Many of us have picked up all manner of extraordinary habits in the past year — growing new spring onions from trimmed ones, fermenting anything and everything, baking banana bread, whether we like it or not (I’m very much in the ‘or not’ camp). But as a lover of fresh flowers, the trend that surprises me most is the seemingly unstoppable rise of dried blooms, with sales up 115 per cent during our various lockdowns. At 55, I think I am both too young and too old for this trend. Sure, in 1978, my Christmas money hot in my hand, I raced to Dressers department store in Darlington to buy Edith Holden’s Country Diary Of An Edwardian Lady. I even had a flower press.