Is nature a curse as well as a blessing?

ature is good for us. Over the past year, an appreciation of the natural world has been one of the rare positives to emerge from the pandemic. We have become more in tune with our surroundings, discovering the joys of birdsong in traffic-deserted urban streets and taking long walks in the countryside.

And if we hadn’t noticed it ourselves, fortunately a new piece of research appears every few weeks to tell us about how much we are engaging with nature, and how great it is for our souls. Almost as great as having the bleeding obvious shoved down your throat by a bored academic.

Still, I don’t dispute the importance of the point, nor do I deny that I am among the millions of people who have found relief and release in the flora, fauna and phenomena that are all around if you only know where to look or what to listen for. In particular, I have appreciated darkness more than I ever did in pre-pandemic times; and I have become almost as obsessed with birds as I am with finding the secret to folding a fitted sheet to perfection.