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The
garden of my early childhood was where I learnt about tenderness and beauty,
pain and failures, mystery and miracles, friendship and loneliness. It was a
modest garden, with a garage at the bottom, and just enough space for a patio,
a vegetable patch and a metal slide. On the left hand-side the garden was
flanked by a clump of conifers followed by a section of trellis, while the
other side was a stretch of terracotta brick wall topped with varnished
sage-green bushes. It was the same world, yet at the same time, it was a
different world. It was private and secluded; it had a quiet about it that was
often difficult to find inside a city, and a degree of mystery