Barbara loves a bit of weeding.My allotment partner can spend hours skimming the soil for errant plants poking their bristly heads into the sunlight.

I find it a torrid experience.

No, I am a glory hunter on the patch. Happy to claim the spoils, radishes, over-sized courgettes and amusingly shaped carrots, at harvest time.

Don’t get me wrong, I can spend hours drenching my fledging plants under the watering can.

But, on the weed front, I am a hands-off kind of a guy.

I have found some weeds to be my friend. Some of the flowers draw bugs away from the veg, while others keep barren soil turned over.

I know it truly rankles with Barbara. I can see her point of view.

You spend hours eagerly weeding on hands and knees, stand back and, with hands on hips, let out a satisfying sigh.

At that moment, the students on the next door plot return after a summer of charity work in Borneo, Namibia or Newquay.

Giggling uncontrollably at the Amazonian-extent of the thicket facing them, they triumphantly hold aloft pumpkins and cucumbers which look like they have been genetically modified by NASA.

I take a weekend city break in Bruges and return to find caterpillars have opened an all-you-can-eat buffet on my cabbage patch, while a cat has used my leeks as target practice.

Life’s just not fair. Rule one of allotmenteering: Don’t be smug. This a race and only the strongest will survive.

Let’s see who’s laughing when winter bites and the soil is either frozen rock hard, or you are ankle deep in a paddyfield.

And that leaves me to ask one question: who, or what, did this to my courgettes?

Not satisfied with eating the whole thing, it munches sizeable chunks from the plant and then leaves under the cover of darkness.

Muntjac, probably. I’ve had run-ins with badgers before, and I’m not sure they like courgettes.

It could be a student, I suppose.

But that’s life on the patch: at times frustrating, at periods mystifying... But always entertaining.