Desperate to write a blogpost. There are 4 working-title ideas I should have written; Cuckoo Pint girl, Radical Rural & The Prodigy, Mum & her Superstitions, & Wildly Different Ghosts, but other things keep shuffling into the queue ahead of them. But I did update my website a bit & wrote up my news.

Scope for a 90s electronic music trail of @themerl.bsky.social? Firestarter - The Prodigy Little Fluffy Clouds - The Ord Texas Cowboys - The Grid Justified & Ancient - KLF Or perhaps a performative reworking of @nicolawriting.bsky.social’s writing for the dance tent?!

Wonderful to be part of the fantastic Radical Rural trail @themerl.bsky.social, & celebrate it, & @cprecountryside.bsky.social’s centenary. Awed & inspired by the company & history. Honoured to speak. The countryside is for all. Thank you for recognising us, the rural radicals, the changemakers.1/3

what an amazing evening 😻 even if I was forced to do physical labour, marring my delicate townie hands 😹 still thinking about century-long transitions from liberation (of economic energies) to control, now time for sharing? Radical Rural runs until the 24th May 👇🏽 merl.reading.ac.uk/whats-on/rad...

Dead chuffed to be part of @themerl.bsky.social’s ‘Radical Rural’ gallery trail, with my books featured alongside the work of @righttoroam.bsky.social, the inspiring writing of @nicolawriting.bsky.social, the songs of @threeacresacow.bsky.social & many other rural rebels!

Come all you rural changemakers, space & access creators & housing innovators; come all you quietly radical countryside champions, apply! Nominate! Let us shout about you! #CPRE100

New showing of the beautiful, moving film Our Land, on the @righttoroam.bsky.social debate @cornexchangenew.bsky.social Newbury, 15-20th May. Q&A (19th) with the brilliant @hollyastle.bsky.social, me & @stevemasters.bsky.social @metfilmstudio.com Some of it home ground. Compelling storytelling.

Excited to be judging @cprecountryside.bsky.social’s Centenary National Awards, for Best Green Space Project. So much good stuff is happening & we want to hear about it! There are 6 Awards in all, from countryside changemakers, to access & housing. More here: www.cpre.org.uk/cpre-nationa... 1/2

Back from eldest daughter’s in Falmouth (joy!) but facing mahusive to do list that mashes my job (writing & stuff) with family & animal stuff, where ‘Hay’ could mean the festival, but means fodder; & ringing someone = 1 min, not days worrying about it. Inspired by daughter’s motto to ‘lock in.’ 1/2

Furzy bavins! Wonderful piece by @nicolawriting.bsky.social about one woman's village legacy.

On this day, as the dregs of the Labour dream go up in a puff of smoke - we need a Green revival This diary reminds me of so much that matters.

Crumplehorn & the common, & shifting baseline syndrome. What Lillian heard in 1907, 1935 & 1975, & what she did to protect a patch of heathland for all. It was wonderful to revisit Lillian Watts for @theguardian.com Country Diary (I remember her from my teens.) Worth saying, re the Romany ref 1/2

Huge congratulations to Mandy Haggith on The Lost Elms!

The first rose, that grows in the old apple tree opened today

Now with link!

There are times though, as I’ve just found out, that you can’t mess around, ignoring bangs, rattles, growls & cars being unreliable, just because that’s the way it’s always been. Sometimes you have to be a grown up. And an unsafe car is not funny, Nicola. Told.

Ah me. Braved the garage with our knackered old haycart of a car (dashboard lights screaming & we’d like it to get us to Falmouth soon.) Despite taking a succession of shockingly-attended old bangers there for years, as usual, mechanic didn’t crack his deadpan face at my self-effacing jokes.

Who tf is shutting down museum accounts. who is responsible for this. I will fight you

This news has made me incredibly sad. I’ve had the wonderful fortune to meet some of the folk who contribute to @romanpalace.bsky.social Bluesky, & they’re an absolute joy. This acct is a cracking example of positive public engagement & whoever has decided to shut it down needs to reverse this, stat

Bluebell Glue, & the Lit Fuse. A corrective to our aim. ‘We feel young, even when we are not. Spring says: we go again, here's another green-lit season.. when hope feels a reachable, tangible thing. My latest for Kintbury Chase & Eco Centre, & a prelude to tomorrow’s Guardian Country Diary..

A wonderfully insightful review from Alexandra Harris @theguardian.com. I loved Melissa Harrison's The Given World with all my heart. Still letting it percolate. It IS stunning & both deeply familiar & strange. One of those incredible books that reveals something about yourself, to you.

This ... oh this ...

Old haunts on the high chalk. The Hampshire view of Walbury Hill, the highest point in Southern England (though not the south west). Houses I’ve worked in, with fields I’ve worked in, between them. Sometimes, a recent house move a mere mile away can feel like years & a far greater distance.

Look at this beauty: books this well-written & lived (as I know this one will be) & illustrated, are so important to children, & the adults reading with them. They help us understand the world, our place in it, & they help fall us fall back in love with it too.

