It may be a really obvious thing to say, but growing your own veg gives a real perspective of people who have to do it to survive.

I am happy to brandish a broccoli at the end of the summer and tug up a few leaves of spinach, but if everything withers, there’s always the greengrocer.

However, my anger at the slugs, wind and feathered friends laying siege to my plot is tempered by the knowledge it is not my only source of food. And that’s a lucky thing.

Meanwhile, my strawberry patch – inherited from a neighbour – is enough to start a Pick Your Own business.

I have left the battling with the ivy which was suffocating the plants to Barbara. Two minutes with the garden scissors and I was suicidal.

Managed to destroy a fifth of the patch by not being able to distinguish between weed and strawberry plant. I think it may be ok though. I hope.

The runner beans are desperate to start climbing up the poles and seem to have avoided the beaks of the pigeons.

The red onions are looking suitably bulbous and I have already enjoyed a meal or two with the spinach. Not a bad start, eh?

I am a long way from being self-sufficent, but I stood back from my plot the other day, hands on hips, and breathed a satisfied sigh.

It's the kind of sigh that comes with a job well done. It's also the kind of sigh which reminds me I am 30 years old next week. Sigh.