Upper class twit of the year revisited
This weekend, in the northern edge of my patch there will be a polo tournament.
Yep, that's right readers. A full blown 'high octane' polo tournament with ponies, pimms and toffs.
A little background. Hurlingham Park is a public park that had a running track on it and was popular with dog walkers, joggers and children. It is rubbish for birds because of this.
It was the venue for the Monty Python sketch Upper Class Twit Of The Year.
Next to Hurlingham Park is the Hurlingham Club which is pretty exclusive (the waiting list is about 15 years) and already has polo facilities and tennis and all that stuff. It also has the best collection of trees in the north side of the patch, and I can't get to it. It is where my recent Blackcap and singing Chiffchaff were.
Somebody thought that it was a good idea to rip up the running track, and put a new polo pitch in and sell it initially as being good for inner city kids (I shit you not) including the local councillor. Fool. Encouraging kids to play polo (especially from some of the estates round here) rather than running other such, slightly cheaper, sports is facile in the extreme.
They have kindly put a picture on their website of part of the patch, which I have of course stolen for your delectation.
The green patch in the middle is where there was once facilities for commoners, but is no more.What all this has to do with a birding blog, I'm not entirely sure. The particular piece of land could barely gather in a blackbird in the winter never mind any other winter Thrushes and in the summer it's good for feral pigeons so it's not like I've lost good habitat or birds.
I just think it's daft, and a little apposite and amusing that the upper class twits have returned to the park.
