Photosynthesis
5 May

And then the sun came out.

Well, intermittently between the showers and downpours anyway. We seem to be having a lot of precipitation along with the milder and sunnier episodes.

What did amaze me was that, during the May Day festivities outside Magdalen College, Oxford, people were injured jumping off the Magdalen Bridge into the Thames because it was only 18 inches deep in some places. Has all the rain avoided that part of the world or is the river incredibly silted up?

Anyhow it only took one day of sun for photosynthesis to kick in and for the garden to really take off. Clematises are flinging themselves up the walls. The first azalea has flowered precipitously if slightly late. The rhibes are a riot of green tangy leaves. The umbrella plant has suddenly developed nearly a dozen leaves. Lillies are racing upwards. Three red hot pokers have appeared from nowhere. And the wallflowers continue their bountiful progress; they really have been a major success story this year. As have the purple Penny Royals in the front garden.

A lot of the good weather coincided with May Day Bank Holiday. Ever since I started my four day week, I've dislike Bank Holidays because everyone else is off at the same time as me and the shops and parks and eateries are full and not empty. Ross and I avoided the mayhem by staying at home. We pottered in the garden and put up shelves for the talking book library in the spare bedroom.

I've also polished off a couple of books. A Scientific Romance by Ronald Wright wasn't the treat I hoped it would be. It really felt like an uncomfortable muddle of two different novels; the one a re-telling of H G Wells Time Machine and the other a confused sub-Oxford nasty romance. I think it would have been better as two different books.

Better (but not as good as The Other Boleyn Girl) was Virgin Earth by Phillipa Gregory. This yarn traced the history of a family of Royal gardeners through the turbulence of the Civil War. Again, it was good to live through history by way of characters who didn't know the outcome.

But I felt it to be a lot more contrived than the Boleyn novel. The clash of loyalties between Cavaliers and Roundheads was not really matched between a clash of loyalties between settlers in Virginia and our hero who got pally with the natives. And the author went out of her way not to describe a battlefield. So I read it through but not with the same sense of discovery as the first novel.

Television continues not to sparkle. We like the new Dr Who. The existential Darlek was a great treat croaking "You would make a good Darlek" at The Doctor. We also like the fact that Bruno Langley, he of Corrie's Gay Kiss, has become The Doctor's new assistant, Adam.

Hussle has provided six excellent weeks of entertainment. Ross continues to follow Nip Tuck and Enterprise assiduously.

Otherwise, there's not a lot to attract the intelligent viewer. Thank goodness for BBC4 where the occasional programme fills an hour. There was an excellent history of Islamic Europe recently which shed more light into the so-called dark ages - they had street lights and public sanitation in Toledo in the tenth century to a standard which London would not achieve for another 900 years.

I'm glad that I can miss out on a lot of crap television because the Bulletin Boards keep me happy with stills from the show. For example, I have not had to watch any of Desperate Housewives to know that Jesse Metcalf (in reality 25 but playing 18) has a certain body-shaved charm.

Nor have I lost any sleep over the fact that I've not watched any of Footballers' Wives but I am quite glad to have cast my eyes on the charms of Jamie Davis, one of the younger bits of flighty male totty who disrobe at a moment's notice.

The Games also passed me by. Kevin Sim was one of the great draws though better still by half was top totty, Philip Olivier who seems willing to show his charms at any chance.

One of the great treats appears to have been the diving competition.

Especially, the moment where young Phil's Speedos appeared no longer to be taught enough to contain his sporting prowess.

The only other thing to report about today is that I have exercised my franchise. I've not said anything about the overall election campaign because, frankly, it has failed to grip me and most of the rest of the population.

The only thing that sprang up which was of any slight interest was a Website called whoshouldyouvotefor.com. This contained a questionnaire which asked you to rate a couple of dozen statements and then compared those against policies in party manifestos. The end result was a suggestion as to how you might vote based on how your views as recorded matched what the parties offered. I came out as a LibDem first, Green second and Labour third. Negative scores were attributed to both UKIP and the Tories.

I felt that that probably summed up my current position of not my natural affiliation.

The LibDems have run the best campaign by far - policy and not personality orientated. Their poster campaign (We oppose - We propose) defined this approach. The Tories have resorted to calling Tony Blair names and playing the immigration card - I hope that they get trounced for their lack of vision and sheer nastiness. Labour have not done badly but not well. They will, in all certainty, be returned to government with a reduced majority. However, they have borne the brunt of an electorate who did not take kindly to the Iraq War and to target driven public services.

I feel that the best result, in the morning, would be for the LibDems and the Tories to have an equal share of the opposition vote. The worst result would be for the Tories' scare tactics to have stirred the basest feelings of the general public.