Thursday, Jan 4th - Started snowing in afternoon. Doctor’s bill came in for £28. I hate January, nothing but bills and bad weather. Telephone, rates, coal, garage and electricity.
(An index of names is found at end of this post)
Tuesday, Jan 9th - An emergency! Snow drifted in the night to two feet in the front of house. Graham Kitchin cleared a path to front door and got back door shut which Mary had opened and then could not close. Luckily we had got milk and plenty of fuel. In mid morning Graham started out with chains, but could not get up to main road and came back.
Thursday, Jan 11th - Snow one and a half feet deep on drive to garage. Postman arrived carrying letters in a sack on his back. Confined to house since Saturday and getting very bored.
Saturday, Jan 13th - Another fall of snow in the night, only two or three inches but covered drive again after I had paid two boys 10/- to clear it yesterday. A letter from Hilary. He had landed a job as Reuters correspondent.
Sunday, Jan 14th - Raining and dripping and blowing all night. The world remade. Landscape green, or perhaps brown, again. Road clear.
Tuesday, Jan 16th - Letter from Marjorie Barnes. Said she had not been ‘with it’ since last February when 500 modern school girls had been dumped on her school and the whole put in two antiquated buildings separated by the main London - Cambridge road. She’s too old for challenges so she is giving up in 1969. God, it makes me angry. I’d like to make these committee buggers run some of their own shit ridden schemes!
Wednesday, Jan 17th - Cuts in government spending announced yesterday. Imperial role at length to be abandoned - an European not an Asiatic power, Persian Gulf and Singapore both to go but Gurkhas to remain in Hong Kong. This enables cuts in aircraft and carriers. Our resources are not in future to spend half their time at the pawnbrokers. The welfare state is no longer to be unselective. Once started this is unlikely to be reversed in future. Raising of school age to 16 again postponed as in 1938 and 1944. For more taxes on private spending we shall have to wait for the budget in March.
Friday,Jan 19th - By car to Sapperton to take photographs of canal. Started to walk up to tunnel by towpath from Daneway lane. Very overgrown. Had to get down into canal dry bed at one point and fell flat on my face after tripping over a tree. Glad Mary was with me. After beer and sandwiches at pub discovered there was a better way way down to tunnel. After lunch drove to Coates where access to other end of tunnel very easy and more interesting. Enjoyed this excursion into industrial archeology very much.
Saturday, Jan 20th - The lunatic who runs the teashop at Bibury said he felt ashamed to be an Englishman. Felt inclined to reply that I had not felt like that since the days of Baldwin, Eden and Chamberlain. Nor did I think being permanently in pawn essential to national pride.
Monday, Jan 22nd - My first day of new term at Alvescott Park. 14 or 15 miscellaneous collection in little room, half of whom had to sit with back to blackboard. One Persian, one Iraqi, several Americans. To this lot I am expected to teach British history and geography. Some hope!
Saturday, Jan 27th - Mary’s birthday. Bay Tree to lunch. A rather gross and moneyed lot of eaters who made me think of Oxfam!
Sunday, Feb 4th - The Vietcong have caught the Americans with their trousers down properly and seized parts of cities from Hue in north to Saigon in south. The Americans will never be able to make South Vietnam a viable democracy without their forces. The best thing they can do is to get out with as little loss of face as possible and no further senseless loss of life.
Thursday, Feb 15th - To-day three years ahead the coinage is to be changed to decimal. Britannia, on coins since Charles II, is to disappear.
Friday, Feb 16th - Met Mary off Oxford bus and took her to tea at Chipping Norton and then to Stratford to see Roy Dotrice as John Aubrey in Brief Lives, a one man monologue. He emerged from his curtained bed in a room stuffed with junk, hammering overhead and a baby squalling next door, put on his clothes and proceeded to reminisce and raconter, in the intervals he heated milk, ate his dinner, peed in a jerry which he emptied out of the window and was funny, scandalous and pathetic. In the interval he slept on a chair on stage and at the end he died. It lasted two hours and was most enjoyable. Every event was dated by Civil War and manners and customs in 1697 compared unfavourably with those before the war.
Monday, Feb 19th - To Salperton Manor and church where we found the largest extent of wild snowdrops and aconites I have ever seen. Far bigger than those at Sherborne. The woods were golden like a field of buttercups in midsummer.
Thursday, Feb 29th - The very cold weather continues. Poor Marzin Jumaa, the Arab, who has a fearful cold, asked when it would get warmer. Replied impossible to tell, had known in snow in May!
