Professor David Farrier

What tense will you choose to live in?

I choose to live in the what ought to be.

And that really hit home with me because what ought to be expresses the fullness of our time of grief and hope.

It carries that sense of ache and loss, but it also carries that sense of hope, that conviction and commitment, what ought to be.

It just exploded on the page for me because that encapsulates this extraordinary moment we inhabit of loss and hope together.

We can't afford not to hope.

We can't afford to let go.

But we need to hold on to that sense of what has been lost and what language do we have for thinking about the kind of emotional color spectrum that that involves.

It's such an extraordinarily unique sensation and emotion to inhabit.

Hi Amanda, it's great to be with you.

Thank you.

I'm very well, thank you.

I'm delighted to be with you on the podcast.

I'm sitting in my office in the University of Edinburgh.

It's very quiet here because the teaching semester is over.

The students are busy on essays and exams.

Yeah, so it's a quieter period and it's nice to have that point of quiet as the year draws to a close and the darkest point comes upon us.

to have that period of quiet to kind of reflect

which I really enjoy.

increasing interest I had in writing about the environment, writing about place and writing about how the world is changing and we're changing it.