Patsy Crawford

The sky is brightest blue with just a wisp of drifting white cloud. Flowers grow in colourful profusion. Trees shade rock pools and garden nooks.

In the background can be glimpsed an emerald green sea. Birds sing. Butterflies hover.

All that’s needed now is Monte Don to complete the picture.

And sure enough onto the scene potters Monte – amiable in panama hat, linen jacket, striped braces, casually draped scarf, looking every inch a man in his natural milieu.

If Monte Don doesn’t have the best job in the world I don’t know who does.

He’s one of a select breed of men and women who have found their niche in life and are getting paid and flown hither and yon to indulge it.

He’s popping up on television anywhere there’s a beautiful garden to be filmed.

One minute a villa in Tuscany, the next an ancient palace in Vietnam, then an antebellum mansion in America’s deep south.

As he trundles around commenting on the plants and horticultural design the man looks happier than a dog with two tails.

At some point he’ll probably sit beneath a spreading tree, fan himself with his panama hat and share wine with his host.

To top it all off he’ll trouser a handy wad of cash.

A man’s got to get paid for a hard day’s work.

Switching tack, as it were, we now find another man whose dream job would make anyone who aspires to prowling the great kitchens of the world green with envy.

I speak of Rick Stein, the restaurateur who makes cooking and eating look so much fun you want to jump on the next plane, race off to that Greek waterfront cafe where he’s sitting ruddy-cheeked and beaming and join him in that meal of freshly caught red mullet.

Rick doesn’t sit quietly beneath a tree drinking wine; he wedges himself into a group of shouting, drinking, food-gobbling fisherman and shouts, drinks and gobbles along with them.

Happiness is writ large on his wide-eyed Oxfordshire face.

Historians get to have a rattling good time of it too, ripping around the world to poke their noses into ancient Egyptian temples and windswept Scottish battlefields, clamber through dungeons and squeeze into secret inner chambers.

If they’re Lucy Worsley they can also get about in drag.

Lucy knows her onions and she’d not be afraid to frock up to prove it.

Show that woman a wimple, a court jester suit, a cheery milkmaids skirt, Anne Boleyn’s bejewelled bosom enhancer (whoa, steady on there Lucy) and she’ll pitch herself into it to lend a bit of oomph to the historical narrative.

Behind this trio trail a host of television presenters climbing, stalking, diving, trudging, poking, prying and tossing in olive oil.

The world is their oyster.

Monte, Rick, Lucy et al probably can’t believe their luck.

Life is a blushing rose, a plate of scampi, an illuminated manuscript.

In Monte Land the sun always shines, the scent of gardenias hangs on the air, the grass is soft and green and everyone gets to live happily ever after.