1. The other day I remembered that I’d written down a dream in the night. I couldn’t remember the dream, but I remembered writing it down. So I opened the little notebook that sits waiting by the bed and read: the rare bird best seen from the pub window.

Yesterday, a sunday, I took the train in the gloom to Lakenheath, one stop on the line to Norwich, not counting Shippea Hill, which according to the map is about five metres above sea level. Lakenheath station is a couple of miles from the village but almost next to the nature reserve, which was handy. I walked through poplar woods to the visitor centre, which has a not too bad coffee machine and and a place to sit with books and magazines and posters and two chatty and knowledgeable RSPB volunteers with binoculars looking out through big windows at a collection of bird feeders under constant attack by platoons of blue tits and great tits – just like home only more so – and beyond them a small lake surrounded by willows and alders. All of a sudden a hawk glided swiftly out of the trees, made a pass in hope at the feeders and disappeared again. I asked the guys what it was – a peregrine! Just six feet away! A dream come true. That was the third time it had visited that morning. And twenty minutes later it was back again.

Then a muntjac appeared, nibbling at the vegetation by the water’s edge, also just a few feet away. I’ve seen them before of course, they’re common, but usually only a distant glimpse as they disappear and the dog rushes after them. And I’ve seen peregrines before, making an entrance in a show that was specially produced for them, but so far away that it was like trying to see who’d scored from the back row at Wembley stadium. They were up near the top of the tower at Tate Modern and the RSPB had a stall set up and were lending binoculars to anyone who wanted to catch the show. And they did the same on the edge of the Clifton gorge in Bristol.

A woman came out of the office and asked the two blokes if they wanted a cup of tea. The chatty one said, ‘you’re too good to us you are!’ They had proper East Anglian accents, accents as endangered as some of the rare birds the RSPBN protects. Ely, just a few miles away is overrun with Londoners and its contribution to linguistic diversity is almost lost. The friendly woman from the office just said, ‘well…’ and went off to make the tea.

According to the leaflet, up until 1995 the area of the reserve was growing carrots. It’s utterly different now. That’s the cleansing and transformative power of water for you. A swift, baptismal transformation. Eric Ennion – more of him later, in fact I’m avoiding writing about him because it’s proving difficult – writes about how quickly things change, how when Adventurers fen grew wet again, as farming declined and the drainage channels became choked and the pumps failed, birds returned and made themselves at home again so quickly, because they are opportunists and blessed, obviously, with great powers of aerial reconaissance. (But what is it with sparrows? It seems they would rather die than leave home. A sparrow very rarely goes more than half a mile from its place of birth, which makes repopulating areas where they have died out very difficult. And why do we seem to care so much more for peregrine falcons than for sparrows?)

I went off for a walk on the public footpath which runs along the embankment of the Little Ouse along the edge of the reserve, dogs being forbidden in the reserve itself. Saw several marsh harriers, distant ducks on a mere, a heron, naturally, and several beautiful great white egrets. One stood in shallow water near a swan, it was so slender and elegant it almost made the swan look clumsy. But I didn’t see the cranes which now nest in the reserve. They are one of a number of refugees from the south which are the cause of great hope and excitement in these parts: spoonbills, glossy ibis, storks, and the most common, the great white egret. The dog chased one muntjac through the tangles beneath poplars and disappeared after another through reeds on the edge of the river. I wouldn’t let her do that during the nesting season. I met a young man with binoculars. He was from Cheshire, down here for a couple of days work. He checks out places for bats, some unusual kind of bat that nests in trees, as part of the planning process. I told him about the egrets and we saw them together as we walked back. He heard a water rail. I was surprised and he said, you might not be able to hear it, it’s very high pitched. I said, well, I’ve got hearing aids but even so… His girl friend, he told me, also has a job in the new environmental world, in the green economy. She works for a company which buys up old gravel pits and the like, cleans them up then just lets them alone. How do they make their money, I asked. Well, one way is to sell carbon credits. I thought that business was now widely ridiculed and discredited, apparently not.

The rain was steady by this time and I left the dog outside when I came back to the visitor centre, where the two old volunteers were still looking through the window, binoculars ready, and drinking tea. The lady from the office came out and said the dog would be very welcome to come inside, so in she came. A pale young man was sitting in an easy chair next to another window with a pair of small binoculars around his neck, doing embroidery, going over a floral pattern printed on a piece of cloth stretched over a hoop. He had a folding bicycle beside him, he had also come by train, from Cambridge. he told me that Lakenheath fen is the only nature reserve near a station in an area with many nature reserves. And he told me that Shippea Hill is the least used station in Cambridgeshire. It has one train a week, at about 7 in the morning, on a saturday. (Really? I tried to check this out but Shippea Hill seems to defeat the Greater Anglia and Trainline websites. They didn’t know when the next train would be. ) He likes to seek out and visit the least used stations in various counties all over the country. We took the train back together, a Stansted airport train via Ely and Cambridge, and he told me that he was a software engineer, working at the moment on the website that calculates whether you can get a grant for replacing your inefficient old gas boiler. At Lakenheath station it was growing dark and you can look for miles down the straight, level track and see the distant light of your approaching train.

2. Radio 3’s new advertising campaign. It’s relentless.

unwind your mind.

the ultimate calm.

And what, exactly, does ‘ambient’ mean?

a safe haven of soothing music, to help you find your focus – destress, wind down, and sleep.

I’m trying to wake up! I don’t want to be put to sleep.

block out distractions, and escape the noise of everyday life.

You are the noise of everyday life!

we’re just pressing pause and giving ourselves some brain space to step back from every day life.

Why have presenters who a little while ago sounded like regular people adopted sinister, insinuating voices, slow and syrupy? In a movie, any child would know that such voices belong to bad witches.

And just when the commons has voted to legalise assisted dying. What about all those warnings about vulnerable old people being pressured to give up and die? I can see her coming for me, immaculate white coat, red lips, false, eager smile and a syringe held behind her back, a syringe loaded with Ultimate Calm.

PS. Reading this now it seems so feeble. I resisted the impulse to swear – not sure why, and I feel now that it would be more effective, more truthful really, if I said I’m trying to fucking wake up! And You are the fucking noise of everyday life! Because I do swear at the radio quite a lot.

Anyway, I left it.