Staying at Maxwell house to consider the lilies

CHELSEA! Chelsea! Before you switch off, ladies, we're not talking football here.

No, it's the world-famous Chelsea Flower Show, imperilled next month because the weather has ruined home-grown displays.
Tell me about it, I asked Edinburgh's florist extraordinaire Thomas Maxwell at his Castle Street shop. "I can well imagine the long dry spell has had a lot to do with it but, John, I'm not much of a Chelsea man.

"Not now. But when I lived in London I never missed it. I've never been for a long, long time.

Far too crowded for me. I'd only go if a was invited to the president's breakfast. Joking of course.

The president happens to be a Scot and he's doing a grand job."
Has the weather got things wilting at Castle Street? "Not disastrously so.

We're fortunate in that we can rely on local estates to supply us."
Enough for Maxwells to "do the flowers" for "The Most Beautiful Night of the Year," at the New Town's Mansfield Traquair last weekend. The glitzy evening raised £300,000 for the Muir Maxwell Trust.

And the preferred flowers? White lilies and white hydrangeas. That's this florist's favourite colour.

You can depend on Thomas to play the white man.

Now it shines, Sean

Lighten up. I can see where Sean Connery was coming from when, with chum David Murray, he stepped out of Jeffrey Street restaurant and girned at next to no floodlighting across the road of the skyline, one of Edinburgh's finest.

Says owner-chef Jean-Michel Gauffre:"I well remember that night. Sir Sean wasn't best pleased but his caustic comments got a sympathetic ear from Sir David. If Sean pays another visit he'll find the skyline by night has improved, having got some of the lighting it warrants.

"
. . .

and a classic line from the ever-nauseating Neighbours: "It's just money," the bimbette purrs to her waster boyfriend, who has just blown a fortune on the horses, "we have each other." No wonder nobody wants to emigrate to Oz any more. Do they all speak and act like that there?

Neighbours is the total turn-off. And Dame Edna's going the same way.
Incredibly, ITV want to nick Neighbours and evidently the Beeb are reluctant to part.

Give them the garbage. For free.
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Re-: Give them the garbage.

For free.
It's the folk who buy the paper I feel sorry for.