Even if money were no object, I'm afraid I'm too clumsy to be trusted with anything like this - but isn't this Lucie Rie bowl simply beautiful?

But wouldn't you just love to own a collection of her wartime buttons? I'd have to learn to knit! Happened on this exhibition as I was walking in Berkeley Square this afternoon.

I'm not the biggest fan of historical novels, but once in a while - and this appealed to me because it's about the gardener John Tradescant and it's nice to think that I've had tea and cake by his tomb in the Garden Museum. Oh, how wrong I was - I had steam coming out my ears reading this! Okay, so hard facts are sparse and they won't knit into a novel without a dollop of poetic licence and imagination ... but when gardener Tradescant gets ecstatically buggered by the beautiful Duke of Buckingham, favourite of two kings ... oh, give me strength, what absolute tosh, and not a shred of historical evidence. I vaguely recall reading The Other Boleyn Girl and I'm sure it was better than this - but Earthly Joys managed to be plodding and repetitive as well as silly, so I think that's me done with Philippa Gregory.

What an absolutely fabulous show ... as soon as the curtain went up on Iolanthe's fairyland I was smiling. Lovely afternoon matinee yesterday with a friend, full of colour and laughter. The set design - whether fairyland or the House of Lords - is fantastic.

The gorgeousness of the Coliseum hits me every time. We lingered admiring the mosaics in the entrance hall but I googled them when I get home, thinking they might be by Boris Anrep - they're not. Turns out they're not mosaics at all, but glass chips over paint. You'd never guess. Still a warm, sunny afternoon when we emerged so we walked up to Soho for apple strudel ice cream and black fig sorbet. Still dithering over whether I should have gone for the marron glacé so I might have to go back before the autumn menu disappears. (Friend is very accommodating about my pernicketiness about the best ice-cream shop! Which is this one, trust me!)

Just about warm enough last night to sit for a few minutes in the lovely rose garden behind the Actors' Church before the concert. (I was well upholstered by a warm cardamom bun dripping in syrup. Best buns in London!) Then a bit of memorial-spotting in the interval.

Not setting the intellectual bar very high this week, as you'll have guessed from my last post - but I've been really enjoying this old-fashioned children's book and galloped through it in a couple of days. I read the Persephone edition but this old Puffin cover seems rather more appropriate than Persephone's elegant dove-grey jackets which would have had zero appeal to me as a 10-year-old. Warning: it's best to switch off your critical faculties and just wallow. Once you start nit-picking about feckless parents who abandon their children (think a dry-land version of Swallows and Amazons' 'only duffers drown') and wonder why none of the children seems even mildly distressed, let alone traumatised (perhaps because Daddy is a foul-tempered crank and Mummy's a drip); and why, even though there's a master-class in hay-box cooking, nobody explains how to go to the loo when you live in a barn (or were middle-class kiddies in the 1930s too well-bred to have bottoms?) .. no, best just to wallow. Though I did long to shake Sue, the elder girl, and get her to stop washing and cleaning for her brothers - even their hankies, yuck - and making their beds! Sue, you are training up three useless husbands for the next generation! And possibly this book should come with a warning about putting flighty ideas into parents' heads: 'Sorry, dearies, had a bang on the head, woke up half way up a mountain and forgot you brats existed' ... even today's helicopter parents might be sorely tempted!

Guess it was inevitable - I kind of knew I'd crack in the end.

That was absolutely the best night out ... great songs, brilliant set design, and we were greeted on arrival by Tower Bridge opening to let a tall ship through which was fun. It's 40 years since I last saw Guys & Dolls (gulp!) at the National Theatre with a very starry cast including Julia Mckenzie, Bob Hoskins and a very young Imelda Staunton - but honestly I think tonight was more fun. If my knees were 40 years younger, I'd have booked standing tickets - which really should be called dancing tickets! I must say I rather regretted my sensible, grown-up decision that we needed a seat. Still humming those tunea!