Always I have hugged trees. Even as a small child I hugged them…all varieties mind…for there is nothing like communing with nature in my book. In point of fact nothing can match the feeling of bare skin on bark…the silver birch especially.

My parents thought me most odd. Pater would often say to me, ‘Jessica, you really do get on my tits with all that bloody tree hugging you know. Why not be like the other kids and go play in the road darling.’ We lived only a short distance from the busy M25 motorway at the time.

Mater called me an insipid, wearisome dullard with alarming regularity until the day she advised, “Jessica my dear, it’s no more tofu for you my girl until you stop this tree hugging malarkey. Even the neighbours are talking about you, and this is posh Surrey after all. We have our standards here.”