If the health-and-safety brigade knew about me, I would be banned from using garden implements. On the day that Apollo 16 took off in 1972, I was in Casualty having been impaled by a fork that went straight through my thigh. Two years later, I drove our mini tractor over the ha-ha (not my father's reaction at the time); by the age of 18, I had cut off an inch of one of my fingers in an electric hedge cutter.
Last week, when cutting the grass and once again reunited with a mini tractor, I hit a flint that smashed straight through the rear window of our Volvo. Each disaster could have been avoided, but I become a bit of a day-dreamer when the sun is out and there are birds and butterflies to admire.
Gardening, in my case, needs my full concentration. It's the closest I have got to warfare. I'm a liability, although, oddly, I managed to avoid a single breakage in 30 years of hunting, eventing and point-to-pointing, which among serious horsey types is regarded as more than slightly suspicious. I hung up my boots when my luck was in. The following year, I broke my thumb fishing. MH
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Vertigo at Victoria Falls, a sunset surrounded by lions and swimming in the Nile: A journey from Cape Town to CairoWhy do we travel and who inspires us to do so? Chris Wallace went in search of answers on his own epic journey the length of Africa.
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A gorgeous Scottish cottage with contemporary interiors on the bonny banks of the River TayCarnliath on the edge of Strathtay is a delightful family home set in sensational scenery.
