This shot is of a fellow basket weaver (well, a fellow weaver – I didn’t make baskets) from my weekend of sanctuary/bliss/calm.

I have now spent two days of chilling out, making my hats and shooting a few photos. It’s been lovely. I’m completely fascinated by the process through which this becomes a basket.

You know how it is? You see a pile of sticks, then they become a huge spider’s web and then eventually they become a thing of great beauty. The combinations of colour you can achieve with willow alone are hugely varied, ranging from bright greens, reds and orange, through to shades of coppery brown, creams and white.

When you add in new colours the whole basket is lifted from something utilitarian to something simply beautiful.

Years ago, my Mum would carry a willow basket wherever she went. It’d get filled up each day with fresh produce from the greengrocer, baker and butcher then emptied as dinner was prepared and her raw ingredients were used to prepare whatever we were eating.

I can’t remember the slide from willow to plastic. I do know it happened many, many years ago. Probably with the advent of doing the family shopping in Asda or Sainsbury’s, where things automatically got put into carrier bags and people would give you a strange stare if you took along a basket.

Now, every supermarket in the land preaches how eco-friendly they are by selling jute or reinforced plastic shopping bags. They crow and trumpet their willingness to embrace the principle of reducing the plastic they use but still those smug “I’m helping to save the planet” bags sicken me.

So, these days I take my willow basket out with me like my Mum used to do and probably her Mum before her. There’s no need for willow to weep, it’s a beautiful thing and of course it’s really and truly totally sustainable, unlike reinforced plastic.