Rewilding

My first encounter with rewilding was through Isabella Tree’s fabulous book Wilding. And before I continue, let me just say that these are my thoughts and feelings about rewilding. I am not an expert (not even close!) and I’m learning every day.

I love the idea of rewilding – that humans should step back and let nature manage itself. Of course, it’s not that simple. Human intervention, particularly since the industrial revolution, means that nature needs a helping hand to get into a position where it can manage itself. This includes constructing, or in some cases deconstructing, to let rivers run more freely and allowing forests to regenerate. It also means introducing native species that no longer roam our lands.

A lot of publicity has been given to the re-introduction of beavers which has been controversial. On the one hand they are seen as creatures that create amazing habitats that benefit them and many other species and build dams that can help reduce flooding. On the other hand they are seen as destructive to the landscape that prevents farmers from carrying out their roles.

Imagine the controversy when we get to the point of re-introducing wolves into the English landscape. For nature to be able to manage itself, these predators a critical to the ecology of the land. I can’t wait!

Earlier this month, I stumbled upon an article titled ‘Farmers could be paid for post-Brexit ‘rewilding’ land changes‘. This is great news! Or is it? Why didn’t I feel excited at this amazing opportunity? On the face of it, this looks like just what we’ve been waiting for.

Out go the EU subsidies based on how much land is farmed and in come funding to restore land for wildlife, carbon sequestration and flood prevention. At the Knepp Estate (subject of the book Wilding), rare species such as turtle doves and purple emperor butterflies have returned in surprising numbers. As a keen birdwatcher, this is great news.

But what of food? If great swathes of farms are rewilded, does that mean more food will be imported? That surely will negate many of the benefits. It is, indeed, a heated debate. The government says its scheme will enable ‘both sustainable, profitable food production, and see a recovery for nature as well’. Others are not convinced.

So why am I not excited? Well, the plans lack detail, and as we know the devil is in the detail. So many questions are raised, the food issue, how this will affect small farms and tenant farmers and how does it connect with other types of land. After all, it shouldn’t just be famers who are responsible for rewilding the land.

We all need to do our bit. We can’t expect the land to rewild by simply carrying on as normal. The controversial aspect of this is about eating less meat and dairy.

Personally, the meat bit is easy as I’ve been vegetarian for many years. However, I do eat a lot of dairy (particularly drinking milk!) and this is something that has been gnawing away at me for some time. I need to stop prevaricating and take action. Watch this space as I make some changes.

So I will be cautiously happy about the new plans. I would like to see much more, but it is steps in the right direction. In the meantime, I will continue with my allotment in attempting to reduce my own food miles and look to reduce my dairy consumption.

There is so much to read about rewilding, so much good is happening out there. Farmers are coming together to provide wildlife corridors and join land together for the benefit of wildlife. It is heartening to see.

What do we get from it, you may ask. It is a good question. There are many reasons and these include:

• engaging with nature is good for our mental health
• air quality is likely to improve
• we are not separate from nature, we are part of it, rewilding helps rejuvenate people as much as animals and birds.

Rewilding, wilding, restoring, or whatever title we give it, is not a quick or easy solution. But it’s one I wholeheartedly support. I believe that it can be done so that everyone can benefit though we must all be prepared to make changes.

Source: Rewilding Britain

Going peat free

I often hear how gardens in the UK are so important to wildlife. Gardens in England cover four and a half times more land that the National Nature Reserves, the number of garden trees is about a quarter of the the number of trees outside woodland and about 60% of gardeners help wildlife by feeding birds and growing wildlife-friendly plants. Impressive stats, but what does it all mean?

Well, to start with it’s not all good. Gardens are getting smaller, including the size of gardens in new builds, large gardens being split up and built on and front gardens being paved over for parking. But despite all this doom and gloom there is much to be pleased about.

