I REMEMBER EVERY DETAIL - THE GERMANS WORE GREY, YOU WORE BLUE.

Victoria Summerly wrote, on Friday 13th, an inspired article in The Independent entitled Colour Prejudice in the English Garden.

It twanged a deeply sympathetic chord with me, as well as making me laugh like a drain. Quite rightly, she singles out the English as being the worst perpetrators of colour and style Fascism in their gardens. The Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish, she suggests, are immune from such idiocy because of climatic or topographic limitations.

I'd narrow her geography down even further. The worst of the hortipuritans hang out south of Watford and East of Christchurch. There are pockets of creative inhibition elsewhere, of course. Harrogate is not exactly free of garden fascism and parts of the Cotswolds are highly suspect. But by and large, it seems to be a 'southern' thing and Victoria's piece reminded me of how much I hate such haughtycultural red-neckery.

Echinacea 'Art's Pride' with Scabiosa 'Chile Black' - hot colours for August and early autumn. Hues too shocking for Surrey gentility?

This is not a rational hatred, of course, and there's no virtue in it. Consider it on a par with wanting to fart in church, or, on being presented to the Queen at Chelsea, undergoing a wild fantasy of ignoring the outstretched, gloved hand and instead, throwing one's arms around the majestic personage and shouting, 'Come on, Grannikins, give yer loyal subject a big, sloppy kiss!!'

But doesn't it ever give you a sense of crashing hopelessness and despair, when you see yet another 'English Paradise' of genteel, colour co-ordinated, tastefully confined borders and lawns? Clippy-clippy yew allees; gracious planting schemes with refined and subtle lemons, creams, pinks or mauves; yards and yards of bloody lavender; tasteful obelisks furnished with pink roses and pale violet-blue clematis – these are the essential ingredients of a 'good' garden, we are told. By implication, a garden which does not exhibit these features is not good.

And don't forget the Chinoiserie garden seats, cherubic nudes – usually born minus genitalia – concrete greyhounds, chicken wire geese or faux Grecian urns, not to mention pointless sundials or lions' heads which drizzle water into upturned concrete scallop shells.

Modern additions to such 'refained' embellishments include snap-on conservatories or timber summer houses which must be painted thyme green and have that abomination of the 'noughties,' sedum sodding roofs.

It's all so bloodless. There's no passion, no wild abandon, no spunk. And there's certainly no risk.

What also narks me, about some of these Country Life Mag, Good Taste, Roy Strong-pleasing type gardens is that they're so smug and comfortable with themselves. No nasty innovative ideas, please, we're Surrey! Climate change? That doesn't affect us – we fly Business Class.

Trees and shrubs, in such places are 'correctly' pruned, as prescribed by the RHS. Border plans are still Jekyllic or Sissinghurstian, a century on from when such styles were innovative and exciting. In musical equvalents, it's like being stuck in a time-warp with Franz Lehar, Harry Lauder and Marie Lloyd.

Genuine nautical knick-knacks in a working chandler's yard. Potential garden ornaments?

Colour control seems to be at the very core of all this. Get out and about, in what's left of our countryside, and you'll find the most extraordinary colours working together like a gorgeous dream. Bluebells with red campion; an orange tip butterfly perching on pale lilac cuckoo flower; the bubblegum pink husks of Euonymus europaeus contrasting startlingly with the bright orange of the exposed seeds; strident yellow charlock and scarlet field poppies - there are countless wonderful and sometimes shocking combinations.

But in a garden, persons of delicate sensibilities might feel faint if they encounter a strident orange Geum, especially if it grows too close to a pink Sidalcea. I even knew rather grand gardener, female, who grew variegated London Pride in broad bands along her border front, but who cut off all the flowers before they emerged because their pale pink hue 'didn't go.' That, to her, was good colour discipline; to me it was sick and perverse.

And while we're on the subject, here's a bit of colour fascism from me: most variegated plants are about as sick and perverse as it's possible to be – specially the ones with stipples and blotches rather than well-defined cream or white lines. When I was learning to garden, back in the early seventies, I planted a variegated zone. It soon became known as 'the vomitorium' because every plant looked as though it had been chundered upon.

Lobelia speciosa 'Fan Rose' - another beauty for rude colour in late summer, provided you have moist, fertile soil. Almost nothing 'goes with' that shade of pink - wonderful, isn't it?!

And now that I've offended virtually everyone, I can conclude by saying that, thank goodness, there are plenty of gardeners, even in the Home Counties, who ignore all this nonsense and have exciting, vibrant, thought-provoking and emotionally moving gardens.

Fergus Garrett carries, with panache, the banner first raised by Christo Lloyd and as a result, the colours are more glorious than ever at Great Dixter, despite a strong presence of yew-hedgery and home counties posh. And Fergus' wild meadows are an inspiration to all of us. See them in early June and if you fail to be profoundly moved by the devastating beauty of such pristine flowery meads, you have a heart of carborundum.

