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You had um in back back then in the day my father's day you would have had brown trout brown trout in here because this is a chalk stream. All right.
We are in a wooden park. It's a wooden park is called now. Right. This is a chalk stream. This is where the wand rises and it goes all the way to um the river temps. Um um I think that's actually where it goes into the temps. That's right. I can't remember the name now of the of the area, but there are So it's it's actually running water. This is Yeah, it comes out from underground springs. You have underground springs. Oh, there's an underground spring. Yeah, that's where it starts and it rises here. Okay. Right. And this flow I thought it was like like no no no it's a chalk stream and it want it goes all the way to Wsworth and there I think there are only about um 220 in the whole world of these chalk streams. Chalk streams is called chalk streams that they're known for brown trout and they know from brown now this river is so polluted this part here it's already but the stream that the source is not too far from here right do I understand properly? Well, this is the source now years ago. And it's already polluted. That the water is already polluted. That's right. So, you won't get brown trout here. I mean, I when I was a kid, they used to grow water crests over at Richmond Green along the banks of the wand. Grow what? Water crests. You know, you eat the water crest. It's wonderful, right? You know, high in vitamins, probably the best greens you can buy. But now it's so polluted, nobody grows water crest. But they they built houses where the water cro beds used to be and that used to be a buffer zone here, you know, but now they've encroached buildings so close to this to this pond. But when you think of this habitat, it's so rare. Um, in the whole world, I think there are 220 chalk streams, right? And we have about 170 of them. 170 in the UK. We have most of them. Yeah. Wow. Wow. And who's looking after the birds here? I mean, well, I mean, they just breed natural and well, most of them are. I mean, you know, Canada geese are introduction. That's the Canada geese, right? That's an introduced bird, but it's it can look after itself, you know. But all of these smaller birds, you know, like tufted duck, they're truly wild. and the blackheaded gulls here you see here. But by March, all of these gulls will leave and go off to their breeding grounds, which is where um it's could be coastal, it could be inland reservoirs, sewage farms they bre. Oh, right. But they won't stay here. They won't stay here. But I I've recorded over the last 3 years here 81 species of birds here. 81 species of birds in this relatively small lake. Well, pond. And I've also found three species that are new to the site. Cettis wobbler, uh, raven, and pied fly catcher. They were three new birds not seen here before. I found those, um, myself. Yeah. Right. So, you're a bird lover. What's your name, by the way? Roy Weller. Roy Willer. I'm more than a bird lover. I mean, I was one of the founder members of Bington Farm, which is a big bird reserve, Bington Farmland. uh back in 1990 I formed that with a group of guys and also uh Bansided Woods and Canon's Farm Bird Group. All right. So you were always involved in always been ever since I was down here. And you said you used to come here when you were five but he's 5 months and he's already here. But I've al also um I mean I started life as a graphic artist and uh there is a book birds of Bington Farmlands and lots of my paintings and vignettes are in that book. All right. So where can we find that book? Uh you go online Bington Farm Bird Group and they then you can go into whatever department for the art and so on you know I mean as you know my name's Roy Weller so you'll see paintings and drawings. Yeah we have a look but you just have to go Bellington Farm Bird Group. Yeah, I mean there is a um if you go to Bington Park as it goes into the farm, you can get all the details from the Bedington Farm Bird group there, but I'm sure you'll be able to pick it up on your smartphone. You see, I don't have smartphones. Being an old guy, I only have little knocky. All right. Not many people like it. No. And I don't want one. This is the thing. Yeah. My family, my sons, all of them have it. But all day in the morning, it's in the evening or it's on the on the uh computer g uh games computer games you know I want to be in the real world not cyberland do you actually have a PC and internet at home no I my my wife does but I I I don't want to be sitting there in I want to be in the real world here this is why I not only come to this place but I go up to Norwood Country Park it could be anywhere you know I used to do a lot of twitching you know somebody would phone up and say oh there's a rare bed and Cornwall and I'd go off down to Cornwall to help the bird. Yeah. Or there's a rare bird in Scotland. I would twitch that. You know, it's called twitching. But I've stopped that. Twitching? That means what? Bring it. It means you're chasing rare birds basically. That's what it means. Yeah. Um and I've stopped doing that now because I've grown sensible after 80 odd years. And uh I just go out somewhere, you know, not too far away, have a day birding, see what I can find. But no more twitching. No, no, no, no. All right. Right. you know, it's not good for the brain, you know. Okay. Roy, well, so interesting to talk to you. I hope we can have another chat. I will I'm sure I will bump into you and your little Yes, I know. Must be a boy. He's in blue. He's his boy. Yes. So, uh I will find you online and I will send you. Do you do you have an email there on Bedington? Well, yeah, my wife does, but I mean I don't use it. But, um uh I'll take your number then after the Yeah, I could do that. Yeah, I could do that. Um but as I say most of the information um you can get is from the from the bird grouping farm bird group and I say I I was um I think we formed it back in 1990. Yeah. It's going back a long way. So um yeah I mean it's it's funny. I started life as a graphic artist and um graphic artist. Yeah. You know, the two things I I I like doing was um illustrating wildlife and also portrait painting. But unfortunately, nepotism rules and you're waiting to go upstairs to get promotion and you don't get it. So I left and my my brother was a supervisor at a tire