Even the smallest garden, balcony or window box will attract wildlife. More gardeners are digging ponds (including myself) helping to compensate for loss of countryside ponds – of course, it will never fully compensate for the loss. But perhaps the aspect we can be most pleased about is people’s willingness to engage in wildlife conservation using their gardens.

The small pond I created in our own front garden

And that brings me to peat. Hop along to many (most?) garden centres and the plants you can buy have all (or almost all) been grown using peat. At my local garden centre, there is a huge range of compost to choose from, all in plastic bags and the vast majority containing peat. How can I, as a gardener (of the very amateur variety), consider myself to be improving my little patch of land for wildlife if it includes peat?

At the end of last November my husband I took a short holiday to the Somerset levels. Walking between our holiday home and the RSPB reserve we wanted to visit, we passed a peat bog. It’s the first time I’d seen one up close and it broke my heart to see the diggers waiting to extract more of this carbon storing material. Peat is formed at a rate of 1mm per year. One swing of the digger’s jaws would dig out hundreds of years of nature’s work. OK, I admit, the peat bogs cover an area larger than one swing of the digger, but you get my point.

I have used peat free compost before, but this is the first time that I have properly researched what I am going to use for my annual seed sowing for my home vegetable plot and allotment. I looked at composts that contain coir. This seemed to be the most common type of peat free alternatives, but by no means that only ones.

Coir clearly has a lot going for it. It is a waste product from the coconut trade which is otherwise thrown away. Coir increases aeration and retains water and can be reused. So far so good! But … oh why is there always a but? It can contain salt as a result of the the type of water used when harvesting it and it doesn’t contain nutrients so will always need to be mixed with something else. However, for me, the deal breaker is the shipping costs. Most coir comes from Sri Lanka and India and I would far rather see it used more locally.

Coir from the coconut harvest

I was delighted to find a peat free compost made entirely in the UK using locally sourced products. Ironically, it is made in Somerset! There are five steps:

1. Harvest rye, maize and grass
2. Create bio-gas with the use of anaerobic digestion
3. The bio-gas is converted into electricity to power 8000 homes per day
4. The bi-product of the bio-gas production is digestate which is separated into liquid and fibre and forms the basis of the compost products
5. Any remaining digestate is spread on the fields for the next sowing of rye, maize and grass

This really ticked all my boxes, a sustainable cycle of production and minimal shipping costs. The compost is packaged in plastic which is a down side for me, however, all their packaging contains 30% recycled material and the bags can themselves by recycled. Good, but not perfect.

So I’ve ordered two bags for seeds and one bag for potting on. Chillies, tomatoes and sweet peppers have been sown and the real test is yet to come. Will the seeds germinate?

Tomatoes on the left, chillies and peppers on the right

Sources: Wildlife Gardening Forum, Rocket Gro.

Just to be clear, I am not in any way affiliated to Rocket Gro, nor have I had any incentives or freebies from them. This is simply my thoughts and experience.

To be continued …

The Child Catcher and Climate Change

The Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang has haunted many a child’s dream.

The Child Catcher from the 1968 film

Dressed in brightly coloured clothes and promising free lollipops and other goodies, he lures the Potts children to his fairground style cart. Supported by those in power and venerated by the wealthy, he is free to carry out his dastardly deeds. Brightness and cheer make it hard to believe that the outcome will be so catastrophic. Expert in his pretence, the children actually chase him and, of course, end up getting caught and losing everything.

The warning signs were there – others have already been trapped, the towns people told stories of what was going on but the danger just seemed so implausible. But look closely, the Child Catcher’s face betrays his true intent.

Climate Change is every bit as scary a monster as the Child Catcher. The pretence is that of better weather (and let’s face it, here in the UK a bit of warming is a welcome thing!), and we have just experienced the warmest New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day on record. Lured out for a pleasing New Year’s Day walk, how can we not enjoy a gentle sunshine and oh so mild air.

