Just a little late-night snack

I’m working late, so I treated myself to this small plate:

The cheeses:

• Parmesan (Italian)
• Manchego (Spanish)
• Saint Agur (French)
• Wensleydale with cranberries (English)

The meats:

• Parma ham (Italian)
• Chorizo (Spanish)

And of course the wine: Rioja, from Spain.

Please don’t take me out of the Single Market. I like it here.

Taking down trees in our garden

We’re fortunate to have a lot of green space out the back of our house — it came about because we moved out of London to rural Gloucestershire, and the prices of property vary wildly between the two places. There’s about an acre all told — some of it garden, some of it largely unused field.

When we moved in, there were basically no trees on the land at all (see above, taken from the top floor of the house in November 2005, a few months after we arrived.)