Nicola Chester
@nicolawriting
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Nature. Writer. Reader. Guardian Country Diary. Countryfile Mag, RSPB. Richard Jefferies Prize & Wainwright Highly C'md. Wild Service. Climate Fic Prize Judge
North Wessex Downs
Joined March 2015
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I fell in love with nature early, but soon learnt it could be taken from me, from others. This is a personal story of how to engage, how to resist the loss of it all & to celebrate the joy of it, from wherever you are. On Gallows Down | The Guardian
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15yo daughter’s bus late home, she just wants get in, & yet, watching her long, animated chat over the fence with our elderly, newly widowed neighbour is just a joy. They’re giving each other all the time in the world, laughing & occasionally putting their hand on their hearts.❤️
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Excited text from son at college today. Town centre, lunchtime: ‘Mum! You’ll NEVER guess what I’m having lunch with!’ Oh the months he’s spent stalking lakes & riverbanks with me, mostly futile ... his reward.
#otters
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Emotional laundry. I remember taking photos of the washing line when my 3 children were all under 6; of all their little clothes hung up, & crying with love & exhaustion. Just hung these up. Had a good cry. Oh, these last few weeks! Couldn’t be prouder...
#keyworkers
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Last exams for this one today & the end of formal education for this family. Not a good fit at all for her, but she’s got up everyday & got on that bus & made it to the finishing line. That in itself & her resilience is what we’ll be celebrating with her today.
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Always follow up tweets! Daughter & I found this narrow, letterbox of fledging blue tits, squeezed into a hazel across the lane. We stopped cars. One landed in her (birds nest) hair! 1/5
@BBCSpringwatch
@michaelastracha
@gillians_voice
@ChrisGPackham
@Natures_Voice
#30DaysWild
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The wood mice have filled half a rucksack & every other shoe in the understairs cupboard, with carefully filched dog biscuits, from a teeny tiny hole in the bottom of the sack. And made a nest in an upside down beanie hat. They are nowhere to be seen. Dog is not impressed.
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From the uplifting togetherness of yesterday’s
@RNNMarch
, to my heart thumping with anger & frustration, from the silence & empty skies around us, & actions that are ongoing to cause that to happen. Someone is cutting a garden hedge with a tractor & flail right now 1/6
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This dear, sweet horse got herself horribly tangled in a fence today, & simply lay down to wait for us, 2 hooves trapped, no panic. I held her head & talked to her as husband cut her out: she talked back. Thank goodness she’s fine. She’s nearly 30 & the trust she has in us. Oof.
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Absolutely shocking what happened
@plymouthcc
last night. Cutting down 100+ much loved MATURE trees, in the dead of night: a whole urban green lung gone, to replace with a vanity project, against the peoples will. Look to
#Sheffield
@StagNews2022
Work with what you have! 💔
Here's what's happening to nearly every single one of your trees tonight.
We are witnessing monsters in the night. Monsters that destroy trees and monsters that sit behind desks ordering their destruction.
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Massive cheer to all those that couldn’t make
@RNNMarch
. Of the 100k that did, everyone could name others that would have marched. You were with us, your voices swell the united ranks of us calling for political change, & action for nature now. In love & rage!
#RestoreNatureNow
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Our gloriously wild & messy garden is FULL of wildlife; a little oasis, even in the countryside (oh yes!) Someone once said ‘I suppose you don’t bother keeping it tidy, because it’s not your house.’ Wish, instead of being speechless, I’d retorted ‘it’s because it’s not my planet’
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Husband rang (hands free) to tell me there was nothing on the M4* except 15 red kites, feeding on carrion in the middle lane. Barely shifted when he drove past & obscured the windscreen with a great stretch of wings. ‘Apocalyptically beautiful’ apparently’... (*Allowed, he’s NHS)
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Counted 16 wrens nipping under this tractor’s wheel arch to roost! Little blurry leafmeal shadows (with the biggest, most defiant voices) tucking in together for the night. Huddle up troglodytes. We need that life-affirming defiance.
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Reaching a hand back into the past today, & giving an 18yr old girl’s hand a squeeze. It’s going to be OK. It was absolutely the right thing to do. It was your decision entirely. As it should be.
