Here are a few things you should know about me:

1. On average, I lose one Oyster card a month

2. Despite evidence to the contrary, I remain convinced you can get anywhere in London “in about twenty minutes”

3. If I ever get tickets to a big outdoor event, it will rain

So in accepting a ticket to this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, I knew that precipitation was pretty much guaranteed in the same way that I knew last year’s maiden voyage to Film4’s Summer Screen at Somerset House would be subject to Noah’s ark-style torrential downpours. And, well, whaddya know?

Which brings me to the final thing you should know:

4. I’m always right

So when Friday rolled around and an inordinate amount of the wet stuff was falling from the sky, I wasn’t at all surprised. But I decided to follow the lead of Embankment tube staff, who were in a somewhat celebratory mood.

The nearest station to the show was Sloane Square.

But once I got there I wasn’t exactly sure where to go or what to look out for. A makeshift field? A large greenhouse? Clare Balding on stilts?

Instead of looking at a map or asking for directions, I decided to follow this man because something about him just said “horticulturalist”.

Luckily, my hunch was right.

So once in the grounds, my next task was to find the East Village Garden because they gave me the ticket, so I set about asking people with “Ask Me!” on their tabards where it was.

“Where is the East Village garden?” I said to the tabard wearing man.

“Do you mean the artisan gardens?” he replied.

“Yes, probably” I confirmed, having no idea what that meant.

“It is that way” he said, pointing in entirely the wrong direction.

Which is why instead of finding the East Village garden, I then spent some time considering an aesthetically pleasing woodland scene made of wire.

Eventually, after looking at lots of sheds and animals made of driftwood, I found a big white tent with loads of flowers in it.

“Aha” I thought, seeing petals. “This must be where the gardens are.”

Looking back, it did seem strange that the gardens weren’t outside, because that was where Carol off BBC Breakfast seemed to be when she did the weather from there earlier in the week.

Another red flag was that some of these gardens were also upside down, which I thought was a bit odd and indicative of the fact that maybe these weren’t the right gardens after all.

At this point I decided to approach another Ask Me! person to see if they knew where the big gardens I’d seen on TV were.

“Excuse me, do you know where the East Village garden is?” I said, craning at her map.

“Do you mean the show gardens?” replied the tabarded woman.

“Yes, probably.” I replied, not really knowing what that was, either.

“They are outside, right on the other side of this tent.” she said, pointing to the exit furthest away.

Another ten minutes passed, during which time I wondered whether I would be the first person to leave Chelsea Flower Show without seeing any gardens.

Then I got distracted by a flying dinosaur.

And suddenly, it was like magic: the rain stopped, a slither of sun came out (people actually cheered. They cheered the sun), and the sea of OAPs parted in front of me. Finally, there it was.

A GARDEN.

I was worried that walking around the East Village Garden might be like when someone invites you round to their newly decorated house to “see what they’ve done with the place” and you have to say oh that’s lovely, even when you don’t know the first thing about interior design or wallpaper except that if you leave Bluetac on it for too long then it makes a mark.

Let’s just say my knowledge of flowers is…limited, at best.

I once kept a bunch of roses in an empty Ariel tub.

Shall we move on?

But thankfully, I’d landed an up close look at what was by far the nicest* garden I’d seen all day.

It had this clever black hole thing in the middle of the water feature (technical term there) and I think that was my favourite bit.

Generally, it was just a bit cool to be able to get in a garden and see everything away from the crowds, while all these old people around the outside looked in wondering “what the hell is she doing in there?”

*it was the only garden I’d seen all day.

In lieu of a notepad, I engaged my Thoughtful Face and pretended I was there to do Professional iPhone Photography, and I’m not going to lie – after snapping this lovely little flower, I sort of got the taste for it.

Plus now I’d found the gardens – sorry, the Show Gardens (another technical term) – there was basically no stopping me.

I decided to leave after a while because my fingers were going numb, and I heard that Fantastic Friday was continuing down at the pub.

But despite the rain, it had really been a lovely afternoon seeing what goes on at this 100 year old London institution.

Thanks to the East Village folk for shuffling me in to my first flower show (centenary edition, no less), and if you didn’t go because west London is a like a far away Never Never Land, I saw some advertising about an alternative Chelsea Fringe in Dalston, so maybe you’ll be into that.

Don’t worry, I won’t go, so there’ll definitely be sun.