Another muddle. The government rushes through this week a bill to prevent Asians from East Africa holding British passports from entering Britain. This our first racial legislation. The rush from Kenya here began when the government began to Africanize the services and restrict labour permits for Indians. No one knows how many Asians want to come, estimates vary from 25,000 to 100,000. It is thought they will crowd into the Midland towns which already have large immigrant communities and make shortage of schools, housing, and hospitals even worse than they are and this will lead to race riots. Those who challenged the bill challenged the figures, claiming the proportion of coloured people still very low and manageable, immigrant skills and labour valuable, the thin edge of a segregation wedge and a breach in our undertaking when Kenya became independent.
The Archbishop and Cardinal Heenan both protested in The Times and some old fashioned Tories found themselves in the same lobby as the extreme left wing Labour members. A Scotswoman tried to burn her passport in Whitehall and the Bishop of Southwark resigned from the Labour Party, which seems in danger of total disintegration. A coalition vote steam rollered it through both houses to-day and it received the royal assent - the conquest of expediency over principle and good faith. Labour goes from bad to worse.
Friday, March 1st - Our anniversary of 1940. Went to bed early and by the time Mary left for her own room it was.
Saturday, March 2nd - Daily Telegraph has had a limerick competition to the old one:
There was a young lady of Wantage
Of whom a town clerk took advantage.
The borough surveyor
Said you must pay her:
You’ve altered the lines of her frontage.
The chairman of Wantage U.D.C replied:
There was a young lady of Thame,
Who came here to save her good name.
What makes me so wild
She was heavy with child
But our poor ruddy clerk got the blame.
One of the best was:
There was a young student on Kent
Who worked doubled up in a tent.
When his friends asked ‘Why so?’
He replied ‘I don’t know:
It must be my scholarly bent.’
I also liked:
There was a young man of St Just
Who complained that his girl had no bust.
So she purchased some foam
Which she tailored at home
Into contours suggestive of lust.
In the Lords the Liberals voted solidly against the bill and so did some Conservatives and Labour, but only three bishops, Canterbury, London and Chichester, went into the No lobby; 3 out of 26 is such a high percentage!
Wednesday, March 13th - Miss Walker, a charming young woman with a rather low assistant (male) came over from the Rural Community Council at Gloucester to meet the Hall committee and outline the prospects and methods of obtaining a 75% grant in aid of lavatories etc etc. We had a full committee and it went quite well. Following old Attenborough’s advice I asked them to supper beforehand and so learnt a lot.
Saturday, March 16th - Drove over to Charlbury to meet Nora at 10.42. Not on train. Waited to 12.45 when phone rang. She had come by another train because in spite of my letter she thought the first too early. What a morning.
Sunday, March 17th - Nora insisted on getting up for breakfast and then washing the car. As usual you could not tell her anything; she knew all the answers to everything. She is 70 on Tuesday.
Friday, March 29th - On Wednesday Parish Meeting. 18 came and it went pretty well. The dubious question of the war memorial came up but we had little enough money for the hall let alone that. I was a bit sorry I had raised that hare, which had run to the pub and been fielded by old Mr Coombs, ‘the Gaffer’.
Saturday, March 30th - Michael Collard to tea; The new headmaster at Littlemore sounds awful. M suspects he has been to a course in personnel management. Committees multiply but the children appear to count for less and less.
Thursday, April 2nd - With Cil’s help delivered letters asking for subscriptions to Hall. Discovered homes of the ‘lower orders’ do not have letter boxes. Often letters will not go under doors. Have to leave them with the milk bottles. Who would be a postman!
Saturday, April 6th - Collecting for the village Hall. About four people refused to help point blank and some others evaded like woman who only seemed to be interested in why the church had to give up the barn. One rugged man in the council houses asked if I was the man who had closed the Tip!! and the refused to pay. On the other hand most were friendly and with a cheque of £100 from in the Manor House we collected £180. The rest was done by Scaramanga. Total collection £203.
Sunday, April 7th - Took Hilary (doing a week at Reuters in London) to see the caravan site at Kingham as an alternative to our lawn, but he could not make up his mind. When I said I was thinking of taking up betting he remarked ‘In your old age you are taking up betting, drink and pornography.’
Saturday, April 13th - Met Nora at Moreton at 11 and drove to Preston-on-Stour where we had lunch in car by river. Then to Stratford to see Lear with Eric Porter. Played on empty stage, no scenery, black and gold costumes, processions with torches, fights stylized. Much thunder and lightning and great deal of shouting. Cordelia a hefty wench, not one to have to carry. Not much moved, felt as if felled with a blunt instrument. Can’t see how play can be annexed as Christian document.
