This week, Callum follows Richard Negus on another side quest, this time to Barkway Literary Festival, where Richard has somehow been entrusted with explaining hedges to a live audience.
Before they get anywhere near the subject there are M&M riders, Gemma Collins, a broken heating system, an increasingly judgmental dog and a collection of male wasps apparently spending their final days getting drunk on ivy.
Eventually Callum McInerney-Riley asks the fairly fundamental question: what actually is a hedge layer?
Richard explains why hedgelaying is almost as old as farming itself, how cutting and laying a hedge encourages new growth at the base, and why something that can initially look suspiciously like a wildlife crime can become considerably better habitat within a couple of years.
From there, the conversation broadens into the role of working farmland in nature recovery, why conservation has to work for the farm as well as the wildlife, and Richard's defence of farmers and gamekeepers whose work often involves managing both habitat and predators.
All recorded in front of an actual literary festival audience, before Richard wanders off to sign copies of Words from the Hedge and discovers that bringing a pen might have been useful.
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