A Life of Splendid Uselessness Is a Life Well Lived

John Alec Baker was not an ornithologist by profession. He had a regular English schoolboy’s grammar-school education, then won his bread at odd jobs and minor clerical positions in the Essex county town where he was born and raised (and where he would, at the age of 61, die). Despite having worked for some time at the Automobile Association, he never learned to drive a car, so when he travelled the quiet roads into the English countryside around Chelmsford to watch the birds, he walked or – despite his poor eyesight and increasingly debilitating rheumatoid arthritis – rode his bicycle.