Marc had just got back from a holiday in Greece this month when he found a terrified gecko hiding in his luggage. A scuffle ensued, in which he and his girlfriend tried to get the little blighter into an ice cream tub, then no end of late-night phone calls to various animal charities to work out what to do with it.

Of course it’s bad manners not to feed your guest, so during this time Marc also had to dig around in the flat for some tasty insects to feed him. Sweet revenge, or a horrible ordeal, depending on how you look at it.

The next day, the lovely people at Beaver Water World, an animal and reptile sanctuary in Kent, said that they were happy to give a home to the gecko, and give him plenty of crickets to feed on.

A happy ending for a very adventurous gecko… naturally Marc’s writing in with his experience to the letters pages of PetPeople, our magazine for pet insurer Petplan.

Well, the rest of the company is sadly yet to see evidence of my ‘skill’, acquired on a creative writing course last year. At some point, obviously, I hope to share my Orange Prize-winning efforts, but in the meantime, one of my fellow students has beaten me to it…

Jonathan Lee’s debut novel, Who Is Mr Satoshi?, was published a couple of months ago. A lawyer by day, he drew on his experiences working in Japan for his Tokyo-set book about a reclusive photographer who sets out on a bizarre personal quest to track down the mysterious Mr Satoshi following the death of his mother.

Jonathan is a thoroughly nice chap and, it turns out, a damn fine writer. The book has received glowing reviews and, much as it pains me to admit it (jealous, moi?), I have to agree. I loved it. It’s beautifully written, heartbreaking and hilarious by turns, and has one of the most immersive final scenes I’ve ever read. Go buy.

“I do feel strongly,” the superbly named Constance Spry once wrote, “that flowers should be a means of self-expression for everyone.” A florist, social reformer and best-selling author, Mrs Spry (1886-1960) took the cut-flower traditions of the upper classes and turned them on their head, effectively democratising the art of homemaking. She taught many Brits how to beautify their homes by making the most of such humble materials as vegetable leaves, twigs and weeds, and encouraged them to use a motley assortment of containers, including broken bird cages, tureen lids and gravy boats.

Having read a particularly romantic account of Constance Spry’s life and achievements in a spring issue of Vogue, I found myself inspired by her creative example. So I skipped off to a flower-arranging course held at the sunny, secret haven that is King Henry’s Walk Garden in Islington.

The raw materials on offer were rather more conservative than Constance might wish for – Tesco cheapie bunches, plastic pots and gardening ‘oasis’ (the green crunchy stuff that soaks up water) – but I held true to her inventive spirit by grabbing a few leaves and squirly twigs from the garden.

This is the wisdom I learned from my flowery foray:

-    Less is more – too many colours, textures etc makes for an untidy mess
-    Go green. If you don’t want to spend a small fortune on expensive flowers, remember that you can get lots of lovely colour and texture from foliage instead
-    Balance the arrangement by adding a bit of symmetry – put large leaves on either side and create a diagonal ‘fan’ of one type of flower running through the middle
-    Fill out the base of your arrangement, which might otherwise be a bit sad and sparse
-    Poke the flowers and leaves into the oasis with conviction, because if it gets too holey, the stems won’t stay put
-    Check your arrangement from all angles

www.voteforachange.co.uk

and…

www.futurefairforall.org/

Surprisingly, neither party seems to have bought Google adwords for their campaign slogans. Maybe soundbite politics hasn’t made it onto the web yet.

Unsurprisingly, no one has done anything with the Liberal Democrat slogan of ‘Change that works for you. Building a fairer Britain’.  This lack of online attention seems to be a common theme for the Lib Dems. Using the very unscientific measure of ‘Google suggests’ (the real time tool that suggests other popular searches in the search bar, based on what people most frequently type in) we entered ‘Is Nick Clegg’ and were presented with this lone suggestion:

Maybe things will change following the recent TV debate, but it seems that, right now, people are most interested in Clegg’s relationship status.

On the flipside, when we Googled ‘Is Gordon Brown’, we got these enlightening suggestions:

And for David Cameron:

Good to know that people are asking the questions that matter.

N.b. Click on the Conservative slogan www.voteforchange.org.uk and see what you get…