The Lakebed
In a riverless city, the promise of water is enough. My mother and I pin our hopes to each monsoon, and evenings in June that stroll the circumference of our bayou-to-be. Starved of fish, the empty lake harbours cattle, gangs of dogs and cricket games — we see snatches of batsmen thr
Observing Blackbirds
For three or four years we’ve kept chickens in our back garden. One of the things about chickens is that they really tear up the ground, and once they’re done with it the earth often doesn’t have much vegetation left at all, so we’ve started to rotate our chickens around the garden to let th
A Story of Spaces: the mind, the page, and the natural world
David Attenborough’s Planet Earth II has recently fallen prey to an attack by Martin Hughes-Games in the Guardian for presenting a view of the natural world that is too polished: too “luxurious” and too “escapist.” Despite Attenborough’s closing plea for us to “do everything within o