The Hyde Hall Dry Garden, from a crushingly inauspicious start when a pile of rocks was dumped outside the main garden, has developed into a dazzling example of how to turn an unforgiving site into a horticultural gem. Not only that, it has never been watered and is as environmentally correct as can be.

Oh, and perhaps I should add, here, that my own garden is absolute crap, style wise. But it's mine and I love it and I'll do what I bloody well like in it.

I should admit, too, that there is just the teeniest bit of yew clippery in the form of two big bobbles. Each had a ridiculous nipple on top, when we move here, and both were too small. So I sheared off the protrusions and grew the little green boobs into big egg-shaped tumps. I think they're out of place - but as Victoria Summerley might say, they're there as 'ironic statements,' so that makes them all right.

Crocosmia 'Bressingham Blaze' and other varieties in gloriously violent colours. They flower when the delicately pastel-hued June flora is long gone. Far too red-blooded for some tastes, but what autumn drama!

I'm listening to Britten's Peter Grimes Act Two, would you believe? And look what prejudice and self-satisfaction did to him, poor sod!

Last Night's film was Almodovar's Los Abrazos Rotos (Broken Embraces.) Penelope Cruz, I'm sure, is at her best when she's being Hispanic. A crackling performance, and what startling glamour! The usual brilliant Almodovar mix of sexual ambiguities, misplaced fidelity and inverted values. I enjoyed it very much, but didn't get quite as caught up as with All About My Mother.

This Day in 2006 the PG and I flew to Amsterdam for a two day stopover before flying on to Cape Town. We stayed on Prins Henrikkade and sipped van Konink's ale by a Canal.

Lawks how I hate August! My garden looks knackered, pox-ridden and repugnant.

A belated Happy Lughnasa to all!

PS - in case you didn't know, the title is from Casablanca - Bogey says it to Ingrid Bergman.

iPADITORIAL LEGENDS

iPad - therefore I am. (With apologies to Apple.)

Try as I might, it proved impossible to beat my mighty-minded, thoroughly decent and remarkably televisual previous show-biz co-worker, James El Sombrero in the race to become one of the first iPad owners in our horticultural milieu. He swankily pulled out his elegantly sheathed beauty on Press Day at Chelsea - back in late May - while I was still feverishly awaiting Budget Approval from our Financial Controller who also operates in this household as the Photographer General.

When I got the approval and sauntered into the Regent Street Mac Store, my simple demand for, and I quote, 'One iPad please, and don't bother to wrap it, I want to play with it on my way out,' was greeted with gales of ironic laughter from the assembled, uniformly sweat-shirted pimply but obliging youths and youthettes who make up the Apple team of 'may-I-help yous.' The iPad, I was told, was not yet available, not even for ready money, and not yet even online.

Certain persons, apparently, had got theirs from abroad, weeks before the UK launch. There had been talk of SIM Card Modification. Hmmm. Way too technical for me. So I went to Singapore, in June, iPadless and grumpy.

But my launch into the joyous sunlit uplands of iPaddery happened around Midsummer's Day. Auspicious, it was. Beltane, the time of burning wicker men and gearing up for better things and a newly productive life.

And it is certainly true, that this ingeniously designed little talisman has proven to be a life-changer. For some. For the rest, there'll always be phone boxes, fil0faxes and places in the wallet for dog-eared snaps of family and friends.

And now, I discover, that Apple have just opened their even sparklier new store in Covent Garden. So I thought it might be a wise moment to assess my experiences with iPad, having played with it for long enough to go quite blind and even more simple-minded than before.

An iPad can contain your entire life, neatly canned like Heinz Beanz. It can carry your library, your hi-fi system, your record collection, a treasury of broadcasting archives such as the Goon Show and Monty Python, your engagement diary, your contacts list, all your family snaps plus one or two photographs of which you may be proud - well, less than two in my case - minutes of RHS meetings, correspondence, your blogging and, well everything, really, all crammed into the slimmest and flattest of metal cases.

So far so good. The iPad is a great deal more than just a new gadget. It, or its descendants will be in the satchel of every school child, and will be at the core of their academic lives, probably from five to eighteen. Grannies will depend on them for keeping in touch and anyone who fails to see all that such machines will do for us is a mugwump or the blindest kind of neoluddite.

This is not just a grown up toy, nor is it a shrunk-down laptop. Nor can or should it replace laptops, though there are folk who say it will. This is something that we will learn to depend on, something to be as much a part of our personal equipment as our wallet, phone or trousers.

Or is it?

Remember the Amstrad? The early Sinclair? The first Apple Classic? Do you recall life before word processors and the internet? How did we manage?

I think the iPad is like the car, a costly toy in 1900 but look at it now. It's only one of a rash of new reader type thingies coming into our world but being Apple, it's zingy, imaginative, fun and different. And I'm already totally hooked on mine.

