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My new passion is wandering around with my partner, getting to know plants. We are overwhelmed with the scent of privet and meadowsweet, delighted by the delicacy of hop clover and Yorkshire fog, surprised by vetch’s black seed pods, enthused by the possibility of acanthus (bear’s breeches) healing our house-mate’s dislocated shoulder.

Oh, the wonder of the Flora Incognita app.

We’re trying to develop a worldview of being in a peer-relationship with other beings, unlearning our anthropocentric, individualistic, mechanistic mindset.

A week is a long time in politics. Ha! I promise I don’t need to be investigated by the Gambling Commission, PN readers! Couldn’t make it up.

For those wondering what I’m wittering on about, my last column two months ago urged readers to get out there during the election and make a difference, whenever it was called. Then, the election was called as we went to press.

Now, it’s the first Monday morning of a new government.

I’m afraid I missed out on this year’s ‘Portillo moment’. (In May 1997, Conservative MP Michael Portillo tried to hide his shock at losing his seat to Labour’s Stephen Twigg, and almost succeeded.) I would have loved to have seen the look on Jacob Rees-Mogg’s face but perhaps he decided to take a nap instead, as he famously did in the houses of parliament, and was snapped lounging on the seats, inspiring dozens of memes.

In the mid-1990s, we were excited to hear that Georgina Smith, a Greenham woman, had bought Peaton Glen Wood, a magical 14ha (34-acre) woodland right next to the Coulport Trident warhead store, from the MoD. Through the first Women’s Camp we held there and the many Trident Ploughshares disarmament camps held there, I came to know Georgina. She was clever, fun and full of integrity, never acting as if she owned the place or blowing her own trumpet about the many courageous and important acts she had done as a woman for peace.