The frogs started spawning earlier than last year but continued well into March, filling up the first shallow beach and then almost obscuring the second. At night I would sit on the cold bench and listen to them croak into the night sky, listen to their splashes of frustration and possession, the scraps between males over females, the ambush of a frog that dared jump into the melee. If I moved like a whisper I could get close enough to shine my torch and see them at it, but I found I preferred not to. I found I preferred the darkness of the bench, of being alone with my senses, of honing in on every splash and croak.

One night, as I shivered quietly, I heard squeaking above the continuous rumble of croaking frogs. My ears pricked; hello! I turned on the torch and there it was, a young male toad lounging on the frogspawn like a teenager on the sofa. Common toads don’t croak to attract females but squeak or peep, which is exactly what he was doing, although why was he on his own? ‘Where are your friends?’ I asked him. ‘Where are the girls?’ Over the next few days more toads arrived via the twitten from who-knows-where, and splayed out in the pond like the first one. ‘Squeak squeak squeak,’ they said. I put the camera on the back gate to see if I could spot females arriving but none did. Would these males squeak for nothing? Another night I swear I could hear squeaking from elsewhere, too. A greater number than the eight in my pond, but far enough away for my toads to be louder. Where was this other pond? I had no idea.

It crossed my mind to take the torch and head into the night to find out. They sounded like they were in a garden north of mine, maybe five doors down, near the neighbour who found the toad that she was sure was on its way here. Could one of her neighbours on the other side of her have a pond? Should I find out? In the end I chickened out of going to look for it; Portslade-by-Sea is not the place to be caught in a twitten looking into back gardens by torchlight; I would need to find another way.

Who do I know on that part of the road? People to nod shy hellos to: the man with a toddler called Arthur, the woman with a dog called Twiggy. Literally no one to march up to and ask if they had a pond, let alone one with breeding toads in it.

I was reminded of my friend Wayne, who, when he moved into his house, leaflet-dropped the whole road asking who had a pond (and what lived in it), who had hedgehogs, who did things for wildlife generally. Most people didn’t get back to him but some did, and instantly he knew who his allies were in his efforts to save species. He also knew how likely he was to get toads in his garden. With his knowledge, charisma and enthusiasm he has built the most amazing network of wildlife gardens in his neighbourhood, with a hedgehog population to match. He’s made a hedgehog box for virtually every one of his neighbours, and clubs together with some of them to buy hedgehog food. He’s a hero and a credit to us all, and we should all be more like him.

I’m not quite ready to leaflet these streets, asking who has a pond, but I am ready, perhaps, to strike up a conversation with Twiggy’s mum in the park. The toads have been and gone for this year, so I have a good 12 months to bring myself around to it.

In Brighton every other roof is home to a pair of nesting seagulls; herring gulls and lesser black-backed gulls, to be exact, and their enormous gangly chicks that tumble down chimneys and off roofs into gardens, and who wander around the streets among clubbers and pub-goers, squawking into the night. There are ‘gull people’ who keep an eye on them, who go around town with a ladder and a net, replacing fallen chicks to their roof (or as close as they can get them), who collect casualties and take them to rescue centres. Once, I spotted a herring gull caught in a kite up high in a tree, its mate waiting desperately by. I alerted the gull people and they had a team of tree surgeons setting it free within the hour. There are those who feed them and care for them in their homes, those whose house you can turn up to with an injured gull, who know exactly what to do with it. There’s a whole community of people that exists only to help Brighton and Hove’s seagulls, who step up during their nesting season and ensure more of the chicks survive than they otherwise would. Their lives and ours, entangled as they are, in this built-up city by the sea.

You can tell the time by the gulls. At dawn they call to each other as if greeting good morning. At dusk they fly south, zoning towards the water, the sunset reflected on their bellies. I’ve never managed to find out if they roost on the sea or just visit at dusk to feed, but it seems some do – certainly some fly out at dusk and back again at dawn. I’ve always thought how magical it must be to sleep like that out in the open, feeling safe beneath the sheltering sky, with so much going on beneath what you can actually see and feel. I have slept on dive boats a few times and felt the power of the sky above me, the mystery of what lurks beneath. But I was in a boat, with showers and duvets and a kitchen and chefs. Imagine just sleeping out on the ocean, bobbing about in the water, snuggled only beneath a blanket of stars.

