With the addition of onions to the plot this weekend it feels as though we’ve turned a corner.  Above the onions are their fleecy guardians, sworn to a life of cosy protection, a shield against those frost-tinted nights; the cloches have arrived! And although they were quite an effort to assemble I look at these and at the newly fitted pea sticks, and I remember the prescient words of 80s sensation Yazz: ‘The Only Way Is Up’.

The plot, like the onion, is starting to take on layers and armed with my new accessories, the pea sticks and the cloches, I’m starting to feel like a bit of a pro.

‘Stand easy son, you may have the commendation but you’ve yet to earn your stripes’.