I went to Hockley Woods with Patrick Mckenna - an ecologist from Rochford District Council. Before we met everyone spoke of the ‘mad Geordie in the woods’. When I met him he was wearing a suit and immaculate shoes - not ‘wood-like’ at all. He had the most crushing handshake, which left my fingers numb for a while.

He showed me piles of coppiced wood that could be used for the sculpture. He told me the devastating news that most indigenous wood FLOATS and won’t sink in water. DOH! What a fool, I’m just no good at practical things (did anyone tell me about wood floating before - or wasn’t I listening?) He also raised a possible problem with submerging sculpture parts in Rochford Reservoir - that contact with water would extract tannin from the wood. But, this is not an issue in the case of A Secret Sculpture as the wood is not going to be in the reservoir for long enough. Phew! I left wishing I had met Patrick earlier in the process. The project is aware of its own ecological footprint - if only through my own interest, which is ethically rather than scientifically informed. I left realising how little I know about ecology.
Patrick gave me a lift back to Rochford. He told me he didn’t eat supermarket meat and had been out shooting pheasants the previous week. I like this idea. I became vegetarian at the age of 12 in protest against having to eat cheap processed meat.

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