Easter Day, April 14th - Went to collect from Lesbians next door. Refused! Told hall was for young people who had the money. If they wanted it they could pay for it!
Thursday, April 18th - Opened flat rate season with 15/- on Newmarket and lost!
Saturday, April 21st - To tea with Eric and Norman Attrill in their cottage on Boar’s Hill. Very secluded with views over Berkshire Downs and copse full of bluebells, anemonies and full of daffodils. Norman to be ordained at Michelmas and go as curate to Portsea. Eric less dominating in conversation and was able to talk to Norman. Eric teaching at Milham Ford but it sounds bad school, full of hate, bad manners and grouses - both among staff and children - with an ineffective mathematician as H.M.
Saturday, April 27th - The good weather broke and inclined to rain, cloudy. Lost about £2 15s on horses last week. In to read to Wuthering Heights to Cicely who told me of her increasing blindness, but she ‘sees’ in her dreams, otherwise only a grey or black cloud.
Wednesday, May Day - Spoke to VI form at Chipping Norton on Humanism using the Greeks as an example. Unfortunately left The Apology behind - old age amnesia again - but it went off fairly well. About 50. The new H.M. a terrific talker, never stops. Fat, bald, paunchy and tough.
Enoch Powell made a speech in Midland constituency saying whites would be swamped and blood would be shed. Coloured should be assisted to return. This set off an outburst of anti-immigrant feeling in working class. Heath immediately dismissed him from shadow cabinet.
Over whole country coloured 20%, Midlands 10%, rarely 50% in any unit larger than a street. Immigrant children with little or no English 5%. Curious that Powell is by origin a classics professor. Dockers in London and Smithfield porters have been marching to Westminster on his behalf.
Saturday, May 11th - Lost on horses. No winners. Went to Lower Swell to photograph Norman tympanum and have coffee. Both Swell churches very damp and neglected. No wonder clergy lose heart.
Sunday, May 12th - Politics hotting up. Labor hopelessly beaten in municipal elections. Can the government hang on till 1971? The Mirror press lord, Cecil King, attacked Wilson last week. Once he symbolized efficiency and competence, now he symbolizes incredibility and muddle. King hints that there is some fresh secret menace to our economy, resigns from Bank of England and down goes the pound. All this supposed to be in the national interest! No time for these inflated self-important press lords.
Mr Shinwell said he was more concerned about saving the party by keeping trade union and working class support than saving the government. Governments might come and go but the party must go on.
Wednesday, May 15th - Stow and gardening. In afternoon to Roman villa at Northleigh. Had last been there in 1930. It was not as I remembered it. It was a large building with a lot of rooms of the open courtyard type of Chedworth and one good pavement. Then to Stonesfield, a good Jacobean pulpit of 1629 and some C13 carved foliage on capitols, a spacious church well cared for. Then back to Northleigh church. This was one of those churches that have everything, Saxon work, Norman Gothic, a fan-vaulted chantry with alabaster figures of knight and lady, C16 Doom painting over chancel arch of resurrection, heaven and hell ending up with C18 aisle and bustos with round window with plain glass.
Sunday, May 19th - Yesterday a year ago hauled off to Radcliffe so good to be alive a year later. Gardened in morning but still very cold. In afternoon to Wardington Manor NE of Banbury, a Jacobean manor house much added to and modernized. The Lord Wardington allowed me to look into Repton’s Inquiry into the Changes in Taste in Landscape Gardening’, 1806. We also saw a Caxton Chaucer and some beautiful C15 M.S.S., Italian and French.
Saturday, May 25th - Pouring with rain. Took Mary to Chipping Norton to go home for day.
After a week of rioting in universities and occupation of factories by strikers, de Gaulle spoke last night. He offered a referendum. If he failed to obtain a massive vote he would retire. Parisians responded by burning down the Bourse.
Sunday, May 26th - Two Meara twins came to lunch and tea. Both have remarkably hearty appetites but they are nice creatures. When Queen dined in Oriel so many local bigwigs were invited that only 17 undergraduates admitted by ballot and they were put in a gallery at back!
Monday, May 27th - To Alvescott. In the middle of geography lesson a figure appeared. ‘It’ had long permed hair, a pale complexion, wore a silk shirt with frilly front and cuffs and a bead necklace, finishing with jeans. It was impossible to tell its sex. I later discovered it was a ‘Hippie’ who had run away from Bryanston and was therefore male. Before I left I saw it again wearing a powder blue silk coat with waistful of skirts. Well did you ever!
