The woodland charity I support sent me a questionnaire to fill in with my last magazine. As a long term supporter and believer that trees are generally a Good Thing I sat down with the form and a cup of tea, and began to work my way through the tick boxes. As usual, I soon began to get that feeling that sometimes none of the options available really applied. They so often don't.
Would you recommend this newspaper to a friend? Online reader surveys love that question. If I truthfully answer No they will presumably infer that I have a negative opinion of their paper, when it's simply that I don't recommend newspapers to friends. At their age they already know what they think of The Times. I might murmur that the Guardian website is good on film and takes architecture seriously, if we happened to be talking about arts coverage, but that's about it.
Did we exceed your expectations? That's another standard question, and the answer is almost always No, but as long as they met my expectations I'm perfectly happy. My expectations were probably quite high to start with or I wouldn't have been using them, unless it was a service where there was no alternative like the trains to London, and they never ask me what I think anyway. And if I'm making repeat purchases the only way for them to continually exceed my expectations would be to keep pushing their performance higher and higher, supposing that were possible, which it often isn't. Once somebody has sent the thing you asked for as soon as you ordered it, and it has arrived promptly and intact, there isn't a lot else they can do. I mean, it would be nice to receive free of charge extra goods that I haven't ordered or paid for but which they have correctly guessed from my purchasing history that I do actually want, and to have them serenaded up the lane by a brass band or even a celestial choir, but I don't expect it to happen.
The woodland charity wanted to know how often I visited my local park or green space, which flummoxed me since I wasn't sure where would count. There is Castle Park in Colchester, but that's five miles away so not very local. The last time I set foot in Castle Park must have been three years ago, when we walked through it to get back from somebody's house to where we were parked, but does that count as visiting? And does the farm count as a green space, and if so what do I have to do to visit it? Is driving down the farm lane or walking to the postbox enough, or do I have to stop and pay specific attention to the surrounding fields? If I say I haven't visited either in the past year this makes me sound as though I am not interested in parks or green spaces, when in fact I am very partial to both, it's just that living in the countryside there are no designated green spaces, or rather practically all of it is a green space.
I didn't score well on how often I visited woods either, which made me sound not very keen at all. I went on the guided tour of the wood the other side of Colchester only a couple of weeks ago, and met a friend for a walk down at Wrabness back in the summer, and I can't remember when the last time was before that. Maybe a year ago when we visited Hackfall while we were on holiday in Yorkshire. Three visits in twelve months is a pretty pathetic total. But I see two ancient woods every morning when I look across the fields from the bathroom window, and our own very tiny wood every time I step out of the house. This spring when I wanted to look at bluebells I had only to step through the gate from the back garden, and that's what I did, because I had masses to do in the garden and didn't want to go and visit anywhere else.
Troublesome things, surveys. I think the most useful ones are the simplest, stars out of five and whatever comment the reviewer wants to make in their own words. I have just given five stars to Crocus, and ducked an invitation to sign up to the Nextdoor website on the basis of universal one star online reviews.
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