Women’s fantasies are difficult territory for me. Sharing your dark inner yearnings is, apparently, easier for the female of the species than the male. The huge and continuing success of Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden demonstrates both the willingness of many women to share their fantasy life and the inaccessibility of that mental terrain for the average bloke.

But, encouraged by Sandra Parsons’s column about marriage last week, I thought I should explore my wife’s fantasies and, taking my courage in my hands, outline my own fantasy to her. These were secrets we ought to share.

It probably won’t surprise you to know that our deepest, darkest desires were fundamentally incompatible.

When I asked my missus what her secret fantasy was, she was bracingly direct and breathlessly excited.

“Well, I’d like to be able to retire from all work when I’m in my fifties, move to a penthouse flat in Covent Garden and then go to the opera or ballet every night. Then, later, after immersing myself in the vicarious passion of the stage, I’d indulge my own desires – late into the night.” “How?” I nervously asked. “Well, with a seafood platter and a glass of champagne at Sheekey’s, followed by a good night’s sleep in proper Egyptian cotton sheets.”

I have to confess I was disappointed. My own notion of an ideal fantasy was very different. Sensing I might be on a different wavelength, my wife asked me what my secret vision of illicit pleasure might be. I shouldn’t hold back, she said, this was the 21st century, shame should be a stranger when it came to partners discussing what they really wanted out of life.

But it is because this is the 21st century, because we all increasingly live lives of relaxed and open modernity, that I felt so shy and still, even as I write, feel so reticent about my fantasy. But having travelled all this way, it would be a tease too far not to reveal the final secret.

In my fantasy life I want to be a farmer. This isn’t a Mellors/Lady Chatterley thing. It’s not even a Brian Aldridge thing. It’s a straightforward, unfulfilled, and, by definition, fantastically unfulfillable, dream. Like so many fantasies, of all kinds, it’s not something that I plan to do, could afford to indulge in without being exposed to public shame and incredulous laughter, or would be physically equipped to manage, even after months of training. But in idle moments, gazing out of a train window, when my imagination is free to fasten on to visions of liberated self-indulgence I see myself in a realm of pure pleasure – as happy as a pig in mud – surrounded, as it happens, by pigs in mud.

While my wife’s idea of bliss is liberation from our current routine to lead a life of pure aesthetic and sensual pleasure, my notion of heaven is liberation from our current routine – and immersion in a completely different routine. As a naturally idle soul, whose student days only began when most working days ended, it has taken me some time to adapt, but I now find that my life is more fulfilled as a result of rising early (Farming Today early) to tend to the needs of hungry creatures (I’m sure you can guess who), spending much of the rest of the day outdoors (from Legoland to Frimley Lodge Park) and then retiring to bed before ten after a massive meal composed mainly of meat and dairy products. If and when the children ever do achieve independence (which I expect will probably be between 30 and 40 years from now), I shall be bereft. I have found my rhythm but, without the children, the routine will have lost its purpose. The rhythms of farming life are, I know, considerably more arduous than anything I live with but in my mind I cannot help romanticising them, and finding an appeal in surrender to a life lived harnessed to nature’s timetable.

There are innumerable other reasons why the life of a farmer, as I idealistically imagine it, haunts my dreams. Having grown up as a provincially minded small-town boy, and worked much of my life in the metropolis, I find my heart lifts more now when in a proper rural landscape than anywhere else. Whether it’s childhood immersion in Ladybird books, a latent Wordsworthian streak, or a response to the divinely inspired beauty of Nature, it’s there, and growing.

And there’s another bit of me that is always drawn to the unfashionable underdog. My sympathies have, over time, been drawn to Ulster’s Unionists, Israel’s defenders, speakers of Welsh and Gaelic and Church of England clergy. Any group that fashion disdains but who remember older virtues win my admiration. And so it is with Britain’s farmers. Not least at this time.

So I’d love, one day, to beat my parliamentary sword into a ploughshare, even as I know I haven’t a hundredth of the real stamina and skill required to farm even half an acre. Perhaps the editors at The Times could send me to a real farm one week to see just how I managed – that might cure me of my delusions.

But funnily enough the one person who doesn’t want me to ditch the fantasy is my wife. Even though her ideal of retirement happiness is urban and mine rural, even though she’s a drinker of delicate Earl Grey and I prefer stewed PG, even though her perfect romantic backdrop for a weekend break is Venice and mine is Buckie, even though her ideal animal companion is a Burmese cat and mine would be a Tamworth sow, she is keen to encourage my farming fantasy. Because it means I might one day get round to joining my wife in doing the weeding in our not so secret garden . . .

Addictive allure of In the Night Garden

Talking of hidden horticultural gems I suspect most Times readers are unaware of the charms of a BBC programme called In the Night Garden. It has become destination television in our household. Even though you have to get up well before the conventional breakfast hour to see it on CBBC2. You may remember there was a flurry of adult interest a few years ago in the Teletubbies – everyone from exhausted clubbers tuning in of a Sunday morning to eager Modern Review-style critics anxious to deconstruct the hermeneutic significance of Tinky Winky’s handbag.

Well, whatever the hypnotic, or symbolic, appeal of the Teletubbies, that’s as nothing compared to the addictive allure of In the Night Garden. Narrated by Derek Jacobi with an incantatory, almost liturgical, power, its cast of characters insinuate themselves into the imagination and become impossible to dislodge. From Iggle-Piggle, an idealised mischievous lost boy, to the Pontipines, a tiny peg family dressed in fantasy mitteleuropean costumes, the characters play on memories of children’s television past, from Bagpuss to The Clangers, as well as setting off deeper resonances from nursery rhymes and folk tales. The music, and ambience, of the whole programme are simultaneously absorbing and restful, curiously like a winter evensong.

I defy anyone not to be drawn in by its magic. . .

Logo-free at last

Many, many thanks for all your kind words of advice on the best place to go for logo-free polo shirts. I now understand why Boden posted record profits last week.

And also thank you for your reassurance on rosé. I’m hoping to spend next week on the Kent coast for what my wife calls a bucket-and-spade holiday. I don’t know what the spade will be for, but my daughter’s bucket holds just enough ice to keep the Château de Sours chilled . . .

— Michael Gove is Conservative MP for Surrey Heath

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