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Whatever Was The Brentford Griffin?

Lots of typefaces used on that flyer.
£52! Blimey.
 
..Gryphons are handsome, powerful, and lordly, but they suffer the handicap of being mythical. In these modern times no one believes such creatures exist..

The same is often said about the English Gentleman.

Dave.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Lots of typefaces used on that flyer.
£52! Blimey.
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a blimming bargain imo - that only gets you 3 hours with Owen Jones

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Hyper³ said:
a blimming bargain imo - that only gets you 3 hours with Owen Jones

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If you pay more, can you get less time?

Actually quite like him, but it's the done thing to have a dig--insert joke about looking nine-years-old.
 
I thought I would give this thread a poke to see if anything happens. The Brentford Griffin just popped into my head, and I haven't read anything about it in many years...
 
When I think of the number of people I've encountered (often in an urban setting) who have NO IDEA what a heron is, what it looks like, how bloody enormous they are and the totally weird and dinosauric noises they make, I have absolutely no faith whatsoever in the average person's ability to know a griffin from a hole in the ground.

Except that it's in the sky. Obviously.
 
Kondoru said:
Maybe it wasnt a Griffin, but a Hippogryth instead?
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One of the things I never understood about the Harry Potter series, is why they say particularly 'wizard' sayings like 'I'm so hungry I could eat a hippogriff' when they must have heard of, seen and understood what horses are. And that the common saying is 'I could eat a horse'. Why did they feel the need to adapt an already comprehensible statement just to be 'extra wizard'?
 
catseye said:
One of the things I never understood about the Harry Potter series, is why they say particularly 'wizard' sayings like 'I'm so hungry I could eat a hippogriff' when they must have heard of, seen and understood what horses are. And that the common saying is 'I could eat a horse'. Why did they feel the need to adapt an already comprehensible statement just to be 'extra wizard'?
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No-one wants to talk like a muggle... Wizard snobbery init.
 
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catseye said:
When I think of the number of people I've encountered (often in an urban setting) who have NO IDEA what a heron is, what it looks like, how bloody enormous they are and the totally weird and dinosauric noises they make, I have absolutely no faith whatsoever in the average person's ability to know a griffin from a hole in the ground...
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I think I've mentioned elsewhere the lady who loudly and confidently responded to her child's query about the name of the bird (a heron) standing in the shallows of a small lake in a local park: "It's a pelican, darling".

God help us.
 
Spookdaddy said:
I think I've mentioned elsewhere the lady who loudly and confidently responded to her child's query about the name of the bird (a heron) standing in the shallows of a small lake in a local park: "It's a pelican, darling".

God help us.
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I was watching a John Rogers walk around London on YouTube and there's a part where he's leaning over a wall looking at a heron plodding around a bit of mud, and everyone spends ages trying to decide whether it's a heron or not. Someone off camera asks if it's a sea bird. And I'm shouting at the screen 'it's a HERON, you numpties!'
 
I would love the Brentford Griffin to be real- such a small ,cute sounding beastie. The sort of mythical monster you could keep as a pet and really give the local cats something to worry about
 
Local "monsters" are hot commodities these days. People are straight up inventing some on social media and people are jumping right on the Belief Wagon because they very much want the world to be enchanted.
 
Sharon Hill said:
Local "monsters" are hot commodities these days. People are straight up inventing some on social media and people are jumping right on the Belief Wagon because they very much want the world to be enchanted.
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Kondoru said:
I think the world is very enchanted;

Its just most folk are too mundane to notice.
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I believe in both these things! That people are trying to create ghosts and UFOs and general hauntedness, because they want and need there to be something 'more' out there. With the decline in religion, perhaps we all want to believe that there is more to life than we can know. And also, and at the same time, we miss so much of the wonder that is out there in the world because we are too busy or too preoccupied to notice it.
 
catseye said:
I believe in both these things! That people are trying to create ghosts and UFOs and general hauntedness, because they want and need there to be something 'more' out there. With the decline in religion, perhaps we all want to believe that there is more to life than we can know. And also, and at the same time, we miss so much of the wonder that is out there in the world because we are too busy or too preoccupied to notice it.
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Yes to both of those aspects.
I don't think it's a coincidence that, say, the US has a thing with national parks and other less-populated areas gathering up fortean and creepy stories, along with those that you can set in decrepit urban areas and other weirdly liminal spots. We need magic in the world, and we'll write it however we can.
Meanwhile sometimes the weird just ... finds you there, sitting in your car (or doesn't)...
 
