It's a cross between Fatherland and The Handmaid's Tale - not as good as either, but I quite like a bit of 'what if' history and this was an undemanding page-turner that I've rattled through this week. I'm afraid I'd be consigned to Widowland, the run-down slum for unproductive middle-aged women - where the recalcitrant fellow inmates would appear to be rather good, bookish company.

The crocuses (croci?) are looking splendid at Ham House. And at Kew Gardens on Sunday the magnolias against a blue sky had more 'wow' than the showy orchid festival. (Where I was sorely tempted to push a couple of preening, pouting Instagrammers into the pond! Wouldn't that have made a photo opportunity!) First chilly picnic of the year - if a sandwich and a hunk of fruit cake on a bench counts as a picnic. Kew Gardens Orangery serves the nastiest cup of lukewarm tea in London.

An evocatively lyrical paean to the countryside (Daily Mail) ... well, I can't say I wasn't warned! From the 'feather-footed through the plashy fen' school of literature, if you ask me! And the anachronisms ... frozen strawberries in a post-war Yorkshire cottage????? Pick-and-mix sweets? And I rather doubt that a 16-year-old miner's son would have been acquainted with a metal detector. Still, that's a nice picture of Robin Hood's bay on the cover.

I seem to be in the minority but I was losing the will to live ... grown-up Enid Blyton or modern Agatha Christie, whatever, it's mind-numbingly tedious.