I've read a sackful of novels, so far, and am just embarking on the works of Ford Madox Ford. What treasure! All 2,000 pages of his Parade's End tetralogy are tucked away in my iPad and weigh nothing. Not a gramme, not a milligramme. Same for Mrs Gaskell, Joseph Conrad and Jane Austen - they're all there, waiting to be read.

BUT - there are dark, unsettling things I've discovered about iPads, and also some MAJOR ANNOYANCES.

Here they are, in brief.

1. APPS.

An App is an emasculated application - about as good as a gelding would be at siring a potential Derby winner. About 99% of Apps are completely pointless. Of the remaining 1%, half are designed for puerile minds, a quarter are only semi-functional but the remainder might be handy on rare occasions.

2. The iPad is very flat, thin and elegant. Its larger sides are as slick as a newly siliconed Teflon surface. The chances of droppage, are therefore greatly enhanced.

3. The battery lasts for hours on end. It also takes hours on end to charge.

The iPad - sleek, slinky and silkily beautiful but remember that most of the Apps are completely pointless.

4. Because it's Apple, you are bound, pretty much, to use the iTunes store for everything. That's fine for music and shows. But for eBooks, iTunes store prices are an absolute outrage. eBooks cost MORE than real paperbacks. That is disgraceful. No paper cost, no distribution costs, minimal administrative costs - all automated - so why the rip off? They need heavy competition and a revolt among customers.

5. After dithering, I decided to opt for a SIM version, so that I could go on line when no wifi is available. I thought at the time, the extra £100 would be worth it.

What I didn't realise was that, short of taking the bloody SIM card out, every time I didn't need it - 99.99% of the time, that is - it would try to hook you into some dastardly O2 network unbidden. If it does that to you abroad, watch out!

As it is, the bastard mobile phone companies are out to get you, if you stray accidentally online. With my iPhone, when in France for two nights, I was not aware that I'd even gone on line, and certainly never intended to and did not knowingly download a single piece of data. And yet my bill was up by £16 for just that. And yet O2 can't even provide a viable signal at my own home. And it's not as if I live in the middle of the blasted Sahara.

AND - back to iPads - AS IF THAT WASN'T ENOUGH, AN ABSOLUTELY INFURIATING LITTLE MESSAGE KEEPS POPPING UP TO TELL YOU THAT YOU CAN'T GO ON LINE, EVEN WHEN GOING ON LINE IS THE LAST THING YOU WANT TO DO. BUT LIKE THE TELESCREENS, IN ORWELL'S NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR, YOU CAN'T TURN THE BLOODY THING OFF AND STOP IT FROM DOING THAT.

Maddening iPad moment, when the stupid little pop-up comes, unbidden, to tell you the network's lost, when you didn't even want to use any dam' network.

6. transferring data between computers and iPads is cumbersome. For Microsoft Word files you need an app called 'Documents to Go' - American for 'Takeaway' And you can only do it all through iTunes. It would be nice if there were some easier kind of 'drop box' system, so you can dump stuff from one machine to another without inadvertently 'syncing' and thereby risking junking other stuff that you wanted to keep.

7. The picture library a bossy and 'we know best' thing which causes weeping and frustration. It really is hardly worth the bother if you're a serious photographer. OK for snaps, but hopeless for trying to transport good stuff. Furthermore the Keynote (Mac's vastly superior 'Powerpoint' type application) works but is slow. I would not trust it for lecturing.

8. The iPad loudspeaker is absolutely PANTS, and the Apple don't even include a pair of their crummy white, pluggy earphones. Tight sods!

9. Er, I think that's it. For everything else, it's absolutely marvellous. The screen and its picture quality is wonderful - great for films, telly etc.

BUT this what makes me really love my iPad: To read, on screen, is easier than reading a real book. It's always ideally illuminated in a font of your choice at a type size that suits. It even has an in-built dictionary and the facility for writing rude notes in the margins - something too few people do, especially to library books.

CRIKEY - what a BORING post!!! I'm so sorry. Back to jollier stuff next time.

I'm listening to Dvorak's String Quintet number 12 in F - not on the iPad speaker, obviously, because it's so pants.

This day in 1983 I was showing a bus load of Over Sixties round our garden, before giving them a talk. The next day, apparently, I lunched in the Braganza restaurant in Frith Street where one of the waiters looked exactly like Lord Kagan, father of the Gannex Macintosh. I've no idea how we afforded that lunch! It certainly wasn't from the fees for presenting Gardeners World, that's for sure!

This week's film was Now Voyager, the gloriously weepy 1942 Bette Davis classic, directed by Irving Rapper, with the closing words '. . . don't let's ask for the moon: we have the stars.'

Aaaah, wet tissues all round.

A GLASS OF CLONED MILK

Lycopersicon esculentum 'Sungold'.

I was going to rant and rail about the media trying desperately to whip up another destructive and pointless food scare over the possibility of, shock, horror, CLONED milk finding its way into the food chain. But the whole thing is too damn silly to bother with and, frankly, I can't be arsed. One thing that did scare me rigid, though, was discovering in the Independent that in the House of Commons, there is only one - yep, just one - scientist. Lord help us all! The Luddites are in charge and there'll be free homeopathy for all. Hurrah!