But just like the Child Catcher’s bright cloak, Climate Change is the master of disguise. Just like the towns people in the film, scientists are shouting from the doorways, ‘Stop! This is a trap!’ And just like the children, we run on not hearing or believing their words.

Already, Climate Change has trapped so many. Christian Aid have identified just ten weather events that cost an estimated USD 1.5 billion. These events can all be linked to Climate Change and all happened in 2021. And this is just the tip of the iceberg with many other weather events scattered throughout the year and set to become more common. The people affected by these events have been captured by Climate Change while many in power deny the extent of the problem.

The financial devastation is just one measure, and a very crude one at that. The impact on the people is impossible to put into words

In May 2021, Cyclone Tauktae hit India and Pakistan. Nearly 57,000 homes were damaged and the water supply system to thousands of villages compromised.

In March, prolonged heavy rain caused widespread flooding in New South Wales, Australia impacting many towns still recovering from the ultra-intense bush fires of the 2019-20 summer.

In late August, Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana in the United States and has been described as the second-most destructive hurricane ever to hit the country.

And if all this seems to far away, July 2021 saw floods in the UK causing property damage, particularly in London. The weather front then moved across Europe with force. Over 200 people lost their lives and eleven countries were severely impacted.

While we may enjoy the unseasonably mild weather, we must not forget this is the brightly coloured cloak of Climate Change. These are not just incidents to watch on the news. These are happening to our friends, neighbours, those just down the road from where we live.

The Child Catcher is everywhere. Sooner or later you will be trapped too.

Source: Climate change: Huge toll of extreme weather disasters in 2021

23. Tomorrow will be a Good Day by Captain Tom

This is a really delightful book. Like many people in this country, indeed across the world, I was caught up in the whirlwind that saw this quiet unassuming gentleman raise over £32 million pounds for the NHS charities (with another £6 million in gift aid!) in just over three weeks. It really is hard to fathom how quickly it all happened.

Captain Tom is known to so many as the 99-year old veteran using his walker to complete 100 laps of his garden before his 100th birthday. The image we all of him is slightly hunched and walking slowly with the aid of his trusty walker.

But, of course, it hasn’t always been like that and, perhaps surprisingly, until very recently Tom was very mobile, driving, gardening, cooking and travelling. At the age of 98, Tom suffered a fall in the home which fractured his hip, broke a rib and punctured a lung. Pretty impressive that he pulled through at all, let alone to go on and increase his mobility in the way he has. It was interesting to read how this endeavour has given him a new lease of life too. Having had his mobility severely dented so suddenly he was left feeling rather down and frustrated. So it seems, while Captain Tom was cheering up and encouraging the nation, that same nation was cheering up and encouraging Captain Tom.

This book is a chance to get to know the man behind the walker. One hundred years in the grand scheme of things is but a short time, but in human time it is long. And much has happened in that time. It seems somewhat apt that Captain Tom was born in 1920, just after the last truly global pandemic, the Spanish Flu, which claimed more lives than the First World War. Among other things, Tom’s lifetime has seen the discovery of penicillin, the invention of television, the birth of the NHS, the opening of Britain’s first motorway, the imprisonment and release of Nelson Mandela, three monarchs and 25 prime ministers. I’m exhausted just thinking about all of that!

Tom shares the story of his life, with background about his parents and grandparents to give a rounded view of where he came from. There is quite a long section about his time in the war, a helpful reminder of those brave men who fought in the Burma campaign and have, since that very time, largely been forgotten. Tom tells us about his first marriage, an unhappy liaison that he recounts with honesty and not a hint of self-pity. In fact, the whole book is a positive telling of an incredible life filled with happy and sad events, true for all of us. It is a lesson in how a positive outlook not only can affect the outcome but can carry us through the inevitable difficult times.

