A stroll on a hot evening, licking an ice-cream. Up to the Castle. Down to the river. Along the High Street, via second-hand bookshop to Eton College.

Half an hour browsing in Takky Maxx because it's not all about history and culture.

Then a drink with a friend and some funny songs, even if the rest of the programme was ... hmm, a bit mixed.

I did wonder if the Queen ever looks out of her window and wonders what it would be like to go for a pizza.

A little something to torment Darlene ...

Lady Grantham: Edith, are you a lady or Toad of Toad Hall?

Best Maggie Smith line from this week's Downton Abbey. (Edith has announced her intention to drive a tractor.)

And did anybody else notice that the book that housemaid Anna doesn't get around to reading is Elizabeth and her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim?

(There was even the suggestion of forming a book group in the servants' hall ...)

The last few days have been damp and dun.

When the sun came out today - which wouldn't have pleased Darlene, who wanted atmospheric gloom for her long-awaited visit to Highgate cemetery - I nipped down to Kew for an end-of-the-afternoon stroll.

The sun shone through glowing rudbeckias, golden marigolds and autumn crocus.

I paid my last visit of the year to the waterlily house

And smelled lavender in my favourite secret garden,

Admired two enormously fat peacocks

And lost count of green parrots which are multiplying faster than ever.

(I don't mind. I like lairy green parrots.)

And then I came home and made blackberry and apple crumble.

Even though the walk was supposed to work off the cake I ate with Darlene, Rachel and Simon on Sunday.

When Spitalfields was the centre of a real living weaving industry, the pale weavers were to be seen with their butterfly nets in all the woods and copses near London, seeking inspiration and suggestion in the beauty of captured insects no less than in that of the flowers on which they fed.

It is Open House weekend, with more than 50 pages of architectural visits to choose from. Last night there was some lamenting that some tours needed to be pre-booked.

I am not a pre-booking kind of person. I am a running out of the house at the last minute person, sometimes so last minute that I miss the whole event.

Full of good intentions, I run out of the house only two hours behind schedule.

I get distracted by this church because you can't walk past a Hawksmoor church without going in.

I get distracted again as I grab a rare chance to see inside one of the Georgian silk weavers' houses on Fournier Street - pure luck, because it's nothing to do with Open House - and I'm especially thrilled to see the kitchen with its stone sink and the tiny courtyard garden. This is what it looks like outside. It's a gallery now - I don't ever remember seeing it open before - and, to my delight, they're showing The Map of Spitalfields Life devised by a clever map-maker in collusion with the anonymous author of this endlessly fascinating blog.

Of course, I'm even more fascinated by the house next door because it's unattainable and I'm very envious of Jane's chance to see the view from its roof garden.

But what I've really come to see is another house that's rarely open. A house that has been described as our Ellis Island, a palimpsest of layer upon layer of history, Jewish over Huguenot, a synagogue built over the garden of a weaver's house that still has its bobbin sign hanging outside.

Then I amble down Brick Lane, with a bag of samosas for lunch, getting distracted by vintage shops selling hats out of Brief Encounter and, of course, I have to admire the wild life.

And the afternoon has ticked away before I make it as far as this exhibition.

Which was actually only number two on my Open House list of places to go.

Never mind. I did better than last year.

Jane Eyre or John le Carré ... I didn't have to think twice.

There's no contest.

It had to be Tinker Tailor. Can you give a film 10*? It was brilliant. What can I say ... I didn't think of Alec Guinness, not once. No wonder John le Carré is so pleased with it.

It's a phenomenally good cast. Gary Oldman has made George Smiley completely his own. Colin Firth is superb. (His suede shoes speak volumes.) The homosexual undertones that were more understated in the 1970s version .. well, history speaks for itself.

And in a film that is largely about the quiet ruthlessness of male betrayal, Kathy Burke is simply fantastic as the Circus's retired, alcoholic researcher Connie Sachs.

I'm ever so tempted to go again.

Doesn't this inspire you to start your great Victorian novel?

There's something about Atkinson Grimshaw that makes me think of Dickens and Wilkie Collins, of moonlight and fog and gloaming and ladies in white.

I'd barely heard of him until one day when I was working in Leeds and snatched an hour in the art gallery there before catching my train home. I remember thinking ... wow, I like these.

I'll definitely be going to this exhibition because we don't get much chance to see his work here in the south.

Belatedly joining in with Cornflower's and Simon's game, the idea being that you complete each phrase with the name of a book that you've read this year. So here goes:

One time on holiday, We Bought A Zoo (Benjamin Mee)

Weekends at my house are Planet Dinosaur.

My neighbour is Doreen (Barbara Noble)

My boss is The Hare with Amber Eyes (Edmund de Waal)

My superhero secret identity is NY JS DB 62 (David Bailey)

You wouldn't like me when I'm angry, because The Very Thought of You ... (Rosie Alison)

I'd win a gold medal in Making Conversation (Christine Longford)

I'd pay good money for A Visit from the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan)

If I were Prime Minister I would Let the Great World Spin (Colum McCann)

When I don't have good books I ... Decline and Fall (Evelyn Waugh). Sorry, Cornflower, for copying but nothing else would fit.

Loud talkers at the cinema should be All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque)

Anybody else inspired to have a go?