On the osteopath’s treatment couch, Louis is rocking me like a parent soothing a fractious child. “I don’t know what to do to make it better,” I say, meaning my problematic joints, meaning myself, meaning this whole shitshow of a world.
As a conservation charity declares a butterfly emergency we meet Steven McCulloch to hear how he’s creating a pollinator-friendly meadow system for managing orchards in Mid Devon.
‘In the last week of March the blackthorn flowered. Rosettes as white as snowburied fields burst from stems black with witchcraft, from between the thorns of fairy tale and folklore; thorns whose vicious stab cast Sleeping Beauty into a hundred year sleep.’
“So my mind is full of what home means, whether it’s a place, a person, or a feeling, when the train pulls into the station and I climb aboard, looking for Dad.”
