Eventually he puts his wet socks and boots back on and stands up. I pick Gizmo up off my lap and tuck him under my arm without giving him another chance to escape and chase after the fish. Noel jumps up the bank and holds his hand out, and I slip my left hand into it. My hand feels small in his huge one, his fingers completely encasing it as he pulls me back onto the path and drops it quickly.

‘Will you tell me more about what it used to be like?’ I ask as we walk past another gate in the holly hedge, the sign on this one reading ‘Norway spruce’, the trees inside just as overgrown as the Nordmann firs and the ground just as overrun with weeds.

‘It’s a great place to come in the winter. You should open in December even if the farm isn’t ready and you just select the trees yourself, cut them, net them, and stack them on the driveway to be sold as pre-cuts. People came for dog walks when it was open and picnics by the river if it wasn’t too cold. Evergreene used to give kids tractor rides around the track when he went to pick up trees.’

‘Oh, that would be so much fun. If the tractor starts.’

‘It will. You’ll see. These things are built to last. It just needs a bit of care and attention before you make the poor thing explode again.’

I lean on the next gate and look over. A wide, overgrown tractor path is the only thing separating this field of trees from the next, which Noel informs me are Balsam firs and Blue spruces, the colour making it easy to differentiate between them. It looks magical. I can see why Noel was convinced there were elves here when he was a kid. I think back to when I was younger. I would have loved to come to a place like this. ‘Has there ever been a Santa here for kids to visit?’

He shakes his head. ‘Evergreene wore a Santa hat throughout December, but that’s as far as it goes.’

‘I could hire a Santa. Set up a little Santa’s grotto for kids to meet him. And you thought elves used to scamper between the trees … I could hang some elf hats around like they’ve been snagged on trunks, and I could make stencils to put down some glittery footprints. All I’d have to do is get a couple of sheets of thin bendy plastic and cut out some little footprints and sprinkle glitter through them onto the ground. There could be some bells hidden in the highest branches so they’d jingle whenever the wind blew.’

Even Gizmo is watching me with his head on one side, his big ears twitching.