Long before Oxford, there were notebooks.
As a girl, I was happiest outdoors, usually somewhere along the Thames, looking for whatever could be found beneath stones, in the reeds, or at the edge of the water. I collected specimens, drew what I saw, wrote down far too much about all of it, and developed the slightly inconvenient conviction that the natural world was more interesting than most other things.
At St. Paul’s, this enthusiasm became rather more official. I won the Natural History Prize, which was gratifying, although probably not helpful in discouraging me.
As the years passed, marine biology went from childhood fixation to something approaching a plan. Then, on a trip to Cornwall with my mother, I discovered that I was afraid of the sea.
I went to Oxford to study zoology anyway. For a time, I carried on as though the problem might simply resolve itself.
But life intervened. I fell in love, left Oxford, married, had children, and divorced. Over time, marine biology drifted further out of reach.
When my work allows, I still gather each year at Horlach, our family home in the Scottish Highlands. At some stage, I began to understand that the life one fails to choose at twenty does not necessarily disappear.
So I have returned, in my own fashion, to the subject I left behind, with my beloved Monty.