David and Victoria Beckham
Credit: Getty
I wasn't the only one to spend 2020 worrying about newts. Like many, the forced confinement of the past year focused me in on my own patch, made me pay attention to things that had previously passed me by. One of the things I noticed was that the area at the end of my garden that had once been a pond was now a weed-grown swamp, devoid of life. Wildlife ponds are having a moment.
Ed Sheeran has had a two-year battle with irate Suffolk neighbours over a vast pond he built to encourage "dragonflies, newts and toads" (he was accused of wanting to use it as a swimming pool). And last summer David and Victoria Beckham won planning permission for a wildlife lake of their own, although the council specified that they must provide escape routes for aquatic animals when digging out the silted-in site they were seeking to renovate.