Question. Are you an optimist or a pessimist?

No that won’t work. If you want to play the game, you have to give an answer. ’I don’t know’ does not count.

Let’s try again. The same question a different way.

Do you have a garden? And do you grow vegetables? You do?

Then you most definitely are an optimist.

Have you thought about joining one of those therapy groups where you all sit down in a quiet room and take turns to stand up and tell the world things like: ’My name is Michael, I like gardening and yesterday I planted a courgette’.

I have had nightmares about things like this.

In fact, one time I was having this recurring dream and one of the group asked me was it a green or yellow courgette. I had to close my eyes and take deep breaths.

The main problem with being a vegetable gardener is that you are so optimistic and cheerful, it worries people that you will try to convert them to your way of life.

You always have this calm and relaxed manner which is best described as an inner glow.

I have been a vegetable gardener for about 55 years and I have always faced my enemies head on.

I have studied and watched slugs, snails, greenfly, black fly and cabbage white butterflies. I have sprayed and treated carrot fly, potato fungus and tomato rot.

I have seen it all, I have tried every treatment and attempted every garden cure known to mankind.

And I’ve been defeated every time.

I have spent hours on the roof of the garden shed with a loaded air rifle to shoot the rabbits that defied all logic to find their way through a wire mesh fence with all the skill of an escaping prisoner from Colditz Castle and eat whatever took their fancy.

I have fought and failed to make any impression on perennial nightmares such as convolvulus and mare’s tail.

And every year it starts again. Every year there will be a new enemy hiding round the corner and you still carry on, ready to take on whatever it is that nature or fate has in store.

The clock is wound up and you press start to take on whatever is to be your fate.

It’s not too difficult to compare your life to a year in the garden. They both have their seasons and they both will have their problems to solve.

This year, we are celebrating 75 years since the end of the Second World War. Just in case you’ve forgotten, we actually won.

It was a costly victory, paid for with the lives of millions of ordinary people. People who were optimistic for their future.

There was little place in this new world for the pessimist, but be certain of one thing: pessimists are patient.

They can wait, and they know that if they wait long enough, they will win.

To be fair, it’s really not too difficult to understand the way that people think.

Life during wartime can be hard going.

Much of what we take for granted today was controlled in wartime by rationing.

We were restricted from overindulgence whether we liked it or not, but gradually we became used to plenty and greedy for more.

The upsets and natural disasters that seem now to be all too frequent and shocking to us when they flood or destroy our one-time safe cities, can be conveniently ignored when they happen in foreign parts.

But ignore them at your peril. We are living through what we would call a ’one in a hundred’ pandemic disaster, and it hurts.

We feel frightened and unsafe, and are facing an unknown, dangerous outcome.

It’s time to start growing vegetables.

There can’t be a better time to become an optimist.

That’s odd, there’s like a dark cloud moving past the window. Does anyone know what a swarm of locusts looks like?