I grew a courgette and I'm very excited

I come from a long line of gardeners. A veg-growing nepo baby, if you will.

My great-great-grandfather, James, was Head Gardener for huge posh houses in Hampstead at the end of the 19th century. According to my dad “he actually knew what he was doing”, looking after collections of kitchen gardens, ornamental gardens, glasshouses - the whole lot. His son, Reginald, followed in his footsteps. One big job perk for him was that, during the two world wars, the whole family got to eat a lot more fruit than rationing would have otherwise allowed.

My grandad, John, tagged along to work with them as a kid and learned the ropes. Even when he later worked on the railway, he regularly use to jump off the train during a long signal wait to go and pick rhubarb by the tracks. A strangely wholesome kind of highly dangerous misadventure. He’s 90 now and was still single-handedly managing four allotment plots up until a couple of years ago.

My grandma grew up on a farm too, which presumably also involves …