I'm a researcher working on low-carbon housing policy; an eco-renovator; a keen cyclist with my very own Sprocket Man outfit; a man who loves sheds; a decent cook; a street band musician; a champion potterer; ... and an occasional poet.

Jetting off to Malaga
 
Dense fluffy clouds cover the North Atlantic
Like an enormous dish of cauliflower cheese
Vanishing into hazy soup on the distant horizon.
An over-packaged snack of plastic bread
And tiny pots of half-edible gunk, thick with preservative
Seem a worthy last supper before I arrive
On the Costa del Concrete.
 
I travel to see my lover
And her uncomplaining, arthritic mum
Who surely deserves some winter sun.
But her trip leads to her daughter's trip and to mine
And time is always short
And fossil fuel is always cheap
So I do what I know I shouldn't
More often than my fragile civilisation can bear.
 
An invisible but potent fart of carbon dioxide
Spills from the engines on either side of me
And the magical views of the beautiful blue-green planet
Are spoiled by guilt.
Knowledge fails to bring rational action in its train:
Not for me, nor for those I love,
Not for all these other people -
All of us so easily habituated
To the phenomenal power of jet travel
As if we were all gods hiding our superhuman abilities
Behind a bored perusal of an in-flight magazine.
 
Melting ice-shelfs and sea-level rise are headline news
In the complementary copies of the Daily Mail
On the faux-leather seats of a jet plane
Heading off to Malaga at more than half the speed of sound.
And the natural history of the living planet
Flows fractally chaotic past the window
Like an enormous dish of cauliflower cheese
Vanishing into hazy soup on the distant horizon.