Guess that like Punxsutawney Phil, I saw my own shadow and returned to my hole - and reports that I'd emerged from hibernation were premature. I was so cross with myself on Friday evening for letting the day slip away that at 7pm I grabbed my coat and set out for the V&A and Donatello ... what an inspired idea and why don't I do this more often! There was hardly a soul there and I communed in peace with perky spiritelli and Madonnas holding properly wriggly babies.

Nearly 600 years old ... but so alive you could imagine him in Florence today, standing at the bar with his espresso or a glass of Chianti. After 40-odd years of living in London, I still sometimes feel awestruck at what I can access with my old-lady travel-pass within 30 mins of home.

I think I might be emerging from hibernation! It's amazing how a flicker of sunshine makes you feel livelier, not to mention daylight lasting until 5.30-ish ... well, I'm not a morning person and I hate that feeling of it not being worth setting out when it's only 2pm. Anyway, today I headed for a bit of colour and the Orchid Festival at Kew which, though you wouldn't think it from this image, is rather more restrained than in recent years ... a good thing, I think, because it can be a bit brash and (whisper it) vulgar. I'd far rather see orchids in their natural habitat than the splashy displays contrived from supermarket varieties from Holland. (Still plenty of these as apparently the public expects them.) But this year, taking inspiration from Cameroon, it looks a bit more natural - and the animal sculptures are still good fun. I loved the leopard and the crocodile. Last year I see that I combined my visit with the first chilly bench picnic of the year ... not today, thanks! far too much of a shock to the system stepping out from the Palm House. I nipped on the bus to Richmond for hot chocolate from here - and yes, I do find that menu deeply confusing but then I remember when coffee came in black and white.

Well, it was definitely a change from yet another A Christmas Carol. Who would have thought that Madame Bovary would make such a hilariously inventive Christmas show - like panto for the literati. The tiny Jermyn Street Theatre was packed last night. Guess who didn't realise there was a big match happening? Piccadilly was grid-locked with football fans honking their horns, though you'd think they'd want be home in front of the TV in time for kick-off. Fortunately, England lost - and we emerged at 10pm to greatly subdued streets and a train home that was mercifully free of anyone drowning their sorrows.

Harrods looks as if it could be made of gingerbread, anyway, don't you think?

And though it had never struck me before, Christian Dior bore a remarkable resemblance to a gingerbread man. What a brilliant idea to recreate Dior's atelier, his seaside childhood home and his chateau in Provence as an entrancing gingerbread grotto. Free to get in - and when you think that a visit to Father Christmas at Hamleys is a whopping £50, I'm sure lots of little girls would prefer this. Only grown-ups on the morning I went - but it was a schoolday - oohing and aahing at all the tiny Dior gowns. Wouldn't Mrs 'Arris have loved it?

Well, it had us talking all the way home ... mostly about how Mark Rylance came to be in such a tedious teenage gore-fest. Five stars from The Guardian and half a star for the roadtrip scenery from the ladies who thought it would never end.

I didn't realise that this was the third book of a trilogy until I'd finished it, but it's a real page-turner - based on fact - about the precarious lives of the elite in Stalin's Russia.

Heartbreaking performance by Bill Nighy as the desiccated civil servant 'Mr Zombie' and a wonderful evocation of 1950s London, even if it is a good 20 minutes too long (but I say that about everything, every time). What a balmy evening in London tonight; I wandered through Mayfair on my way home from the cinema and people were having dinner outside restaurants and gathering outside the pubs with their drinks ... you'd think it was August, not nearly into November.