But instead of ranting, and because heck, it's August and lazy times are here, I thought I'd show you a little of Wendy's opulence on the tomato front. This is how she looked on Monday, before the PG raided all the ripe tomatoes for cooking and was spotted grumfling them raw, in the kitchen. I've stopped some of the plants, but others will be trained round the roof, for late fruits, and because it's a bit of a laugh, going against the text books.

Sad Thing - the swifts have pretty well gone. I saw some flying high yesterday, but our nesting birds have dumped us for warmer climes, the ungrateful little sods.

Amazing thing. Two ravens flew over the house yesterday. Are we doomed? Is this the end, the coming of Wotan, signifying the doom and sending Brunnhilde to snatch me off to Valhalla for an eternity of gardening leave? Don't jest. Brrrrrrrrrr! Scary!!!

Happy thing - when I pruned the massive yellow banksian rose on our house, I exposed a song thrushes nest with three roughly 1 week old fledglings. I withdrew sharpish and mum thrush has continued the rearing task. Lovely and so good to see a succesful late brood. It will be her third, at least, so three chicks shows she's a dam' fine bird.

Because they are invasive aliens, gurus and boffins have been having a serious down on buddleias - or buddle jars, as we're supposed to call them these days. I have been rejoicing in the glory of Buddleja davidii 'Nanho Blue.' It isn't blue but the bush is quite small and dainty - by buddle jar standards - and has an exquisite fragrance.

Buddleja davidii 'Nanho Blue'

I pruned the tops from the most vigorous half dozen stems in June, to temper its growth a little and to secure more late blooms. That works well and I'll do it again next year. Each February I take off about 70% of all growth.

The buddle jar - isn't it ridiculous? - grows near a batch of agapanthus seedlings which have a good smattering of soft blues and whites. They're bone hardy and die right back underground each winter. August is the proper time for aggas, just went so many other garden flowers are about as appealing as unlaundered pants.

My seedling agapanthuses.

I'm reading John Updike's The Widows of Eastwick - I love his take on religion and hypocrisy - and aim to re-read its prequel, The Witches of Eastwick which was made into a pretty bad but utterly enjoyable film. That was my first sighting of Susan Sarandon and I have to confess to being rather smitten at the time.

This day in 2006 I was in Norfolk, walking over the salt marshes near Stiffkey. The ground was vivid with sea lavender and I spotted a Black Tailed Godwit, in full summer plumage, in in a creek.

This week's film was Fish Tank, a wildly acclaimed BAFTA winner which was one of my week's most bitter disappointments. It was so self-indulgently over-length at more than two hours, that I would have fallen asleep if rage hadn't kept me watching. The tired old theme, of disillusioned teenager with a slut-bitch mother living in a hellish part of Essex where no one is safe was trotted out laboriously for what seemed hours. To make matters worse, the DVD print was cropped for a 4:3 TV - why do that still do that? - and the sound was so abysmal and the actors' diction so poor, that much of the dialogue was inaudible.

Oh dear, Another moan. I must get out more.

Byeee.

WITH SEVEN HEADS BUT ONLY ONE BODY, CO-ORDINATION MUST HAVE BEEN AN ABSOLUTE NIGHTMARE!

I haven't posted a word since 9th July. I'm mortified, ashamed, filled with remorse, shocked and contrite. Sorry. Sorry. And sorry, too, for being so behind with everyone else's post. I see there are Garden Monkey posts. Goody! But no JAS posts - or am I missing them since he went all Wordpressy.

BTW - the title refers to the dragon in the Mediaeval Tapestry of the Apocalypse, at Angers.

The garden at L'Hôpital Saint Jean, Angers - in Anjou - built by Henry the Second as penance for having Thomas Becket bumped off. It now accommodates a museum featuring the work of tapestry artist Jean Lurcat. See about him here.

The garden was dry and dead. Now it's wet and dead. I walk like The Curse of the Mummy and will need surgery on spine and hip. Harrruummmph!!!! My days are made tolerable by iPod, iPhone, iPad and iBuprofen - ha! ha! The latter I take in gargantuan doses, but I'm more seriously addicted to the iPad which I absolutely love apart from one or two MADDENING things . . . but there'll be some serious colborning on that one, soon.

The hyped up ibuprofen pills are a shockingly bright pink, presumably designed as lures for small children and have to be taken with food - pills, that is, not children. I find whisky a good accompaniment, especially if there's also some dark chocolate.

Our most riveting garden event since 9th July was the flowering of my tuberose Polianthes tuberosa. The fragrance is complex and erotic and for some days, Wendy has been smelling like a scene from the Tales of a Thousand and One Arabian Nights. She's also burgeoning with tomatoes and cucumbers, both kinds - 'lunch box' and 'impressively endowed.'