Got down to holidays with Mary. She refused Italy, thought Holland too towny and not restful, did not like Ireland, finally agreed to explore Scotland. Every obstacle raised, brother’s holiday and trip to Looe, her Mother, and finally the cat!
Saturday, June 1st - Heavy traffic but reached Stratford without getting stuck in a jam. Julius Ceasar. Ceasar (Brewster Mason) very Musso-Hitleresque and pompous. The conspirators and Antony all young men. One Negro servant and one black soldier. Crowds on the grass by the river. Many girls showing pretty well everything. Mary said I had become a philosopher; I had! Realized I had last seen the play 15 years ago with the fifth form.
Monday, June 3rd - Alvescott. Flower boy started to talk about syphilis in Lapland. Evidently wishes to shock, endeavoured to look unshockable.
Tuesday, June 4th - Heard at breakfast to-day that Senator Robert Kennedy had been shot on the eve of the primary election in California in Los Angeles where he had just attended a victory celebration. His life in danger. If he dies it will be the third, his brother Jack, Luther King and now Robert. Americans feel humiliated but it is part of their way of life to allow the free purchase of anything from machine guns to bazookas!
Thursday, June 6th - Heard at breakfast Kennedy had died. Asked John Milton Tilley if he carried a gun, said yes, he had a derringer upstairs!
Saturday, June 8th - A Bingo session at the Hall brought in £16 10s. About 70 people came. No gentry. I was the only representative. I sat next Mrs Simms, old Bubb’s housekeeper, who proved an efficient instructor. You had a pencil and crossed off numbers. My usual luck. I won nothing. The working class seem to find it exciting. To me it seemed pretty boring before the end of the evening. I fetched three women from Bledington, where Father Dendy is known as ‘the Bingo Priest’.
Monday, June 10th - Rev. Gamble’s brother brought in a letter during the first period from Cherry.
Saturday, June 15th - The village fête. Held in Blackwell’s small garden which was cut up into small enclosures and quite suitable for the purpose. It also had low stone walls to sit on. Produce, cake, bottle, jumble, flower stalls, tombola etc. Won a bottle and Mary drew a doll, Lady Penelope, which Vi had dressed in wedding get up, including I noticed white pants! We had a nice tea at convent. The nuns were being social and having a fine time. I was taken rather against my will and told Mary I would tell Leadbetter the church had rather better been blown up. Anyway all the village was there even if they would never dream of attending church itself. Scarry gave pony rides and there were dog races, but they took place ‘off’ in an adjacent field.
Wednesday, June 19th - Peace in the country! I don’t think!!! In addition to the aeroplanes we have a bird scarer across the road which bangs every few minutes. Learnt from Butters to-night that Cil has a lump on her neck and has been told she must see surgeon. Poor dear, she is very cast down as she has already had one operation for cancer.
Sunday, June 23rd - Rainy and cold, could do nothing in garden. Got ready dinner, cold chicken and new potatoes. Drank bottle of Frascati. Michael left about 5.30 after telling me of the inner workings of the comprehensive school - far too big. A sixth form some of whom can’t read! and staff jostling for places in the huge hierarchy the numbers make necessary. ‘Team’ teaching and working lunches!!
Friday, June 28th - Burford School to get advice from history mistress about books for A level 19th century. Miss Simms very helpful. Tea at Woodstock. Keble Dinner 7.30. High Table with back to hall. Very big attendance, especially of young men. R. H. Coney President, Warden, panegyric on Davidge, the Bursar, by Q.C. pupil of his. Then Davidge himself gave a conspectus of his life as conducted on the principle ‘Go while the going’s good!’ - Golf, Cricket, Law, Rowing, Port, finally revealing a portrait of himself in hunting pink with glass of Port beside him. Much noise from young men at back of hall. Soup, Whiting, Turkey, Strawberry Bombe, Mushrooms on scrambled egg, Hock, Burgundy, Port. Sat next to parson with beard like Ho Chi Min who had been imprisoned by the S. A. Government.
Wednesday, July 3rd - To-day family to arrive from Harwich, but at five Hilary rang up from Baldock, Herts, to say traffic so slow that he would have to stay night and arrive to-morrow. The crew were getting mutinous. They went to a farm, camped in an earth field where Jacob succeeded in emptying some dust into the food!
