On a day with a glimmer of sunshine (at last),

I glimpsed a flash of lapis blue as last year's hyacinths begin to open (and felt glad they'd been reprieved from the bin).

I squeezed lemons into a bowl of pasta

And tore a bunch of green, peppery basil.

Poured a glass of cold wine

And settled down to a book

That evokes the colours and scents of Corfu.

A high-quality beach read is exactly right for grey days

Spent on the sofa

Instead of a deckchair.

What high hopes I had of Wild Romance for this true Victorian scandal inspired Wilkie Collins, among others, who borrowed from it for his novels No Name and Man and Wife.

And, of course, Chloë Schama - whose first book this is - is the daughter of highly-readable historian Simon Schama. (Only a cynical thought, but what happens to female historians these days if they don't have telegenic good looks?)

Real-life Wilkie Collins?

I'm willing to forgive that novelett-ish book-jacket and prepare to be gripped ...

'Somewhere, across the silvered plane of dimpled water, a ship sounded its horn, and another answered. Theresa Longworth, the teenage daughter of a Manchester silk manufacturer, stood on the deck of the steamer ...'

Oh dear, oh dear.

Too breathless for me, but never mind. In 1852, on that cross-Channel steamer, 19-year-old Theresa enjoys a brief flirtation - and a fumble under the travelling rug - with William Charles Yelverton, a soldier and Irish aristocrat. Some months later, she takes a bold step and starts writing to him and before long she decides that she's in love. So much in love that when Yelverton is posted to the Crimea, she follows to become a lay nurse with an order of nuns. Yelverton, of course, is a cad. When they're apart, he makes some effort to damp down this hysterical passion. But when they meet again, and Theresa is so enthusiastically up for it - and he's having fantasies about her nun's habit ... well, what's a chap to do?

And I'm on Yelverton's side here. Because Theresa is bloody terrifying ... all that pent-up convent-girl energy; we'd call her a stalker today.

Home from the Crimea and they have a clandestine affair and there may/may not have been a pregnancy and illegal abortion. In 1857, they go through a makeshift wedding ceremony in Scotland, followed by another one in Ireland. But in those days the marriage laws of England, Scotland and Ireland didn't tally ... so was either marriage legal? Barely a year later, Charles gets legitimately hitched to a wealthy widow ... and if Theresa is to find her way back into respectable society, she has to prove that she has prior claims.

The courtroom drama that ensued in Dublin is a riveting exposure of Victorian hypocrisy - for how can a wronged woman defend herself without impropriety?

So why does the book go downhill from there? Naturally, Theresa hasn't a hope of achieving respectable marriage to anyone else ... so she feistily takes off to America as a journalist, Fanny Trollope-style, and goes on to travel the world as a New Woman.

Much as I admired her indomitable spirit, though, I'd stopped caring about her - for once the courtroom drama is over, it falls flat and reads too much like a well-researched dissertation.

And though I'm all for feminism, did Charles have to be such a cardboard cut-out? Maybe Chloë Schama's research didn't throw up any more information but it seemed the kneejerk reaction of a young, female writer to cast him so readily as cad and villain.

Come on, men can be victims too, and I'd feel sorry for any chap pursued through a war zone by a highly-sexed Victorian spinster who's impossible to shake off.

Great story ... but she doesn't tell 'em like Wilkie Collins.

Black Swan

is

bizarre,

erotic,

totally barking mad

and

absolutely beautiful ...

And I lapped up

every

preposterous

minute

and

wished

it was

twice as long.

Even if there were moments when I had to whimper and cover my eyes.

It says something about my squandered afternoon that I caught Jamie Oliver recommending tapas of cheese, honey and coffee.

That's right. Together.

So it had to be tried. Right away.

(It's good ... but it needs better coffee than I had immediately

to hand.)

I did wonder if Jamie got The Flavour Thesaurus in his stocking?

Hurray, the first snowdrops and a glimpse of daffodils and tulips starting to appear, and next year's tiny fircones forming on the trees. But it was so cold and grey at Kew this morning that we hid in the Palm House.

The sap isn't rising ... yet.

But it won't be long.

'And still Mrs Miniver had not bought herself a new engagement book, but was scribbling untidy notes on the fly-leaf of the old one.'

My Persephone Diary is beautiful but it's designed for Mrs Minivers whose only commitments are Tennis Parties and Afternoon Tea.

I can see that I'll have to buy another diary to cope with Ordinary Life 2011.

Before I get into a dove-grey muddle.

I love it when an exhibition makes me open my eyes. And think as well as look.

I got off to a great start at the Royal Academy's British Sculpture exhibition this morning.

It wasn't too crowded - with works or people - so there was room to stand and

wonder ...

And feel surprised, because somehow I never thought of the Cenotaph as sculpture? (It strikes me as more powerful in its stark original version, unadorned by poppies and carved wreaths. Or flags.)

And then I thought about what a wealth of inspiration British sculptors found in the British Museum.

And what vitality surges through Epstein's colossal Adam ... how can blood seem to be pulsing through stone?

(I didn't drop my lorgnette like the old lady who was appalled by Adam's nakedness when he was first exhibited in 1939.

But isn't it typical of British prurience ... that a great work of art ended up being exhibited as a rude sideshow in Louis Tussaud's waxworks in Blackpool?)

There was space to sit and contemplate Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. (That's one of hers from Battersea Park in the photo.)

And then ... I got to the 1990s and Damien Hirst's seething mass of bluebottles crawling over a festering barbecue.

And hoped that eventually we'll take a few steps back and start again.