The best tomatoes are 'Sungold.' The new variety 'Cherry Falls' has as much flavour as a tissue moistened with distilled water. It's high-yielding, but what good is that if the flavour is so feeble? I shan't grow it again.

The old variety 'Tigerella' tastes almost as bland as 'Cherry Falls' but it looks prettier when ripening. The big, Marmande tomatoes I bought in Carrefour, in Calais, last week, tasted better than all of mine mine, apart from 'Sungold' which, as I've already said, is the best.

I promised a little more about Angers and Terra Botanica. I think it's best told in pictures so I'll keep the wordage brief.

The interior of the Saint John (Jean) hospital, now serving as a museum whose main treasure is a modern Apocalyptic Tapestry by Jean Lurcat. It was inspired by the Cold War. Lurcat served in trenches, in the First War and was a member of the Resistance during the German Occupation in World War 2.

The city is totally charming, with masses of ancient buildings - cathedral, one of France's largest Mediaeval castles, the Cathedral of Saint Maurice, abbey, churches and much more besides. Narrow cobbled streets in the old part of town are almost traffic-free and the view from the river bank, looking back to the oldest part of the Angers is delightful.

Outside the Musée de Beaux Arts. Sorry, I didn't record the name of the artist - rubbish journalism!

My assignment was to write a travel piece about Angers and particularly to report on Terra Botanica, a new theme park occupying a 17 hectare site on the city's outskirts. What a dream of a job!

Terra Botanica - the restaurant, looking through the animated fountains. The food was designed by local Chef Pascal Favre d'Anne (see him here) and and includes top notch hamburgers - yes, hamburgers BUT eco-friendly and made exclusively from local farms. He calls them 'Hambur 'verts'

The 17 hectares are divided into four big theme gardens covering plant hunters, crops and economic crops, botany and horticultural science and local Maine-et-Loire horticulture crop farming and viticulture. There are lots of gardens, film shows, animated shows and boat rides. You can learn more here.

Stylised washing as an art form in Terra Botanica

A quiet place - unusual in this frenetic theme park.

Grass gardening at Terra Botanica

I'm Listening to, would you believe, the Yin Tong Song from the Goon Show. Ying tong diddle I poh!

This time last year I could walk five miles without aching. Now I do well if I can cover five hundred yards.

The film - well, Telly Programme was Sherlock, the new BBC 1 drama. It was OK, up to a point but irritating at many levels. Great story, intelligent transmogrification from Victorian Baker Street. BUT - the filming drove me nuts and a taxi chase, with the anaemic looking Holmes and Watson on foot was daft. But thank heavens for a Dr Watson who isn't a knucklehead - now that's far closer to the real Conan Doyle. Plus, they're sort of metrosexual, type thingies. Tom Sutcliffe gave it an orgasmic review in The Independent. I wonder if he's a good friend of Mark Gatiss????

Good Byeeeee

BUSTED BANGERS, FRIZZED COURGETTES, BLACK SWEETCORN AND RAW CHICKEN.

NOW THEN, NOW THEN! (Why do people say 'now then?' It's nonsensical - a self contradiction in two words. Barmy. We should think up a new way of ahemming for attention.

But to get to the point:

The image below is included mainly for the delectation of Ms Arabella Sock, in recognition of her illustrious blogging achievements in food, gardens and other mises en bouches of this extraordinary life, and in particular as a mark of congratulation on her NEW FENCE.

The piccy is of a wall made entirely of gabions - those abominations of engineering, crafted to stop cliffs falling onto motorways but snatched up gleefully by assorted garden designers, and those who go through the motions of design (you know who you are.)

Named after 'gabbione' which is, according to Wikipedia, Eyetie for 'cage,' these objects, like vertical gardens, black granite kitchen surfaces, carpetless restaurants and those things that super-chefs use to turn perfectly good food into cuckoo spit, will eventually be recognised for what they are - banes, rather than boons to Mankind, and to Man Unkind as well, for that matter.

Anyway, as a mark of respect, I dedicate this gabionic construction to the Sock who, I suspect, actually has a tiny gabionini somewhere about her garden.

I have to say, that this particular wall of gabions, with its streaks of coloured stones, including limestone, slate from schist and some reddish stuff I wasn't able to identify is rather impressive.

I spotted it in the new Terra Botanica, an 'Edutainment Park' at Angers, in Anjou. More on that later, when I've picked up the rest of the piccies from Boots. (The PG stayed at home, so the pics will probably be substandard.)

Joyful things.

1. The swallows have flown their nest - all five - and now zoom about the garden by day but rush home to Mum and Dad for night roosting in the garage. They've crapped all over the barbecue which will probably improve the flavour of my burnt offerings next time it's wheeled out for use.

2 Last summer was such a pile of pants, weatherwise, that I don't think we barbecued once. This year, each week end, we sacrifice sausages or chicken with veggie kebabs and sweetcorn which is nicer, if almost but not quite burnt to ruination, rather than boiled up in a saucepan in the kitchen.

