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.

Feeling a twinge of guilt for spending a sunny afternoon lying on the bed with a book - but not too much! I'm so enjoying this wartime tale of the dreary Rosamund Tea Rooms (no longer a Tea Rooms but a boarding house) in Thames Lockdon (Henley-on-Thames). Sarah Waters called it 'one of the funniest novels I have ever read' and David Lodge called it 'one of the best novels about the second world war.' I'm finding it all reminiscent of London Belongs to Me - another from the same era which I loved. Must get back to it or Mr Thwaites will be eyeing up my butter ration.

What an absolutely entrancing exhibition at the Royal Academy yesterday about Joanna Hiffernan - who was Whistler's Woman in White and Courbet's Jo, La Belle Irlandaise. I stood for ages in front of the beguiling Symphony in White, No 1:The White Girl - I've seen it in the flesh before, and so many reproductions on book jackets - but, oh, the texture of her dress, and the white flowers on that voile curtain. Whistler - whilst lapping up the publicity - denied that the painting had anything to do with Wilkie Collins's sensation novel: 'I had no intention whatsoever of illustrating Mr Wilkie Collins's novel; it so happens, indeed, that I have never read it,' he protested.

I don't think I'd ever tire of Wapping. The critics objected because the painting had no story or moral. But you can weave your own story ... the confident young woman, owning the space alongside her rather louche companions - and all the life of the river behind her. 'She has the most beautiful hair that you have ever seen! a red not golden but copper - as Venetian as a dream,' wrote Whistler. Whistler's white girls had a lasting influence on other artists.

The Somnambulist by Millais ... well, this has far more of the Wilkie Collins, if you ask me! Walking dangerously close to the cliff edge, the blown-out candle in her hand, the lights of the cottage behind her ...

Albert Herter's Portrait of Bessie (Miss Elizabeth Newton) is rather more saccharine - but isn't that Whistler's polar bear rug?

And you can see where Andrée Karpelès's 1908 Symphonie en Blanc is coming from. This is my perfect exhibition - not too big and completely engaging. Quite unlike the unwieldy, indigestible sprawl of Surrealism at Tate Modern the day before. It's not often that I come out of an exhibition really not having enjoyed it - but it was too large, too muddled, too hot, too crowded, there was hardly anywhere to sit down and, to cap it all, the ladies' loo was squalid ... Oh well, Surrealism has never hit the spot for me!

Really enjoying this lovely book, which has been my slightly too heavy handbag book this week.

I must look out next time I'm at Charing Cross station because, stupidly, I've never noticed that the benches are cleverly worked into the design - although I suspect it worked better with the old wooden benches, not the ugly modern ones. I was there only a few days ago - just before I got to that page of the book!