No longer do you find pork chops with the kidney in, due to the offalphobia following BSE, so I understand, or the EU, or something obsessive like that. Like all chops must be identical or something. I feel cheated.

Some hedges are so old that you can date them from the number of species of tree in them - they would have started as one species, probably a thorn, and then new species would have become established over the years. The theory goes that the number of species in a certain number of yards equals the number of centuries the hedge has been there. I've seen a parish boundary hedge that went back to Saxon times (conservatively), and my parents had a front hedge to their 1970's house that may have been Tudor.

Penny