Pastures new

This spring, we moved to Greater Liverpool. 

Cambridge has been a fine place for many years, but it was time for a change - more scenery, more sea, a proper city. 

Now, exploring new communities, new routines, new rituals.  

There is a lot going on - even if I feel I've barely started seeing what's out there. More than 400 climate-positive groups and projects in Wirral Environmental Network, for instance. Lots of cultural activities and creative arts happenings, big and small. A whole bunch of social enterprises, and community projects, and radical ideas taking root. The energy feels very different to Cambridge, even in similar-seeming spaces or groups, a bit more alive and edgy perhaps. Even doing things outside 'the' University, the weight of it is felt somehow across Cambridge, holding space and complacency. It felt like time to be more connected, with more diverse people and ideas - and of course different problems, and different opportunities. 

I've lived almost entirely in Cambridge since 2000. I would like to think I left it better than I found it. Makespace is still going - and moving. It's amazing how many times 2012's "we can do a 1 year lease max" repeated, in the end. Cofarm Cambridge grew a lot of produce since starting growing in 2020; sadly we didn't get the momentum we needed to get agroecological community market gardens in more places. Thanks to Abbey People and Cambridge Sustainable Food, Grow Cambridge CIC have taken on the site. Weakening ties. Looking back, I have perhaps worked in an unusually high number of different parts of the University of Cambridge over the years; not all those parts still exist, though. But I've been 'out' of the University as much time as I've been in it, and my last 3 jobs have been with organisations based outside the UK. 

It is a luxury to be able to choose where to live. It's not necessarily an easy choice, though: what with climate change and the state of the world, picking somewhere resilient, where one hopes to weather a couple of decades, is non-trivial. So many factors in play. But this choice feels good. Refreshing.

I've been trained to water some of the Incredible Edible planters near the train station, as a small step towards some local community maintenance and growing. I even removed a non-edible daisy from one planter, so folks can be confident that anything they pick can be eaten. At the now traditional Long Now London outing to maintain the Uffington White Horse this week, we talked about how it's not about going out to maintain that particular horse (although it is a beautiful horse), but about finding the things nearer home that we could care for; perhaps some of those will be the great chalk horses of the future. 

I'm interested to find out what sorts of things I do next. 

 

New home, new mantelpiece, always evolving postcard selection

(Thanks Naomi for Greater Liverpool, much more human than Liverpool City Region or Merseyside, and slightly more meaningful to overseas colleagues than 'the Wirral'.)