I’ve been getting ‘stuff’ done today. You know, all that boring old crap that builds up over the weeks that you just hate doing like washing, sorting socks and admin. I know I sound fickle but I so wish Jo was still around, even though she drove me to distraction with her inability to turn up when she was supposed to and her endless crises.

Anyway, after matching what seemed like a million pairs of socks (though in reality about three dozen pairs), I still ended up with about ten or fifteen unmatched ones – how DOES that happen. I gave up at that point and got on with some admin, the most pressing of which is this impending visit to the USA.

The organisers of the Flower Show asked me to provide a biog and an outline of what my lecture will be about. I must say, that brought me down to size a bit. How on earth can I make myself sound interesting to the thousands of people who will visit the show on the day I speak enough to engage 400 of them in the lecture theatre for half an hour? The enormity of what I’ve undertaken has hit me now and I’m starting to realise that I have but a few short weeks to get myself sorted out and get a lecture put together. It’s doubly difficult because my subject isn’t a core reason for people attending the show if you see what I mean – it’s a peripheral subject that may or may not interest the good folks of Philadelphia.

It’s not just that my subject is peripheral, it’s that I am a complete unknown quantity to the audience. No-one (other than my invited friends) will have the first clue who I am or why I am there. At the moment, I’m not even sure why I will be there.

All I keep thinking is ‘I’d better be good’, ‘I’d better be better than good’ because if I’m not, I’ll fall flat on my face and I’m not sure I can face that after travelling half way around the world to do this thing. I decided to shoot this Christmas Cactus in its mad burst of colour for my pic today because I’d burbled on in my synopsis about how it is possible to do a good plant shot in artificial light…..now I’m not so confident about that!!!

I’m going to have to put in a lot of effort over the coming weeks to get something sorted that I’m happy with. I hope my ‘day job’ isn’t taking up too much weekend time or I’ll never get it done. Panic panic panic…….

We’ve also got to find someone to take care of things here – two Border Collies, four hens and a wabbit can’t fend for themselves even for one night, let alone that long. Jo used to do the house-sitting too but now she’s gone, we need another alternative.

DM has been sorting out our trip and all we are waiting for before we book is Jeanne’s input into dates – well, we can’t fly all the way to the USA without getting together with our friends can we? We’ve got trips planned to see Jeanne, Lara, David’s Uncle Arthur and Auntie Barbara, the amazing Steve Barney and hopefully quite a few more of our friends besides.

I must confess to being more than a bit scared for all sorts of reasons, not least the travelling….though by going with DM, that’s less of a problem for me.

Last year I was trying to escape from my real life.