My most frequent dream is of finding bottles. Finding a treasure trove of a digging spot that will keep me nourished forever.

Although I’ve found some OK places on the island, nothing compares to the village dump I had back in Sussex: an untouched square mile of metres-deep Victorian finds, veiled in thick woodland.

The through-the-ages dump near my new house is within an industrial area and, already, some of it has been surfaced over for plant equipment. History is vanishing before my eyes.

It’s not digging season; the summer weeds are waist-high and the thought of ticks, mosquitos and rampant pollen is enough to keep me away.

When cold weather comes and the lush green has died back, I’ll scramble back to that patch and see what some digging can do.

Another area I identified was flooded all winter, so I anticipate about a month’s exploration in the autumn, when the earth has dried and the ground plants have stopped being quite so extra. This one is a spot I identified with old maps and I had some very nice – very complete – surface finds.

But the surface finds were few and they ran out. I needed to dig, and I couldn’t find my little shovel in the stacks of moving rubbish in the shed.

This year, I’ll be ready.