Flying man

The old Rule of Three myth worked out well for us. Finch bumped his head again this week and for the fourth time a giant egg swelled on his forehead. It was in the same spot as the very first, so maybe that does still count as three. Anyway, that should definitely be it for now. How did you get on with Storm Gareth? A bit blowy wasn’t it? A fence panel blew down in my parents garden so my dad decided there was no time like the present to fix it. Now being still in the middle of gale force winds. Off he went to the garden centre up the road and selected his panel. Would it fit in the car? Oh no. What does dad decide to do? Carry it home.

There is a steep hill in the town where my parents live. The garden centre is at the top, and it goes right down from there, through the town and down to the sea. On a clear day you can see Torquay. Off dad went, out of the garden centre and onto the hill. And behind him, giving him a nice little shove, came Storm Gareth. Then it gave him a bigger shove, and a bigger one, and dad felt the fence panel lifting. It’ll be fine, he told himself, but then he felt the panel take off, and it was all he could do to not take off himself. He was pretty sure he would have been over in Torquay within the hour, or worse might have been blown askance and ended up in Paignton (no one wants to end up in Paignton). Wisely he put the panel down and got it delivered.

Here’s my little character for the KidLit4Climate campaign last week. Children’s authors and illustrators all over the world gathered together to organise an illustrated protest in solidarity with the children and young people’s strike on Friday. We went along with Wren and her tiny banner to the march held here in Exeter. It’s impossible to be involved with children either through work, or because you have children and grandchildren and not be concerned about the environment. From climate change through to biodiversity collapse (7 out of 10 species in the UK facing extinction according to the Wildlife Trusts), and oceans full of plastic, it’s not a good picture. It’s hard to get your head around the evidence for all this if you haven’t been trained to read primary research, and even then, how many of us have access to peer-reviewed journals? I find Inside Science useful on Radio 4. Adam Rutherford can veer off into having a partisan edge to his questioning but I love being able to hear directly from researchers themselves and make up my own mind. There was a great one the other week looking at why methane levels (one of the greenhouse gases) have increased in a way few had predicted (it involves swamps). I look at little Wren, currently busy trying to master potty-training, and hope with all my being that we can find the solutions to make the change we need.