3. Wendy, the greenhouse, has produced a tuberose flower spike, despite my inept plant management in which I managed to rot off two of the three bulbs.

4. The mock orange in the shelter belt which hides our back garden from the village street is full of blossom. We can't see a single flower - they're all on the street side - but when in bed, with the windows open, the entire room is filled with delicious scent.

5. The iPad is amazing. I'm reading Penelope Lively's Family Portrait on it. The book cost a little less than a paperback but is more convenient. I can alter the font, the type size, can book mark where I got to and so on. What an absolutely brilliant gadget this machine is.

AND

A very, very sad thing.

I looked out of the window this morning and saw that one of the swifts which nest in our roof had fallen. Swifts live almost every moment of their lives on the wing, landing only when they nest. They even sleep on the wing. This one had probably been hit by a raptor - we have a marauding hobby which swoops over frequently, trying to snatch up swallow or house martins and was lying, with a few feathers round it, on our terrace.

I picked it up and tried to launch it - that's what you do with a fallen swift. The tiny legs, almost vestigial, end in long, sharp claws which grip with amazing tightness and pierced my skin. That surprised me because it had seemed very weak. It was a young bird, hatched this year and until now had obviously been healthy and in good order. I tried a launch, but alas, it was too badly hurt and unable to fly. My attempts merely caused it further distress, and there was, very sadly, only one further option.

That put a big black cloud over the morning. Nature is a vicious, nasty, ruthless bitch and there are times when I really hate her. It shouldn't have to be so agonising, but it is. Damn it.

My meadow thrives, despite the drought. Lady's bedstraw and field scabious are flowering for the first time this summer but our star wildling was still the spotted orchid which we spotted - ha ha - earlier. It's the one place where I'm actually allowing lesser bindweed, Convolvulus arvensis. I think it will do no harm and you cannot deny that the flowers are exquisite. Distinctly prettier than C. sabateus, which we pay good money for, and also rather more variable.

I'm listening to Schubert's Der Winterreise, A legendary recording with Benjamin Britten accompanying Peter Pears. Britten's playing is riddled with verve and vim.

This time in 2006 I had gout in my right foot but managed to prune a big Ceanothus dentatus and a small Brachyglottis greyi before watching Federer beat Rafael Nadal. The PG and I watched Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, that evening.

This week's adventure was to travel by train from Peterborough to Kings Cross, to Saint Pancras, to Lille and thence to Angers. What a thrill to be in Anjou, the epicentre of the Plantagenet Dynasty and to bathe in Angevin culture for three delirious days. And to think I was paid to go there! More on that later.

The TGV train broke down about 20 minutes short of Angers station but had the good nature to stop so that my window looked out onto a patch of trackside wildflowers. I watched Marbled Whites, a fast flying fritillary of some kind, Chalk Hill Blues and other intriguing butterflies for the hour we had to wait while they magicked up another locomotive.

Despite the breakdown, I'd recommend the train over beastly aircraft any day. Civilised travel, what?

Bye bye.

BITTERSWEET MOMENTS, SAD FAREWELLS AND HILARIOUS PRATFALLS.

What a gut-churning mix of sadness and joy this week!

On Wednesday, the PG and I paid our respects to friend and colleague Professor John MaCleod.

John died at 70, after a valiant fight with cancer, a few days before retiring from RHS Council and was about to become one of the Society's Vice Presidents. His scientific reputation was massive - he had been Director and later, Trustee, of the National Institute of Agricultural Botany as well as having served as RHS Professor of Science for almost ten years.

He was the friendliest of men, tweedy and leonine in appearance, with a fiercely honed intellect, effervescent sense of humour and a startling ability to absorb a mass of information, sift it, digest it and come up with a thorough analysis in a bewilderingly short time.

The church, in a Cambridgeshire village – nice rood screen and curious pulpit – was packed with friends and colleagues. No fewer than five speakers paid tribute to him, unfolding stories about the man, his times and achievements in such a way that his stature grew with every sentence and our sense of loss cut deeper.

But as always, with such experiences, there was great pleasure in remembering joyful moments with John. No one could demolish a plate of sandwiches with such speed and gusto, though his manners were perfect. And the thought of confronting him on the Rugby field - he was a front row forward - would have filled me with dread, if we'd met 50 years ago.

The 'story teller's chair' in the Teaching Garden at RHS Harlow Carr. The Bramall Learning Centre is in the background.

The bittersweet flavour continued to shape the week but at a far more trivial level. My time as a member of the Royal Horticultural Society's Council has come to an end.

Still wearing somber garb, we drove from John's service up to Harrogate for a tour of the brand new Bramall Learning Centre at Harlow Carr Garden. You can find details here but there's nothing like seeing it for yourself. What impressed was the way in which natural light floods the rooms. You feel that the garden is in the room with you, and when the trees lose their leaves and the skyline drops, in winter, the lower light source will create a different effect.