Thursday, July 4th - Mary went home. Hilary’s car with Lise, Nicholas and Jacob arrived
at about 1.15. I had lunch already left by Mary to be reheated. Nicholas watched me frequently at lunch. He has grown but is still slim, thoughtful and pleasantly spoken. Jacob is white haired, active and jolly. He cannot form sentences but shouts words. He has an extremely powerful voice which can be trying at meals. He is a keen eater and partly house trained.
Friday, July 5th - We went down with Mary to see site. My old earwig tent used as a kitchen and stove with one side up, a large ridge tent with fixed ground sheet and fly sheet which Hilary, Lise and Nicholas sleep while Jacob sleeps in car. The site is a bit rough but clean and pleasant. It is owned by some scrap metal dealers.
Nicholas was surprised by the views from the house and said “Now I know how big the world is.”
Hilary and Nicholas went to meet Nora at Cheltenham bus station. They all came to high tea and Nora went down to Bledington guest house to sleep.
Tuesday, July 9th - When alone Mary let her hair down about Nora and Hilary. Anyway nice to know Hilary admires me and likes Mary. Neither can stand much of ‘the Bolter’. They would be very pleased to have us in Copenhagen.
Thursday, July 11th - Took Lise to see As You Like It at Stratford. There had been a deluge the night before. The terrace along the river by the theatre was covered, half the lawn in front and the meadows opposite and a swirling flood poured past the theatre. The attendants said they had known nothing like it. They made the most of the play, especially Rosalind, who seemed permanently on heat! Lise very appreciative and elegant. She hopes to take a degree in English and so to become a grammar school teacher.
Saturday, July 13th - Brought Nicholas a space hopper ball for his birthday and gave Lise four volumes on Jane Austen which I gave Molly for her 21st birthday present in 1927. Last night family camped on back lawn and this morning left for Bolton.
Tuesday, July 16th - In morning tent struck and Hilary packed and loaded and about 11 they got off to Reading. That night it poured with rain, but rang up and found they had got tent up in afternoon. Very sad to see them go.
Thursday, July 18th - Heard at end of term in Lancashire at St Edwards VII Lytham St Annes, Lipscombe was doused with water and boys chanted ‘Lipscombe must go’, ‘We hate Batman’.
Saturday, July 20th - Nicholas visited Phyllis (Auty) but she dragged him by the arm and he called her “a nasty old woman.”
Wednesday, July 24th - A lovely but tiring day. The Bear at Burford for lunch with Cherry. Did not like it, pretentious and canned music. Met traffic warden, ex R.S.M. with black moustache painted on upper lip. Then to tea at Wayland’s Smithy, sat under barrow and later made tea. Home via Wantage. Told how ghastly a woman’s life is without ‘a chap’.
[Holiday in Scotland. On July 26th, the Diarist left for a 15 day tour of Scotland, starting with train from Birmingham to Glasgow, coach tour from Glasgow to Skye, Harris, Stornoway, and Inverness, and finishing off with a day in Edinburgh.]
Friday, July 26th - Industrial clumps interspersed with mountains of Cumberland and Galloway, green and empty. Train very fast, smooth and punctual. Taxi to Royal Hotel, very Paddingtonian, dirty, dark and next to W.C.. Dinner expensive so go out to Sachihall Street , depressing, lethal traffic, found rather sleezy cafeteria to have fish and chips. Depressing city.
Saturday, July 27th, - [with Macbayne’s coach to Fort Augustus stopping at Bridge of Orchy for lunch, Glencoe, ‘site of massacre pointed out’, tea at Fort William] large and crowded like Bourton on the Water.... Pleased with room at Hotel Caledonian at Fort Augustus. Somewhat disturbed by drunks in bar at night. First noticed what seemed characteristic of Scotland, the appaling litter, paper, cartons, bottles and tins everywhere.
Sunday, July 28th. - Missed sung mass at 9.15. Cricket ground in sunshine till ‘English dialogue’ mass at 11.0. Good congregation. Echoes of English Prayer Book, but vastly inferior to Thomas Cranmer. Sermon and mass said standing face to congregation. No hymns. Many communicants received standing.....1.45 to Glen Affric, along Loch Ness past observation point for monster, Urquhart Castle, Glen Urquhart....
Monday, July 29th - To Kingussie, lunch in old fashioned hotel with as always keen and efficient and courteous school leavers as waitresses all in decent black uniform. To Culloden, a sad place, asked to treat as cemetry, clan graves, museum dark and crowded.. Then to Inverness, huge Columba Hotel, huge dining room, fed like battery hens at high speed. To new episcopal cathedral, dull modern building.