The book takes us up to the famous walk, the interaction with many celebrities, his number one single with Michael Ball and finally the knighthood by the Queen. On the way, we get to share Tom’s love of all things mechanical, racing motorbikes, driving a wide variety of cars, tinkering with tanks and continuing to use the ride-on mower well into his 90s. His love of travel is also apparent, with some lovely photos included of Tom in far flung places, again travelling at an age when many have swapped their passport for pipe and slippers. I’m sure Tom’s longevity can be put down to his positive attitude, good genes and a healthy dose of luck.

I enjoyed the way the book was written. It has obviously been put together very quickly but is definitely in Tom’s voice. Of course I don’t know Tom personally, but from when I have heard him speak in interviews I could hear his voice in the book. His love for his family shines through, both the family that came before him and the younger generation. His cheeky sense of humour is evident and it’s easy to see why so many people have taken to him. At a time when the nation needed a role model and a positive distraction, I can’t think of a better person to be it.

Thank you Tom for sharing your life with us.

Edit: I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, before we learned of Captain Tom’s sad death. I find comfort in the words he wrote in the book, knowing he was prepared, as much as anyone could be. It is nonetheless so very sad to have said goodbye to him so soon after we all got to know him. RIP Sir Tom, to Hannah, Lucy and the rest of the family I send much love. What an amazing few months you have all had, wishing you peace and comfort in these difficult times.

Tomorrow will be a good day.

22. Wilding by Isabella Tree

Wow, what a book. I was pulled from hope to despair at the turn of a page. Isabella writes about the wilding of the Knepp Estate, located in Surrey and which has been farmed by generations of Isabella’s husband’s family. It was also requisitioned in the second World War and underwent widespread scrub clearance and ploughing.

Isabella and her husband inherit the estate in the late 1980s as a working, but money losing, farm. They continued to farm using ever more intensive methods and diversification. These all continued to lose money and eventually, at the beginning of the millennium, the long journey into wilding the Knepp Estate began. Isabella takes us with her as the endless negotiations with government departments, NGOs and charities take hold and which are largely responsible for the despair. This is punctuated with the successes of introducing various animals, including fallow and red deer, Exmoor ponies, Tamworth pigs and longhorn cattle.

The hope is sparked by the return of many rare species such as turtle doves, a multitude of earthworms, dung beetles, bats and butterflies, including mass sightings of the Purple Emperor. Rare plants and fungi have proliferated too bringing greater understanding of the interdependence between subterranean mycorrhizal fungi and the more obvious above ground plants. I was fascinated to learn the mycorrhizal fungi provide a network that enables trees to ‘speak’ to each other.

Of course, it was not all plain sailing. The local community was not, at first, supportive of the experiment. Funding issues created stress and an uncertainty as to the direction and scope of the project as well as for how long it may be able to continue. For now it does keep going and in 2020, some years after Isabella wrote the book, wild stork chicks were welcomed on the estate. The first to hatch in England in several hundred years, this exemplifies the hope that this project has given.

One of the surprising things to come out of it is the greater understanding of what the landscape of the UK was like before man put his significant mark on it. Experts have long since believed that our landscape was heavily wooded with a closed canopy across most of the land. However, the Knepp wilding projects, as well as others in the UK and Europe, are starting to shift this belief. The variety of wildlife that once roamed this land, including bison, would have done so across prairies, not unlike that savannahs in Africa. Our native and much loved oak tree would not, in fact could not, survive under a closed canopy and there is much evidence of oaks across the country.

Despair comes back in when the government agencies are unable to see this new evidence and persist in sticking with the old ways. I want to believe that the hope will shine through and more and more places are allowed to ‘wild’ as the Knepp Estate has. It is not alone in this type of project and makes that hope a little brighter.

My next step – to visit Knepp (when allowed of course) and really enjoy this amazing place.

