If it ain’t brack­en, don’t fix it.

I refuse to apolo­gise for that pun, you’ll just have to suffer. Here is a photo I took of myself recently in my dad’s garden. I can’t remem­ber the last time I had a new photo of myself bar a few awkward phone snaps when I’ve been out. Perhaps you could say I was commun­ing with nature when I took this photo, but I was sat on a plastic bag to avoid sitting in anything nasty hidden under­neath the plants, so I don’t think I was that in touch with nature. Luck­ily we don’t have pois­on ivy or danger­ous snakes in this coun­try, I was more worried about the milder perils of sting­ing nettles or fox drop­pings. I was also a little limited with angles and fram­ing, because stick­ing a wide-angle lens in your face is rarely flat­ter­ing, but I couldn’t get the distance to use my portrait lens because I didn’t have a tripod with me.

There’s a wooded area at the end of my dad’s garden where I took the photo, left over from the wood­land that covered the area before they built the houses in the 20s and 30s. It’s not really a prop­er wood or field because it’s too small, but it’s not really garden either because it’s left wild. A lot of the trees are about fifty foot tall, and there are ferns and wild flowers and daffodils grow­ing under­neath. I don’t know if it would even be legal to cut the trees down, anyway every­one prefers them stand­ing. My parents used to keep their cara­van down there (there’s a lane that runs along the back of the other houses which connects it with the road), and there’s currently a dilap­id­ated Second World War Ander­son shel­ter which houses some foxes, a compost heap/​bonfire pile and a pet grave­yard (RIP Sukey, Sweep, Sue, Snow­drop, Honey and Smokey) and my old climb­ing frame over­grown with plants.

The deeds to the house also contain some inter­est­ing clauses banning you from using the land to host a trav­el­ling fair or farm pigs (it doesn’t ban you from farm­ing any other anim­als, mind). I think any fair that would fit on it would be a pretty disap­point­ing affair, but some pigs would prob­ably enjoy root­ing round in the compost and tree stumps. My parents never gave the pigs a go, sadly, but at least they aren’t in pris­on for ille­git­im­ate pig-keep­ing and funfair-host­ing.