After all the hurly-burly of last week’s Blog I am feeling rather wan and exhausted. One of the nice things about WordPress is that I can reply individually to each comment although this becomes rather time consuming and exhausting when a brawl breaks out in the comments layer. Still, it seems impolite not to reply – especially to new people who have emerged from the shadows. Thank you all for your contributions.

I have seen various important people over the last week or so: firstly I had lunch with Sue Biggs the Director General of the RHS. A deux. In James Rudoni’s office at Wisley . I had a delightful time discussing all sorts of things about the RHS while eating slabs of rather weighty quiche and small round chocolate cakes. Also on offer were oranges cut into quarters: rather like those which used to be on offer at half-time during football matches. I don’t know if they are still standard fare or if today’s players prefer a bag of monster munch and some intimate massage: anyway, neither of us could work out an elegant way of eating them so they were left untouched.

I have also been to visit the offices of Somethin’ Else who make Gardeners Question Time. I like a fizzy office especially one with a pool table and table football. It reminds me of Thirtysomething which some of you might remember. It was a late Eighties television series about rather perfect couples with young children and exciting jobs: this was a time when we had a very small baby and were permanently exhausted.. The blokes worked in an advertising agency with a basketball net into which they potted (i) balls while having creative thoughts. I had a mad crush on Mel Harris who played a character called Hope. Unlike them this office also had a roof garden with fine (though cold) views and a selection of containers bearing the fading vestiges of sweetcorn and other things. Apparently the pumpkins were removed as it was considered a health and safety issue to have large vegetables teetering on ledges six storeys above the street.

The frost (ii) has, as I am sure you have noticed, spectacular. It was minus 10c here on Monday and the only way to sit at my desk was by wearing a velveteen Turkish skullcap, a large scarf, many layers of thermal underwear, two fleeces, a travel rug and a pair of luxuriantly cashmere socks. The alternative was to jog around the house stopping occasionally for a strenuous press-up or two or to go out. We went to the cinema at one point because we were so cold (iii) and at one point I went and sat in my car because it has heated seats and my buttocks needed thawing. The countryside and garden looked delicious and I, like many others, spent time tootling around taking photographs like this. My sympathies go out to Andrea Jones (photographer de luxe) who spent the night with some truckers on the M8. It was doubtlessly quite tough on the truckers as well.

I feel I must warn you about the January crop of garden magazines. House and Garden features the first instalment of the Top Twenty Garden Designers (about which I wrote here and Nigel Colborn went all ranty: which is always gratifying to the rest of us). It consists of a rather nice group picture and then a (I think) deeply unflattering individual picture of me looking as if I have just emerged from a chilly evening spent marinading in a deep pool of lemon juice. But that is foolish vanity and it is very lovely to be included: even though not everybody will approve of the choices. Part Two featuring the much sexier Sturgeon and West is next month. Also English Garden features my column, my garden and a piece I wrote on Tom Stuart Smith’s garden: such saturation is only for those with stronger constitutions.  To make things worse there is more to come as I have a piece in January Gardens Illustrated (iv) and a snippet in The Garden. Sorry.

To top it all I am on Eggheads this Friday at 6.00pm on BBC2. You might remember my writing about it in the summer, here to be exact. It is for Celebrity Eggheads (v) (using the word in an even looser fashion than they use it on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here) and I was on the Home and Garden team with Toby Buckland, Chris Collins (the Blue Peter gardener), Aggie McKenzie (the unscary one of the two people who clean people’s houses) and Craig (off Big Brother).

Did we beat the Eggheads? You will have to watch and see. Set your video recorders or new fangled Sky Plus machines. 6pm Friday

The picture is of Viburnum opulus berries in the frost.

I am listening to Baby Please Don’t Go by Van Morrison.

Two years ago I was shamelessly trying to flog you copies of my book – which are still available, incidentally, if you send me a fiver.

  1. Is that the right word? Almost certainly not. Dropped? Slotted? Basketed? Popped? Dunked? (or is that only appropriate for the Slam Dunk?)
  2. Spectacular for us but probably nothing to write home about to those of you from Omsk, Finland or Alaska.
  3. The American with George Clooney. Quite good and particularly notable for an exceptionally beautiful Italian playing a small town prostitute. So beautiful was she that her presence in the brothel of some rural hill town in the middle of Italy seemed fanciful to say the least. If one took the British equivalent – for example, Melton Mowbray or Banff – I am pretty sure that the standards would not be quite so high. I may, of course, be wrong and welcome comments from those among the readers of this blog who regularly patronise rural cathouses.
  4. The more observant of you might have noticed (I did not) that my article in December’s GI about the charming naked folk at Abbey House included a slight misprint. The owner Barbara Pollard was called Su Pollard at one point (after the actress best known for playing the bespectacled chalet maid in Hi-De-Hi): fortunately it was taken well.
  5. For the benefit of the uninitiated (or foreign) Eggheads is a television quiz programme where a team of  people (could be a pub quiz team, work group, football club or, as in this case, a scratch team of the best brains around exhaustively selected from literally hundreds of applications) challenge the Eggheads. This is a group of serious social misfits who have dedicated their lives to absorbing trivial facts. Some might say that this is in compensation for their having few friends but I could not really comment.