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More madness! Please consider signing & RTing …
In less than a week, on the 21st March
@CambsCC
will vote on whether to DESTROY its largest traditional orchard. A HABITAT OF PRINCIPAL IMPORTANCE, a 1000 trees, for a £200m tarmac road for buses. A loss
@greatercambs
claim can be “lessened to non-significant” in 30 years by
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Hoping this is the year. I’ve written a book (8yrs, in the gaps inbetween). A memoir of place, an account of environmental protest, estate cottage living (tied & tenanted) & of the rural working class. It’s about wildlife & living wilder. It’s an ecology of love, ruin & hope. 1/3
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Absolutely appalled, shocked & horrified at this. Nobody hurt or threatened. This is peaceful, disruptive protest alerting many sleepwalking into a world that threatens life as we know it; that already is taking & endangering lives. I am so sorry.
🚨 BREAKING: THE WHOLE TRUTH FIVE IMPRISONED FOR 4-5 YEARS
⛓️ Lucia, Cressie, Louise and Daniel have received 4 year prison sentences today, whilst Roger has received 5 years.
➡️ Stop jailing those telling the truth. Sign the petition —
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Badger will go … this is a very old badger track, & a long one, headed straight for Gallows Down. It’s trotted out & rarely deviates, across whatever crop is planted, plough or stubble; a silvery, padded, indelible watermark. A crease in the folds. A landscape’s stretch mark.
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Ah me. Us. What we’ve extinguished. A whole population of house martins in this village. Nest cup marks watermarked on so many of the houses still; a ghost village of thousands. Thumbprints of our guilt. Still hundreds when we came here, all gone in the last decades 1/2
“A branch of flowering lime hangs above the roof”
Artist: CF Tunnicliffe Writer: EL Grant Watson
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An incredibly profound & moving piece of work. And an existential crisis laid bare in the most deeply felt & vulnerable way. A question many of us have, & are grappling with, afresh.
#ClimateActionNow
#ChrisPackhamC4
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I’ve written a book. A memoir of place, an account of environmental protest, estate cottage living (tied & tenanted) & of the rural working class. It’s about wildlife & living wilder. It’s an ecology of love, ruin & hope. 1/3
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The kite’s are building ... too early for me to be hanging my washing out just yet, but as Shakespeare says in A Winter’s Tale, ‘when the kite builds, look to your lesser linen’ ... I once lost a nice, satin, M&S camisole to a kite’s nest. Teach me to be fancy.
#smalls
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HERE IS THE NEWS: my book has found the perfect home! Really, really excited to tell you that it will
be published later this year by the very lovely people
@chelseagreen
! And to celebrate, a barn owl has just flown over my writing hut roof with a deliciously thrilling screech!
Hoping this is the year. I’ve written a book (8yrs, in the gaps inbetween). A memoir of place, an account of environmental protest, estate cottage living (tied & tenanted) & of the rural working class. It’s about wildlife & living wilder. It’s an ecology of love, ruin & hope. 1/3
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Gorgeous, deep, damp corner of the horses’ field … but visibly, audibly, markedly fewer insects & birds: more so than ever before. This is a picture that seems to be country-wide. A
#SilentSpring
. A deep unease. The pest/herb & fungicides, the mowing, felling, ‘winning’ out. 🧵
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Been sat here ages now. Very still. No further instructions have appeared. D’you think anyone would notice if I just ... went?
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I curtsey to you, perfect agaric, with your jaunty, margherita pizza cap; & I care not who sees me do it …🍕
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Ah me. Us. The sweetest, happiest, most biddable soul has left us. Named for the kite frame on her chest, she was with us everywhere, in all we did; could turn her paw to any ‘job.’ Doubt I’ll ever have such a well-trained, soul-companion as her, again. Utterly blessed. Beloved.
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Great excitement! And a first! A tiny Pygmy Shrew (fairly sure) in the bathroom! It’s a damp room, just enough space for a shower, loo & this year, A LOT of woodlice. It was the size of an acorn! On fast wheels! Love the description in my beloved old Reader’s Digest Field Guide.
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After 20 years, & 884 column pieces (just one week off to have 1 of my 3 children) I’ve written my last Nature Notes missive for my dear local newspaper. It’s where everything began: a training ground, a springboard, a celebration, a defence against loss, a beating witness.🧵 1/3
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Grain store resting on its staddlestones at Little Hidden Farm, keeping the rats & the rot at bay. More often than not, you only see staddlestones lining a path or drive, usually without their toadstool tops. Love this farm.
