This story was written and shared as part of the Read Now Write Now workshops which took place during the Look Climate Lab 2022. To find out more about Read Now Write Now, click here.

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He lay back in the deck chair and let the sun warm his face. Breathing deeply he relaxed and allowed himself to drift. It had been a stressful but productive morning. The meeting had largely gone well. The outline planning permission had been granted. It was just a matter of time before the groundwork would start. There were a few protesters, but that was to be expected. The usual tree huggers and Nimbys.

He awoke feeling colder and reached for his phone. He had an app that controlled everything around his home. Even here outside, he could activate underfloor heating on the patio, or the lights above it with just a swipe.  He smiled as he felt the tiles warm beneath his feet. So much for so called global warming. If the temperature did get warmer, so much the better. He enjoyed short breaks around the Med and long haul trips to the tropics. Who wouldn’t want to bring some of that back home, all year round?

He drifted again and this time when he came to, he could hear a voice saying,

“ A little bird tells me you’re going to dig up the wood.”

When he opened his eyes a Robin, as round as if it had swallowed a fat ball whole, was perched on the table looking right at him, talking.

He laughed at sight of it and marvelled that its voice reminded him of  his grandad, Bob. He had been full of sayings about little birds or going to see a man about a dog. His gran, Jean liked to say that Robins were the souls of loved ones back to visit you. He asked the bird if that was happening now.  As if in answer he found himself floating, following the Robin over fields and roads until they arrived at Bob and Jean’s house.

It wasn’t just his grandparents house now, but as it was forty years ago when he spent happy weekends with them. It felt so good to see them pottering around the house and long back garden he felt warmer and lighter than he had in a long time. Sadly they could not see or hear him when he tried to reach out to them. Instead he watched and listened as they  tended the garden, planting flowers and vegetables. He remembered the scent of tomatoes fresh off the vine and the sweet sharp taste of Gran’s rhubarb crumble.

Then all at once he was flying with the Robin again over streets he remembered from his early days as a builder. He bought and modernised old terraces before selling them on. The properties and the profits got bigger over the years. He had done well for himself. When they arrived back at his own home he couldn’t help feeling proud of his progress.

The house arguably was bigger than he needed. He didn’t have a family but he needed the space for business and entertaining. Everything was top spec – not like some of those early terraces where he had targeted a quick refurb and resale. The garden was the finishing touch. True he didn’t go in for growing things like his grandparents had – there wasn’t enough time for that. It must be sustainable though – the tiles were quarried in Italy and would last forever. The hardwood that made the raised decking and the pergolas was from the far east. They had grown for up to one hundred years before being cut down but would stand for another fifty more in his garden.

He only had three cars – an off road vehicle for country weekends, something smaller with a soft top for when the weather was good and the Jag, well just because.

The Robin interrupted his pleased reverie by bringing him back to the wood on the land he was about to develop. They circled the area now while he argued that it was no more than wasteland with a few trees. It was barely a copse, certainly not a wood. He wasn’t doing anything illegal. He paid his taxes, created jobs for some people and homes for others. People need somewhere to live.

The land below them changed – he assumed they must be in the future now as the trees were gone. The land was built on, more or less to the plans he had for the new estate. He thought it looked good at first landscaped and still surrounded by fields on the outskirts. Then things changed again and the fields had gone too, swallowed up by more buildings and gridlocked roads.

He waited again for the scene to change and felt a moment of panic when it did not. What was the future after that? He looked round for the Robin but it had gone along with his grandad’s reassuring voice. He could hear someone, though it sounded like his own voice, repeating to himself like a mantra,

“The future is unwritten, there’s still time to change, it’s never too late.”

He woke fully this time, back in his own garden. It was dusk now so he reached for his phone again to switch on the lights, then switched them off again, while thinking for the first time about solar power.  Could he change his mind about the wood? Maybe he could amend his plans to make the development smaller or the gardens bigger. The houses could be built ‘greener’ – he would start looking into that tomorrow. He could build around the trees and give the place a name – Bob’s Wood, no Robins’ Wood.  It might not satisfy the tree huggers or the Nimbys, but he liked to think Bob and Jean would be proud.