I’m away from everything for a bit for Caz’s birthday. Just my beautiful wife and the trees for company, which feels right, considering I’m in Bowness, on Windermere. We took a boat trip today, and the dusty pre-recorded voice told me that Beatrix Potter once bought up fields and woods and eventually left them to the National Trust. She made sure there’d be one of every single native tree from across the whole British Isles (bar none). It was a pretty eccentric thing to do, and the sort of thing that today people in tight jeans and ponytails might wish "billionaires would do today". Quiet respect to Beatrix, I guess.

I know you don't get to be eccentric if you're poor, if I ever make my money, real doing-mad-shit money, I would love to be eccentric, truly do something that fucking matters and lasts. I would do it, not because I want people to remember my name, I don't give a fuck about the words Tom Ive, its because all this fucking hard work and success can;t just be a buy a cunty car or leave my kids a house they won't need because ill teach them how to earn their own? Success has to amount to something fucing wild, and when I say wild I mean it literally - I'm not talking about space travel or a massive stadium, I'm talking about green space, land, biodiversity and something... fucking wild... something spectacular.

One of every tree in the British Isles, on a single slope on the far bank of Windermere opposite Bowness, let that sink in. Absolute unfaltering British biodiversity. Wow.

Tonight I’m sitting behind a massive carved door - By the looks of it, it's Indian, centuries old, dragged halfway across the world to be a statement piece at the entrance of Mizumi, the hotel’s Asian-fusion restaurant. It’s the sort of door you’d expect to open into a dusty temple courtyard or something Indiana Jones might blow up without a second thought for actual archaeology. But instead you get sweeping 'Asian' music and odd sake cocktails. This restaurant has no idea what it's doing, it has Thai curries, Japanese sushi, Chinese stir-fry, and Indian curry, all jammed together on Frankenstein's menu. It shouldn’t work, but it does, my brain glazed over it after noting the oddity, in that absurd holiday way where you stop caring about whether things make sense because you're on holiday.

Inside this mixed-up Asian-fusion-Frankensteins restaurant, I found myself half-listening to a young American woman at the next table. She was American. Her accent was so loud and obnoxious that kind of American that can cut through the spa-style gong music like it was nothing. She was telling her friend, loud enough for me to catch every word, how rotten colonial England was, how we’d spoiled entire continents and left wounds still bleeding and how dare we lump all of Asia together under one roof.

She wasn’t wrong - we did do that, the colonial bit I mean. But I couldn’t help sitting there thinking how odd it was, hearing it come from her mouth in that accent - America, the empire that took the colonial baton from England, turbocharged with modern economic imperialism and ran further than the historic British ever could. It felt strange, but not in an angry way - more like noticing that the telling of history never really finds a focus point in truth, it just changes focus depending on the source. I sat there with my curry next to me and weird modern carbon fibre chopsticks, wondering if maybe everyone is so busy looking at everyone else's atrocities that they're too busy to see their own. Me included.

She was wrong about the restaurant, cultures always trade and exchange food, the restaurant was sound, culinary brilliance. If I could find any defence for the poor lass it was that the decor was a little ‘Asia soup’. There’s something oddly comforting about it, really - an ancient Indian door propped up in the Lakes, guarding a restaurant that can’t decide which part of Asia it wants to be. Maybe it’s actually just being honest about the muddle we all are, trying to pin ourselves to places, cuisines, and roots. Or, much more feasibly, maybe not. I could have done without the loud ramblings of a probably well-meaning American teenager, but we had a wonderful meal and I'm very comfortable to tell you I had curry, Thai food, Chinese, sushi and a sticky toffee pudding. She would definitely classify our table culinary hate crime, but it was exceptionally tasty. I'm going to insult the Spanish now, too and say if anything, it was like 'Asian' tapas. Banging.

Caz and I have spent a lot of time discussing the trees out here, it took us ages to identify them and wonder how old they are. They’re just here because someone who loved them and made sure they’d stay. I do love Victorian and Edwardian gardens, it reminds me of Monk's Kirby or Newnham Paddox and where we used to visit sword punk under the blessing of the Earl of Denbigh and Desmond. He's got a massive fancy name, but we know him as Zed. I think folly gardens are stunning and they stand for something: If you sit with nature long enough, choose to plant something real, it'll last hundreds of years, if not much, much longer. I can take or leave the miniature temples and funny structures, but when they degrade, they only add to the beauty. Here in Windemere, it's the same. The trees cover the land, hand-picked by nature, sometimes hand-picked by the residents. If you zoom out, it would be easy to mistake the lakes for a giant curated folly garden. The trees, the water, the hills, the spacing. Perfection. Picked by whatever higher power you choose to believe could curate such beauty. I choose to believe nature is responsible.

I'm grateful for the time away and nature.

Music was David Gray - Please Forgive Me

Old trees and culinary crimes

Barefoot Path

Old trees and culinary crimes

Skipton - My Town

Barefoot Path