UR TV CAST

You can ignore it, and the skies will not fall in on you but, if you want the so-called “repeat-flowerers” to develop another good flush of blooms before the autumn, then you have to be prepared to help them out now.Many roses flower only once, and no amount of coaxing will persuade them to do otherwise. Even if you like gardening, it can still be rather annoying. So, all those of you who had earmarked this afternoon for sitting in a darkened room shouting: “Come on, Steffi,” prepare to be infuriated.
For this is a critical moment in the year for roses. One of the more infuriating features of keen gardeners is the way that, even when the garden appears to be absolutely fine, with plants flowering their heads off and the borders a positive riot of colour, they manage to dream up some, usually arduous, task to do.

And as an added treat, London’s Articultural Show has moved south of the river to bring its mix of market, theatre, fairground and studio under the festival’s umbrella. Various locations on the South Bank, London SE1 (0171-960 4242) every weekend to 22 Aug
Sharon Gethings. Some of this year’s more unusual inclusions are two installations using 1950s fridges and the contents of Dijon’s rubbish bins respectively, a cinema in the back of a 1959 Peugeot (left), adult babies and a “cannibal” buffet from France, and a band of luminous, hooded drummers from Italy. It’s the festival that’s too big to be contained.

From this weekend, the Royal Festival Hall’s annual al fresco beano, The Great Outdoors, once again spills out on to the South Bank’s walkways and roofs, with artists from around the world providing the latest in theatre, music and dance. What’s more, she’s developed a polished stage act with a band that can fill huge halls with a raucous, grungey sound In other words, don’t write her off just yet

NEC, Birmingham (0121-780 4133) Fri
Tim Perry. What’s more, the music didn’t seem to be there either, with “Thank U” hardly being a brilliant single. But we shouldn’t forget that she has written some stirring AOR anthems, especially “You Oughta Know” from her first “proper” album, Jagged Little Pill, which sold 30 million copies worldwide and established a huge fanbase. Many found it hard to take a multi- millionairess still in her mid-twenties rambling on and on (and on) about her deficiencies and bad times. It examines the nature of love, evasions and absence – what would you think if your husband of seven years completely vanished one morning, without warning or explanation?

Marie Darrieussecq is in conversation at the Institut francais on Tue (6 Jul), 17 Queensberry Place, London SW7 (0171-838 2144) at 6.30pm
Diona Gregory. Last year’s incredibly personal set of songs on Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie seems to have set the career of the Canadian singer- songwriter (right) back a stage or two.

Non-Francophones here have had to wait for Helen Stevenson’s translation, published this week. Her second, My Phantom Husband, was published last year in France and shot straight to number one in the bestsellers’ list. Pig Tales, the story of a woman’s transmogrification into a pig, by Marie Darrieussecq (left), has sold nearly 450,000 copies, making it the most popular new French novel in 40 years Astonishingly, it was her debut novel. This is not a book for grown-ups but the rambling outpourings of someone whose heart still belongs to Daddy..

Divided into two periods, which we might call Before and After Wendy, it is a new version of The Fall in which Shalit looks back enviously on the golden period before her own birth.Quoting de Tocqueville, she lingers over a vision of American society in which women could walk alone without fear, “so great was men’s respect for their modesty” – and is apparently unaware that this courtesy was rarely extended to female slaves, working-class women or prostitutes.Ahistorical, sentimental, badly written, Shalit’s text is the product of a type of education which teaches students to look things up – the book is stuffed with quotations, whether appropriate or not – but not to think for themselves.Failing to understand the link between modesty and shame, which imposed on women the responsibilty for men’s sexual disgust, Shalit is living proof that some people long for a world with strict rules. And she desperately, passionately, wants to avoid growing up.In order to sustain her argument, such as it is, Shalit has created a fantasy version of history. She wants, in other words, to restore herself and other women to a state of invincible ignorance. She wants romance, mystery, the return – literally and metaphorically – of the veil. I know he’s that way because he loves me.” She would like sexual conduct to be policed, literally, by officers who intervene when couples kiss in the street.Shalit admires cultures, like Malaysia, where it is assumed – or so she claims – that a man and woman who are alone in a room for more than three seconds have had sex: “It must be interesting to be alone with someone in Malaysia.”She wants to meet Mr Right, an old-fashioned guy who will leave billets- doux in her apartment, like the New York fireman whose girlfriend found this vomit-inducing note under her pillow: “Lisa is the prettiest little napper in New York City”. But she wants to live in a world where the lives of girls and women are ruled by their fathers: “I’m a much stronger person for having a `paternalistic’ father who is always telling me what to do. Like all good conservatives, she disapproves of mixed bathrooms and sex education; her first chapter consists mostly of a vainglorious account of her triumph in getting herself excused from sex education classes at school.None of this would matter much, if Shalit simply applied her theories to herself.