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View from a bluebell wood, with stormbow. Took shelter in the hazel & laurel copse. Thunderlight off wet wood heightened the senses to skylark singing-height. As soon as the storm passed all the birds burst up singing & the scent! Oh, the scent was DIZZYING!
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What harvests, hardships & hurrahs this tithe barn has known … the dust, still settling.
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A cowslippy thread. Today, I sat on the big hill above my home with my husband, hugged my knees & cried. Mostly for joy. I was here yesterday too, with my best friend. 1/5
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Through the open gate, a willow warbler sings; that fresh, lilting laugh on a descending note, a sub song now; a smile at a memory, but a freshness, nevertheless. Begin again it says. Begin afresh.
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This little note left by a student on my Library desk at work means everything… we are going to start a
#Hungerford
#Swift
Town community project from school, & I can’t wait to get started. It seems our Eco Club students feel the same!
#swifts
Here they come!
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Wooden enemies*, as they will be forever known in this family, starring the old Hollow Lane from farm to farm, on the way to Mum’s house. (*wood anemones).
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On a denied Open Access island in the North Wessex Downs. Feel like I’m trespassing, yet I’m not. Rutting fallow deer abroad & grunting, ash boughs clacking together - or perhaps, sets of broad, moose-like antlers - in the rain-presaging wind. I parachuted in.
@Right_2Roam
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The GREEN of it all! Each year we are amazed again by it, the spring, the zing, as if we’ve never seen such vibrancy, such a force of life through the green fuse. Our wonder refreshed, as if we’d never drunk. What a miracle life on this earth is. Shouldn’t we all treasure it!
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Oh my gosh, this is immense! I am thrilled to pieces! It means a very great deal to me … as does Richard Jefferies & his writing. This was an incredibly strong shortlist (& longlist too) & I feel extremely awed & honoured by that. Thank you!
Many congratulations to
@nicolawriting
for winning the Richard Jefferies Award for 'ON GALLOWS DOWN' that reflects the spirit of Richard Jefferies' nature and countryside books.
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So, I have news! Very excited about this ⬇️ (& really honoured.) It’s a fantastic & beautiful magazine, with great, in depth articles, & I’m very much looking forward to being a new columnist!
We're delighted to announce our new regular columnist,
@nicolawriting
, author of award-winning 'On Gallows Down'.
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A poignant, devastating light illuminating the dying of the ash trees. The sheer scale of this loss, obvious now. Whole woods will be lost. My earliest years were informed by the last, ghostly skeletons of the elm trees. More than ever, we must replace & protect what we have.
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We have just RUN up the lane (1 barefoot, 1 in slippers) to the ‘sunset gate’ of Champion’s hayfield, to get a view over Wilts & West Berks of this! Hayfield at sunset … the little altocumulus were all pink jellyfish, just missed those!
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Oh my … my heart is a lapwing! This lone, last pair have managed, against the odds, to raise a full clutch of chicks here. Daughter & I watched them hours old, up on their legs like foals & scumbling about. Tiny pom poms. Tenacity & vigilance from parents & still so vulnerable!
The thinnest moon-rind of hope, a fingernail to hang on by. Out there, on the arable, I heard a lapwing cry; saw a paddle-wing turn in the blue. A single pair, the last in the village, is nesting. Impossible odds (you need a critical mass of lapwings.) Griefstruck & hopeful …
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And just like that, spring is declared in the overnight shedding of dear old new forest pony’s coat. It’s going to take some time, & *all* the birds of this little west of west Berkshire corner will raise their chicks in chestnut lined cups, as they have for 30yrs of generations.
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Amazed & thrilled that
#OnGallowsDown
has been shortlisted for
@wainwrightprize
! In a life wounded by standing up for nature (yet ever hopeful!) this is validation, encouragement & an absolute honour. Thank you
@chelseagreen
@AnneWilliams4
& so many supporters. This is immense!
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I put down roots quickly, fiercely & have fallen hopelessly in love with this place in just a week. It’s been a wonderful holiday. There are spotted flycatchers in the orchard beyond the yard, flocks of linnets, hop kilns & owls in the barn. How can I leave a view like this?
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The photo is my daughter with a scarlet tiger moth in our garden. We were worried we wouldn’t get any this year. They are only here because we let wild, messy comfrey grow in the garden. I will keep yesterday’s
#RestoreNatureNow
march in my heart, & blow on its furious coals.
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My brilliant dog, Kite; aptly named for so many reasons, I could write a book .. she has springs for legs. Call her & she’ll come!
