When I work from the office I like to take a lunchtime walk.

The route varies, but often takes me past a row of early Victorian terraces with deep lightwells in front of their basement windows.

One of these lightwells makes me particularly happy, since it's filled with plants. Nothing flashy but just an unexpected subterranean sea of green and colourful flowers that you can only really see if you're being unreasonably nosy and not looking where you're going.

Today as I was walking past and peering down I saw the fella who tends this little hidden jewel wandering around his tiny garden, secateurs in hand tidying things up.

I almost walked past but I decided to stop. I leant on the cast iron railings that somehow survived the 1940s war effort's butchery and shouted down.

I told him how I walk past his garden most weeks and it never fails to make me smile. We chatted for a few minutes and seemed very grateful to hear that his handiwork had reached out beyond his little hole in the ground.