Kestrel

Photo by Sachin Nihcas from Pexels

A familiar shape casts shadow so captivating
Master of stationary flight, watching and waiting
Eyes shine bright scanning into the tiniest hole
Unsuspecting on the ground, prey of mouse, shrew, and vole

Fields all shades of green with crops and grass
Rich in food, seen from an elegant gliding pass
Perfectly poised our hovering hunter strikes from up high
Swooping swiftly to pounce, its prize hardly uttering a cry

Remarkable razor-sharp eyes spanning vast distance
Falls short of guaranteeing a worry-free existence
One in five alone carry the hope of new life
Nemesis starvation clustered in the young is rife

The precious few that soar and grace our skies
Resplendent russet plumage and bright black eyes
Speckles of dark perfectly placed on wing and chest
To share space with Kestrel, we are truly blessed

21. Bring me back by B.A. Paris

This book is billed as the bestseller with a killer twist you won’t see coming. For me, that’s a bit of a spoiler because I’m then on the lookout for what the twist could be. Did I see it coming? Yes, to be honest I did (as did many others according to the reviews), but that doesn’t have to spoil the book does it?

There are spoilers in this review so please stop now if you want to read the book!

The plot is a love story. In the present, Finn is engaged to Ellen and they are blissfully happy. In the past, Finn had been in love with Ellen’s sister Layla but that ended in mysterious circumstances. On the way back from a holiday in France with Finn, Layla disappears. It turns out Finn lied to the police about the exact circumstances to avoid being under suspicion for Layla’s murder. So Layla remains a missing person and eventually Finn gets back to living his life. He meets Ellen for the first time at Layla’s memorial some seven years after her disappearance and gradually a relationship develops between them. Not surprisingly, not everything is as it seems.

Some reviews claim the plot is unrealistic – why would Finn get involved with Layla’s sister? But that didn’t bother me so much, if life has taught me anything it’s that the most unrealistic things are likely to be true! What I struggled with was the characters. Finn is a very successful businessman, though it never goes into any detail about what he actually does. At one point he says that at 27 years old he has earned enough to never need to work again. Finn has a violent streak that saw him nearly floor his father, nearly kill an old girlfriend and seriously assault his best friend who refused to press charges. For a while, they didn’t speak, but then they become best friends again and it’s unclear why. Other than that, we don’t know anything about Finn so his character if very one dimensional and not, in my mind, very likeable. The same can be said about Ellen and Layla. We don’t know their interests or, particularly with Ellen, what her job is.

This is where the book fell down. The characters had no depth and I didn’t really take to any of them. Finn’s violent streak felt like it had been introduced to give a reason for Layla’s disappearance, but it could have been done better. And when a person goes missing, the partner is often top of the list of suspects with or without a violent past.

The plot is not necessarily new in this genre, but none the less plausible for that. Ellen and Layla were brought up on the island of Lewis with a violent father. When their mother dies, Ellen and Layla are left to pick up the pieces. Their father relies on Ellen and hates Layla. Layla finally gets away and comes to London where she meets Finn on her first night. He pursues her and wins her over and then it all falls apart on the trip home from France.

And the killer twist? Well, if you do want to read this book, definitely stop reading now! There are lots of hints to the twist throughout the book, advertising it as something you won’t see coming is a little disingenuous to the reader. Layla has clearly had a difficult upbringing and early on shows signs of multiple personalities. After their mother died, Layla would still talk to her and then answer as her mother. It therefore wasn’t a great surprise to find that Ellen is Layla. That’s not to say that Ellen never existed, following an argument between Layla and her father, Ellen intervened and their father ended up killing her. Layla then took on Ellen’s personality and for a long time suppressed Layla. When Layla reappears in Finn’s life he has no idea he is living with her. An interesting concept which could have been explored in much more depth, but when Finn finds out it’s really too late. His temper gets the better of him and he ends up killing her, not deliberately but as a result of his violent streak. A somewhat unsatisfactory ending in my mind. Finn becomes contrite and won’t allow lawyers to try to seek his release from prison.

All in all, a book I wanted to finish to find out what happened, but not one that will stay with me and gripping.

