Saturday, December the 24th, 2011
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I greatly admire those who devote time and energy to the study of extremely arcane, obscure, or specialised subjects. Such as Robert Killick-Kendrick, whose obituary appears in today's Grauniad. Though he was “a man of many interests, which included guitar playing, choral singing, hiking and photographing the numerous butterflies that visited his garden”- and possibly sharing his wife's major preoccupation (she is “an expert on sand flies”)—our hero is particularly to be acclaimed for this:
He also made a study of domestic animals' bells, ranging from elephants in India to hunting dogs in southern France, which resulted in a scholarly, but sadly uncompleted book, illustrated mainly with his own photographs.
Incidentally, elsewhere in the Grauniad today, in the Weekend magazine, there is a photograph of what must surely be the most coveted Christmas gift of the year—of any year!—an Alain De Botton action figure. Curiously, there is no trace of the photo, nor indeed of the accompanying article, on the website.