Our (recent) rescue hens (*1/2) have settled in, & we love them! Used to barn life, they’re growing in confidence & more natural behaviour - scratching up things I’ve planted, & this morning, surveying new horizons from the shed roof no less. Surprise! Thanks hens.

When you’ve just done the night shift, & the ‘day’ people won’t leave you alone … for all you night shift workers out there, trying to sleep… tawny owl in the tree being mobbed. 1/2

When you’ve just done the night shift, & the ‘day’ people won’t leave you alone … for all you night shift workers out there, trying to sleep… tawny owl in the tree being mobbed. 1/2

Along this unassuming post office fence, I can see bur chervil, pellitory of the wall, rue-leaved saxifrage, common poppy, herb robert, cleavers, common cat’s-ear, thale cress, wall speedwell, Guernsey fleabane, prickly lettuce, common whitlowgrass. The plants! The poetry! The wonder!

'A landlord’s right is a tenant’s plight.' Lifelong renters, we're recently as secure as we can be now, sharing Mum's lovely house. Cautiously optimistic, but worried for 2 of my adult children (youngest's at home) who've known nothing but the precarity & mould of renting; the fear of speaking up.

A gloriously verdant & happy Mayday! The green fuse is lit, the lushness breathtaking, the birdsong still (though much-diminished) a wonder. Cuckoo calling in the distance. It makes you feel youthful (I’m not) & hopeful (I am). Hope you can find some of this wherever you are.

Brilliant piece of really nuanced, compelling & thoughtful writing (& action) on rewilding; community, the fears, the complexities & challenge, & what's been learnt in a short time. Lovely stuff from @jon-moses.bsky.social @cynghrairailwylltio.cymru @inkcapjournal.bsky.social

Fantastic launch for @cprecountryside.bsky.social & @littletollerbooks.bsky.social’s anthology Future Rural @dauntbooks.bsky.social in Marylebone. Many gathered voices from diverse angles, addressing the past, present, & reimagining the future of the countryside for CPREs centenary. Fun was had!

What an experience for all of us.

Every day brings a gauzy-yet-almost-convincing email offer from a 'book club' or creative agency that love my book/work/ethos. 'At Vermont, we do not believe in charging experts a fee to share their knowledge.. [er..thanks?] we're currently curating a high-level series titled The Future Rural..1/2

“‘An afternoon pint’ is different to drinking on a work day and then going to vote on decisions for millions of people.”

This! This alone would improve our lives on a daily basis…

Out this week! #FutureRural is a wide & diverse collection of voices on the rural for @littletollerbooks.bsky.social & the centenary of @cprecountryside.bsky.social. Thrilled to be among those voices.

The new Our Land feature documentary about @righttoroam.bsky.social is absolutely amazing, you should go and see it as soon as it’s out. Bristol Watershed in May, with other screenings elsewhere over the next month or two. Solid Q&A covering all the complicated chat you don’t get online.

Birthday bluebells, a canopy of stitchwort stars at my feet, a lake in the woods. That a wood should be filled with such things. Everything.

House to myself to get on with five, (5!) deadlines I’ve let cannon into each other, so I’m knuckling down.* *someone said there are woodcock roding in a clearing in the wood, & the light & the eve is heartbreakingly lovely so help me I’m offffff … I’ll be back before they are. Possibly. 1/2

Cold tonight. This easterly wind finding paper-cracks in the house. If we had any #heatingoil left we’d’ve put it on, but it’s all gone, & we cannot justify paying more than double what we did 6wks ago. We’re fine (ofc!) but it makes me think of others in draughtier rural cotts, in need of warmth.

Tonight's goodnight image is 'She Did Not Turn', David Inshaw, oil on canvas, 1974. Sleep tight.

Lovely review of our anthology Future Rural which is out next week. Thanks so much Shafik. @cprecountryside.bsky.social

tasting the night air tender curve of a snail’s horn this little white moon

Writing hut patched up after being taken apart 6mths ago, brought here on a tractor drawn trailer, & rebuilt. The freshest of new beech leaves, stars in a copper beech galaxy above it. Still needs work inside but soon, I’ll be writing in it again. Incredibly it still has barn owls flying over it.

A treat to hear @lissakevans.bsky.social in convo with Claire Fuller & the Big Book Club audience at #WinchesterBooksFestival. Two of my favourite authors, in a really lovely, relaxed format. I took a lot of inspiration from Lissa’s writing on the WWII homefront, & loved #smallbombatdimperley

The light on the bend in the lane, & through the soft new copper beech leaves, like blackcurrant cordial. Growing to love this corner.

Sold out screening of Our Land at Curzon Soho this week. With a feisty Q&A to boot. The distance between ourselves and Hugh Inge-Innes-Lillingston of the Thorpe Estate: a trifling acre or two. The distance to Francis Fulford of Great Fulford: an ocean, a continent, an intergalactic space voyage.

My latest columns for #BBCCountryfile: Rural disadvantage, #drivingtests, youth & #TheArchers - I love writing these, & the opportunity to celebrate or give rural communities a voice. Met my ‘school Mum’ friends last night, all going through the impossible learner-driver situation. Glad we’re done.

Full list of screenings, more being added every week 👀 www.metfilmstudio.com/distribution...