The New Walden

Lots of people talk about 'getting closer to nature' or 'living off the land', especially when sitting in hot offices in London or jam-packed into tube trains - something I've had my share of. It's an easy thing to do.

But now that I am living closer to nature I am going to do my best to replicate the dreamy imaginings that filled my head through all those years living in a tiny studio flat in Peckham. I feel I owe it to myself and to those who don't get to fully experience the British summer.

I also want to avoid being one of those feckless wankers who arrives from London and steamrollers over everything. My get-out clause is that I am from the north and am merely returning after a long stint (15 years) of drinking, writing, interviewing bands, running a record label, publishing books, getting up to mischief and avoiding being shanked by my hot-headed south London brethren.

So, in between the journalism stuff and the book-writing stuff, I am intending to clean up the pond (below) that has gone to seed, been filled with litter, treated as dumping ground and just generally left in a state of minor disrepair. What was once a popular swimming and fishing hole (and before that an overspill pond from the mill, now long-since gone) has now been left.

The aim is to encourage more wildlife (there is already bird life, thousands of tadpoles, roach, rumours of pike, mammal holes and a huge heron that lives in the rushes) without messing with things too much. I think it needs to be left while - who wants sanitised, ordered nature?

It's a secret place and should stay that way - but it would be an even greater idyllic oasis without the broken bottles, cans, rusted oil drums and that enemy of the countryside: plastic.

I've just spend three hours down there, surveying the land, shifting abandoned tyres and palettes, hanging bird feeders and getting stung to buggery by the shoulder-high nettles. I could think of no better way to pass the time and intend to keep getting my hands dirty

We have already nicknamed it Walden Pond, in tribute to Thoreau.

Watch this space.