A child walks out from her sleeping body into the cool morning. She is barefoot on the Living Ground, and beyond the verandah a vine carries ripe fruit above the route to breakfast. The air smells of leaves and food. Her parents are still nearby, unhurried. She knows the path to the other children, the orchard, the water and the place where the morning meal will be waiting.

She reaches for fruit because it is there. Nobody is waiting to ask for a coin before the child can eat. The growers, stewards, soil, water systems and people who care for the place have done their work. That is why her morning can begin so simply.

Somewhere a family has arrived from another country. Their children are sleeping, the parents have bathed, and there is food when they wake. A capable engineer has found an opportunity to contribute without first losing a year of life in employment uncertainty. A mother has sent her eight-year-old to visit friends along a safe route and returned to her own unfinished book. A husband and wife have gone swimming after work and are laughing through a very long table-tennis rally.

Sher would notice if the wash route needed improving. I would want to know whether the media system had kept the family’s latest memories safe. Our children would find something to do that we had not planned. Life would continue making demands upon our imagination, and we would continue delightedly meeting them.

I think back to 2008, to a young man who could not swim. I think of the week in August 2013 when I met Sher and married her. I think of our son Kairo, of Keilah, of the Turkish berries, of the extraordinary speed of Korean internet, of the first seeds in Prado, and of three children on a bicycle by the sea.

The whole journey has been a gift. Now we are making the gift shareable. That is the Trott Bailey Family Civilization.