Over the past couple of weeks I have spent an awful lot of hours in the garden, weeding, planting and filling it with future delights. Not my garden, I hasten to add… mine is both very green and very untidy, having been invaded by the homeless house sparrows who used to live in next door’s ivy. When the rampant robe was removed last autumn, the colony was obliged to seek alternative accommodation and apparently my honeysuckle hedge was ideal.

Now this is all very well, and I am delighted to have them… and Ani, of course, finds them a constant source of joy to stalk and bounce at. They tease her, she bounces… they tease her some more. The only trouble is that now they have nests in my honeysuckle, the climbing roses there are ten feet high and I daren’t disturb the birds and their eggs to cut the…