#dogsoftwitter
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A deep & hopeless love for peeling Estate paint & crumbling buildings… destined always to be binding, tying & unrequited.
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Golden hour on the down; the light, elegiac; the thrill of being sat in the rough grass, watching a short-eared owl hunt, close too. That cat-faced, kohl-rimmed glare, those light-plane wings flicking up in the sun. Breathtaking.
@andreacarollee
’s ‘lemon-eyed owl!’
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Re-routed & trespassed my walk to quickly put some distance between me & a man making me feel very uncomfortable.. but, all senses on hyper-alert (heart-hammering) ended up seeing so much. Highlights were a relaxed herd of fallow bucks & a big flock of bramblings.
#WomenOnNature
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Reasons for being late, no 112 (& a little scrolling/ timeline cleanse for you.) Shepherd Bastable’s lovely sheep moving fields. Hold ‘em up Michael …
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The wildlife YOU & I love, the places YOU & I love, under threat as NEVER before. This is shocking, shocking news. Please read this. For the RSPB to declare its anger & fear like this? It’s deadly serious.
@Natures_Voice
⚠️😡Make no mistake, we are angry. This Government has today launched an attack on nature. We don’t use the words that follow lightly. We are entering uncharted territory. Please read this thread. 1/13
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This site. I’m scared I haven’t got the time, energy & head space to set up a home anywhere else (no wriggle room.) But I’m more scared about losing all the wonder, good stuff & good people on here. It’s not just a platform, it’s a lovely, rich, diverse & supportive community.
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A dusk-to-dark walk along the old lane that leads to the chalk track up to the downs. Hares in the fields, teal overhead, & water running everywhere. The wood on one side with its feet in water. A thorny branch moved in the stillness of the trees, in a Birnam Wood moment … 1/4
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Happy New Year from below the wildly swaying rookery on Rooksnest Lane, on the walk home from Mum’s. Thank you to all you wonderful, lovely Twitterers, still here, still making the place worth staying on in. And thank you for your support & encouragement. Going to be a busy year!
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A sweep of the snowfall of snowdrops in the chestnut wood. Bridal path, bridlepath. The bone deep, trough-iron tang of mistle thrush carolling, melancholy, but lovely; also hopeful. Robins, chaffinch, woodpecker drumroll, rook, sheep. A pause at the gas gun. Big hill beyond.
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Mum sent this pic ‘from a bookshop in Oxford’ … ‘there was a pile of your books upstairs, but I thought this display needed adding too …’ Guerrilla product-placement, Mum-style …
#Spare
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When our farmworker’s cot was built by John Astor MP in 1953, am told you could hear stone curlews, curlews, corncrakes & nightingales from its rooms. I’ve seen local extinction in our 17yrs here. But right now, a cuckoo is giving it some welly from the wood. Hope is the thing ..
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Turneresque skies over the back garden field & my little writing hut. Finished recording my book today. I wasn’t sure I could do it, but I did; (& really enjoyed it). I also wondered how I’d feel about it, reading it out loud … &, yes. I’m proud. I’m proud of it!
#OnGallowsDown
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Come on
@Tesco
, you should be welcoming these birds, celebrating them & enlightening your customers! These birds have just been placed on red list of highest conservation concern!
Here we go again.
Shame on you
@Tesco
Get those
#NetsDownForNature
now.
Stop the netting preventing House Martin’s nesting at North Berwick Tesco
@horton_official
@patrick_barkham
@JournoJane
@MarkAvery
@AmyJaneBeer
@nicolawriting
@themarshtit
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The wall roses … turning our functional, 1950s utility-built, no frills farmworkers cottage into something wonderful …
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Possibly the only carpet of snow we’ll be getting ... but isn’t it wonderful? Always wondered whether there was ever a cottage here, & these demure-but-tough & enduring snow-piercers are a remnant, runaway garden ...
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My youngest daughter brought me a very special package ... I think this is the moment it all becomes real? I'm an author & it's all I ever wanted to be. Lovely to share this moment with her, too; she's the middle one starring on the front cover!
#OnGallowsDown
... *lovely quotes*
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The most fabulous evening
@wainwrightprize
Absolutely delighted with Highly Commended. Huge congratulations
@jraldred
#GoshawkSummer
& thank you to
@Ray_Mears
& judges who said such glowing things, & my lovely cheerleaders, readers & top indie publishing team
@chelseagreen
💚
The judging panel also wanted to highly commend 2 titles from the
#WainwrightPrize22
, 'Otherlands' by
@TJDHalliday
Thomas Halliday & 'On Gallows Down' by Nicola Chester
@nicolawriting
!!
