I can’t say I have ever had much of a passion for proper scientific fieldwork. In fact, on about the only occasion I ever did any, I disliked the experience very much. I was about 23, and, wearying of ever finding a full-time job in nature conservation, I got myself enrolled as a temporary member of staff at a northern university where I spent about four months on a cold, treeless fell, counting gentians. It was very boring and it drove me to the bottle. I made the discovery that the teeniest, most drivelling drop of scientific information requires days and days on your knees out there under the clouds with your quadrat frame, and weeks and weeks more of statistical skulduggery back in the lab.