Looking over this land now, I can see just what an astonishing thing was achieved at the Pure Genius village. Four weeks ago, depressed by the eviction, I catalogued the things that went wrong there. I owe the other settlers a major apology. Pure Genius survived - in many ways prospered - in the face of conditions which should have been insuperable.

It had to cope not only with the pressures of writs and possession orders, but also with Wandsworth Borough Council's closure of almost every other facility that might have been able to help the drunk, the drugged and the deranged. This was the only community able to care. It also had to survive the strange circumstances of its birth. It's not hard to see how difficult it is to build a sustainable settlement from a spectacular political statement.

What Pure Genius achieved does not end on this piece of blasted land. Both the evicted settlers and the people living in the neighbouring estates are rustling with ideas. They will execute them, when they do, without public fanfare. They need no help from noisy people like me,who are likely, in truth, to be more of a hindrance.

What is brewing in Wandsworth is part of a much wider transformation. All over Britain, communities are waking up to the fact that neither the government nor conventional developers are going to help them. Credit unions, LETS schemes, self-build projects, city farms and gardens, permaculture and community education remain almost invisible to the people who think they are running this country. While the government watches the dead leaves blown across the water by the wind, quietly, beneath the surface, Britain has begun to flow the other way. This is the way the world begins again: not with bang, but a whisper.