Congratulations!
#WainwrightPrize22
#JCWP22
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Oh my! I am being massively distracted by a CARAVAN of WATER SHREWS going back & forth & about, under the window of my writing hut, squeaking & carrying on! They are adorable, & in a dry downland garden, just like it says in my Reader’s Digest Field Guide from 1984. 1/2
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Sound the trumpets! They’re here! 3 swallows chasing across the farm, twittering into my consciousness like the old memories they are, pulling new ones in their wake. The evening strangely humid, midgey; the air scented with horse sweat. The sky like the inside of a mussel shell.
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Yesterday’s tree & today’s: favourite old pine. Heard it go - like a pencil snapped in anger & the air filled with the scent of pine.
#StormCiara
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A lasting joy to see
@Anna_Dillon
@thorneh
’s collaborative exhibition
#ElevatingWiltshire
. I’ve long loved Anna’s work: we’ve a shared, deep love of this landscape & David Inshaw; astonishing then to find him in the room & rightly praising Anna’s work! This is Tan Hill 1/3
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An incredibly emotional evening, resisting the no-fault eviction of a family from an old estate cottage after 26yrs. Music, cake, love & solidarity, & an honour to do a reading. The spirit of Esme Boggart ignites: blinks out & stands another day. I think she has other plans …
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Up with the ravens at their favourite high spot. They relish the big winds from here, holding tumbling parties, barrel rolling & mirroring each other in pairs. This steep side of Walbury Hill shoulders Gallows Down, & is known as ‘Flying Leap’. I think the ravens revel in that.
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We have a fight on our hands, like never before. The nature, the places, THE WILDLIFE WE LOVE needs us, needs YOU now. We need to garner ourselves with knowledge & facts … & support our wonderful nature & wildlife charities.. 🧵
We face an urgent nature and climate crisis. But instead of a plan for nature's recovery on land and at sea, the UK Government is pursuing a dangerous agenda of deregulation that puts the very laws protecting wildlife at risk. But what does this mean exactly? (1/12)
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'If you hit people with a message at the end when you've convinced them how brilliant wildlife is, it tends to work.' Exactly,
@StephenMoss_TV
. But if the BBC won't broadcast that episode? Vital chances lost.
#WildIsles
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A whole field of (planted) red campion! An arresting, magenta blush, & a cuckoo calling either side, pollinators encouraged back & swallows swooping low above it.
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Writing out here in the dark, it matters, doesn’t it, to record all this? To delight in nature & sometimes despair of the losses; to set it down in words along with others? Deeds from words perhaps. Because what will survive of us is love & possibly, evidence of the printed word.
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Heart thumping, hands shaking: yes, the hedgecutter is at work (tractor & flail). Because 'suggestions' are not rules, & most people put 'tidiness' above killing wildlife. There are birds nesting in the hedge, chaffinches, greenfinches, goldfinches. I am so tired of this. 1/2
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It’s
#PublicationDay
for
#OnGallowsDown
! Thrilled to pieces & just a little awestruck. I climbed The Big Hill & filmed this, up there only with the ravens (or so I thought! More on that later!) Huge & heartfelt thanks to all those who have supported my writing.
@chelseagreen
1/2
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That X has such weird connotations, doesn't it? I liked the friendly gentleness of the words twitter, a tweet, tweeps ... & of course, the little cheery blue bird. And I know the world is on fire, & I'm raging & frightened about that - but this all seems like another madness.
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It’s paperback day for
#OnGallowsDown
! I took it up its hill to celebrate, with the skylarks, yellowhammers, summer chalk flowers & butterflies. It’s got a beautiful new cover, won the
@RJefferiesSoc
Award, & is longlisted for
@wainwrightprize
! Astonished & proud
@chelseagreen
!
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An unsettled thread, on rural work & housing. We’ve rented all our adult lives (30yrs) or lived in tied cottages that came with a job, on country house estates... change usually comes at walking pace; but not always. Sometimes it’s overnight. But you always fear it. 1/8
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The Government is planning to override juries if they make the ‘wrong’ decision in acquitting those peacefully but desperately alerting us to a worsening crisis they are continuing to ignore. No longer democracy, is it?