Ode to 2020

Ode to 2020, oh what a year
A new decade too, we greeted with cheer

January started cold and bleak
Overshadowed our lives with Brexit speak
But if we’d listened, we’d have heard the sound
Of distant drums gently beating the ground

Ode to 2020, oh what a year
We’ve broken the union with our neighbours near

February brought storm Ciara to our shores
Rain and floods and wind that roars
Countrywide Ciara did spread
Little did we know, worse was ahead

Ode to 2020, oh what a year
The weather’s full might started the fear

March crashes along and life changed forevermore
A lockdown wave sweeps Europe from shore to shore
Freedom to see our loved ones and be sociable
Stay at home now, it’s all non-negotiable

Ode to 2020, oh what a year
At first the novelty makes it feel less severe

April full of contrast of peace and confusion
Ghost towns and cities a mere hint of illusion
Households cherishing togetherness, others in isolation
Home learning now the only option for education

Ode to 2020, oh what a year
The full scale of the challenge is starting to become clear

May’s weather gives us a much needed boost
By our gardens we have all been seduced
But mental health is taking a battering
For so many their worlds are a-shattering

Ode to 2020, oh what a year
New cases decrease, is that the sound of freedom we hear?

June arrives and we are still reeling
A man has died and the world needs healing
Black Lives Matter and change is long overdue
But violence thrives with threats of a curfew

Ode to 2020, oh what a year
The world reacts, protests across the globe appear

July is here and our shops are reopening
Our high streets experience a slow re-awakening
But care must be taken – caution we must not discard
For we are the weary, the dazed and the scarred

Ode to 2020, oh what a year
The summer beckons, but is it false cheer?

August rolls around and guards are dropping
But the virus isn’t gone, it isn’t stopping
We eat out to help out – but can it really work?
The economy needs us, it’s not just a perk

Ode to 2020, oh what year
Can we really approach autumn in this high gear?

September starts with the new school term
It’s strange for the kids as they help fight this germ
New cases start to rise but what is the cause?
Does education really have to take another pause?

Ode to 2020, oh what a year
From the virus we cannot call the all clear

October lands and we keep battling through
But more grim news is keeping us blue
The graphs keep going up and up
And we are always chasing, playing catch-up

Ode to 2020, oh what a year
Hallowe’en is cancelled to add to the drear

November and can this really be true?
Dark and dreary and into lockdown two
Yet is that a light piercing the murk?
A vaccine we think really will work

Ode to 2020, oh what a year
At last the bright future is starting to appear

December dawns, Christmas lights are lit
But the virus has a final 2020 hit
A new strain has emerged to blight our celebrations
Rocking us all to our very foundations

Ode to 2020, oh what a year
Now you’re gone, will we shed a tear?

20. The Salt Path by Raynor Winn

I looked forward to reading this book having walked a small part of the path that Raynor and her husband Moth took on. Mine was an easy walk in comparison, staying at pre-booked B&B each night with a trip to the pub for our evening meal. And our gear was taken there for us. Raynor and Moth had an altogether different experience and harder by far.

Raynor and Moth, wife and husband, together for 32 years having brought up two children and made a success of a delipidated farm. But that all came crashing around them due to a misplaced investment.

We join their story as the bailiffs arrive to take possession of their home and livelihood. Added to this disaster, Moth has recently been diagnosed with a life limiting degenerative illness. Instead of falling on the mercy of the state, or sleeping in a doorway, they chose to walk the length of the South West Coast path, 630 miles of waymarked path running from Minehead in Somerset to Poole Harbour in Dorset. They have next to no money and carry all their gear with them, including the tent they sleep in every night. It’s called wild camping so there are no facilities either.

The sense of despair is palpable, particularly at the beginning when they are forced to leave their home. Yet it is surprisingly upbeat, and their determination to keep walking an analogy to keep going in life. Having lost everything, with yet more to lose with Moth’s illness, the couple take on a challenge that would send many a fit person running for home comforts.

