Annie Lennox and the Home Secretary got together to big up SING, an AIDS charity http://www.annielennoxsing.com/ Listen and be moved.
Camila Batmanghelidjh said she would rather be facing a teenager with a knife than us lot after lunch. Her work with homeless, troubled teenagers is being threatened by a funding cut. This is insanity. Which billionaire with a brain will step up to this particular plate? Please? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_Company,
As always the lunch was packed with women doing boggling stuff – witness this site:
http://www.womenoftheyear.co.uk/z-yes-you-can.htm

And Shara Brice and the East End kids she turned into a troupe of world class cheer leaders…can’t wait to see the film that Hollywood is making about them.    

Stephen suggested that, if a plot lacks plants, it’s a question of, ‘Come into the Installation Maude’
Lila Das Gupta talked about Gardens Without Plants in terms of shock jock stuff.
    

Treck back to Oxford, shattered, to see a late showing of Oliver Rowse’s bizarre and brilliant ‘Udder’ at the Burton Taylor Theatre http://www.oxfordplayhouse.com/BurtonTaylor/ . He is 20 and a name to watch. His show’s a sell out til Saturday – a few tickets left at I write.

Odd things always happens after time spent at the Savoy. Once, many years ago, the concierge found me my first husband. Another time Adam Faith picked me up in the American bar on the night I launched the Daily Express’ first colour magazine. And then there was the Botham incident, again in the American bar.
Tonight I went to a small pre-opening party to have a look at the renovations which have taken nearly three years. All very lovely.
Outside, just beyond the only street in the UK where you have to drive on the right I gave a hand to a man in a wheelchair. Ten minutes later I was in at the Royal Opera House listening to an audience with Sir Jonathan Miller talking about.. opera. All thanks to my mystery new friend – don’t even know his name,
As I left, slightly early, I lost my way and landed up in the staff canteen where I found a pile of chocolate muffins. I hate the things but bought a couple for my colleague Tom Robbins, the FT’s travel editor. That was the deal – I represented him at the Savoy so long as I ‘brought back muffins from the Savoy’. Has anyone else ever seen muffins at The Savoy? Well I haven’t and even the super soaraway new Savoy had little parcels of raw tuna, tankers of champagne, teeny spring rolls etc etc but no muffins.
So the muffin issue was resolved by the Royal Opera House.
And if my mystery friend reads this: thank you so much.
    

Professor Caroline Evans from Central St Martins brought a whole new angle to the party. She enjoys pursuing gardens – catching up with them as they change. Like the Pursuit of Happiness I suppose. She presented us with Plant-free Garden equivalents from her world. Apparently one fashion collection had no clothes – nothing.
On an equally surreal note Stephen wondered if it were possible to make a garden by wrapping the whole of the RHS Council and leaving the resulting bundle outside.

First up is Wayne Hemingway http://www.hemingwaydesign.co.uk/. What a star. Why isn’t he better listened to? If local authorities and the government gave his housing scheme designs the attention they deserve we’d have a happier little island and far less crime and grimness. His methods are proven and, frankly, you don’t need to be a social scientist to work out why. His schemes give people lovely places to live with outside space where action and community spirit thrive alongside the plants and trees. It’s a no brainer given to us by someone with burgeoning grey matter and conviction.    

GOLD
The win, and raising awareness about problems faced by the indigenous people of the Cameroon rainforest, made the slog worth it… even working seven months without a weekend. You can read about some of it on http://bakagarden.wordpress.com/.
And as soon as I get a break from my new job, running the Financial Times’ property section, I’ll put some pix up.    

Was the evening becoming tired and emotional when OE artist/ceramicist Jonathan Garratt www.jonathangarratt.com suggested planting up either side of airport runways to make ‘accelerated gardens’? These are gardens designed to be viewed at twenty miles an hour or whatever it takes for a Ryanair jet to crawl into the sky.

Now I am shattered. First day of the Chelsea Gardening Matters forum. It started three years ago and I’ve chaired every year. This year the Royal Horticultural Society’s Bob Sweet has put two of us in per day to chair it. Today I am with Wesley Kerr.

The first time we met was in 2004 when I was presenting BBC2’s Gardens Through Time. We were filming at Chelsea. My director had told me to walk and talk in one direction, his director had told him to walk and talk in….a collision course. Neither of us saw the other coming and BANG we crashed.
This time we find a more collaborative way to work one on stage and the other cheer leading from the floor.

I’ll be talking about Erotic Gardens on Friday February 5th at Middle Temple (all proceeds to Malawi Dream, tickets from malawi_dream@me.com) and March 12 and 19 in Oxford. The Oxford gigs are also fund raisers, one for a new homeless charity working with the Burford Garden Company. Probably easiest to buy tickets from me. Watch this space for updates about the charities etc!