They don’t nest on my roof, which makes me sad, because they would be so safe here. But they do come into the garden. Herring gulls gather sticks to make their nests, take ridiculous swims around my pond. They stand guard as I set the table outside for summer meals and Ack-Ack-Ack to their mates if it looks like the food might be decent. Sometimes, if I leave the back door open, they come into the house, their feet slapping on the kitchen tiles as they raid Tosca’s bowl for meaty morsels. I don’t feed them, per se, but if the hedgehogs haven’t eaten all of their food I leave the lid off the feeding station in the morning so the gulls can have their breakfast – kitten biscuits flying everywhere as they peck, dramatically, into the dish. Ack-Ack-Ack-Ack, Ack-Ack-Ack.

I used to say, ‘You can always tell when the buzzards are around, because the gulls go bonkers.’ And they would. They do. Suddenly the rooftops erupt with distressed gulls calling to each other to protect their chicks or eggs or even half-formed nests. I look to the sky and might see one or two buzzards circling above them. Or I might see a peregrine falcon, one of those that nests in the city centre and usually takes starlings and pigeons. These days I’m more likely to see the drone the bad man flies to stop the gulls nesting on his roof.

Several times a day now, the gulls launch themselves into the air, flying in circles and crying out their horribly distressing alarm calls. It’s not a predator disturbing them but a drone, a drone flying too close to their nests. I thought it was a mistake at first. I thought whoever was doing this was interested in seeing the gulls’ nesting. I see this at Brighton beach when the starlings are murmurating – the drones always fly too close, weaving among the birds and causing them to shape-shift into different forms to escape them. But it’s born of an idiot wanting to get better footage, who ultimately likes the starlings. Sadly, this isn’t an overeager gull enthusiast who can be gently persuaded to keep his distance. If only it were.

I don’t like Facebook but it’s best for community groups and I’m a member of a few that keep me updated with various things I like to know about (e.g. when the park is due its annual haircut so I can rescue butterfly caterpillars). There’s a group for the road next to mine, which is handy for knowing if the bins won’t be collected or if there are any road works or does-anyone-have-a-spare-parking-permit or did-you-hear-the-motorbike-last-night-it-was-very-loud-do-you-think-it-was-the-same-one-involved-in-the-crash-that’s-been-reported-in-the-Argus?

One day someone wrote about the drone. ‘I think it’s being used to deliberately scare the seagulls,’ she said, ‘can everyone keep an eye out?’ She reported the incident to the police but, without knowing who was responsible, couldn’t get much done about it. A few days later she had worked out who it was – a man with a warehouse on the road behind hers, who was flying the drone at lesser black-backed gull nests to stop them nesting on his roof. She spoke to him but he was horrible. She updated the police but they still didn’t come. I reported the incident to the police, too, using the same crime reference number she originally used. They wrote back and said it was being dealt with. But it’s not being dealt with. The drone’s still flying and the gulls are still crying and up to five times a day I feel my whole body tighten as a man sends his drone to the rooftops to deliberately distress nesting birds. Where are the police? Where is the justice? How do I get these sounds out of my ears?

My partner Emma and I head to Birmingham, to see Mum, my sister Ellie and my half-sister Anna, while Tosca has a holiday with the dog sitter. Due to Covid, it’s only the second time Emma has met them, and she’s never met little nephew Stanley, Ellie’s partner Gareth, Anna’s partner Alex or mum’s husband Pete. ‘Time to throw you to the wolves,’ I say.

