Dear Mary | 16 February 2008

Q. I am currently living, with two others, in a ‘high end’ house in an elegant garden square in Chelsea. We are all friends of, and pay rent in some form to, our absentee landlord, an old-school landowner and pig breeder who, when not charming the birds from the trees, is generally blasting the life out of them at his stately pile in north Norfolk. He is used to commanding retainers and, when in London, these feudal tendencies remain at the fore. Over the years the triffid-like growth of the buddleia tree in the garden had rendered the masonry perilous and poised to crash down on the minimalist plate-glass extension of the banker next door. The potential litigation could have been lethal so, on a trip up from the country, our landlord took to the overgrowth with zeal. He left the job unfinished and the garden now resembles a village napalmed in Vietnam.