January. No Basic Petrol in 1948. Bevin for western union. Too much Shakespeare? "Progressive man" or idiotes. Duffle coat.
Thursday, Jan 1st, Roel Hill Farm
In the morning Miss Gill came to lunch. She was very busy making a calf manger in which I gave a hand. Where she had learnt her farming I don’t know as she had done youth work during and before the war.
She seemed to be a remarkably capable and very nice woman. About four o’clock a boy arrived with a telegram to say that a dog, long on order, was at Cheltenham, so Ruth, Molly and Hilary went off to get him. Alone in the farm house, the wind beating against the floors and the doors rattling and banging in the gusts, and no one nearer than the other farm a mile away, I felt the loneliness of the Cotswolds. About seven Hilary and the girls came back in triumph with the dog.Friday, Jan 2nd.
Started home in the afternoon from Notgrove Station, an hour’s wait at Kingham in a waiting room lit only by a hurricane lamp; had two bottles of milk with us so drank half a bottle and ate a fruit bar and some chocolate and felt better. Half an hour at Oxford, finally reached Henley by bus about eight o’clock. Hilary said, “I feel sick as a dog”. But when we reached the house he asked, “What’s your mental condition like?”
Sunday, Jan 3rd
Up to London to Tchaikowsky concert at Albert Hall with Mary and India exhibition afterwards. Mary very gloomy. Very slow train back. Fed up generally.
Monday, Jan 5th
M came over to supper and had a long and confused argument over the future which went to a very late hour. Then put aside our quarrels, came into her bed….
Monday, Jan 12th
End of holidays always a very busy time, working in gardens, doing bees, moving hives, etc, etc, carpentering. Hilary went back to Dartington today, very cheerful, with guinea pig in basket, viola and rucksack. I am very pleased with the way he is turning out, not academic certainly, but a very sensible, friendly, generous well-balanced chap it seems to me.
Bought a second hand duffle coat for 50/-, rather discoloured and dirty but beautifully warm. Weather mild so far this winter, but terrific gales and very damp.
School started today, very trying, nothing but questions and problems from 8.30 to 5.0! Feel I have done enough school teaching, but in some ways a pleasant way of making a living.
Wednesday, Jan 14th
Went over to Reading for supper with Mary. Had one of my chicks, a bottle of white wine, sprouts, potatoes, Christmas pudding and rum, very merry. Asked her at supper if she ever f…. in the bath!
Thursday, Jan 15th
Chancellor said no chance of Basic Petrol this year; the petrol saved would buy the whole of the cotton for domestic textiles etc etc. Can mean going over to Mary by bus, school or public, coming home at 10.35 getting home at 11.20. Fares cheap, 1/6.
Friday, Jan 16th
Bought some daffodils in Reading. The first shop I enquired at said they were 8/6 a bunch, a little further on there was one selling them for 5/-! What the real value was I don’t know, but felt I must have them as I had seen them in the shops.
Sunday, Jan 18th
Did a good weekend of bees and carpentry, but wind very strong and cold. Had a filthy cold which I did not treat with proper respect in the early stages.
Things very bad in the Ruhr again. Food short, except for miners and hunger and unrest giving the communists the chance of making trouble for the occupying powers, which they are not slow to use. Everywhere they promote hatred and bitterness and violence, for these can be used for the high and lofty ends of international communism. In India we have a different spectacle: the Mahatma Gandhi has fasted for four days and by so doing induced the Hindus and Moslems to make renewed efforts to end the violence between the two communities.
When the (Marshall) plan goes through Congress we ought to reconvene the 16 western states and make one more attempt to create a federation of western states. It seems the only hope for the West, but whether national statesmen are capable of the imagination and grasp required seems doubtful. The “safe” men who have let us down so often before seem likely to again.
Monday, Jan 19th
Heard one boy call another a lump of rotten cow dung. Is this the effect of too much Shakespeare?
An ex pupil of Nora’s returning from S. Africa rang up University College, Leicester, to ask for my address. They said we had gone to Henley-on-Thames in 1934. “You could try that but we don’t suppose that Mr Barnes I still there: he was a very progressive man.”!
Tuesday, Jan 20th
Yesterday a white frost so got Tom and Len to carry up remainder of bees, now have them altogether with a cinder path behind them and a low screen in front, where I hope they will be out of the way of the children. Wore my duffle coat to school this morning as very cold.
Cold better but cut two committees this evening, one Library and one Old Boys. How I hate committees, what a waste of time and a bore. Sadly deficient in sense and in this way not a progressive man, but what the Greeks would call an idiotes [layman or private man]! Life too short and too full of things to do to go wearing out the seat of pants as a committee man, so mended and painted hives.
Tuesday, Jan 27th
Spent weekend with Molly and Ruth at Roel Hill Farm, went by bus via Oxford, Witney, Burford and Northleach. Travelling along these great turnpike roads always reminds me of the past, the Legions, the great days of coaching. The wind like a knife on Friday and a wild night with little sleep from howling of the gale. Slightly warmer on Saturday and Sunday, but some rain. On Saturday afternoon walked down to find Spoonley Roman villa in a wood below Roel Hill. Two rooms with pavements had been roofed over, but in one case the wooden building had collapsed through neglect upon the Roman foundations, which were covered by a mass of beams and stone slates.
On Sunday morning walked round the farm, saw no one, mediated on the future of bees and wondered whether I could reach 100 colonies by 1951.
On Friday and Saturday a great debate on foreign affairs in which Bevin announced that we would work for a western union beginning with France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg..… Churchill had come back from Morocco for the debate and said his speech about the U.S.S.R. at Fulton (when he used the term “the iron curtain”) far surpassed by the government’s latest remarks on Russian and Russian policy. He urged that a final attempt to be made to reach some understanding with Russia before it was too late. If the movement for western union is successful it will be the lighting again of those lamps which Edward Grey saw extinguished one by one in 1914 and which have never shone since. As Gilbert Murray wrote today, so much of European history since then has seen the struggle between the individual and community on one side and a gang or party on the other to seize power by force, fraud and terror in order to enforce their pet fanaticism on the others. And yet at the same time there have been the widespread movements of good men, Liberals, humanitarians, Friends, relief workers and internationalists, trying to undo the effects of war and the moral and material devastation on which the gangs have relied to accomplish their disruption.
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