A visual arts day

Caroline, as a member of the Friends of our art gallery and museum, was able to book us onto their bus trip into Herefordshire yesterday. We wiggled our way to Kilpeck, so we could wonder again at the 12th Century sculpture on its gem of a church, before spending a happy hour or two in Roy Strong's nearby garden. You might say, from the sublime to the ridiculous.

But for all it's being over the top, the garden created over the past four decades at The Lasket is a staggering achievement, a carefully-constructed three-dimensional work of art. The wilderness of an orchard where cats are buried isn't typical - there is something surreal about it.

This particular cat was, Sir Roy told us, named, not for the poet, but for William Larkin, the Jacobean painter: from the time I was a guide at Charlecote Park, I remember his portrait on copper of one of the Lucys, hanging in the Great Hall, a rarity.