the cover on the swimming pool, preparing meals and running the house. As we load the dishwasher she tells me that she was Green long before it was fashionable, because she and Angus had to make do and mend as they put their children through private school. Fiona is always smart and keeps her house tidy; Nicola is all flyaway hair, ethnic waistcoat and untidy bedrooms.
Her brother Drew is staying too and he’s a big fan of Loaded. He’s carrying a CD. Angus picks it up and asks ‘‘Sorted for Es and Whizz’? What’s all that about then?’ It might be OK here. I drink whisky, which Angus seems to approve of, even if my coppicing is, as yet, uninspired.
So in turn I take her to visit my parents, who now live in King’s Lynn. She’s a little bemused that my mum does all the work and that we eat at six o’clock and no-one speaks during meals. Her family are normally arguing, telling stories, swearing or laughing throughout dinner, which is at eight. ‘I’m not a performing monkey,’ I tell her, ‘we don’t do raconteurs in my family.’ She’s no doubt spotted that we call the living room the lounge and the loo the toilet.
My dad is baffled at meeting an assertive woman. Nicola quite enjoys challenging his opinions. He has no sympathy with the Greens. A retired farmer and lifelong Tory he tells us over a pint of home brew, ‘There’s no such thing as global warming, it’s invented by people who make a living out of it. They’ve all got college jobs, they rely on it to sell their books. And if the ocean level rises a foot what effect will that have on us?’ He then produces an article from Farmers Weekly that proves that organic food is a waste of time and that nitrates are really good for the land.
She must be committed to this relationship to be listening to this here in Norfolk with me. She copes with my dad’s views with hitherto unknown levels of diplomacy.
‘Thank you for putting up with this. My dad enjoys telling people they’re wrong.’
‘I’ve heard it all before from my relatives. And I was enjoying counting how many ways he could insert “Well, if Pete had gone into farming” into a conversation.’
‘Can you imagine me as a farmer?’
‘I can’t imagine anyone worse. You’re completely cack-handed at anything practical!’
There’s a small blip when she tells him to slow down in his car – no one in my family has dared criticise my dad’s driving – as he drives past a pheasant, but no disasters. She puts up with lots of things that irritate her, such as watching television and always having to drive to pub lunches. No-one does that simply out of politeness. She’s doing it for me. I want to believe she’s doing it for me.
Meanwhile my Oxford commutes continue. My true inauguration into the Green set comes with an invitation to George Monbiot’s party. No one drives to this venue. In the front garden of George’s two-storey house is a huge mountain of mating bikes. Racing bikes, granny bikes, mountain bikes. Piled on top of each other like a bizarre cyclical sculpture. The sort of thing the EU should do something about.
Inside it’s squeezing room only. In one corner of the living room stand a group of bearded Newbury veterans and members of the Donga Tribe, jamming on bongos, violins and harmonicas singing in pseudo-folkie voices and occasionally blowing tin whistles.
Many guests appear to have been issued with ethnic trousers with drawstrings. A man in a rainbow jumper is slumped on the stairs. Fashion has clearly never penetrated Oxford. Collarless shirts, tweed jackets and endlessly patched trousers are everywhere. This party would never feature on a glossy magazine’s lifestyle pages. Not a high heel, short skirt or a glass of champagne in sight. We’re soon introduced to a local novelist, a woman doing a project on bananas and a man who was working for Sting’s Rainforest Foundation. George is unfailingly friendly, performing introductions as if he’s on Question Time.
‘Ah, yes, this is Nicola who’s an environmental journalist and director of the FMF, and this is Pete who’s a journalist doing some very interesting work with, erm, football, and this is Tim Pears who’s just written a fantastic novel and this is Piers who’s back from PNG where’s he’s campaigning on logging issues.’
The guests appear impressed by a commissioned book, but there’s a silence when I mention it’s on something called football. At times it feels less a party and more like a convention of anthropologists. No wonder we have global warming; it’s because the Oxford Greens are doing so much flying around the world studying deforestation, indigenous tribes and Fairtrade fruit.
It does make me wonder if my split existence can really continue. It’s football and TV versus Frisbees and story telling, showbiz parties in London versus tin-whistle affairs in Oxford. Is love worth a future of drawstring trousers? The only solution is to try and not think too hard about it and to gratefully sup several bottles of organically-brewed beer.
A couple of weeks later we’re on another big night out and as we’re on the wrong side of Oxford we end up sleeping at Oliver’s house, dossing down on the floor of his office. We’re awoken at the unbelievable time of 6.30 am by the sound of something mechanical swishing. Light cascades into the previously dark room as an organic hangover batters my cranium.
‘Oliver has automatic curtains. He likes to get up with the sun,’ explains a strangely awake Nicola. She thinks the automatic curtains are a brilliant invention.
Ten minutes later Oliver emerges munching a bowl of muesli and wearing headphones. Where’s the coffee? Sodding 6.30 am. Who wants Gaia and a perfect sense of elemental nature at this time? It’s neither day or night.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ booms Oliver. ‘I was just listening to yesterday’s Archers on my personal stereo.’
‘Do you know what is the biggest problem about saving the planet?’ I ask Nicola.
‘No.’
‘The hours.’
I Guess We’ll Always Have Powys
In the outside world Radiohead have the Bends, Paul Weller is the Changingman and Oasis say the sink is full of fishes. Eric Cantona’s away with the seagulls and trawlers after being suspended for kung-fu kicking Crystal Palace fan Matthew Simmons. John Smith is ushering in a New-ish Labour and Jarvis Cocker wants to do what Common People do. Meanwhile I’m marooned inside a roofless cottage, desperately trying to restrict my bowel movements through fear of using the compost loo.
Gazing at the hole in a piece of wood intended for my backside and the accompanying bucket of sawdust, it seems that Green life is perhaps beyond me. Or more accurately, beneath me.
An updraught of cold air chills my buttocks. Cobwebs cover the bare stone walls of the bathroom. Outside, half a metre away from the condensation-drenched bathroom window, is a slab of bare and decidedly damp rock.
The house has been dug into the hillside in an attempt to keep out the winds that sweep down the valley. Ernest Shackleton must have felt a little like this when he was immobile on the Endurance, sitting in darkness for months, not having a proper loo either and waiting for the pack ice to close in and crush the life from his vessel.
Nicola has invited me to a meeting of like-minded eco-warriors in Powys, Wales. We’re staying in the house of a man called Chris. He looks a prototype Green. He’s got a light beard and the thin wiry frame of the perpetual cyclist. No sign of a paunch, just a six-pack stomach from a diet of vegetable stir-fries and much mountain biking. From the evidence of the ropes and karabiners in his garage Chris knows a lot about climbing and abseiling. There’s a canoe too. Chris works in some capacity at the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) in Machynlleth, known affectionately as ‘CAT’ to CAT people.
We visit CAT after finally leaving the train that spent several eons perambulating gently through the wintry hills under grey skies. Set in an old slate mine, CAT has a hydro-powered cliff railway, lots of solar panels,