Well, I stand here for the speechless. Today I speak for the mayflies, the minnows, the moorhens. The bitterns, the buntings, the bream. I'm murmuring for the tadpoles, warbling for the warblers, whispering for the reeds and the rushes, bubbling for the chubb, rudd, roach and dace.

I'm here spouting for the sticklebacks trying to sparkle and shine in the murky slow-flow of a stream suffocated by silage waste, blindly spinning in search of the last patch of gravel beneath the tonnes of silt that has washed from the fields, lost in the gloop of glyphosate, gulping neonics and nitrogen.

I'm here to shout for the trout of the Trent, the Tees, the Thames and the Tyne, for those fish whose sides don't shine, down in the soup of sewerage spilled by the greedy to clog the gills of those beautiful creatures that give anglers thrills and kingfishers meals.

I'm here squawking for the heron, stock still in the shallows of a stagnant pond, staring at a mat of impenetrable algae, starving. I'm here for the other curled up at the end of the lake whose poisoned livers ache, whose stinging eyes can't make out the pipes of the industries that have relentlessly and illegally pumped waste into its ancient water-world.

Today, I'm screaming for the seals, the seabirds. I'm screeching for those stranded on the strandline amongst the flotsam of plastic that the tides will tow back and forth for all our forevers.