This is not only about how boy meets girl; it’s also about how boy flies straight past girl and chooses instead to try to have sex with a lamppost.
It’s 10:05 p.m. I am sitting on the curb in a pub car park. Many guided nature walks start this way. Wildlife groups think it’s so easy when they organize guided walks for the public. “Meet at the Robin Hood pub car park!” they say in their ads. “10 p.m.!” Well, that’s all well and good, but it’s dark at 10:05 p.m. and I feel a bit weird wandering up to people outside a pub, bumbling about like Hugh Grant, asking strangers, “Excuse me, are you guys here for the glowworms?” Then I notice them: about 30 people standing in the street opposite, all of whom are wearing good, sturdy walking boots.
David Seilly, our glowworm expert and guide, is addressing the crowd. Already he weathers a polite rain of questions from the other attendees. “How many might we see?” “Will I need my waterproofs?” “Will there be toilets?” The usual.
I have never seen glowworms before. The thought of seeing even one excites me, though. I love what they stand for: an animal that throws caution to the wind, screaming not through feathers, or through squawks, songs or dances, but through the medium of photons pumped out of its backside. “Come to the light, baby,” she says gently to the males. “Come to momma.”
Off we go to our venue for the night, Cherry Hinton Chalk Pit. The former quarry provided hard chalk to build the colleges of Cambridge University up the road and lime for the cement.
