Every spring, when the gardening issue comes round, they tell me to go and review Petersham Nurseries. They told me when it was newly opened and unknown and when more people would have put their money on Skye Gyngell being a weird cable channel (maybe devoted to Morris dancing) than a chef. They told me when it was at the top of its form, well-established, and coming top in all the meaningless lists and winning all the meaningless awards. They carried on telling me after people began to say it was actually maybe a bit expensive for what it was. And they told me to review it again this year.

But, as you will notice from the restaurant named at the top of the page, I haven’t. As usual, I left it until the last minute, made sure it was a nice day for a drive out to Richmond and lunch in, I assume, a nursery, and then couldn’t get a table.

I told my editor that, instead, I would write 400 words about how much I hate the squirrels in my garden and then make a spurious but soon-forgotten link to one of the many restaurants I have eaten in recently and really must get round to writing up soon. But he said: “Not again. You do that every year.”

I was, I’ll admit, rather flattered that he had noticed.

“No, but this year it’s a new thing,” I said. “They’re decapitating the tulips. And not even eating all of them, just removing the heads and leaving them there, sort of like the heads of traitors on spikes over London Bridge, as a warning to me…”

“A warning?”

“It’s because I finally stymied their attempts to dig up my bulbs by covering all the beds with chicken wire over the winter. So now they’re doing revenge killings, to show that I have been wasting my time. But only the dark purple and the red. The white and the pink ones they’re leaving as some sort of sign, which I am pretty sure…”

“If you can’t get into Petersham, then go to the Greenhouse. According to Hélène Darroze, it’s the best restaurant in London and Antonin Bonnet is a genius.”

“According to whom?”

“To Hélène Darroze. Of the double-Michelinned Restaurant Hélène Darroze in Paris, who’s coming to run the Connaught in June. Don’t you read the press releases?”

“No.”

“Or the trade press?”

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