Did you go to Chelsea? Have you ever been? Did you find the gardens?

Whenever people blog about stuff they received for free, their posts always seem to start with something like this:

“I’ve always been really interested in amphibious modes of transport. So when the Huge Cruise Company asked if I’d like an all expenses paid trip on their luxury liner to an exotic island somewhere really sunny, I jumped at the chance to check out the construction of the ship for my readers.”

For some reason, no one says “Look guys, I just fancied a freebie so bear with me on this”, instead they waffle on about doing it for their readers, or having a real affinity with the brand.

Well bloggers, the game’s up.

It’s high time we stopped pretending and admitted that occasionally, we all just want something for free so we can brag to our mates and make them wish they spent a large proportion of their time writing a blog about London instead of going out on a Friday night.

Which is why …

…when the Cavendish Hotel in Mayfair asked me if I’d like to come for an overnight stay and dinner round their gaff, I was all YES, YES, ABSOLUTELY, YES, YES, WHEN? despite secretly having the following reservations:

• The average Londoner seldom needs to stay in four star hotels in London
• The average Londoner cannot afford to stay in four star hotels in London
• I think Mayfair is the devil

Luckily for me, the reception staff at the Cavendish had already anticipated this moral dilemma, and promptly solved it by uttering the following words upon check-in:

Your executive king room has been upgraded to a junior suite. It’s on a private floor, so you’ll have to take the lift to the 14th and follow the stairs to the penthouse suites. Would you like any help with your bags?

And with the magic words “upgrade”, “suite” and “penthouse” firmly in the bag: that, as they say, solved that.

So off we went to the top floor and into the Berkeley Suite, where, it could be said, the views over London weren’t half bad.

The room itself had everything a Dalston native could want from their first London hotel stay:

• a huge bathroom with a separate shower and bath
• one of those low down basin things that blokes use to wash their nuts
• bathrobes, slippers, a loofah
• two sofas
• a big TV with the option to watch stuff in black and white
• a Bose sound dock for the room rave
• a super king sized bed the size of Battersea and
• a Nespresso machine that neither of us knew how to work.

It also had a surplus chaise lounge which, my date remarked, “doesn’t really fit with the colour scheme of the room”, but it’s fair to say that by this point, all we wanted was an excuse to call reception using the phone next to the loo.

So with dinner not booked until 9pm, we nipped off to the Three Crowns pub round the corner for drinks and a bowl of olives which looked and tasted suspiciously like wasabi peas.

I later found out they were, indeed, wasabi peas.

The pub was home to a few bewildered looking tourists and the friendliest bar staff you’ll find any side of Whisky Mist, one of whom spent a lot of time singing along to Adele songs in an Eastern European accent.  All in all, I agreed with this reviewer who said the Three Crowns is quiet, but

a nice place to spend an hour escaping from the horrors of the West End.

In short, by the time 9pm and dinner rolled around, we were wasted.

Just kidding.

We were a bit tipsy though, so after returning to the hotel and getting directions to the Petrichor restaurant on the first floor, we were well up for getting stuck in to our dinner.

I called shotgun on the best starter and main (quail eggs with brioche soldiers, then a chicken and bacon roulade), which meant my date – who suffers from an aversion to ordering the same thing as someone else – opted for a fish combo of scallops and trout.

While I was just pleased to find out that scallops actually existed in real life, not just on Masterchef, my date was busy panicking about the upcoming trout. Because that’s what happens when you panic-order pink fish, when you don’t really like pink fish.

*pointed look*

Bellies full, cheese board consumed, wine devoured, signature scrawled – we retired to the 15th floor, where London was lit up below us and looking spectacular.

Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of it, so here’s one of me feeding a dog some Monster Munch at a party a few weeks ago instead.

 

Thankfully, the Cavendish doesn’t chuck you out until 12pm at the weekends, so in the morning there was plenty of time to take in the sights of Mayfair and have a quick shop in Fortnum and Mason have an extended nap and miss breakfast before checking out.

All in all, I would highly recommend the Cavendish Hotel. The staff are lovely and polite. The food is good. The suites have lovely views. The complimentary water is brilliant for a hangover. You’ll find it tucked behind Fortnum and Mason at 81 Jermyn St  St James’s, London SW1Y 6JF.

At this point I’d like to wrap things up by saying how interested I am in feng shui and room design, and stress how much I really, really like four star hotels. 

Yep, fingers crossed.