If you go down to the woods today, in floaty trousers and without a balaclava, you could end up with a weeping, distended eye socket and knees the size of watermelons. It all started innocently; friend X to me: ‘would you like to go on a ‘plant journey’ in the woods?’ Me: ’sounds like hippy shite but I’ll do it.’ We rendezvoused with our fellow plant travellers (imagine lots of cheesecloth and Chinese slippers) in a quiet country road and silently made our way through the forest until we came to a fire in a clearing. Whereupon, a very smiley lady welcomed me by wafting a bowl of smoking sage leaves all over my nice clean cardigan. Then we had a pow-wow around the fire and were instructed to go and spend some time with an oak tree; get to know it; share life experiences, that sort of thing. We were also given a handful of oats for us to use as a sort of tree warmer! I offered my oats to a young oak and started chatting, as you do, but then I got interrupted by a vicious mosquito which had was attempting to drink me dry through my smokey cardigan. This opened the flood gates and I spent the next half an hour swatting midges and picking other brown flitty things out of my ears and out of my pants. Thankfully, we were then summoned back to the fire by a penny whistle for some group meditation that involved going down a hole to another world – all to the strains of a badly played bongo. Needless to say, I couldn’t find my hole and I was starting to itch, not to mention the fact that I was ravenous for my acorn burger washed down by nettle tea supper. This morning, I look like the Elephant Woman. Note to self: a tree is a tree. It does not talk; it does not eat porridge.