“My mother’s goals for 2015 lie before me. Most of them are good: visit Shakespeare’s Globe and tour Bazalgetxes 1850s London sewers —inspired; tour Glasgow’s Clvdeside and its Victorian churches—excellent (tick); eat fish and chips around Britain’s coast (tick); do more for the Rectory Society (tick). But then, in small uncertain writing at the bottom, this word creeps in: ‘Pilates (cross)’. Oh dear. As an ecologist, I, too, am interested in the ‘core’, but, although Pilates has its place, All that hot air expended before and after sessions is burning a hole in our planet. But then i look at Country Life advertisements (big tick) and I see the solution immediately: not ‘Dating 4 Grown Ups’ or Tosca and Willoughby wooden loo seats, although both bring warmth and succour in their way, but The Gravel Rakes, which ‘deliver a perfect finish and cut out weed problems‘. I bought one on the spot and put it by my mother’s bed. And now, every Sunday, with The Archers playing merrily in her ears, off she goes up the path (above). And as she pulls her trusty gravel rake,she’s using every muscel in her body, all those muscles that Pilates might forget. She is happy, my mother, and the dog is, too. And the ecology of Oxfordshire is safe. Bliss!”