The library, in the Bramall Centre, is one of the most attractive I have ever entered. I kept sneaking back, pretending to look things up in books, but in reality, admiring the layout, the airiness and the accessibility. It's almost impossible to tear yourself away.

The building itself, we were told, is one of the greenest in Britain, complying with all the latest carbon-related diktats and recommendations. (Details here.)

At Betty's Restaurant, Harlow Carr, enjoyed a slap up dinner. This was given as a gesture of thanks to those of us who are leaving Council, and particularly to the retiring President, Giles Coode-Adams.

Giles was hastily handed the reins when Peter Buckley died so unexpectedly and so shockingly late in 2008, and found himself steering the Society through a rather difficult patch. He proved to be a strong, stable hand at the tiller, always maintaining a positive stance, always expressing calm confidence. I'm going to miss his wisdom and his positive attitude enormously.

At yesterday's Annual General Meeting, in a tent at Harlow Carr, I handed back my badge of office, along with the other outgoing Council members and walked away feeling a huge sense of relief, mingled with almost unbearable sadness.

There was also a sense of guilt – still is – because I had completed only eight of my allotted ten years. My dodgy physical condition, plus the need to take on more paid work than I expected to be doing at 66 – thank you, bankers, pension funds and other financial advisors! – meant that there was less time to give to the RHS. And it is never right to commit to any volunteer job, unless you are prepared to give it your all.

I'll still be doing lots for the RHS, but it will be less pressured.

I can also be far more objective when discussing the Society, or writing about it. And far less in inhibited about criticising, whenever I think it's going wrong. Perhaps some remarks about children? (But not now, not here and not - well, not yet, anyway.)

Thalictrum delavayi - my current favourite meadow rue.

The garden is a disgusting, weedy mess but some of the plants are looking wonderful and Wendy if busting out in tomatoes and cucumbers. I'm trying not to weep at the seeding sow thistles, but it's not easy.

I grow our native meadow common meadow rue, Thalictrum flavum which is quietly handsome, but not a patch on the delectable Asian species. It grows wild, in the Fen, so I feel it deserves its place on our side of the hedge, too.

T. delavayi is my current fave, though, pictured above. The tufted purple tassels of F. aquilegifolia make it a close second. There's also a double-flowered T. delavayi, but all I can say to that is why? When the single, lilac flowers are such a delight.

I'm listening to Beethoven's String Quartet Opus 59 no. 1 One of the Rasumovsky Quartets.

Film of the week was. Salon Kitty, a 1976 rudery by pornographer-cum-director (whoops, pardon missus) Tinto Brass. It's long, and dwells rather lingeringly on genitalia, perversions and abnormalities of a sexual nature. (Whatever normalities might be.) The piece also creates a preposterous vision of the Third Reich. But it is not nearly so bad a film as first appears. It begins with remarkably Cabaret-like sequences, borrowing from paintings by Otto Dix (also worth looking at here) and continues to undermine one's security with hideous visions of exploitation and deceit. Helmut Berger, as the immaculate, but repulsively degenerate 'model Nazi' is utterly convincing. The rest of the plot is weak as water, but the compelling, self-destroying process is hypnotic.

This time in 2002 I was in a state of mild shock, having just become a Council Member of the RHS. At Hampton court, that year, retiring member - Christine Skelmersdale and the ex-Treasurer, Martin Slocock wined and dined the PG and me, along with fellow council rookie and whizz kid landscape designer Michael Balston, at Hampton Court. No nancy table cloths or frilled waiters for us, thank you very much. No no! We formed our own little enclave, by the water, in a quiet corner, with our own hamper.

We had a table of sorts, and chairs, but more important than any of that, we had wine, wit, merriment and warm companionship. Two lasting memories of that night - apart from all the joy and stuff - was a gigantic basket of luscious, dark cherries and finishing the evening sipping a magnificent vintage white bordeaux. I'm pretty sure it was a Sauternes, but can't recall which estate it came from.

Oh, and here's the blushing confession: while everyone was watching the Hampton Fireworks, I discovered that I had absent-mindedly grabbed one of the bottles of the delectably raisiny, musty, golden wine and was swigging directly from it. Disgraceful! But then, at every good party there's always someone who just goes that bit too far.

Bye bye for now.

BROKEN PROMISES

Oncosperma tigillarium, one of the world's most elegant, clump-forming palms, a native of Thailand and Peninsular Malaysia. Shot in the Singapore Botanic Gardens. My shot.

Goodness me, I owe so many apologies. It is hardly believable that I've been back in 'blighty' for just over a week, and have failed, failed abysmally in my bright intentions to keep an illustrated blow by blow diary of our adventures in Singapore and Malaysia. What a feeble attempt - just two brief posts. But time did for me and having my passport pinched in Malacca was no help.

Now we're back and it's lovely and hot here, and amazingly, the garden is not dead. Wendy has picked up a couple of nasty infections, the shameless slut, so I've had to take action. I expected her to have a few problems but she's riddled with red spider which is a shock, when I think how lush and healthy everything was before I left!

