That woman’s got me drinking

It is enough to make a man turn to drink. On a distinctly non-abstemious day, I was sitting in one of my favourite places on earth. It is not a great garden, merely a characteristically English one: roses, benign verdancy and the joyous sunshine of gentle summer. My dear friends have just finished restoring their late medieval house. It is not a great house, merely a classically English one. Chillingham Castle, the Wakefield family’s seat in Northumberland, which resplends in grandeur, was described by Walter Scott as bearing the rust of the Barons’ wars. This place, by contrast, is more a case of the gentle patina of manorial peace over long centuries. You feel that if you caught the house off guard, it would be smiling at its latest owners’ enjoyment. History is now and England.

Lunch drew fruitfully on the kitchen garden: vegetables for the risotto primavera (also a non-Atkins day), strawberries for pudding.