1. On Wednesday, the Government plans to stop juries acquitting the wonderful people taking necessary measures to protect life and to protect us all.
Please join us outside the *Royal Courts of Justice at 9am, 21 Feb* to stand up for trial by jury and democracy 🧵
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I have been married to this lovely, funny, warm, wonderful, calm, forgiving & patient man for 21yrs today. I still marvel at my luck. It continues to be fun & frequently, very silly.
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Uh ohhh … unexpected puppy in the writing hut area …
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Nearly finished my book. It's an account of environmental protest & loss & the remnant rural working life. It's about wildlife, family, marriage, estate cottages & making a home when you cannot own one. It's an ecology of love, ruin and hope. It's been a long time,
#amwriting
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On Gallows Down is about the fierce desire to protect the nature & landscape I love. It's about family, rural working class life, writing, reading & influencing what you do not own. I hope it's tender, joyful, watchful, lyrical & full of story & connection. Coming Oct '21.
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Off to London to meet my fellow
#WildService
authors after we spent an emotional night around a fire basket in a wood. Immensely proud to be among them. There are authors you know, & authors you may not yet know, that will move you & blow your socks off. This is more than a book.
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Dad died yesterday. A short, brutal illness. 4wks ago, he was fit & strong. Just 16 days after diagnosis, he was gone. This rural community & the
#NHS
have been amazing. Receptionists, Drs & Community Nurses have given awesome support, practically & emotionally. Thank you.
Journey’s end & the end of a Painted Lady Summer. Though this multi generational, cyclical, meta-morphosed relay of 7,500 miles never truly ends, it does for individual creatures. This one, faded & battered like an old, navy-issue travelling case. Summer’s end; September.
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This is immense! Thrilled & still dancing (quietly, in the school library) to be among such company
@wainwrightprize
. Writing & reading about nature gives us all agency for change, inclusion & action for the one wild life & glittering planet we have. Gorgeous artwork
@paperhelen
!
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We can’t really see the sunset easily from our house; but sometimes, a message, a hint, sends us running to ‘the sunset gate.’ And here we are… sunset over Champion’s Field at Rolf’s Farm, looking over Wiltshire … the field filling up with owls & bats.
#sunset
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Estate cottage looking picturesque this morning. The farmer long gone out to The Manor Farm. Probably breaking ice much earlier than me!
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So, it turns out, we’ve been married 23yrs! Amongst the craziness of a busy family spell, it took Mum to remind us both. And I do love him so much. He’s my Gabriel Oak (but don’t read too much into that!) he’s funny, wise, irreverent & serious (sometimes) & very, very patient…
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Man tells me (with lots of swears & at volume) he is not intimidating me, after almost running me over on a lonely, single country lane, then reversing back, getting out, yelling & swearing at me some more. This is sometimes why I trespass like a deer through the woods.
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Strange night of warm, strong winds & sudden gusts - a fitful sleep of unease. Doors banging, curtains flying up to the ceiling, a brief burst of polecat yowls at a still point in the night, from the barley below the window. Sparrows down the chimney. A storm that doesn’t come.
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The most incredible, uplifting, empowering day, marching for Nature. So many friends & wonderful activists all around, & inspiring speeches. We are not alone in this. Nature has a voice. The scale of 100,000 of us, matched by all those here in spirit.
@RNNMarch
#RestoreNatureNow
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The world waking: magpie, dunnocks, mistle & song thrushes, gt spotted woodpeckers playing a timpani dual, green woodpecker laughing, crow sermonising, woodpigeon chorus, wren, goldfinches, kite, meadow pipits, nuthatch, great, blue & marsh tit, starlings, sparrows. Good morning!
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This is what it’s come to: The Cubbington Pear, a landmark tree that meant so much to so many, Tree of the Year in 2015, has been cut down for HS2
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Part of us is missing … a farewell, dear Kite, my companion among these hills | Nicola Chester
@GdnCountryDiary
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I wasn’t in a position to ‘lead’ this, but I have used my small, quiet voice, persistently, insistently. It might’ve been a softer form of activism. But it was activism, nonetheless. 5/5
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Last of the buttercups … this dear, beloved soul: working dog, family member, nanny, bus stopper (throwing her ball over the garden gate in front of it, so the bus driver would stop & throw it for her) is a glorious old lady now. Most reliable recall & stay ever. Bit deaf now!
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