Before I had children, I had visions of becoming a mum of ample cheer at the garden gate in welcoming apron, homemade jam bubbling on the stove and the tantalising aroma of fresh bread wafting smugly up the street as I welcomed the children from school, my hair smoothed of distraction.

It hasn’t worked out like this. The garden has been like a fairytale meadow recently – picture poppies waving like an Afghan carpet and Dorothy skipping sparkly-shoed as Snow White’s forest friends gambol gaily through flowering wilderness. And then insert this image into a suburban street with neatly clipped verges along the rest of its flanks.

So this week I’ve had to act. To be honest, with the towering bramble thicket around the house, I wasn’t sure anything short of a miracle Disney Prince brandishing Excalibur would do the job. But I’d waited several weeks for an elusive Prince Charming and I didn’t fancy calling a horny old goat into service.

The other alternative was a managed forest fire. And with one man and his dog nowhere in sight, it was up to me to mow the meadow, brushing 100 years sleep from a Flymo cobwebbed to the hilt.

Now I take my hat off to the marketing department at Miracle-Gro: how they manage to sell the stuff is a total mystery to me.

I can’t wait until someone invents Miracle-UnGro, a growth inhibitor for all vegetation over two inches tall, except raspberries because now the grass is mown, when Prince Charming finally shows up, I be asking him to make jam.