The sun shine and all the blossoms of April and May have meant such a lot this year. We have moved my mother into a very good nursing home with exceptional and kind staff, and arranged a room for as if it was her own bedroom at home, with favourite watercolours and rugs and family photographs. She has a French window to the garden which she can see from her room. We are so grateful to have found somewhere so peaceful and with such a high standard of care. She gets visits every day and the rest and dignity of the place is beginning to have an impact. I played her Pachelbel on Saturday on a cd, but had to suppress an urge to put on Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now, which sums up her attitude to life better.

At home, life is dominated by children’s exams and their plans for the summer, the dog won two rosettes at a “Fun” dog show at Cottenham, a thoroughly modern-day-Thelwall experience. I have been in Gloucestershire and Norfolk for my collectors’ column and the library working on the very very final touches on my book. I have prepapred a feature for Country Life due out in June on what Cambridge University means today in its 800^th year and had a series of inspiring conversations with eminent professors, who are experts in astronomy, classical world and botany and bio-diversity – I think its rather an interesting read