I’m setting up a ‘climate crisis hub’

‘We thought the house would make the most fantastic centre for climate action,’ I heard myself telling the cat rescue lady as she let the two moggies out of their carriers into the living room.

I was trying to reassure the socially conscious liberal who had brought the two cats we were adopting that she was leaving them in what she would consider a good place.

I said: ‘We want it to be somewhere schoolchildren can come to learn about biodiversity…’ What was I on about?

Still, pretending I was turning my house into a climate crisis hub was a bit much.

I had just come back from the bank where they had on their wall a poster for a nearby country house where the owners had done exactly that – to get the EU grants, according to the girl behind the counter when I asked her about it. And why not? We might have to go down that route if the plumbing gets much more expensive.

I regurgitated what was on the wall in the bank to the cat lady after she asked me what I planned to do with the place as we stood in the formal front room, while the cats pottered about mewing and exploring, walking along the piano, then jumping up and sitting inside the grand Georgian box windows.

Rather than saying we were selfish so-and-sos who wanted to live in a big house with land, maybe make a packet by doing Airbnb, I said: ‘We want it to be somewhere schoolchildren can come to learn about sustainability and biodiversity…’ What the heck was I on about?

‘We’re thinking of having a social café, and a series of artist workshops focusing on engaging people in a conversation about nature…’ I was spouting word salad, really.

All things being equal, I would be able to be myself. But the world being as it is, the two lovely black-and-white cats would be loaded back into the carriers and driven away if I’d waxed lyrical about my new oil boiler and said how much I was hoping Trump gets elected.

They were street cats. There’s a programme in the nearby harbour town whereby the strays get trapped and neutered and turned into pets. These two had the ends of one ear cut off to mark them as done.

They looked like they were itching to find a way out of the window.

I think the need to quantify and control, to order nature, is a thing the left like to do, fearing the bloody chaos of the wild.

Tagging, neutering, if necessary culling. As a budding conspiracy theorist, I worry that this is what the lefty elite wants to do to humanity, ultimately. Get the numbers down. Make the masses more compliant. Turn the marauding humans into indoor house pets.

She handed me a bag of ethical cat food, whatever that was.

‘Are there mice here?’ I assumed it was a trick question. I was careful not to say yes, I wanted them gone.

Affecting a feeble air, I admitted there were so many mice they faced me down when I went into the kitchen and ate their biscuits. It’s true. One pops his head out of the bread bin and gives me a dressing down if I disturb him while he’s eating. I thought she would like that.

But to my astonishment she said: ‘Oh good, they’d like to catch mice.’ I managed to stifle the exclamation of joy that nearly burst out of me, turning it into a yelp and a squeamish face to intimate that I couldn’t bear for mousey to get crunched.

As she left, I felt disgusted with myself. But I was at it again a few days later when the builder boyfriend and I went to pick up a chest of drawers he had agreed to buy online from a girl living halfway up a mountain in a farmhouse that had been turned into a trendy hostel. She came down the overgrown drive to meet us in baggy pants, woolly jumper, unbrushed hair standing on end, and once she had divulged she was a musician who played electric violin in a band, I started making a right fool of myself.

As the BB did the deal on the chest and started loading it into his truck, I heard myself talking complete nonsense about being in tune with nature.

I didn’t snap out of it until she started slagging off Britain and Brexit, upon which I heard myself say, very stroppily: ‘The pound is up and the economy is booming.’

Whereupon she revealed her father and brother worked in the City and I realised the hipster drop-out commune, complete with music said to be inspired by the sounds of plants, was being funded by capitalism, and the illusion was lost.

Of course it was all baloney. Why had I even entertained the idea of admiring it?