I'm an inquisitive type and I've always been interested in finding out more about new topics (apart from DIY, to be honest).

This has taken me into areas I would never have imagined - allowing me to sound relatively well-informed (hopefully) on subjects like data and fintech.

On a normal day, I might be working on a podcast or event, or writing about these bedrocks of the new economy - then do "something completely different", as Monty Python said.

This "something completely different" might include forestry, a subject I knew little about when I left The Scotsman in 2009. More than a decade on, I've discussed the wood and the trees many, many times - and I find the whole topic fascinating.

Working with forestry and trade body Confor, I've learned lots about productive forestry - trees planted specifically to grow timber - and why that matters so much for rural economies. I still can't get my head around the fact that the UK imports 80 per cent of the wood products it uses - the second largest net importer in the world after China. But I have learned that many people just hate the idea of a tree being chopped down - but still want a wooden frame for their new home, a fence or a deck in their garden, or fuel for their wood-burning stove, or …well, you get the picture.

I can't understand why the UK doesn't plant more productive forests and grow more of its own wood - for economic and environmental reasons. Growing trees soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and wood products then store it.

Yet there is still a massive kickback against commercial forestry, some of which dates back to the bad practices of single-species planting in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Modern forests are now planted with a mix of species and objectives in mind - including economic, environmental and social considerations.

There is a big discussion about what modern productive forestry can do for biodiversity - and about which types of trees, and forests, soak up most carbon. A new academic paper about productive forests and climate change was the focus of the latest online meeting of Westminster's All Party Parliamentary Group on Forestry and Tree Planting last week.

I've helped to organise and hosted 10 online APPG meetings since the pandemic arrived, and I've enjoyed them all very much.

This group has thrived online, with large attendances of passionate and well-informed people from varied backgrounds. It's a niche stat, but there were 84 interactions in the chat in under an hour at last week's meeting. [If you're into this niche, read a report of the meeting here, and link to the report and video].

I've chaired a lot of in-person forestry seminars and full-day conferences on forestry too - including a really good event at Adam Smith's House in Edinburgh in February 2020 BC (Before Covid). Hopefully, we'll be back to in-person conferences soon, but many shorter events with a clear purpose will stay online - and rightly so, in my view.

All the forestry events I have hosted - both in-person and online - raise so many discussions and questions. There is always so much to learn - and I guess I will never fully see the wood and the trees.

I once wrote a book called The Wood and the Trees - but that's another story.