I was lost. Hopelessly lost. Getting lost was an occupational hazard for a new Member of the European Parliament (MEP). The parliament building in Brussels is enormous. But help was at hand in the form of Frank Schwalba-Hoth, a former German Green MEP. He looked kind and was wearing a bowtie.

“Where are you trying to get to?” he asked.

I gave him the number of the committee room. “Right”, he declared,

“Follow me!” It was a fair walk and as we proceeded, “Have you decided?”, he asked.

“Um, decided what?”

“Decided on your focus. You can't do everything. When you walk through parliament, you need people to point and say: ‘That's Paul Brannen MEP. He's the Mother Teresa of … windfarms’, or something along those lines”.

We arrived at the committee room and with a shake of hands he was off.

It was a year before I saw him again. As it happens, it was at a climate change event I was speaking at, in the Chapelle pour l’Europe in Brussels. Herr Schwalba-Hoth was the chair. At the end, over a glass of Cabernet in the crypt, I asked him if he remembered our first meeting.

“Oh indeed”.

“So, what am I the Mother Teresa of?”

“You, Paul, are the Mother Teresa of trees”.

I’ve always had a few issues with Mother Teresa, so I mentally translated this into “the Martin Luther King of trees” which fitted in better with my theology.

From then on I was determined to become if not an expert at least reasonably well informed on trees, timber and their climate benefits (as opposed to becoming an elderly Albanian nun). Before long I was sitting on the European Parliament's Agriculture and Environment committees, focusing on forestry and on using more wood in buildings and the built environment.

Then Brexit struck. I was now a political Dodo. A “former British MEP”. But, thanks to Herr Schwalba-Hoth I departed the Parliament with a niche understanding of European wood products and their potential to help decarbonize the built environment.