The Adventure of the National Trevor

Last week I had the pleasure of seeing Sandi Toksvig live. Her show was lovely, funny and uplifting in a way I've not seen anyone do before. Part of what she did was talk to members of the audience about their moment as a National Trevor, named when one of her friends misunderstood the phrase "National Treasure". The idea was that everyone has moments of fame to one extent or another in their life and she talked to people who had appeared in the press at one time or another. I thought it might be fun to share my National Trevor moment...

I grew up as a member of various animal charity's kids clubs from the RSPCA to the RSPB and the Wildlife Trusts. When I was about eleven or twelve the local wildlife trust ran a writing competition. They asked for short stories which had a theme of sustainability and I immediately had what I knew was an excellent idea featuring some loggers in a rainforest.

All I needed was a suitable animal to star in my story so I endured the hideous noise of the dial-up internet connection to do some research. I'm not sure quite what I looked at- this was pre-Wikipedia. Eventually I found what I needed and discovered an strange animal called a kinkajou- they have no close relatives but are in the same family as racoons and coatis.

The story was written and sent off to the wildlife trust. A couple of months later and I received news that I had won the competition which didn't really come as a great surprise. I don't think that I was overly confident, I just knew that I'd nailed the brief they'd created. I was invited to attend the opening of the new wildlife trust headquarters and stood around awkwardly as various people spoke, including wildlife TV presenter Chris Packham. Eventually my moment came and in a huge crowd of people I went up, shook his hand and was presented with tickets for a steam train ride (which is a prize I'd still be keen to win even now).

As my Dad and I were there we attended a talk given by Chris Packham which went alongside his book Back Garden Nature Reserve, a title which sits happily on my bookshelf to this day complete with the author's signature. The room gradually emptied and my Dad and I were along with Chris. I can remember little of the conversation but we chatted for what like ages at the time. It strikes me now that at the time we were both people with neurodiverse brains, me with dyspraxia and him with Asperger's, though neither of us had yet discovered this.

I really got on with Chris Packham. Here was a man who like me was hugely into his wildlife yet was a different sort of adult to any I'd met before. I always dreamed of basically doing his job and it would still be something I'd love to do now. He advised me to keep moving forward and not get too focused on one thing- now you've found out about the kinkajou, he said, find out about something else. It was good advice and I look back on the day as a formative one.

My story was then published in the Wildlife Watch newsletter complete with a proper kinkajou illustration. Whilst I've had the odd thing published here and there since, that was a really cool moment. I spurred me on to continue writing stories and I wonder if I'd even be writing this now if I hadn't discovered the wonderful feeling of people enjoying my writing.

To end, here's the full short story which I think still stands up reasonably well as a children's story:

Cheeky, a Kinkajou living in the forests of North Brazil was awoken by a loud THUD! Kinkajous are nocturnal creatures so Cheeky was not happy to be woken at Noon. Sleepily, Cheeky peered out of his hole to see what all the fuss was about. He stared in horror. For what it was making the racket was a pair of loggers out to make some money. They had terrifying machinery and they looked like they meant business.

The loggers looked around and decided to cut down Cheeky’s tree. Cheeky didn’t know what the loggers were saying but he did know he had to get out the way of them. Very quietly, he sneaked out of his nest. When he was halfway down the tree, he was spotted.

“Oy look here, Fred,” said one of the loggers. Fred looked up. Cheeky was rooted to the spot.

“Just get rid of it,” Fred said.

“We can’t cut down its home” complained the first logger, whose name was George. 

“Look, if every logger worried about destroying stupid creatures homes there would be a whole world covered in trees!” yelled Fred.  

The arguing went on and on. Cheeky was still frozen on the spot. Luckily, after an age of arguing, a ranger of the park came along on his daily round

“What have we here then?” he said. The loggers looked up and they knew the game was up.

“You’ll come quietly I suppose?” laughed the ranger. 

“What’ll happen to our machinery – it costs a lot y’know?” Fred asked. 

The ranger just grunted. As the loggers were taken away, Cheeky climbed back up to his nest. He had a lot of sleep to catch up on. Meanwhile the loggers were given an extremely large fine that they couldn’t afford to pay.