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Main herbaceous border in pretty good shape with lots of interest. One or two places where it could have done with a bit more TLC. We are getting to the point now where we can tell when a chunk of the border needs to be dug up and restarted, when the perennial weeds are getting a grip or when some proper plants are getting too big and vigorous. We wondered what the cycle was, not getting further than thinking that it was more than five years but less than ten.

Formal beds spot on. Some designed as a mass to be viewed from a distance, some more complicated and designed to be viewed close-up, taking an interest in the individual plants. Some of these last were getting to be more like flower arrangements than flower beds. Around the corner, the new formal garden looking very good. And the first sunken garden was tremendous. An island of botanical peace and heaven on a warm and busy afternoon. Good wheeze not allowing people into it.

Second wonder was, who gets to be head gardener? Is he parachuted in from some favoured gardening consultancy or television programme, or do the chaps who have worked there for years get a look in? Do they get a management type, a botanist or a gardener? It might have been a reward for a worthy retiring soldier at one time. After all, it was a royal palace. And then, does he (or she) do the formal bed designs all by himself, on graph paper, years before the planned date? Does each gardener get a bed to play with, subject to some management guidelines? Do they have an away-day in some swanky hotel and brainstorm it out with flip charts and canapes?

Back home to more A. Huxley, a re-reading prompted by acquiring a bit of Lit. Crit. while on the Isle of Wight. Now, since I was in my teens, I have always thought it more worthy to read, say, Das Kapital (in English that is), than to read a book about Das Kapital, a book of highlights from Das Kapital or a biography of the author. Let alone some talking head of a university lecturer on BBC3. One should go to the horse's mouth. In the same way, I have been wary of Lit. Crit. More worthy to read 'War and Peace' than to read of it. So over the years, despite higher than average consumption of books, I have only got as far as four biographies of literary giants (George Eliot, James Joyce, Charles Dickens and Aldous Huxley) (all from charity shops) and two autobiographies (both Simenon) (one bought, one borrowed). And with the exception of Dickens, with whom I still do not get on, despite the occasional effort, reading the book about the person did quicken the interest in the books by the person.

So now, more or less by accident, I have tried a bit of Lit. Crit., written at about the time I was a first year undergraduate, by one Jerome Meckier from the University of Massachucetts. Not got all the way through yet, but it does remind me of the difficulty of writing this sort of stuff. Treading the narrow line between rubbish, pomp and vacuity. Unreasonable to expect someone to keep on the narrow line all the way through 223 pages including the index.

But I do learn something, particularly about Huxley's relationship with D. H. Lawrence, a man from whom he differed as chalk from cheese, but one whom he greatly admired. As a result read 'After the fireworks' for the first time and 'Point Counter Point' again. Both remain worth reading, despite the passage of time, and both appear to be awash with portraits of chunks of his friends and chunks of himself, particularly the latter. It seems that this was all the thing at the time. They all knew each other and they were all at it, and nobody much got too upset about it.

But it was then odd to come across a short essay in 'Music at Night', the sort of civilised, erudite and funny essay that one would expect from Huxley, all about how he had found it impossible to accept a very generous offer from an American magazine of large circulation to contribute a piece about his private life. Despite being rather keen on the money. So OK to write about himself in a slightly dressed up form in a novel, but not OK to be honest and up-front about it (in so far as that is possible about oneself, never mind desirable). He did not make a moral issue of it, just a personal preference. He did not care to exhibit himself in this way. He had a point in that the magazine was rather more into the secrets of the bedroom than was his custom in his novels, which tend to remain fairly cerebral whatever the subject matter. But a nice distinction; one that I sign up to: much happier about being an exhibitionist in matters of the brain than matters of the body, leaving aside, for the moment, their connection. And I sure the man himself would have agreed that it all depends where one's talents, such as they might be, happen to lie.

By way of a postscript on baring all for the great British (or US) public, a bit of hearsay about the hotel inspectress. It seems that she was giving some gent the benefit of her advice about his hotel and that he was rather prone to making embarrassing asides when he thought he was off-camera, some of which were transmitted. Now if this was scripted, it just goes to show that reality TV is just as bad as I thought it was. If it was done without his knowledge, verging on the illegal. If it was done with his knowledge, what sort of a chap is he? Do we really want to clog up our airwaves with this stuff?

The point being, I suppose, that revealing all is apt to be something of a confection. One can never be sure that it is what it says on the tin. Even if one was a shrink.