So, they let me out again. Clearly the Powers That Be didn’t read my last blog, as my request for a cosy, warm greenhouse went ignored!

This week's location: a potato store.

As I arrived, a HGV was being loaded with around 40 tonnes of potatoes, ready to go to a frozen chip producer.

As it happened, my task didn’t require me to pick up a potato at all, but rather to take readings of the air pressure at multiple locations within the store. The aim is to better understand the flow of air around the boxes containing some 1,200 tonnes of potatoes. Ultimately, we hope to be able to generate a computer model of the airflow within the store environment and, subsequently, improve the storage conditions.

This is driven by economics and industry legislation, rather than Vegetable Rights activists, although I did learn that a stored potato is not dead! Even after being taken out of the ground, potatoes continue to respire, emitting CO2 and heat, hence the need to regulate the store temperature and air quality.

All this got me thinking, at the risk of starting an Infinite Monkey Cage style philosophical debate, when is a potato dead?