STUFF HAPPENS

Black and white

While it was going on the decade was entirely ours to describe, one word after another, millions of minute hands hour by hour etching out the character of the island each littoral city, sub-continents. Also, the nature of work in Dublin and Dubai, the unsatisfactory financiers, family life in all its forms the justice of […]

by Alex Hickman

The consolation of community tree planting

I have been planting trees and hedgerows for five years now, and it gives me so much pleasure that by mid-summer I find myself beginning to look forward to cold winter days spent outside armed with a spade, a sack of tree whips and the company of friends and neighbours. I started out in 2014 […]

by Alex Hickman

Obituary, 17 years on

Roddy Scott Compassionate journalist who died filming the Chechens’ forgotten war The Guardian Roddy Scott, who has died aged 31 while filming intense fighting between Chechen rebels and Russian forces in Ingushetia, would have enjoyed the irony that it took the killing of a British journalist to revive international media interest in the ongoing war […]

by Alex Hickman

PLANTING TREES OUTSIDE WOODS – A Manual for Organisers, Landowners & Planters

TREES OUTSIDE WOODS Trees outside woods – planted in hedgerows, as copses and clumps, in avenues, landscape trees studded along hedgerows, or planted along field edges, or to mark a field entrance, or a stretch of footpath or bridleway – bring depth and height to a community’s landscape. Trees planted outside woods provide havens for […]

by Alex Hickman

The Hague

What do you do if you are the Kingdom of the Netherlands? No inheritance to speak of, only land water then sea water and over 17 million souls squeezed in between. Well, you take nothing for granted. You learn irrigation, navigation and English, you grow cash crops make yourself widely available to trading opportunities, hold […]

by Alex Hickman

Berlin in June

Such beautiful blue skies! Parks, pleasure boats on the Spree and across the imperial parade ground a soft breeze from the east cools the walls of the restored Reichstag, and stands up the tricolour of black and red and gold. Through the warm afternoon, electric scooters bearing citizens glide to and fro. These mellow scenes […]

by Alex Hickman

Midsummer

Half of June lost down lanes of puddles, damp swallows ill tempering iron skies low over fields of bullocks mooing with the cold. In the verges hares nesting under hawthorn umbrellas, their tall ears bright wet. Each day reduced by rain falling, falling and bringing the light down with it, folding the village in grey […]

by Alex Hickman

Antrim after rain

We kill one hundred head of cattle each week explained the old man sitting back in his chair, a Presbyterian from the south with an ecumenical constitution and a paper napkin tucked over his tie so that crumbs from his cream bun scatter onto the boardroom table. And pigs to China: tonnes of pork meat […]