The walk is a path, but is also very challenging in places. Add to that the task of finding a place to camp each night, the path takes on quite a different hue. Raynor’s description of the path, the landscape, the wildlife and the weather are clearly from someone who has a deep connection with nature. Their interactions with other people clearly highlight their plight, yet the book never asks for sympathy. Their aim was to spend as much time together as possible. Having lost their home and income, they were now facing the possibility of losing Moth and for Raynor that meant she needed to spend each moment that remained with him.

Food was scarce and cleaning facilities scarcer. Dips in the sea replaced baths, clothes stretched out on rocks replaced washing lines. Yet astonishingly, Moth’s health slowly started to improve. His illness is one which gradually reduces movement and, despite a few occasions of temporary paralysis, he began to be a bit freer. This certainly was no indication of a miracle recovery, possibly just a sign that keeping moving keeps you moving.

More then anything, this is a story about a journey, though one without an end. Without giving too much away, the book ends with hope for a new start. Still much to overcome, but two people stripped of everything they’ve held dear find that life still has something to give. There is a sequel and I’m keen to find out how the two of them get on.

19. Our House by Louise Candlish

This book starts with a conundrum – Fi returns from a weekend away to find a family moving into her house. It turns out her husband has sold the house without telling her. He has now escaped abroad with the aim of ending his life and the story is told from their two perspectives: hers as part of a podcast and his as a Word document – his suicide note.

As the story unravels we find out that Fi and Bram are separated on account of his infidelity and at first it seems to be this that is at the heart of Bram’s covert plans.

I struggled a little with the beginning when Fi finds a removal van outside what she thinks is still her house. While I can understand this would cause huge confusion, upset and a great sense of disorientation, there was quite a lot of making a scene and if felt rather drawn out. It was saved by being interspersed with snippets giving some of the background. Once the story moved on from there, it picked up the pace and was less cringe worthy.

I enjoyed the story, but found it hard to really take to either of the lead characters. Bram’s behaviour was erratic guaranteed to have a bad outcome, yet he professes to love Fi above anything, agreeing to ‘Whatever Fi wants, I’m on board’ in the separation conversations. It leaves me questioning, why he behaves as he does when all he does simply damages his relationship with Fi and his children.

Fi is painted as the wronged woman, doing everything she can and sacrificing anything for herself to protect her children. Of course, protecting your children is a natural instinct, but surely for both parents and the distinction is too wide here – Bram is unable to curb his behaviour while Fi only thinks about the children. Yet Bram is the one to make the children laugh and dash around like mad things, while Fi is the sensible boring parent. They set up what they call a bird’s nest agreement, the children continue to live in the family home and Bram and Fi take turns to live there with them, when either is not there they live in a flat a couple of streets away.

And so the story continues to unravel and show that the infidelity was the least of Bram’s crimes. What comes to light are Bram’s numerous speeding tickets, fines and court appearances. Eventually, he is banned from driving but doesn’t tell anyone, especially not Fi. Inevitably this leads him to driving whilst banned and, when in a particularly bad mood, drives erratically with disastrous consequences and a web of deceit which eventually led to the secret selling of their house.

I wanted to keep reading to find out what happened, but I did have to suspend belief at times. Although sometimes you read about things that have really happened and they seem so unlikely you wouldn’t believe them in a book, so maybe it’s not as unrealistic as I think! The story continues to weave around the selling of the house, without giving too much away, this is not something that Bram chose, but more that he was blackmailed into.

I did like the ending. Reading other reviews, some didn’t share my opinion with one person describing it as a lazy ending! What it didn’t do was tie up all the loose ends and give you a nice happy ever after feeling. In fact, it is left on quite a cliff hanger for the reader to then decide what might have happened next. I like that, all too often books seem to contrive a fairy tale ending, but not so here. I won’t give it away, but suffice to say that best laid plans don’t always give the best laid outcomes.