More aeroplanes this week although pretty much everything about Flybe is better than Ryan Air.

The seats were more comfortable and upholstered in a dove grey leatherette, there were pockets in the seat in front.

The aeroplane had propellors which is strangely comforting as that way you know whether the engines have stopped before landing.

The stewardesses smile and their hairstyles are much more freeform. One had tailored wisps that fall in front of her ears and look a little like the cheek pieces on a Roman helmet: but softer and less impervious to arrows or glancing sword blows.

Nobody has yet tried to sell me smokeless cigarettes or lottery cards.

It was a bit bumpy though.

And I wonder why there should be so much fuss about life jackets on a flight from Birmingham to Glasgow I would have thought we were more likely to hit a Pennine or at the very least a branch of Matalan just outside Salford than water. Perhaps “Your crash helmet is beneath your seat” would be a more useful catchphrase. Or “A blank Last Will and Testament Form will fall from the panel above your head”.

I have been to Glasgow in the company of Toby Buckland, Chris Collins (the Blue Peter gardener), the utterly delicious Aggie McKenzie (the less intimidating Scottish one from ‘How Clean is my House’) and Craig off of Big Brother (1) to compete in Celebrity Eggheads. This is an early evening Quiz Show of whose existence I was blissfully unaware until quite recently. In it a team of people compete against the Eggheads who are a collection of people who have won every Quiz show around. There are winners of Mastermind, Brain of Britain, Fifteen To One and various others. They undoubtedly have a great deal of general trivia stored between their ears but I am not sure if I would like to be stuck in a lift with any of them for too long. One of them reads and memorises the cast lists of television programmes in the Radio Times but never watches anything.

Still, it is one of those things that come along every so often that should never be refused. We were the Celebrity (2) House and Garden team.

I think I am probably not supposed to announce the result here but, we did not completely disgrace ourselves and you will have to wait until around Christmastime for it to be broadcast. In the meantime watch out for Martyn Cox and the Horticulture Week team who I think are probably transmitted before us.

The BBC building in Glasgow is super -duper impressive. There is also another fine building across the canal

that looked a bit like shiny croissant. The experience was pretty terrifying all in all but I am glad I did it as these things only come along every so often and it would be silly not to go along for the experience. Our team name, by the way, was Marigolds and Mortar.

So back to the airport, back on another aeroplane and back to Birmingham. I think that Toby and Craig might be long lost brothers. They also both look quite likeMarkD, maybe they are the long lost triplet heirs to the Czar.

Other interesting things this week include a new client and the solving of a particularly tricky Ha Ha problem.

I also participated in a Gardeners Question time in aid of BYHP – a very fine local charity. I am not at my most comfortable in such situations as my mind goes blank when asked about non-bolting Coriander seed or the best plants for a sunny border. Most of my questions required me to recommend the felling of a large tree. I also ran an auction whose lots included a stuffed Peter Rabbit the size of a pert Red Setter (which I sold for £220, thank you very much).

I also gave a troupe of design savvy ladies and gents a personal tour around this garden, it was quite nerve wracking as one of the participants was Mary Keen, doyenne and grande dame of garden design. I feared her quizzical eye but actually she is just as delicious as Aggie McKenzie ( although in a slightly different way). They asked good questions some of which I was unable to answer satisfactorily.

And finally, just to keep the hard core of deluded people who come to this Blog for horticultural wisdom I planted a small garden. This was commissioned as a place in which the client could inter the ashes of a number of dogs and a horse. The ashes of a horse, incidentally, fit into a surprisingly small box. It is part of a larger garden but I decided to go annual and bright so, for those who like a plantlist, these are the ingredients:

Tithonia rotundifolia

Cosmos Dazzler

Nicotiana sylvestris

Dahlia Jescott Julie

Dahlia Rip City

Dahlia Ambition

Dahlia Sam Hopkins

Dahlia Hillcrest Royal

Calmagrostis Karl Foerster

Ligusticum lucidum

Ammi majus

Thymus Silver Posie

Cornflowers (Blue)

I am off to Gardeners World Live at the NEC in Birmingham for five days tomorrow: I am running the Celebrity Theatre with proper garden celebrities like Ms Klein and Messrs Titchmarsh, Buckland and Don. And Alys. And the bald gingery one.

And on Sunday Dawn is doing clever things with herbs and hanging children in baskets. So if you are there please come and say hello.

The picture is of Seseli libanotis, Phlomis tuberosa Amazone and the fading flowers of Allium Purple Sensation.

I am listening to the Concerto in E Flat for Trumpet and Orchestra by Haydn and Hummel. Played by Alison Balsom. Which makes a sophisticated change from the fabulous Bert Kaempfert who seems to have been rather dominating my listening recently. (3)

PS I am assuming that most of you have seen the new Three Men Went To Mow but, just in case, here it is….

(1) and also, until they got bored and wandered off, a number of stray Twitterers

(2)I fully appreciate that this is stretching the elastic of the word “Celebrity” to its very limit. As my ever supportive friend, Mark Diacono, sweetly put it: “For Celebrity: Read Available and cheap”. He might be right but is more likely eaten up with envy as he did not get the chance to show off his extensive knowledge of darts and guavas.

(3) If any of you are unfamiliar with the oeuvre of Mr K then may I point you here.