I was an average student in everything except geography, where I seemed to excel at understanding landforms and developed a thirst for knowledge and a joy of a developing vocabulary. Who wouldn’t want to know about castellated ramparts, subduction zones and podsolisation! I struggled with science but felt it was so important to develop and test hypotheses – and biology field studies were a small but joyful part of my school career. I am an English West Country girl and delighted in coastal habitats; on the coast at Studland I identified my first grass – Townsend’s Cord grass – of course! To my shame, at that stage in my career, I didn’t understand the ethos and discipline of making biological records and I note that this discipline remains absent from our school curricula.