‘I’m s-s-s-s-sorry for my la-la-la-la-language,’ Mum stutters to Emma, and then explains she’s had a brain haemorrhage, as if she’d forgotten to mention it the last time they met, or as if I’d not done so in the two and a half years we’ve been together. Her stutter comes and goes and she loses it as soon as she relaxes. ‘I work very hard on my brain,’ she says, and proceeds to list the ways, while Emma nods enthusiastically. ‘Every day I do Sudoku, Wordle, Words with Friends, and then Pete joins me for the crosswords (the standard and the cryptic), and then we do “the quiz”,’ she says proudly.

‘What’s the quiz?’ I ask.

‘The quiz,’ Mum replies. ‘Pete asks the questions and I answer them.’ I am, as ever, none the wiser.

‘I was very surprised’, says Pete, ‘to learn today that your mum knows who Harry Styles’ girlfriend is.’

‘Who’s Harry Styles’ girlfriend?’ I ask.

‘Cheryl Cole,’ says Mum, ‘and she’s a good fifteen years older than him.’

Emma googles this and can’t find any information to confirm or deny this ‘fact’. It’s something no one else in the room had ever thought about.

‘And how do you know this?’ I ask.

‘Haven’t a clue,’ says Mum.

It’s been six years since her haemorrhage, a Grade 4 subarachnoid bleed on the brain, after which she spent two months in hospital. (‘N-n-n-n-n-o I d-d-d-d-d-didn’t!’ she says, ‘I would have remembered!’)

She bled into the front-left part of her brain, the bit where all the language and speech is. A tragedy for someone who taught literature in secondary schools for 40 years and who knows the Latin stem of everything. Who has an annoying habit of quoting Shakespeare and other random pieces of literature she thinks we should all, too, have engraved on our brains. We thought this habit had been washed away with the blood but it returned, one day, when she sprang a test on us, just like she always has.

‘Nature red in tooth and claw,’ she crowed, rubbing her thighs. ‘Who wrote it who wrote it?’

‘Tennyson,’ I replied. It’s an easy one, for me. It’s the one everyone rolls out on Twitter whenever a woodpecker eats a blue tit or something similarly unsavoury. ‘Oh it’s all so brutal, isn’t it? Nature red in tooth and claw!’, they post. ‘Yes indeed, yes it is, yes.’ come the replies.

‘Marvellous,’ said Mum. ‘Excellent daughter.’

‘I haven’t actually read it,’ I sighed, ‘it’s just quite a well-worn phrase, isn’t it?’

‘A well-worn phrase? You haven’t read Tennyson?’

We all googled the poem and realised quickly why none of us other than Mum had read it. It has several parts and was written in different years and, ‘Has anyone actually got to the tooth and claw bit yet?’

‘Heathens,’ Mum remarked, and we laughed.

‘I’m sorry I haven’t read any Tennyson,’ I lied, and reminded her that I read her favourite poems to her – T. S. Eliot’s Wasteland and Philip Larkin’s Aubade – when she was unconscious in hospital.

‘You did WHAT?’ Mum spat out her tea. ‘Christ, no wonder I nearly died.’

She lost her speech entirely for a few weeks and then slowly got it back, but she still forgets words sometimes. There is often such beauty in her quest to find them, like when in hospital she described the woman who ‘lived on the wall opposite,’ or when she got really into the wheelchair tennis but forgot both the words ‘wheelchair’ and ‘tennis’. ‘They drive around in little boats,’ she said, and we all chimed, ‘Golf! The rowing! Tour de France?’ and she said, ‘No!’ and became frustrated. ‘Little boats,’ she said, ‘little boats.’ Two days later, out of nowhere, she said ‘I’m really enjoying the wheelchair tennis,’ and we all said ‘Ohhhhhhhhhh,’ and laughed for days.

She can’t read books anymore, she has no concentration. I buy her poetry compilations; she can just about keep up with a poem, although she forgets about it soon afterwards. ‘I’m happy sitting with Pete and doing my brain games,’ she says. She makes me play Words with Friends, an online version of Scrabble but with coloured tiles and themed headdresses when you reach a certain goal (I’ve currently got one with frogs on it). Sometimes she beats me. Sometimes.