Now then, Singapore. . .

Our main purpose was to help with judging Community Gardening projects, and for me to deliver a keynote address at their conference. Singapore National Parks Department administers the Community Gardening contest, but the main impetus has to come from the communities themselves. And although this is all relatively new, the uptake and growth has been excellent. 270 communities took part this year, in the contest - which has much in common with Britain in Bloom - but the number signed up for the next contest is up to 400.

Community gardeners, judges and NParks people at the Caribbean at Keppel Condominium, shot by the PG.

What struck me, apart from the enthusiasm of all the participants, was the diversity of social groups which have got stuck into hands-on gardening. Singapore is a small island accommodating 5 million souls. Land, and especially green growing land, is at a tremendous premium, and yet, the standard of horticulture is quite fantastic. And that goes for the best of the community gardens.

You might think that tropical conditions make it easy, but Singapore has possible the most challenging soil known to man. Any humus-rich, laterite forest soil eroded away centuries ago and all that is left is a hostile marine clay which handles like Plasticene.

And the climate is similar to being inside a mist propagator. Tropical rainforest species thrive, but the locals try to grow Mediterranean herbs such as lavender and thyme, and are bitterly disappointed with their results. 'Don't come to me with your hard luck stories,' I told them. ' I can't grow tropical limes, cardamoms or nutmegs.'

A government housing project community garden. Not sure which of us shot this!

When you visit Singapore as a tourist, the opulence, cleanliness and order is what strikes you - after you've recovered from the beauty of the planting everywhere. But as in any large city, there are relatively poor districts and yet, with community gardens, huge efforts have been made and some of the results are delightful. We were able to go up in a high rise building to look down on one particularly fine set of gardens. Each little plot is individually maintained, but the whole area is looked after by the community.

Statue of Chopin, in the Singapore Botanic Garden. (The PG.)

The initiative behind community gardening comes from the all-embracing National Parks Department. It is they who administer the contest, they who provide advice, help and encouragement to communities and it is they who must now bring this contest forward to embrace the wider population so that all parts of the city, and all sectors of society have the opportunity to be involved.

You might say, well, that's part of their job. But the folk we worked with seemed to be giving life and soul to this movement and its current rapid growth is largely due to their dedication, encouragement and support.

There are so many fabulous reasons for visiting Singapore - a vast tropical garden which happens to accommodate a large city. If you plan to fly to Australasia without taking a stopover break there, you'll be doing yourself out of a delightful experience.

Now, a final word about tropical fruits. Guavas, mangoes, jackfruit, mangosteens, pomelos, passion fruit, rambutans and dragon fruit are all delectable additions to the more familiar pineapples, watermelons and, of course, bananas.

But how about the Durian? You can find references here and here.

Back in 1969, on my first visit to Singapore, I was introduced to the durian. I was still groggy from a recent bout of 'flu - there was a nasty epidemic that year - and had totally lost my appetite. We were on a pig farm and the stink of the pigs, plus the clouds of flies which flew up whenever you moved, not to mention the oppressive heat, had combined to make me feel distinctly queazy.

'We have excerrent fluit for you,' said the pig man, in Chinese-sounding English. And sitting down at a crude table, in a shed next to the farrowing sows' pen, he proceded to break open a thing that resembled a giant horse chestnut fruit. Inside, instead of conkers, there were lobes of yellow-cream matter which resembled - well never mind. If you're not a vet, you probably wouldn't have seen what I was about to refer to anyway.

He globbed out the lobes, putting them onto a non-too-clean plate and offered them to me and to my father who was with us. 'Eat' he exhorted. 'It's good, good!' I managed a mouthful but shamefully, with stink of the durian masking the pig muck, I gagged.

Well, 41 years later, my dear friend Ng Cheow Kheng encouraged me to revisit the durian. He bought some, so fresh they were still wriggling, and so ripe that the husks were just on the point of splitting. He invited us into his wonderful flat, with stupendous views of the city, and there I plucked up my courage and had another go.

And do you know what? They are absolutely, utterly, totally delicious. The creaminess of the texture and the complex flavours have to be tasted to be believed. I can't believe I've wasted 41 years in which I could have enjoyed durians whenever I visited South East Asia. What a bummer - though that's probably not a good word in this context. No wonder people say of the durian, it smells like hell but tastes like heaven

The PG's record of my durian epiphany.

I'm looking at my sparkly new iPad and wondering if, when I synch it with my big Mac, it will mess up all the settings and scrub the stuff from my iPhone. I've already loaded it with A Tale of Two Cities. Well, you can't have a Dickens-free iPad, now can you?

This time two weeks ago I was tucking into fresh water prawns with soupy noodles and snarfing Tiger beer. I believe a gigantic banana split was consumed, but I'm not saying by whom.

I'm reading Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim. Gosh, how depressing!