Taxonomically challenged
I've done some pretty shitty jobs in my life (quite literally, given my agricultural upbringing). Perhaps the worst was the year I worked on a Turkey farm on the run-up to Christmas, but pulling half-rotted dead calves out of cows comes a close second. So if truth be told, I've no great reason to complain about the work I'm doing right now. I can do it at home, in my own time and without supervision. I can have my music playing whilst I do it, and I can get up and walk away from it for a half hour or hour if I want.
But it's still driving me to distraction.
Farm work is tough on the hands, and occasionally the stomach, but it leaves the mind free to wander. Data entry work is murder on the brain. The job I'm doing right now (and will probably be doing right up until we escape to the Antipodes - hell, I need the money!) is particularly taxing. It involves putting plant survey information onto a database. I'm no botanist, certainly no ecologist, so I can't get excited about a Cerastium Glaseratum or Narcissum Pseudonarcissum. But after typing them in a couple of hundred times in a day, the names start to swirl around my head in a semi-tourettic dance. I find myself endlessly repeating Hyacinthoides Non-Scripta in my thoughts, savouring the balance and flow of the words. Deschampsia Cespitosa is another one that won't leave me alone - does it really grow in cesspits, or does it just sound like that? Worse still are the ones I do recognise - every time I type Digitalis Purpurea I can see the foxglove, heavy with flowers and droning with bees. Senecio Jacobea sits bright yellow ragwort in a field of grazing horses. It's a notifiable weed, so I feel a twinge of guilt every time I type it in - should I be telling?
And worse still are the comments, written all around the survey forms in tiny, spidery, ecologist's handwriting. There's nowhere in the database for these comments, but ecologists are too driven by their love of plants not to make them anyway. An early problem with the survey was that each polygon (as the areas surveyed are known) was taking too long to cover. The bean-counters in the company switched the payment system from an hourly rate to a certain amount per polygon completed. It made no difference - ecologists are not motivated by money, they truly care about their plants. I feel an echo of their excitement at finding a rare figwort, their resentment at the invasion of alien species.
Perhaps saddest of all are the survey forms that come in uncompleted, with just '100% lost to agriculture' scrawled across them. It could be that they were surveyed in the rain, but I like to think those stains are ecologist's tears, weeping for the loss of Ranunculus Ficaria and Veronica Montana to the plough and monoculture grass sward.
When I am in New Zealand in six weeks time, drinking fine Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc and looking for Hobbits, I'll look back on this nightmare job with a wry smile. For now I'll just have to grin and bear it as my head fills up with taxonomy.
Unless they want me to carry on with it when I get back.
But it's still driving me to distraction.
Farm work is tough on the hands, and occasionally the stomach, but it leaves the mind free to wander. Data entry work is murder on the brain. The job I'm doing right now (and will probably be doing right up until we escape to the Antipodes - hell, I need the money!) is particularly taxing. It involves putting plant survey information onto a database. I'm no botanist, certainly no ecologist, so I can't get excited about a Cerastium Glaseratum or Narcissum Pseudonarcissum. But after typing them in a couple of hundred times in a day, the names start to swirl around my head in a semi-tourettic dance. I find myself endlessly repeating Hyacinthoides Non-Scripta in my thoughts, savouring the balance and flow of the words. Deschampsia Cespitosa is another one that won't leave me alone - does it really grow in cesspits, or does it just sound like that? Worse still are the ones I do recognise - every time I type Digitalis Purpurea I can see the foxglove, heavy with flowers and droning with bees. Senecio Jacobea sits bright yellow ragwort in a field of grazing horses. It's a notifiable weed, so I feel a twinge of guilt every time I type it in - should I be telling?
And worse still are the comments, written all around the survey forms in tiny, spidery, ecologist's handwriting. There's nowhere in the database for these comments, but ecologists are too driven by their love of plants not to make them anyway. An early problem with the survey was that each polygon (as the areas surveyed are known) was taking too long to cover. The bean-counters in the company switched the payment system from an hourly rate to a certain amount per polygon completed. It made no difference - ecologists are not motivated by money, they truly care about their plants. I feel an echo of their excitement at finding a rare figwort, their resentment at the invasion of alien species.
Perhaps saddest of all are the survey forms that come in uncompleted, with just '100% lost to agriculture' scrawled across them. It could be that they were surveyed in the rain, but I like to think those stains are ecologist's tears, weeping for the loss of Ranunculus Ficaria and Veronica Montana to the plough and monoculture grass sward.
When I am in New Zealand in six weeks time, drinking fine Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc and looking for Hobbits, I'll look back on this nightmare job with a wry smile. For now I'll just have to grin and bear it as my head fills up with taxonomy.
Unless they want me to carry on with it when I get back.
Comments
I used to be a social worker, and I'd go home and cry almost every day. Takes a special person to do that job.