"Looking closely at the local cliffs and the pebbles, all sorts of patterns and textures emerge: one minute it feels like looking through a telescope at the night sky, another I'm reminded of richly patterned, woven cloth. Cosmic Fabric, it seems to me.

"Then again, whatever we may think of it, I'm drawn to this land because it is just so wonderfully and boldly the ‘wrong’ thing, in the ‘wrong’ place, at the ‘wrong’ time: turns out that nothing commits, against all expectation, like a massive lump of rock. 

"Something in that stubborn determination feels familiar...

"Being here, clung onto by the mainland, I notice that the particular, physical material of the Lizard provides the conditions for whole

new species and subspecies of living things to invent themselves and to thrive.  From tiny clovers to eccentric humans, it’s all available for us. Here.

"On a personal note, as someone who has always considered themselves to be essentially ‘not from anywhere’ and certainly with no special claim to Cornwall, since moving here with my family 10 years ago, I feel more at home, here, than I ever have, anywhere, and maybe that is this rock’s special knack."