I WAS forced to apologise to my husband this week.

He has, ahem, helped sections of the garden along by providing after dark a sprinkling of a rather more personalised “water.”

Now, it emerges that the practice has been encouraged for some time at National Trust stately homes — and in broad daylight — as a means of helping fertilise the garden. The Trust points out that this also saves water and energy normally used in flushing the loo.

Fortunately, this behaviour only applies to men. But the result domestically is one very smug husband who insists on being called an environmental hero.