‘Losing Eden’ by Lucy Jones left me feeling hopeful, inspired. But I can’t imagine what I shall do, and it’s driving me nuts. What I really want is to form a joy brigade at Bruntsfield Evangelical that goes outside regularly, to ‘touch nature from the inside.’ But I tried that before, and no one signed up, and I have no idea how to persuade people to sign up to things, or what sort of thing I could run instead that people would sign up to. And now I feel depressed. I feel I want to do something, and I can do something, but no one will back me up, presumably because there’s something wrong with me.

That’s how I felt about noon. To burn some energy, I went to walk to the shops and back, and long before I knew what I was doing, I found my toes dangling in the Braid Burn. It was a very particular spot. Last time I came here, I pretty much wrote a sonnet in my head, and came back and wrote it down. Today I did not have many words in my head, but I was astonished at how delicious the light looked through the leaves and the warm bed of wildflowers I couldn’t name.

When I came back, I was still fizzing with frustrated energy. I didn’t realise hope could be such a terrible emotion. On a whim, I got Edward Thomas off the shelf, and browsed through his poems, including ‘Lob’ and my favourite, ‘Adlestrop.’

By that point, I’d calmed down enough to get back to my work. I read ‘Wilding’ by Isabella Tree, with illustrations by Angela Harding. It also made me feel hopeful. They have a story about a diamond in the rough, a shining city on a hill in a land still cloaked in darkness, a suggestion that homo sapiens could be a keystone species. I was close to tears three times while reading it.

After I finished, I went outside in the rain into my tenement’s shared garden. I’ve been there exactly once before: in January last year, when I was viewing the flat. I looked once, and decided it was dark, lifeless and dull: not worth going back to. I was so wrong! I’m plotting to try taking my morning pot of tea in the garden some day when it’s dry. I don’t feel angry any more.
