Sebastian Shakespeare

Recently I lost my mother, my job and nearly my wife in quick succession (she was diagnosed with breast cancer). My son now needles me by asking what I do all day. ‘Son, I have seen things you wouldn’t believe. I have dark thoughts.’ That is what I want to say, but I don’t have the courage. It is hard to explain to an 11-year-old that the black dog can be as demanding as any full-time employer. Besides he wouldn’t get the Blade Runner reference. But his niggling question makes me realise I am a man in need of an alibi, or another alias. My old headmaster once described me as the opposite of a whited sepulchre. I think he intended this as a compliment My grandfather S.P.B. Mais earned his keep as a novelist, broadcaster, gossip columnist and schoolteacher.

Chekhov had no illusions about horticulture (‘It’s a nice, healthy business to be in, but there are passions and wars raging there too’) but even he might have been bemused by the zealotry of our Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) commissars. Last September I enrolled on an RHS Level 2 Certificate in Practical Horticulture. I was hoping to improve my gardening skills and learn more about the propagation of plants to save me forking out a small fortune at garden centres. Besides, I was tired of relying on my woefully inaccurate plant app to identify rogue forbs on my lawn.