It’s early winter. That dark time of the year before the solstice when nothing is possible. I want to write here, I will write here, but it is a struggle. I want to write about the world and how sad I am about the way the world is. But my world is ok. There’s nothing wrong with my world. I have a home and there is always food on the table. I have family that I love and who love me and I am connected to. I am retired from work and I have a guaranteed pension. I have easy access to wonderful health care. All the bad things in the world are things I hear about.

Yesterday we assembled our Christmas tree. It’s made of baubles and fir cones and hearts and stars, all hung together on threads to make the shape of a tree. It lives for the rest of the year under our bed. Now it is in the bay window, with a three-flame candle underneath it and lights shining from the pillowcase above that supports the whole thing. The threads are attached to the pillowcase with safety pins. It is all rather eccentric, and the remarkable thing is that it has survived for at least five years.

I don’t know how to be a good person. I don’t know how to make the world a better place. I use my vote wisely – I voted Green – you can’t vote Lib Dem after the coalition and you can’t vote Labour after they expelled Jeremy Corbyn. There was a wonderful moment a few years ago when Corbyn almost won, but now I despair of politics. So Green. It’s something. And what about marches? The acceptable face of marches in this country is the farmers. We care more about the farmers having to pay a bit of tax than we do about starving children around the world or the breakdown of the climate because of the continued use of fossil fuels. But I don’t go on these marches either. I’m frightened of being arrested or kettled. An atmosphere of fear has been created that keeps me at home in the warm. Is that how it should be?

What am I saying here? What I often say is that I am a gardener and what I do is grow a little food. That is my contribution to the world. Today that does not feel to be enough. I’m also a writer and so I must write. I write this blog now and then, mostly about my garden, though not today. Today it is about the struggle to speak.

Is there anything universal here? How does being human work? There seems to be a condition I will call a cotton wool condition. Outside the cotton wool there is death and destruction. How can we be both alive and happy? How can we be both aware and safe? How can we both have and give?

In the garden we feed the birds. I have hung two wire bird cages that I found in a skip and put bird food inside them. The smaller birds can hop in through the wires and claim a few seeds. The larger birds compete on the bird-table top. The garden fades and thins as winter deepens. On the ground the sparrows find fallen seeds and blackbirds turn leaves to find worms. The robin waits for the gardener to turn bits of soil, or perches on the fork handle to say Happy Christmas.

So Happy Christmas! And something – love, thoughts, care for all those who are not as lucky as we are.