According to the doctors, she made a complete recovery; only we know the bits of her that have come since her injury. The part of the brain where the language is also dictates behaviour, and we were warned that she might become more volatile and impulsive. There’s a switch, and if it’s flicked she’ll fly into a rage and there’s no getting through to her. We’re getting used to it and we are learning, gradually, how not to stoke the fire. There have been a few slip-ups, usually when I haven’t realised that this is ‘brain haemorrhage rage’ rather than her just being her usual stubborn self. I spend less time with her than the others and I forget, sometimes, that these days they can read her better than I can.

She also has ‘funny turns’, where she goes quiet suddenly and has to hold on to something to steady herself, even if sitting down. We don’t really know what that is but it comes and goes; she used to have several a day and can now go months without having one at all, but then will have one, suddenly, that takes us by surprise. It’s as if there’s scar tissue around the injury and sometimes messages in the brain hit the wrong bit, come to a sort of dead end and the whole brain short circuits and needs resetting. It’s scary when it happens but, again, we’re all used to it. Five minutes later and she’s fine again, although always a bit shaken.

The sun is shining, and we sit on the front lawn together, taking in the last of the day. I notice the first red mason and tawny mining bees of the year and have to remind myself to focus on my family and not spend the entire time staring at the trunk of the tree where the insects bask. Mum asks Alex, who is very handy, to fix her water butt and downpipe, which are clogged up with moss and silt. (Poor Alex, he always gets given jobs when he visits.) Emma and Gareth keep sneaking off for ‘chats’.

‘Can I go to Liverpool with Gareth tomorrow to watch the football?’ asks Emma.

‘No you may not,’ I reply.

It’s been so long since I’ve been home I had forgotten they are under the flight path of Birmingham Airport. That being woken at 6.10 a.m. as the first plane flies overhead is quite intrusive, that conversations are interrupted, as we pause to let the noise fade, that the others barely notice it, Ellie even finds it comforting. But I struggle, as I struggle with lots of things these days, as each plane is a reminder of empty promises to reduce emissions, of the mountain of work yet to be done. I haven’t quit flying completely but I do so very infrequently (although I was never a very frequent flyer). I suppose that makes me a hypocrite – taking part in one of the very things that needs to be curtailed if we are to meet our emissions targets. I drive too, but again, very little. I’m not perfect. I think it’s OK to live in today’s world while striving for tomorrow’s. I’m practically vegan, I buy very few clothes, I drive and fly very little and walk or take public transport nearly always. You can be part of a world that needs changing and still push for that change. You can be a car driver but still campaign for cleaner roads for asthmatic children. You can eat meat while campaigning for an end to factory farming. I don’t like flying and I don’t want to fly but sometimes it’s easier and cheaper to fly and, as with all partnerships, the decision to fly or not isn’t always mine alone to make. But now, with a plane drowning conversation every two minutes, I’m faced with the enormity of what needs fixing. And it’s overwhelming.

Emma, Alex, Anna and I go for a walk with Mum. ‘Pete doesn’t like walking,’ she tells us, so it’s nice that we can join her. We cross a meadow into agricultural fields and I don’t know where I am. There are nearby villages I’d never heard of. There’s not much in the sky; a baby buzzard mews for its parents and we stop at a big log and take photos of each other. They’ve had so much more rain here than we’ve had in Brighton; I can’t believe how different the landscape is.

We pass the garden centre that closed down and was left abandoned with all the plants left on the shelves with no one to love or water them. ‘I’ve rescued a few,’ says Mum, who explains that she has been sneaking in for months and helping herself to plants that ‘don’t belong to anyone anymore’. Anna puts her face in her hands and we try not to laugh while reminding her she is stealing.

‘It’s not stealing if you’re rescuing things left for dead,’ she explains. ‘I have given them new life.’

‘What plants did you take?’ I ask.

‘Ah,’ she says. ‘I’ll need your help to identify some of them, darling. But they’re really coming along, the garden is looking splendid.’ We are hereby complicit in her crime.