O gloomy day! My state-of-the-art headphones fell into a flower border at work and were heavily mulched and liberally watered before I spotted an earpiece sticking out lamely from behind a canna the next day.

It's all that idiot Suze's fault: I only took them off because she came blundering round, disturbing Mahler's 8th and moaning that she'd only sold one of her hideous sculptures at the exhibition last week. Privately marvelled that even one person should want to wake up to such a monstrosity every day, but made soothing noises and let her have a bit of a swig from my hip flask. Must have been then that the headphones fell off…

Anyway, she rallied surprisingly quickly after that and got all giggly, flirting over the top of the herbaceous perennials with poor old James the job scheme. Poor lad turned to jelly, not surprisingly in my opinion, as Suze can be pretty scary at full pitch. He became completely unable to concentrate and did even less work than usual for the rest of the day.

Eventually dragged her away on the promise of some free penstemon plants, but all that happened was that she made herself comfortable in the polytunnel on my folding chair, and started to regale me with the details of one of her children's revolting illnesses. Why does everything deteriorate into chaos when Suze's around?

Gave Annie a lovely surprise today by popping round to see her at work. Honestly, I don't know how she stands the tedium: she was all by herself with a barrowful of compost, listening to that dreadful gloomy music on her headphones. No wonder she's so morose most of the time.

Mind you, felt a bit fed up myself after the debacle of that exhibition: days on end of being covered in clay and sawdust then 72 hours in support tights and high heels grinning inanely, and for what? I think I must be ahead of my time artistically. Annie's got exquisite taste, and I know she absolutely loves them: she's always telling me how unique they are.

Anyway, was greatly cheered by the presence of that charming odd-job boy: since my varicose vein exploded I've been feeling a bit old and haggard, but I'm certain he winked at me. I felt years younger, and was a bit disappointed when Annie took me off to see her rooted cuttings, but then she said I could have some to take home. I'm going to make a little cottage garden border around my Geoff Hamilton bower, and these will look lovely.

Actually, I think I'll just sit down with one of his books for a bit and dream of those strong brown arms and checky shirts…all in the name of research, of course.