Pond Life

“The Observer’s Book of Pond Life by John Clegg was a book I discovered as a child in a public library in Patchway, Bristol, around 1979. I kept borrowing and renewing it over long periods of time. The images it contained suggested a parallel world invisible to the one that surrounded me. Pictures of water beetles, water mites, and dragonflies struck a chord along with the more graphic images of diatoms and other single celled animals more abstract in appearance. It was an astonishing book for me and made me curious to know if my small garden pond was also teaming with such life. This led to a new obsession of spending hours peering into microscopes often whilst listening to my parent’s 7” records. As a kid exploring the vastness within a single drop of water was like travelling into space. The printed measuring rule in inches and centimetres on the back book cover has remained in my mind all these years later.” Stephen Gill