It sometimes pays to be looking downwards, which I do when litter-picking. On a walk to M&S, along the canal and via the new valley-spanning Wolstanton link-road, I spotted an oak sprig fallen on the path. “Now where’s that come from?” I wondered. There had once been a little oak sapling on the path, which circa 2005 I had occasionally protected. I had several times cut back the lesser shrubs that were attempting to swamp it, letting sunlight into its nook in the hedge. But in recent years I had been unable to re-discover it as I passed by. “Swamped and died”, I thought.

But there was an oak sprig, fallen on the path in front of me. I looked up. Spreading high above me was a fine healthy young oak tree. In the same place as before, but the shrubs had thickened and grown outward onto the path, while the oak had grown upward to the light. That was why I couldn’t find it again. I was looking for a struggling and scrawny sapling on the edge of the path, but it’s now a proper tree growing up from the centre of the hedge.

One also finds other things. The M&S walk was to get new ‘maximum’ Merino-wool thermals, before the cold damp weather arrives and they suddenly sell out. I had wanted Amazon’s Damart, but Amazon seemingly couldn’t deliver to any of the many Amazon lockers in Stoke (always “full”, which one can prove is a complete lie by ordering other items). Thus an early morning walk to M&S was called for instead. M&S’s Damart equivalent is HeatGen (£56 for a top and bottom combo). I’d also idly looked at the M&S sunglasses online, needing a new pair. But I couldn’t afford them at £20-£30. The HeatGen thermals are being paid for by a kind benefactor who doesn’t want me shivering again this winter, but sunglasses are not on offer.

So… what did I also find while litter-picking the route to M&S? You guessed it. A nice and perfectly good pair of men’s sunglasses. Free. And also the M&S brand. Strange, when that sort of thing happens. But it does, and surprisingly often. Not long ago I went to litter-pick and snip back the greening-up of an old disused railway-line path. With secateurs. On the way there I found a perfectly good pair of wooden-handled hedge shears, discarded with some other ‘builder and decorator’ fly-tipping and with a bit of dried paint on the handles… but un-rusted, still nice and sharp. What are the odds?