I had a mission today.

Some of you will have noticed that Cleve West has been publishing various photographs of assorted rugged looking contractors toiling away on his Chelsea Flower Show Garden. I decided that, as I was at the Chelsea Showground anyway delivering emergency chocolate to two of the contestants in the Most-Hassled-Woman-In -Britain competition, Alex Baulkwill (the Show Manager) and Hayley Monckton (RHS Press Officer) , it would be fitting take a similar photograph of him in his high visibility vest and steel tippy-toed boots.

Unfortunately he was absent visiting plants in Norfolk so I had to make do with assorted pictures of  his guys building, other people digging very large holes and still more shimmying all over the Great Marquee. The ground is disgustingly muddy but it is all quite exciting.

Clockwise from top left: a large hole (at the bottom of which is a layer of oyster shells - the debris from an 300 year old fast food restaurant that existed when the Royal Hospital was a pleasure ground: oysters were the equivalent of candy floss), the empty marquee (which will be teeming with plants), the Cleveettes toiling away while Cleve is swanning around the countryside, Marquee skeleton with Health and Safety officer in foreground, Alex Baulkwill and digger, view of general chaos.

For those of you - Americans and such -  who are unaware of the Chelsea Flower Show it is a huge flagship show comprising about 20 large show gardens (each costing at least £200,000), lots of smaller gardens, a huge tent’s worth of nurseries and a fleet of stands selling greenhouses, benches, mowers, pots, tools etc etc. It is usually very crowded but the standards are very high. Most American shows (as far as I can gather) take place inside big sheds which has to be very limiting - apart from anything else there is no chance of digging bloody great holes.

My only other observation (unrelated to the Chelsea Flower Show) concerns the word Glum. Glum is good word. Very onomatopoetic. The man who runs the key cutting kiosk at Euston station has a gloriously glum face. Jowly, stubbly, slightly blobbly, definitely lugubrious and fantastically,overpoweringly glum.

I am listening to Superfly by Curtis Mayfield. The picture is of ivy and Clematis montana - not my favourite variety as it it is too rampant in its habit and does not flower for long enough but it is good in situations like this.

Last year I was in Barrow-in-Furness and wrote about Flint,Muslin and Caramac.