I know I’m stating the obvious here, but I think I’m getting old; I’m sitting watching the Brit Awards, the British Music Awards, and I can honestly say I only like two things that have been played so far. Is it me or has the Brit Awards become incredibly “Pop” orientated – it all seems very mainstream. Okay, okay… it’s me.. I’m getting old – I am holding out for the program’s finale – Blur are going to be playing. I’ve seen them play live before, in fact I turned up to one of their very first gigs way back in the early ‘90s before they’d had a hit. I’d hear a buzz about the band and decided to go and see what they were like; the support band came on and were pretty good – an hour later the same band comes on stage and apologise that Blur had broken down on the motorway and wouldn’t be able to make it and that they would be playing a second set.
He’s a cheeky chappy isn’t he? An Emperor Tamarin originally from South America, this small monkey isn’t actually endangered like the majority of the animals that feature on these pages. During an informative conversation with one of the keepers at London Zoo, one of the issues that zoos have when keeping these small monkeys is keeping their blood sugars low enough; it seems a diet of fruit and veg contains considerably more natural sugar than their diet would normally contain and so have problems with diabetes. Mind you, you don’t really want to be feeding these tiny hyperactive something that will make them more energetic do you really – especially when you’re trying to take a photo of them.
An arboreal species, the Tamarin have the run of a large open space where visitors and animals are able to share the same space (to an extent), in fact these inquisitive creatures often get too close to the public for the keepers liking. Last year one of the monkeys decided to use my tripod and lens as a new climbing frame, you can’t blame it really – the camouflage covering is very realistic – that and all the monkey “Lynx Deodorant”* I sprayed all over it.
*An anti-perspirant, Lynx is well know for the adverts where woman can’t resist a man who uses this spray. Marketing, pah!
Andrew Skelton: 
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