And I can’t seem to prevent myself from feeling ashamed for having `let her down’.“Every Sunday, Elaine and I dutifully visit her. I feel like a normal human being during the week and then on Sundays I’m there with my tail between my legs Elaine says I change completely. It sounds ridiculous but she is still disappointed that I gave up acting at the age of 14. She wants to have grandchildren but part of me is against the idea because I know she’ll be awful.

“In my working life I manage a team of people, I earn twice as much as my father ever did. I have been living with my girlfriend, Elaine, for six years yet I still can’t stand up to my mother. It got a lot worse after my father died because I’m an only child and my mother just can’t let go. Meanwhile Dad is right behind shouting: “What time do you call this anyway?” You cower, you mumble, you quake You are a child again. How many of us could assert for Britain when we are at work, but are still secretly afraid of our parents? How many of us, smokers for 15 years, still suffer withdrawal pangs rather than face our parents finding out?
Rory, aged 32, still goes to weekly Sunday lunch because his overbearing mother insists and he’s too frightened to say no. Regular sex, giving up smoking, getting a mortgage and no longer recognising a single character in Neighbours By such benchmarks, do we attain adulthood. We pay our own bills, decide our own bedtime and are pleased with our status in the world Until, that is, we return to the family home Suddenly the finely honed professional image is in tatters.

Your mother opens the door and declares that you are not eating enough. Worried about the future? Want to know where the British are going as a nation? Come into your local garden centre, Maud Rain or shine, most of us will be down there already.. They would also be thrilled to see the white-haired couple stopping to let their grandchildren play with the concrete crocodiles and gnomes. “Can we go and see the Wendy houses now, grandad?” chorus the tots as a procession of pushchairs, Zimmer frames and wheelchairs trundles past them. “We want to landscape our garden a bit and put in a barbecue.” Shouldn’t people their age be clubbing and pubbing rather than pottering about in the garden? His wife Julie shakes her head vigorously. “If you’re proud of your home you want your garden to be nice, too. We’re going to sort out the garden now and then we can use it for parties.”Mintel would be proud of them.

Even young people are feeling the urge to get out in the open and close to the soil. He finds no difficulty attracting students to his new course on gardening and contemporary culture.All of which may not be of burning concern to the gaggle of twentysomethings clustered around Van Hage’s garden ornament display (naked nymphs at pounds 760, playful hippos for pounds 39.95). “We’re here to get some ideas,” says Wayne Martin, a graphic designer. Garden centres provide a vision of an earthly Utopia where there is honest toil that uses mind and body and isn’t dominated by the clock.” He also notes a growing trend toward an open-air festival culture, replacing the traditional damp British fete.