Firstly, the personal news.

I know it’s been a long time, but I am well, thank you.

I am also busy.

Right, now that’s out of the way, Plantlife UK are encouraging people not to mow their lawns for the month of May. This is an effort to improve the biodiversity of our gardens, which could be a rich habitat for all kinds of life, but in many cases are a boring monoculture of shortly clipped and ‘neat’ grass. Only a very limited selection of critters finds this of any interest at all, and you wouldn’t find anything like it in any natural habitat in the wild.

You would think that this is easy for everyone. Park lawn mower in the shed, leave it alone and let whatever seed has alighted in your garden grow for a while.

But ever since having ‘a lawn’ filtered down from the high-class and…