Thank you 2023, hello 2024

The last of a sunset over fields and trees

2023 for me was a year of sampling, reading, reflection, learning, conversations and getting lost. A messy, liminal year where I realised that I was very tired after the three years before it and I needed to walk a lot, breathe very deeply and collapse a bit. I won’t be glad to see the back …

Read more

Old blogs rescued from the recesses of the internet

A lone figure pushes something into the depths of a huge warehouse

In a fit of… something or other, in the past I have deleted blogs from the web. I regret it. I think maybe I thought that by casting old stuff aside it would make space for the new. Perhaps I was embarrassed about old stuff I’d written. Perhaps I felt like that history was a …

Read more

The Good File

close up of butterfly on leaf

I started a newsletter. It’s called The Good File – occasional updates on what I’ve been up to, good things I’ve seen online and useful things for pragmatic optimists. You can sign up here, and read the latest addition to the file.

A good quote on just getting on with it

A handful of beans

I enjoyed this, from Dr EE Schumacher’s foreword to John Seymour’s Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency. ..nothing can stop the flowering of a society that manages to give free rein to the creativity of its people – all its people. This cannot be ordered and organized from the top. We cannot look to government, but only …

Read more

The future of Biodiversity Net Gain

Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) is England’s new statutory tool to prevent biodiversity loss due to development, and it is being talked about as a powerful new tool for nature recovery and a way to funnel private investment into doing it. It’s going to be mandatory from January 2024 (delayed from November 2023) for most developments …

Read more