QUOTE : At the far end of our plot he'd cleared a little square patch of land and planted herbs: thyme, rosemary, parsley, coriander, chives, sage and mint. I asked him if he was worried they'd be polluted by the city air. "You're all polluted yourselves," he said, but without animosity, not judgmental. "You breathe the air, what difference does it make if you eat it? It's already inside you." At night I used to visit our vegetable patch with a torch. I would crouch down with my feet on the bare earth and watch the velvety sage leaves catching the moisture, covering themselves in it, soaking it up. The rosemary held up its tiny daggers in the darkness as if trying to burst bubbles of water hovering just above the ground. And the tall tubes of chives, the spiky, green, seriously weird hair-style of a subterranean onion reaching upwards. Thyme crawled over the soil, like a detachment of the Resistance, grouped together, efficient, close-knit. I used to stay there thinking, resting. I liked being with plants, they're neutral, they don't talk, don't hear anything, have no longings or needs.