We’re just back, well fed and watered, from our annual holiday. This year we revisited the Lake District, after an absence of 18 years. Our eldest son, then a toddler, described that visit as “the holiday with the hills and the rain”. The description still holds. Back in 1991 we spent most of the time making sure our little darling wasn’t about to wander over a cliff edge. This time around we were free to please ourselves, and that meant...

As the papers tell us, we’re enduring the worst recession since the Norman Conquest. So it’s no surprise that people are flocking to their local allotments. The ideal of cheaper fruit and veg, coupled with the fact that some people are suddenly finding themselves with lots of spare time on their hands, makes growing your own seem an attractive prospect. As our regular reader will tell you, we’ve had a bash at growing our own in the garden...

…since I posted here. I had a week off at the start of August and since then, apart from a few enquiries and some plans work, I’ve been able to concentrate on my own poor neglected garden. This weekend has been a Proper Summer weekend – sunshine, lawn-mowing, England losing by an innings on the third day, that sort of thing. And we’ve spent it pruning, lopping, excavating, shoveling and generally killing ourselves off. We’ve taken 36...