I was thrilled to bag a ticket at long last to visit the Cosmic House - you have to be quick off the mark when they're released - and it's now top of my list of 'Best Things To Do in London for a Fiver.' The house was the home of Charles Jencks, the post-modernist architect who lived there until he was 80 (and I am lost in admiration if he still managed that spiral staircase, 52 steps one for every week of the year - and very impressed with myself, too, because I gulped when I saw it!). I'm not a fan of post-modernism but this eccentric house was fascinating to see - and even Jencks admitted that he had gone Too Far. It's so busy ... throbbing with ideas about life, the universe and everything, you feel exhausted looking at it. It did strike me as a very masculine home - his big, important ideas squashing any sign of the wife and young family who lived there too. (Tellingly, his daughter says that she didn't like bringing her friends home.) And I'm guessing that the person who designed the witty frieze of spoons in the kitchen wasn't the person who had to do the fiddly cleaning - though I suppose that if you can afford a Holland Park mansion, you can afford the staff to go with it. Frankly, I could live without my husband exercising his schoolboy 'wit' in the cloakroom ... the symmetrical double flush to the loo - one side works, the other doesn't - well, hilarious if you're 14, but the women visitors in my tour group all agreed that it verged on bullying and we wouldn't want to embarrass our guests for a larf. (Symmetrical soaps, too ... one tablet is soap, the other is stone.) Much use is made of MDF ... in fact, Jencks was really like a more high-minded Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen. You can wander round at your own pace - sit on the (very uncomfortable) furniture - and be very grateful indeed that you don't live with a clever clogs with an insatiable urge for DIY. What I really did love was the beautiful garden designed by Jencks'wife Maggie Keswick; I remember reading her book about Chinese gardens before what for us seemed a very adventurous trip to China back in the 1980s. And around the corner from the Cosmic House is the Best Horribly Unhealthy Lunch for a Fiver from here. Oh, those buns ... no seating, but if you're determined you can grapple with bun/coffee/monsoonal downpour whilst lurking in a doorway. Fuelled with 5000 calories (full disclosure: it was a cheesecake bun ... the whopping XXL Wimbledon bun filled with clotted cream seemed excessive even for me), I jumped on a bus to the National Portrait Gallery. Bad mistake - it was heaving. And it used to be such a calm, peaceful hideaway for discoursing with Brontes or Beatrix Potter. I hope it's just temporary enthusiasm and too much publicity for the revamp. Too hot - too crowded - too noisy ... I gave it just 10 minutes and went home.

I'm back ... a feel-good, exuberant exhibition of Andy Warhol's textiles has inspired me to come back to the poor old blog. Who wouldn't smile at dirndl skirts and summer holiday frocks printed with ice cream cones and toffee apples, flacons of 'Fanel No6' or even Argyle socks and baby bootees? A philodendron print dress in pink or gold - from Palm Fashions of Florida - was very Mad Men's wives - and only needed to be accessorised with a dry martini and a Virginia Slim. I rather doubted if the owner of the witty brushes and brooms frock ever needed to wield one in her own kitchen ... surely the help did the dirty work?

So many things I haven't written up (more for myself taking stock at the end of the year when it's all melded into one!) ... a brief holiday in Lisbon, a jolly visit to a new gallery with a teenage friend who is the best company, one mediocre memoir and a long, fascinating biography, an exhibition that most critics loved but I thought was mostly tosh ...

But I did love Piet Mondrian's amaryllis - I would never have guessed the artist - and was thrilled when mine from last Christmas belatedly pushed out a couple of flowers. (They seem to thrive on neglect but possibly not as much neglect as they get here!) Blogs, pot plants ... must try to do better!

PS I forgot to mention films in my round-up but this French film about a single mother struggling to commute into Paris during a transport strike is completely gripping and yes, absolutely as good as a thriller. Still in cinemas but only just.

Well, what a brilliant night out ... witty, 100% engaging, a really good, old-fashioned play by Somerset Maugham. And you could hear every word! (Nothing wrong with my hearing but I'm often challenged when trying to decode mumblemumblegabble on TV. "Got it!" I'll cry after rewinding three times, like trying to solve an obstinate corner of the crossword.) All the more gratifying that our tickets only cost £1 in the Love Your Local Theatre lottery promotion - which, sadly, has just ended. The theatre was packed with a grey-headed audience ... oh, not often I can look around and think I'm one of the younger ones! We did spend some time wondering why Jane Asher gets to look as she does at 77 ... and we, er, sadly don't despite being respectively quite a bit/a fraction younger.(Cheekbones would have given us a head start.) I had to laugh when I came across this interview with the theatre's new (young) director: Tom Littler, the artistic director of the Orange Tree Theatre in leafy Richmond is reminding us not to underestimate his audience. Yes, they may be older, and sometimes wealthier, than the average theatregoer, but they’ve lived full lives. “Richmond is a very interesting area because many of those people are very liberal, children of the 1960s, have been to parties the likes of which the young people on stage might not even have dreamed of,” he smiles. “So I always think: ‘Let’s be very careful not to judge anybody, just because their hair is white.’” But isn't that just my luck ... old enough for creaky knees but a decade too young to have partied on Eel Pie Island.

Normally I find that a 'brilliantly funny' from India Knight - and worse, 'one of the funniest books you will ever read' from the Daily Mail - is like a flashing red light saying 'You'll hate this.Avoid.' But for once - this really is a genuinely funny book.

Nipped in quickly this afternoon to catch this small, but very good exhibition of highly covetable artists' textiles in lovely, sunny galleries overlooking the chimneytops of Kensington. (And there's a gorgeous cafe that I'm planning to adopt instead of the over-crowded V&A caff.) After the excellent Zoom talk yesterday by Persephone's Nicola Beauman, I got the wrong end of the stick and thought it was an exhibition of Persephone endpaper textiles; it isn't - but it's still very good. I don't wear scarves, but this silk scarf by Patrick Heron was my favourite thing in the show.

What I know about North Korea could be written on a stamp, but I've been completely engrossed by this fascinating book based on interviews with defectors, weaving together the stories of six ordinary people's lives in the grip of (shockingly recent) famine, under a regime that had at least one informer for every 50 citizens; more even than East Germany's Stasi. The young lovers who meet in darkness, too fearful even to confide in each other about their growing doubts - the kindergarten teacher who sees her little pupils starving to death - the mothers struggling to feed their families on foraged grass and corn husks, but still dutifully dusting the obligatory portrait of 'Our Dear Leader' - the loyal doctor's stunned realisation that in neighbouring China, even the dogs eat better. 5* recommendation for one of the best books I've read this year.

I do love this moment when the lilac blossoms in London - my favourite scent, especially after rain. But I was quite taken aback at Chelsea Physic Garden on Saturday to come across a bush absolutely laden with these crimson roses ... I know it's sheltered there, but roses in April! It doesn't seem right!