills. I’d always ask the dealers if what they were selling was proper, and they’d tell me it was. I found myself puking in a hedge more times than was sensible. Nearly got beaten up a few times trying to get refunds, and it was obvious that the dealers didn’t care, and loathed anyone who bought from them. Bill probably spent his money more wisely than I did.

And as time had passed, we were driving further and further to reach the raves. The police were getting better at shutting down parties. The ones that did survive might be thirty people dancing round a sound system that’d struggle to wake someone sleeping next to it. I remember parties that kept two or three villages awake.

Tonight wasn’t the first time our crew had necked their stuff at a service station, and none of it worked as well as in the old days. Some nights, they’d have danced to a car alarm just for something to move to. It was annoying being the driver, the only one straight, but the others weren’t all that out of it.

I reached the trees and turned back. I still had Bill Sparrow’s number somewhere although I couldn’t think when I’d last seen him. I’d pitied him for missing the raves and noise, but now I felt differently. A bird chirped, and I wondered if it was the same type of bird that had first called him. And I realised I wanted more. The guys in the car weren’t really mates. They’d not visit me if I was sick, just like I’d not called Bill once he stopped raving.

I don’t regret those nights out dancing – the people I met and the adventures. But you need to know when to stop in life. That morning, I had no idea what a hide was, couldn’t tell a sparrow from a goshawk; but a few weeks later Bill gave me my first birding notebook. I decided to swap raving for twitching. It was the right time.

Background

I played with a few titles for this, including The Great God Pan is Dead. I liked the link between rave music and Pan as the god of ‘rural music’. Pan is the only Greek god whose death is recorded. Once, a sailor near the island of Paxi heard a voice from across the waves: “Thamus, are you there? When you reach Palodes, take care to proclaim that the great god Pan is dead.”

There’s a part of me that loves the idea of rural raves, of people coming together to dance under the sky. It sounds wild and pagan. But I know I’d hate the reality, being stuck in the middle of nowhere long past the point where I want to head home. And the lack of toilet facilities - a friend who was at Castlemorton has told me how grim that could be. And I feel too much sympathy now for the people who’d be kept awake all night. But there’s also a part of me that wishes I’d tried it, just once.

This is another South Downs Way story. It’s slow progress on that series, particularly after deleting many of my notes. But it continues, and there is an over-arching story to be told about The Devil and his lost love.

Recommendations

There’s a rural aspect to the history of rave music - an idyllic pastoral component, of people from the city escaping to the countryside. And it’s this that the KLF record Chill Out captures.

I’m lucky enough to have a copy of this on CD, found in the 90s at a newly-opened HMV that had a couple of rare things among the stock. I also found a copy of Tori Amos’s Crucify single, with its haunting version of Smells Like Team Spirit. Chill Out’s cover has a pastoral scene of sheep in a field but the record takes the listener a long way from English countryside, describing a train journey across the US. The track titles are poetic: Pulling out of Ricardo and the Dusk Is Falling Fast; The Lights of Baton Rouge Pass By; Madrugada Eterna. As we travel, different sounds fade in and out. News broadcasts. Preachers sermonising, someone playing steel guitar, a snatch of Elvis. It’s one of my favourite pieces of art.

I actually recommended Chill Out in November 2023, alongside a story featuring The Devil. So for this post, I’ll recommend something slightly different.

In 2023, I went to Liverpool for the Toxteth Day of the Dead. Among the many activities taking place in The Florrie was a live performance of Chill Out. The musicians replayed and reinterpreted this record. The session has been released on bandcamp and it’s beautiful.