Anybody else struggle with this? I am dragging myself very slowly through to the finishing line - book group choice, wouldn't you know, and no excuse as we've had two months over the summer to read it. And I'd swear it grows 50 pages longer on the bedside table every night ... why does every mediocre novel have to be so long these days? I thought it was going to be about salvaging Renaissance paintings after the war ... but that barely features, and the only interesting character disappears until p191 by which time I was thoroughly bored with the rest of them. 'Moving, wise, poetic and funny,' said the Daily Mail. 'Contrived, over-blown and doesn't know when to stop,' is my verdict. Oh, for a savage red pen to cut out the adjectives!

There's definitely a hint of autumn in the air, so who knows how many balmy evenings are still in store? Holland Park is such a lovely setting for opera and we really enjoyed last night's performance of Vaughan Williams' Sir John in Love, sitting in the front row in big, comfy armchairs ... if only other theatres would copy! A last-minute decision mid-afternoon, so no time to organise a picnic ... decades ago, when I must have had more energy, we used to have huge, elaborate picnics in the park before the performance. (Showed my friend the railings where I got bloodily impaled after we got locked in after closing time - shudder! I was never the type who could clear a fence with a skip and a jump!) As I'm deeply immersed in a food history project right now, I was giggling at that Shakespearean insult, 'You Banbury cheese!' ... and wondered how many of the audience would get it. As for "let the sky rain potatoes ... hail kissing-comfits and snow eringoes" ... I could have pointed them to a rather tasty pie recipe.

Oh dear, it's been two months - is Mrs M displaying any vital signs? I don't like to declare her dead after so many years! She's still gadding about but has lost the urge to write. I felt like I hadn't been to the theatre for ages - although looking at the sidebar, it's more that I haven't seen anything I've particularly enjoyed. But last night's Much Ado at the National was a brilliant night out on a warm evening - balmy stroll across the river, quick Pimm's to get in the mood, and Shakespeare that was as 'wow' as any big West End musical. Lots of laughs and fabulous sets and costumes - I'd happily go again tonight!

No, I haven't made one - the recipe serves 20! I was in Fortnum's yesterday and I'm not sure that I'd have been tempted at £8.95 a portion - but anyway, they were sold out. Instead, I listened to this lively discussion from the British Library about all things trifle-related ... I rather like the sound of the veal trifles and looked up the recipe from Garrett’s Encyclopaedia of Practical Cookery (c1890).No, I haven't made them either! I haven't done any baking apart from a seed cake a few weeks ago: I do love a seed cake, they're due a revival.

London was buzzing yesterday. In the mood for some Jubilee bling, I headed for Sotheby's rather splendid exhibition of tiaras (free to get in, always a plus for the common people!) and spent a happy hour wishing I could try them on! This is the Spencer tiara, very pretty. I think the daintier ones look classier, one would so hate to look nouveau riche, and I love the ones with delicate, trembling flowers that would catch the light as you waltzed across the ballroom.

But I was rather taken by this Third Wife's Tiara, that belonged to Loelia, Duchess of Westminster. I hope the pre-nup was tight as her marriage was described as 'a definition of unadulterated hell.'

I'm definitely one of those north/south of the river people - and I had to kickstart myself yesterday to get myself to Brixton by lunchtime. I know, three stops further than Tate Britain - but it's all in the mind! I was so glad I did because we had a fascinating tour of the house where van Gogh was a lodger in 1873/74 and may/may not have had a romance with his landlady's daughter. Or even his landlady. The house was almost derelict but has been sympathetically restored and stripped back rather than turned into a museum. It's fascinating as a glimpse of middle-class domestic architecture: the parlour where Mrs Loyer ran a little school - and kept her cane in a hidden window box; the punishment lines penned by some hapless schoolboy, discovered under a floorboard; the steep, narrow stairs up which some poor little skivvy hauled cans of water; and the thrill of standing in Vincent's best bedroom looking over the rooftops and slum dwellings in the alley behind. I'm hugely envious of the artists in residence who get to sleep there. Only half a dozen people on the tour so it all feels very intimate. And definitely worth the (very short) detour.

I loved The Weirdstone of Brisingamen as a child, especially as it was set in a Cheshire landscape that was familiar from Sunday runs in the Austin35 (five children crammed in the back!). I remember reading it, sick with excitement ... and would have been baffled that Alan Garner later rejected it as a 'fairly bad book'. Do children still read it today? I don't think they do; none of the children I know,anyway - it's all Harry Potter. I hadn't realised that 50 years later Garner wrote this sequel to round off the Weirdstone/Moon of Gomrath trilogy that he had abandoned - but it's a sequel for adults, not children. Colin, the child-hero, is now a brilliant but brain-damaged astro-physicist at the radio telescope at Jodrell Bank, traumatised by his childhood adventures. Reader ... I hated it! I lost the will to live - and it's only 150 pages. If it baffled Ursula le Guin, what hope was there for me? I don't have much patience with fantasy and myth, but I don't see what's so clever in being obscure.

Anyone else enjoying Sarah Lancashire as the exuberant TV cook Julia Child? Lovely to see her with so much joie de vivre after all the miserable northern characters she usually plays.

Remember feeling so thrilled when I happened on Julia's kitchen in the Smithsonian ... plodding around the world's largest museum, a bit footsore, trying to cram too much into a day ... and what a surprise! I didn't even know it was there.