My father was a brewer, and although he commuted from my childhood home in north Essex to his office in London every weekday, he thought of himself as a countryman (like his own father before him) and lived for country pleasures. In hindsight, these seem to have consisted largely of killing creatures in seasonal rotation: foxes, pheasants, partridges and rabbits during the cooler months; salmon (in Scotland) and trout (wherever they could be found) when the weather cheered up. But he wasn’t simp
Nothing sets off a garden quite like a neatly clipped topiary ball, cone or, perhaps, cloud. If you fancy having a go at turning your shrubs into topiary in time for the first garden parties of the summer, now is a good time of year to get cracking. You could take the easy way out by buying a ready-made design in the form of a wire frame. Some even come with a plant attached. The plant will grow into the shape and you just trim off the excess as it pokes through the frame. It is not, though, the
One of the reasons I waited so long to have a baby was the endless trail of horror stories about pregnancy and birth. I had the distinct impression that – despite the availability of C-sections on demand – one would be pressured into having a natural birth.