Tuesday, July 30th - Reached Kyle of Lochalsh late for lunch and had to wait as café could not take us till 2 o’clock. Steamer 3.15....62 miles to Stornoway, sea dead flat....Royal Hotel, old fashioned but comfortable..... Party by now at day 4 getting too familiar and roaring with laughter at the feeblest jokes. Depressed by boring conversation of semi-educated women from the suburbs, but then reflect would dons be any better?
Wednesday, July 31st - Morning in Stornoway. Discovered ‘the men from Vigo’, two drifters from north-west Spain, dark lecherous looking lot. Afternoon over 15 miles of peat bog getting poorer and poorer scrannel strips of oats and potatoes. Tea at tiny bungalow, all 23 packed into one small room, but lots to eat. Driver asks for volunteer to say grace ‘as they take religion seriously here’. This performed with dignity by presbyterian elder. Difficult to see how inhabitants get a living, some crofts with roofs covered with growth of grass and weeds and lace curtains at tiny windows suggested they were lived in. To small derelict fishing harbour, Port of Ness, then to lighthouse on Butt of Lewis, a very dull drive home across the bog.
Thursday, Aug 1st - Stornoway kipper (good) for breakfast then on to Harris. Next to hotel for coffee a hovel, but old dame asked for payment for photographing. To fine old stone circle, Stones of Callernish. Then over mountain rood and a succession of cols to Tarbert, a good hotel. Opted out of expedition to Rodel Church in afternoon. Walked down to harbour and had tea at hotel (4/-). Weather brilliant and at 9.45 still very light.
Friday, Aug 2nd - Crossing to Uig. Lunch on board. Salmon. Uig prettily situated in bay backed by mountains. Portree packed with visitors, hot and rather nasty. Back to Uig. Reached Loch Maddy about 10.30. Set off in dark ….Our names read out, Mr and Mrs Campbell (the red ferret) red out. Old lady at cottage door to welcome us into living room, peat fire, gas lighting, and table laid with big tea of cakes, scones and jam. We were in a bedroom opening onto living room with oil lamp, but everything of the best, nylon sheets, Tricel quilt, fitted carpets, etc, and bath and W.C.
Saturday, Aug 3rd - Woken by seagulls after good night to find ourselves at Loch Eport, North Uist, with the Macdonalds, who had been visited by Philip and Elizabeth. Part of cottage tweed shop. Mrs McD widow, brother runs croft and niece just finished teacher training in Glasgow waits and cleans. He has a cow (in milk) two calves, some hens, a flock of sheep, a peat cutting, the shop and a steady flow of Macbrayne’s tours. In morning sit outside on derelict pier where abandoned tweed mill with looms etc. Delightful absence of other members of party, silence and loneliness, reflections on loch, yellow of kelp, distant silhouette of blue mountains against summer sky. In afternoon round trio of North Uist. After supper walk up road, a lovely land - quite out of the 20th century.
Sunday, Aug 4th - Enquire about church. At 12, English not Gaelic this Sunday, but 2 or 3 miles away. Driver (‘a good living man’) offers to take us in Mr Macdonald’s car but warns us as ‘it will be dry’. It was . No kneeling, no organ, three fat elders in front, minister occupying central pulpit in vintage frock coat. Bibles supplied with paraphrase of psalms. Started with Old Hundredth, this at least familiar. First line sung by cantor. OT and NT lessons, more paraphrase, 20 minute sermon, mainly about ‘sacrament Sunday’ and Kirk session in a week’s time. Two collections. Return to very sophisticated lunch: melon, soup, cold pork, tomatoes with toasted cheese, onions in sauce, peaches in jelly, cream, cream cheese, coffee. Sleep till 4. Then walk. High tea. Offered supper!
Monday, Aug 5th - P.m. to Enskay. While waiting for night boat taken to see hut circle called ‘the Wheelhouse’, fine view over sands and only the Atlantic between us and ‘the limitless abominations’ of the U.S. Boat Claymore, Mary gets nervy and wants sandwiches and tea when on board. I don’t though accompany her to dining room. She complains of my behaviour. I tell her not to be hysterical and exit dining room. Gloom! We are unluckily in a cubicle which contains washing facilities, gents which is dirty and W.C. not working two decks up. Take pill and sleep well.
Tuesday, Aug 6th - Breakfast at 9.0. Steam for two hours up delightful and tranquil Sound of Mull with a lovely shore on either hand, call at Tobermory, Salen and Craigmore. Oban a crowded and traffic ridden holiday town. High tea at café in Oban and transfer to new boat, Colomba, allotted good double cabin.
