May the verdant bagpipes of destiny lead you along 2011’s most rewarding routes    

Lake swimming last night. Water lily flowers tight shut. Vast pike leaps out of the water lily pads beside me.

Now I will stick to admiring my own mini lilies, by day, from my pike-free garden.    

Roy Lancaster, that gentle, adorable plantsman whose passion for trees makes me want to buy a field and get planting, was giving a talk in the Gardening Matters tent. An elderly gentleman in the front row got up to go. Roy made a cheery comment – but the ‘gentleman’ answered with a rude gesture. Bizarre and very un Chelsea. I suppose that, as chair, I should have had him composted. Instead I send dagger thoughts to you Mr RudeBoy.    

Walk to work talking to Mark Stephens my mate who’s defending Assange. A green woodpecker flies up across the path.
Along the canal a heron pecks at a sandwich surrounded by a flock of seagulls.
The gardeners in Queen Mary’s garden are pruning but will not let me take one of the rose buds which looks like antique silk

FT’s office party. Buses chug us along the Thames, South Bank lights twinkling in the water, to a nightclub overlooking Regent’s Street. Wembley lighting up the sky in one direction, millennium wheel in another. Cranes everywhere. A magnificent Egyptian frieze around the top of the building opposite.

Walk home past bling Christmas lights where Kentish Town Road crosses Regents canal..two man-sized snowmen, flashing multi-coloured lights    

although I am too hot to think. Writing about no-chemical swimming pools is heating instead of cooling my brain. And I cannot remember the name of this plant.

I’m told that it seeds everywhere. I was told that about Nicotiana sylvestris and I can’t manage to get it to flower let alone seed.
Then there’s the enigma of the Monkey ‘C’.    

Daughter number one is 21 tomorrow. We meet for dinner in Soho and walk back through Camden Lock where a cool three legged fox is wandering along Hartland Road where we used to live.    

Completed the cycle ride round Oxford to raise money for the Jane Ashley cancer unit. Very easy to donate: www.justgiving.com/isiscyclists. OK, not very challenging ride. 13 miles. Except that we were led but someone who is having her final chemo session today. What a star.
This is such a great cause.    

Julian Dowle, Chelsea veteran, judge and winner of countless gold medals with Lila Das Guptas, BBC Chelsea star and I crept into this hut to escape the razzmatazz outside.

I wish Ann-Marie Powell had been able to join us but Gilbert Bundy prevented her appearance at Chelsea and, at a few days old, he would not have been allowed in the showground. Yet another reason that the RHS should reconsider its under-fives ban.

    

Went to see daughter number one last night. She is one of the UCL (University College London) students occupying the Jeremy Bentham room close to where, many years ago, I used to have tutorials.
Just outside they have made a cardboard coffin. Candles and flowers surround it. A plaque reading, ‘RIP education’ explains the curious shrine.
Inside, a timeline around the wall marks interviews with the various newspapers and the BBC; marches; interventions from the authorities.
The atmosphere is calm and serious.
Tables, each with its own collection of laptops and students are marked, variously, ‘Media’ ‘Process’ ‘Welfare’ and so on.
I am invited to join the supper line: tuna, cous cous, tomatoes.

All the students I meet are polite and thoughtful. I ask who are the leaders. There are none. Yes, I say, but there must be a few key decision makers . No, it’s just consensual.
Impressive.