Somehow the municipal mowers had missed the piece of open ground by the old rope works. After decades of yearning, the wasteland had realised its cherished ambition of becoming a meadow. Wading through it, I was taken back to childhood where we used to play “long grass city” in the suburban pony fields on the outskirts of Carlisle – tunnelling, caving, den building, making friends with beetles and daddy-long-legs. Even without flowers, a simple field commands the eyes, and the heart.