Wednesday, Aug 8th - Breakfast at 8. Our ship to Craigmore then by coach to Iona. Walked by path to Cathedral and have too little time to see chapel, church cloisters and bookshop. By coach to Inveraray, a show town with preservation order, a good specimen of 18th century town. Deposited various groups in Glasgow and us at Royal Hotel. The end after a fortnight with bores and odds.
Friday, Aug 9th - Arrived Edinburgh by rail 10.40, to Art Gallery, easy to find, a small but magnificent collection. To Linen Bank Head Office, the most baroque bank I have ever seen. At 2.30 got coach to view city. Tea at Jenners and 5 o’clock train back to Glasgow, well content. Supper at café where always a watcher, ? C.I.D. or drug pedlar, stood under stairs and watched street. Glasgow sinister dump, Edinburgh in contrast beautifully clean and free from litter.
Saturday, Aug 10th - Home about seven, to be greeted by Badger, the cat. A lovely and new kind of holiday for us.
Thursday, Aug 22nd - Stratford to see Marlowe’s Dr Faustus. Remember reading it with the Mummers at Keble with K. E. Kirk in the name part. He threw himself into the part so wholeheartedly that the quad echoed to his howls! The play gives the producer every opportunity. The devils and the seven deadly sins were so horrible that I heard an American remark at the interval, ‘I prefer them chained!’ The opening gave you a very good impression of the renaissance world ‘still striving after knowledge infinite.’ How Marlowe would have loved our own age, splitting the atom, space travel, chemistry of the living cell, computers and so on. Helen twice walked across the stage naked except for some copper paint. She was a cockney striptease artist who told the Observer she thought it would be all right because it was ‘the Royal Shakespeare Company’!
‘Nature that framed is of four element,
Warring within our hearts for regiment,
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds:
Our souls whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous architecture of the world
And measure every wandering planet’s course,
Still climbing after knowledge infinite
And always moving with the restless spheres,
Will us to wear ourselves and never rest.’
Marlowe, Tamberlaine
The news this week has been the Russian rape of Czechoslovakia. The Czechs were liberalizing their government and the Russians regarded this as an attack from within. They cannot understand the fact that in a Communist state communism has been tried and failed. In Poland and Hungary Gomulka and Kardar are holding down peoples who are both anti-Communist and anti-Russian. A successful liberating movement in Czecho might have been fatal to them, not to mention East Germany.
lSaturday, Aug 24th - Bingo! I went along rather reluctantly and found myself ‘calling’ to a collection of village women. They were very nice and did not mind when I made a gaffe at first.
Sunday, Aug 25th - Open Day at R.A.F. Rissington. Helicopter display, old Wellington and finally Red Arrows. Met no one we knew. Mary said R.A.F. officers ‘scruffy’ but everything scruffy these days.
Tuesday, Aug 27th - Gymkhana in field other side of road from 10.30. Took ’the gate’ for an hour in the morning and again in p.m., cars 10/-, adults 1/- children 6d. The nobility and gentry arrived in hordes. The horse industry clearly major in these parts. £117 taken, profit about £80.
Tonight the Czech leaders are back in Prague and a compromise has been reached.
Wednesday, Aug 28th - The agreement is ambiguous. The Russian troops are to be made inconspicuous. It seems they may remain as a permanent garrison. The press is to be curbed. Commentators are divided on what the agreement is worth. One correspondent writes: ‘In the retrospect the history of the Russian victory may well look like a crushing defeat - the moment at which the Soviet Union risked everything in a final and futile effort to stop the modernization of communism.’
Friday, Aug 30th - Things look worse again to-day. The government has urged intellectuals to leave the country while they still can.....(Sept 1st) Still on a knife edge. many young intellectuals leaving for West, Edward Crankshaw says Russia a dinosaur dying in a swamp with Czechoslovakia underneath!
Saturday, Sept 7th - Woodward and Gwendolen to lunch. He seemed pretty good though said next stop was cemetry and if you joined the Co-op you had free use of hearse! Said A. J. P. Taylor charlatan not interested in truth but good at self advertisement and so failed to land the job as Regius Professor.
Wednesday, Sept 18th - To Swindon to talk to Catholic teachers’ club at St Joseph’s comprehensive school. Rather daunting to talk to so many nuns and reverend gentlemen but they were charming, friendly and very polite. Threatened to tape record but I don’t think they did in the end. Went on much about Greek humanism but hope they found it interesting.
