Al fresco in March

I love to cook and eat out of doors. It's a family thing. My father had a passion for the open air and would often make little fires to get warm or to keep off midges or cook something.

Before World War Two my parents would seize every chance to get out of London on bikes to Kent and Surrey, still rural then, check out a quiet camping spot, spend the evening in the local pub and wake up with the birds next morning, ready for a fry-up.

When I was a child a spell of fine summer weather would take us out of the house entirely, just as far as the end of the garden or the next field, where we would rig up a day-time camp with chairs and kettle, cats and books, only returning home to sleep.

I carried on the tradition with my sons and there were several years when their tents would be pitched on the lawn all summer, whatever the weather. One year they were joined by a couple of local kids and the four of them lived in the field for weeks. Every morning the senior cat and I would pick our way over the guy ropes, coax the camp fire back to life and wake the sleepers with the sizzle of sausages, bacon and damper (a kind of rough dough cooked in the frying-pan, an Australian outback substitute for bread, the most important ingredients being fresh air and wood smoke - it tastes terrible indoors.)

This evening, as the sun was sinking, I made the first fire of the year in my little hearth just outside the house. Fred is casting an interested eye upon my supper which consisted of half a red pepper, a shallot and some wild garlic fried up together with 4 quails' eggs I was given today.

As I ate I listened to the sounds of the day's end: ewes and lambs exchanging bleats of anxiety and reassurance, birds twittering as they settled for the night, the homeward rumble of a tractor and the last calls of the children on the farm next door. The western sky glowed pink and peach and the town lights came on in the distance. All of a sudden I realised it was dark.