Junopsis said:
Yes to both of those aspects.
I don't think it's a coincidence that, say, the US has a thing with national parks and other less-populated areas gathering up fortean and creepy stories, along with those that you can set in decrepit urban areas and other weirdly liminal spots. We need magic in the world, and we'll write it however we can.
Meanwhile sometimes the weird just ... finds you there, sitting in your car (or doesn't)...
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And, conversely, the national parks and the wild;s reputation for gathering weirdness is, quite frequently, down to man's increasing estrangement with the natural world. We can't recognise dangers and happenings that would be perfectly normal to anyone who lived in that environment, but we're so city-bound that we think we can walk for hours in blistering heat, with no water, and then go off-track to look for a convenient stream at which to fill our water bottles...with the inevitable results. and then become a 'mysterious disappearance...'
 
catseye said:
And, conversely, the national parks and the wild;s reputation for gathering weirdness is, quite frequently, down to man's increasing estrangement with the natural world. We can't recognise dangers and happenings that would be perfectly normal to anyone who lived in that environment, but we're so city-bound that we think we can walk for hours in blistering heat, with no water, and then go off-track to look for a convenient stream at which to fill our water bottles...with the inevitable results. and then become a 'mysterious disappearance...'
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Yeah, it's not converse at all! We don't have maps with "here there be dragons", and communication has brought people's general understanding of other cultures up to "oh, yeah, maybe it's actually rude to paint them in fictive, fantastic terms" -- so the next closest other-able place (with respect to where spooky and liminal ideas come up) is that undeveloped wildnerness area (and the urban decay spots that aren't generally frequented/safe to be in/legal to be in). It's just how we're viewing the world now is changed, but the impulses behind that are totally the same, I think.
 
catseye said:
When I think of the number of people I've encountered (often in an urban setting) who have NO IDEA what a heron is, what it looks like, how bloody enormous they are and the totally weird and dinosauric noises they make, I have absolutely no faith whatsoever in the average person's ability to know a griffin from a hole in the ground.
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I was walking along a trail with a ditch to my left. I kept walking, as one does, and suddenly a great blue heron exploded out of the ditch. I think I was more scared than it, since I nearly shit my britches. It flew away, but damn, I was in awe and shock. That being said, I knew damned well what it was, even though I was terrified. It's a bloody giant bird. I was maybe 6 feet from it.

Yeah, I could have assumed many things, but I know the wildlife in the area and after I re-started my heart, I continued on my walk.

Don't get me wrong, anyone could have been surprised by it, but I doubt many people in the area would mistake it for a pterosaur.
 
MercuryCrest said:
I was walking along a trail with a ditch to my left. I kept walking, as one does, and suddenly a great blue heron exploded out of the ditch. I think I was more scared than it, since I nearly shit my britches. It flew away, but damn, I was in awe and shock. That being said, I knew damned well what it was, even though I was terrified. It's a bloody giant bird. I was maybe 6 feet from it.

Yeah, I could have assumed many things, but I know the wildlife in the area and after I re-started my heart, I continued on my walk.

Don't get me wrong, anyone could have been surprised by it, but I doubt many people in the area would mistake it for a pterosaur.
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I was down our local park and encountered a heron in the stream. As I stopped, it obviously realised the game was rumbled and took off majestically.

More impressive though is my sighting of around seven herons forming a tight circle within a freshly mown farmer’s field by the local reservoir. I understand they wait motionless until a mouse runs through. Then that’s it for the mouse.
 
MercuryCrest said:
I was walking along a trail with a ditch to my left. I kept walking, as one does, and suddenly a great blue heron exploded out of the ditch. I think I was more scared than it, since I nearly shit my britches. It flew away, but damn, I was in awe and shock. That being said, I knew damned well what it was, even though I was terrified. It's a bloody giant bird. I was maybe 6 feet from it.

Yeah, I could have assumed many things, but I know the wildlife in the area and after I re-started my heart, I continued on my walk.

Don't get me wrong, anyone could have been surprised by it, but I doubt many people in the area would mistake it for a pterosaur.
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To be honest, I've been startled occasionally by pheasants starting up out of hedges or hedgerows. They make an ungodly noise as they fly off too. I can absolutely see non-country dwellers being terrified by this whirring, clacking thing heavily taking off into the sky, especially if they didn't know what a pheasant was, and also didn't get a clear view of it.
 
