The Mysterious Bittern
As a child I absolutely adored Fungus the Bogeyman. There was something about the dank and dismal atmosphere that really appealed to me - probably because Raymond Brigg's perpetually brown, slimy-drizzling underground world seemed so similar to the early 1980's Cornwall I grew up in. Today's dreary weather outside reminds me of that book's twilight gloaming. And, in perfect synchronicity, I read that a Bittern has been filmed booming for the first time. The bittern, the most funereal and melancholy of birds, is a creature that has always been lurking in the distant reedbeds of my mind. Aged six, I was mystified by ‘the bogey bittern’ in Fungus the Bogeyman, a drab subterrenean version of the bird, decribed as being ‘Like Surface Bitterns, and like Bogeymen themselves, they are SOLITARY, SKULKING and CREPUSCULAR.’
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