factory. I won't mention the name. And he when he left, he said, "Do you want the job?" I said, "Yes, please." It was three times what I was earning as a young graphic artist in a studio and there didn't seem to be any chance of promotion because of nepotism. You know, if a member of the family or a friend would come in, they would take the job. So, you wouldn't be promoted. I see. That's why I took it. And I I I mean, at the end of the day, um I think money is more important than um vocation. So, yeah, I took that. What What kind of graphic artist you were fashion type? Don't forget when I was a kid there were no computers. So all your lettering was done with ruding pens, triple n brushes and you the main um medium was gouache. It was like a um a type of watercolor opaque not transparent. So that's what you did all the designs for. Say uh somebody asked you, "Oh, can you do a a trip to um cheap trips to France or Paris?" And you would do a hundred odd designs and eventually you'd pick one out that worked and then you would paint literally hand paint it. Do the whole lettering everything. It was like illustration for books. That's right. But when the computer came along, bye-bye lettering artist and anybody else who did personal work like that. It's all I mean look at the things like um you know you see these films now um like dinosaurs and stuff um and and you can't imagine when I when back then we was talking to a computer expert and they say one day yes you we won't need you to paint them we can do it on the computer and we thought no you can never do that you look at Jurassic Park now you know those amazing images that you get you know so Um yeah, times change, you know. Well, it's happening now, isn't it? Artificial intelligence. Oh, yeah. Big time. People might be losing their jobs. Oh, yeah. But more so white collar workers. I mean, in the industrial revolution, it was the blue collars with farming mechanization and so on, you know. So, people working people were losing their jobs on mess. Now, it's the white collar boys, hasn't it? You know, the overpaid lawyers and so on have got to watch their step now. You know, who knows? radio presenters, TV presenters, do you need them anymore? Do you need to pay them vast salaries when you can get a machine to do it? Well, I think there's some certain certain jobs won't be Well, this is it. I think it's more more white collar workers. I mean, if you're in say the building, you're not going to get robots bu putting roofs up and, you know, um build uh carpentry, glazing, all that sort of stuff. I think will will be there. Yeah. They're the jobs you should be looking for now. You know, like plumbers installing Yeah. heat pumps. That's right. You know, go where not forget the vocation. Go where the work is now and that's going to be safe for decades. And it's probably most of the building line is a good idea, you know, to to get into that. I think forget the degrees in art. Yeah. Forget about them. You need significant degrees that are not going to get you a job. And also you who wants to unless you're like a doctor, you know, that's a well, one of my daughters, she's a lawyer and she pays £250,000 a year income tax. She gets a bonus. Oh, boy. Why? You restless. She gets a bonus and in January, but she has to pay £50,000 income tax on it, you know. So, she earns big money but pays massive tax, right? But again, those sort of jobs, you don't know if they're going to be um threatened with AI. You don't know. Well, lawyers, no, I think I have a young son now that was um uh wanted to go into uni. I say, "Well, forget it really. just get yourself perhaps to do um plumbing, heating engineer, gas and heating engineer, that sort of job, you know, and like a kind of indoors. It's well paid. Particularly if you go self-employed. We all know what it's like when you call the plumber out, don't we? How much is going to charge you 100? Yeah. More than a lawyer, 150 quid, 200 quid an hour, you know, to do a half hour's work. So, that's what I would do if I was a young man. It would be um building trade but not outside. I wouldn't I mean the weather is so appalling now. Um we get 6 months of rain. Who wants to work outside? Used to be drier you say? Yeah. Oh yeah. Used to be drier, right? Colder and colder, right? Last year was the warmest year on record in this country. Yeah. They said with the the the warm the climate warming it means actually wetter weather for the UK. You so you get wetter win uh winters. I say I think we're on our seventh rainstorm already, so you get wetter winters and um hotter summers. You know, we're often hitting the 30s now. So again, if you wanted to work outside, who wants to work in 30 40° and who wants to work in the rain? So get yourself something in the building line, but inside plastering, you know, but plumbing, I think, would be the thing I would do if I was a young man now. plumbing, gas engineer. It's such good money, you know, good advice here for for for young people that don't know what to do yet. But look, I mean, my brother, he's passed now, but he was a master mechanic and um it was a good job. He started off as a grease monkey and then became a major mechanic in charge of 20 guys, right? But now robots put the cars together. Robots spray the cars. So all of those jobs are gone. And look at the black cabbie today. Used to have to do the knowledge and it was a precious job. But now you've got Uber and you've got satellite navigation. You don't need to do the knowledge. Soon there will be cars without drivers. Black cab men are working for Uber, you know, because they can't get the work. Things change so fast. Yeah. Well, that's the trouble now. There's not a gradual change, is there? It just happens suddenly. It's in your overnight basically sometimes. Well, this is what happened with commercial art, graphic art, whatever you want to call it. It just overnight all that personal, you know, people that used to paint the signs on lorries, the lettering and so on, transfers now, wraps, didn't need it. So, that's it. It can happen that quickly, you know. So, how how do you see the future of the planet? you as a as the nature lover. Well, I I think um we've got to do something about controlling the population. I mean, just look at the seas now. We've fished out herring. Cod hadock now are becoming commercially almost extinct now. You can't get a living from it. So, we're we're going down