Spookdaddy said:
I think I've mentioned elsewhere the lady who loudly and confidently responded to her child's query about the name of the bird (a heron) standing in the shallows of a small lake in a local park: "It's a pelican, darling".

God help us.
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I'm trying to come up with a heron-based pun, but I'm egretting the idea already.
 
In Going Off Alarming, part 2 of his autobiography, Danny Baker writes about a piece he fronted on the tv show Twentieth Century Box concerning the Brentford Griffin. They tried interviewing people in Brentford High Street but no one had heard of it. They then had the bright idea of asking passers by the way to local landmarks, etc. What they ended up with was shots of local people pointing wildly in all directions. They were cut together back at LWT and he recorded a voice over saying "it seems everyone in Brentford has spotted the Griffin at some time or another, and locals were only too keen to let us know where it was"
 
MercuryCrest said:
I was walking along a trail with a ditch to my left. I kept walking, as one does, and suddenly a great blue heron exploded out of the ditch. I think I was more scared than it, since I nearly shit my britches. It flew away, but damn, I was in awe and shock. That being said, I knew damned well what it was, even though I was terrified. It's a bloody giant bird. I was maybe 6 feet from it.

Yeah, I could have assumed many things, but I know the wildlife in the area and after I re-started my heart, I continued on my walk.

Don't get me wrong, anyone could have been surprised by it, but I doubt many people in the area would mistake it for a pterosaur.
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There was a heron living around Horning that tourists used to feed. You could buy food for it at the local shop. I remember standing in the well at the stern of our boat while it was standing on the deck, and I was putting food down which it was pecking up with its stiletto beak, a permanently fierce look in its beady eyes. It was huge, and frankly I don't know whether I'd be stupid enough to do it now. I don't know anything about the temperament of herons. But I reckon that beak could do some damage.
 
PeteByrdie said:
There was a heron living around Horning that tourists used to feed. You could buy food for it at the local shop. I remember standing in the well at the stern of our boat while it was standing on the deck, and I was putting food down which it was pecking up with its stiletto beak, a permanently fierce look in its beady eyes. It was huge, and frankly I don't know whether I'd be stupid enough to do it now. I don't know anything about the temperament of herons. But I reckon that beak could do some damage.
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In the wild, herons are very shy, sometimes comically so, as they try to hide from you behind a thin tree trunk and assume that because they can't see you, you can't see them.

Majestic, but not too bright.
 
SimonBurchell said:
In the wild, herons are very shy, sometimes comically so, as they try to hide from you behind a thin tree trunk and assume that because they can't see you, you can't see them.

Majestic, but not too bright.
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This one's stomach had long since overridden his timidity. He was a local celebrity.

Years ago I was walking to work and saw a heron gracefully, majestically alight on a roof to my right. For half a second it looked around almost as though to say, 'Did everyone see how graceful that was,' before two crows bowled into him as if from nowhere and the three vanished behind the roof.
 
MercuryCrest said:
I was walking along a trail with a ditch to my left. I kept walking, as one does, and suddenly a great blue heron exploded out of the ditch. I think I was more scared than it, since I nearly shit my britches. It flew away, but damn, I was in awe and shock. That being said, I knew damned well what it was, even though I was terrified. It's a bloody giant bird. I was maybe 6 feet from it.

Yeah, I could have assumed many things, but I know the wildlife in the area and after I re-started my heart, I continued on my walk.

Don't get me wrong, anyone could have been surprised by it, but I doubt many people in the area would mistake it for a pterosaur.
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Common cranes are even bigger, 6-7ft wingspan, saw one flying by a bit back.
 
PeteByrdie said:
This one's stomach had long since overridden his timidity. He was a local celebrity.

Years ago I was walking to work and saw a heron gracefully, majestically alight on a roof to my right. For half a second it looked around almost as though to say, 'Did everyone see how graceful that was,' before two crows bowled into him as if from nowhere and the three vanished behind the roof.
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Our local herons get mobbed by crows. I was at Fountains Abbey last year and we watched a heron being set upon by about half a dozen crows - the racket, with the crows doing their 'warning' screech and the heron 'crayking' away, was terrific.

I guess herons would take the young of other birds, especially if the youngsters fell out of the nest or were just learning to fly.
 
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