I couldn't believe it when I found this in the charity shop yesterday and pounced on it in glee.

And then I opened it and felt sad.

It is inscribed in curly black writing, To my sweet EJ. Love always, D.

(Or maybe that's M. No, I think it's D.)

Who was sweet EJ ... Elizabeth Jane? Emily Jessamine? Was it love always from her D for Dad or from Damian, Daniel or David? If he loves her always, how come his lovely gift ended up unappreciated in the charity shop (it was only published about two years ago)? And there's no splodges and stains to show that she ever made Molly's mother's blueberry-raspberry pound cake or the French lemon yogurt cake that brought about a blog romance and then a wedding. (If you're not familiar with Molly's blog Orangette, she met her curly-haired husband - who was one of her readers - when he e-mailed her after discovering her yogurt cake recipe, and their long-distance romance blossomed from there. I have to remind myself that this is extremely unlikely to happen twice.)

Anyway, I've been engrossed in Molly's family reminiscences and recipes all morning until they made me so hungry that I had to make pancakes for lunch.

Don't you think that her book has found a much better home with me? EJ is probably a thin person who watches cookery programmes on television and doesn't know how to make pastry.

I'll let you know how that lemon yogurt cake turns out.

I picked marigolds and dog daisies along the beach

And red roses, valerian and elderflowers from the garden.

I filled another vase with Spanish broom

Which has a slightly medicinal scent.

I made buttermilk scones with strawberries and clotted cream

And they turned out just right,

Though not quite as good as my mum's.

But they never are.

I watched a splendid sunset

While drinking Portuguese wine

With new friends who own the very posh beach-hut.

And I discovered that a very famous ice-cream family

Have set up an ice-cream cart only five-minutes from my front door.

So all in all

It was a very good weekend.

'Really only someone with that superior intellectual honesty could have given a record like that. I could equate it in musical terms with Ted Hughes's Birthday Letters.'

Bob Geldof, on Dylan's Blood on the Tracks.

I've listened through five hours of Dylan on the radio last night and tonight. And there's more to come next week.

It doesn't seem right that he's 70.

He was the soundtrack to every broken heart I've ever had.

When I revisited my old college bar a few years ago, I was profoundly shocked to discover that Lay Lady Lay was no longer on the jukebox.

I wonder if I should apologise to my much younger neighbours?

It's hard not to sing along when you know all the words.

There's so many wonderful loan exhibitions in London that I'm inclined to neglect those art treasures that we can see all year round. Absolutely free.

So when I had an hour to spare at lunchtime today, I decided that it was far too long since I'd paid a visit to the Leonardo Cartoon.

No better time than the present, because when the Leonardo blockbuster opens later this year, the hordes will descend.

Oh dear, I arrived in the quiet, darkened corner where you'll find the Virgin and Child and St Anne and John the Baptist, just as a tour party filed through ... I hung back and watched them. Shuffle, pause, blink, two-three seconds average attention span, that's it, we've done Leonardo.

And then I was blissfully alone ... just me and Leonardo ... and I sat and gazed until it was time to get back to work.

When I was about 11 or 12 - before helicopter-parenting was invented - I used to gad all over London on my own. (Nothing's changed then!)

And I used to spend hours in the National Gallery. I loved the soft lines of this work, and the gentle faces. I haven't been back to see it since my own mother died, so maybe that's why I was so struck today by the tenderness of the pose - the mother perching on her own mother's knee. (Mustn't get over-sentimental. I'd have flattened my mum if we'd tried this at home!)

I did think how lucky I was to have spent so many lunchtimes here over the years.

It has made me a very fierce defender of free museums.

And the rights of 12-year-olds to grow up without too much adult interference.

Yesterday was one of those unremarkable days when, if I kept a diary, I'd have to say Forgot What Did.

But if you'd like to go down as a footnote in history - sorry, but it's only for Brits - you might like to write yesterday up for Mass Observation.

I've visited their archive in Brighton and trawled through boxes full of these one-day diaries dating back to the 1930s.

My pasta and goat's cheese dinner last night was an ordinary middle-of-the-week supper. In 2011.

But I wouldn't have been eating it in 1951 Austerity Britain.

And in 2051, maybe it'll seem as far in the distant past as dried eggs and Lord Woolton's Pie.

Now ... what on earth was I doing for the rest of the day?

I forget.

The local museum (no longer free, sadly, thanks to cutbacks, unless you're a resident) has organised a nettle trail ...

Into the wine shop (for nettle beer)

And the cheese shop (for Yarg cheese),

Around the allotments

And into the cafe (for nettle soup),

The health food shop (for a tonic),

Even into the wool shop (for nettle-dyed yarn, but surely not nettle knickers?).

I'm now wondering whether to expect people tramping through the bottom of my garden? You might call it laziness ... but I call it bio-diversity. Do you think I could start selling teas?

The well-dressed gentleman in the next seat was trying to read the Standard over my shoulder.

He asked me what it said about the show.

(Actually, it was two influential bloggers who originally dubbed it Paint Never Dries. And now that's what everybody calls it.)

The well-dressed gentleman pulled a face.

He was a backer who had lost money on Lord Lloyd-Webber's Love Never Dies, the sequel to Phantom of the Opera, set ten years later on Coney Island.

(He said he'd also put money into Phantom. So I stopped feeling sorry for him.)

Paint Never Dries was very loud. Shouty, screechy loud.

And I still managed to nod off.

And there wasn't a single tune you could hum on the way home.

But I liked the skeleton pushing the hostess trolley and agree with the Whingers, that was the best bit.

The well-dressed gentleman pulled me another face. He said they'd made changes since the first night but it hadn't really improved.

'I've given up hope,' he said.

'It'll never get to Broadway.'

I didn't think much of Paint Never Dries ...

But it's not every night that you get to meet an angel.