the scale of fish already. We're fishing out the seas. And then when you look at mammals like tigers, elephants, they're all in their hundreds now, you know, and eventually you can see areas like Africa being put to the plow. Well, the Americans plowed up the planes. We literally turned our country into a very tame country. We couldn't rewald it. It's not big enough. There aren't big enough areas. So, what I do see is um big trouble ahead with population. So you say control that the growth of population but I think that's already happening. You look at China the population there is is not growing anymore but it's still static. What one and a half billion and it's the same with India. I mean if you count two or three of those countries that's almost the half the world's population. Um but even this tiny little island that we live on I mean I think we're about 60 70 million. But if you count the um Scotland, Ireland and Wales, you're talking about another 20. So you're looking about nearly 80 to 90 million people on this tiny little island that we live on. And wherever we go, we can't help it. We just cause extinctions. And David Atenburgh said the next big extinction would be um mankind. You know, every everywhere we go, we cause extinction of of wild animals. Look at the tigers. Look at the whales and the sea, fish, anything you like to name. So, you're quite pessimistic, I can see, Roy, about the future of the planet. I I I say we've got to control it. We've got to control the numbers. I mean, we're what 8 billion people now. I mean, what are we going to do? 10 billion, 12? When are we going to soft? When are we going to soft? You know, it it the resources aren't here. You know, now we're looking at nuclear power. And um we know how dangerous that is. Look at Chernobyl. What happened there? You know, can you imagine having two or three nuclear power stations in the UK and one of them was to blow in this tiny little country? It it would be contaminated for thousands of years, you know. So, yeah, lots to lots to worry about, I think. All right. Well, well, can you say something optimistic for the end of the I think there are I think what something optimistic I would say that younger people like yourself people today are aware of what we've just been talking about and green what people used to laugh at parties like the Green Party eventually they will become a major force I think and then we'll have young hopefully sensible people that realize what we're doing to the planet and they they'll put it right you Don't you think that Europe actually is going too much green and and the other continents are not and that's why we're losing out? Well, of course. I mean, America and China, you know, the big industrial huge countries, they they are the polluters, but they rule the world because of their size and their wealth. So, um hopefully you're just hoping again that another generation, whether they be Chinese, American, okay, well, this enough is enough. You know, we need to live in harmony with you don't have to be religious, but you need to these creatures are here for a purpose. And we can't we can't have a world which is going to be covered in concrete and plastic and and no natural life, you know, you know, um plastic grass, you know, um plastic flowers, you know. No, but see you're this little fella. See, when he grows up, he'll probably be voting for for groups like um the Green Party. The Green Parties to save the planet. Who who, you know, who can look at a forest and think that's a wonderful place to be. Um it's good for your your mental health. Uh not look at the oh that's um a thousand acre of timber, you know, or look at the sea that we can go on scooping everything out commercially until there's nothing there, you know. Right. So this is the changes people are changing. And I think young people also today they they you know they're not drinking like my generation smoking. I think they're more aware of their health and their mental health than ever before right and they want these nice green places you know. True. They more aware I think I think it's to do with the internet as well the access to knowledge you know like you know the older days you had to go and dig in the library books. Now you just on your smartphone or you wait for your newspaper to come come along, you know, but now it's instant, isn't it? So maybe the people are more intelligent, more aware of what's happening. I think so. I think so. Yeah. I mean, uh, each generation, you hope, becomes more educated than the one before. That's what you're hoping for, aren't you? Yeah. If you go back to my father's day in the early 20th century and my grandfather's day in the late 19th century when you used to get brown trout here, you won't now. But most of them couldn't write or read, you know. So yeah, things have improved. So maybe it's not going to be that bad for the future of the planet. I think so. I'm sure you your generation will sort it out. And if not, yeah, it's my generation. I think you talking about more of his generation. generation. Yes, definitely. So, yeah, here's hoping. Yeah. Good. So, we'll leave that on a light note, on a happy note. Thank you so much for the interview. Well, we can find your work, you said, on the on Bedington Farm. Yeah, that's if you want to find out about the local bird group. It's still running. As I say, I was a founder member then way back in 1990, but it's still running and it's quite a sizable nature reserve that eventually will be totally open to the public. And I think you've got Mitchen Common, Bedington Farmlands, which is a redundant sewage farm. It's about a square mile. And then you have right next to it, the next buffer zone is Bington Park. If you add the three together, they call it the Wandle Valley Country Park. And that's about that comprises something like three square miles. So it's a lovely big green lung for cordonians and Londoners, you know. It's it's going to be up there with Richmond Park. You know, it's such a large area. Thank you very much for doing that for me and for for the small one the world all for his benefit you know this guy. Yeah, good job Roy. Well, it was lovely to talk to you and I hope I will get in touch with you and hopefully to find out more because you are a very knowledgeable man. I'm sure I will see you again. All right. All right. Take care. Cheio
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