Two things have occurred at the same time: my reluctant acceptance of the ‘reality’ of climate change, despite persistent concerns that its ideological dimensions have not been entirely narrated as yet, and despite an uneasiness at buying into a supreme scientific discourse that has a simple and bleak answer to everything.

My reluctant acceptance of my own limits, that it is not possible to do all things at once, and to do them all well, that self image does not equate with self-actualisation, that people may not, after all, scream my name out in the streets, or at least not in one united chorus of adoration.

From these twin epiphanies comes a tension which unites the story of myself and of the society I live in. Fear, utter fear and immobilisation, the temptation to withdraw. And at the same time a temptation to throw myself against my limits, and the institutional limits, like a rock against a window.

Or perhaps a better metaphor is to quarry away with a quiet determination.