Saturday, Sept 21st - Roland Wilcock and his second wife, Mary Simpson, to tea. Had been camping in Italy with an old Henley boy, Alan Mountjoy. Mrs Mountjoy a formidable widow in my day. Now married to Mary Wilcox’ father. All these old boys with their middle aged wives make me feel very antediluvian. Got a bit of dirt about John Milton Tilley. It seems his wife’s father a wealthy American who founded some university in the U.S. and the Manor belongs to the Tilleys. The Bursar, Col. Brooke, who runs the P.O. and the village shop, has put money into it but so far seen no return!
Roland Wilcox still very nervous, but much redder, fatter and more prosperous looking.
Monday, Sept 23rd - To see Mrs Dockar-Drysdale at Little Clanfield Manor. Agreed to coach three of her children. Met Jonathan, Damien and Shaun [Sean?]. The latter only 12 but super intelligent, the first I thought a girl, said to be delinquent. Pleasant and about £8 a week so hope I can stick it.
Saturday, Sept 28th - By coach to Pendragon Hotel, Southsea, where we saw again Castle & Bell of 1941. A most complicated hotel, even the boots couldn’t find our room.
Sunday, Sept 29th - Off by taxi at 9.30 to [Portsmouth] Cathedral where put in the lady chapel. Started with an inaudible sermon. Norman as oldest first to be made Deacon. Only one priest. Norman with greying hair much older than the rest who seemed very young. Coffee at Church House. Here met Eric, Norman and to my immense surprize ‘Uncle Edgar’ Hirons from Fareham. To Mary’s astonishment he called me ‘Sir’! Lunch at Sally Port Hotel where Cherry waiting. Presented Norman with Dictionary of Church History I had had from Bubb, subscribed as follows:
AMICO SUO
NORMAN ATTRILL
PER XXX ANNO SOCIO
CARTARUM DELINATORI EXPERTO
DOCTORI PRAESTANTI
ACADEMIAE BIBLIOTECAE FUNDATORI
JUVENUM MONITORI
TAMEN JACOBI IMATORI
HUNC LIBRUM
VIAM SUAM NOVAM
DOCTORIS ET ORATORIS
IN ECCLESIA ANGLICANA
IN SPE IUVANDI
DD
H.D.B.
IN FESTA
SANCTI MICHELIS ET OMN: ANGEL:
M.C.MLXVIII
After this Cherry drove us to the dockyard and we went over the Victory to which I had last rowed in 1908. I was amazed by its immense bulk and the height of the masts. Had to go round with a party of 30 in charge of a sailor who spoke no English I understood.
Saturday, Oct 5th - Enjoying Harold Nicholson’s Diary. He considered one should keep a diary for one’s grandson. Wonder what mine (if any) will make of mine! He certainly valued the diary. It was the one of his possessions Vita was instructed to take it with her if she had to flee from Kent on a German invasion in 1940. He was a nice man but too civilized to push to the front. A friend in the House told him he should be more ‘formidable’. Alas, I have never been formidable except perhaps to 2a!
Sunday, Oct 6th - Cherry arrived at one o’clock and took us to the Bay Tree for lunch. Stood her a carafe of white wine. Back her to tea and she left abut 5.0.
Monday Oct 7th - While I was over at Clanfield, Mary went into the Roberts and got more than she bargained for. The Lesbians next door, June and Hilda, have split up and June is now trying to seduce Cil. Rings up twice a day and comes round and spies through the window. Has had rows with Mrs R and even the saintly Margaret because she says they are lying about her staying in to break her friendship with Cil. Cil is so kind hearted and emotional that she is fair game for this scheming bitch. Cicely who wants to leave Cil her money now thinks she may have to set up some sort of trust in case June gets hold of it.
Friday, Oct 11th - Went round to Scarry and found R.D.C. surveyor had passed plans for hall so in his opinion septic tank must be adequate.
Friday, Oct 18th - To Thetford, Norfolk, via Buckingham where left car in car park then on with Mary to The Bell via Bedford and Newmarket.
Saturday, Oct 19th - To Ickworth, huge, standing screened with trees in a large park. The day was passed in lectures and tours of the house. The architect brought in a pudding basin and a carton to demonstrate the construction of the rotunda built by local carpenters on the model of a barn with a great brick drum and beams.
Sunday, Oct 20th - Had drink at Bury and explored the surroundings of the new cathedral. Then to Ickworth for sculpture lecture and lunch. Off about 1.45 driving very fast, sometimes 70 or 80 m.p.h. to motel at Oxford.
Monday, Oct 28th - The great revolutionary anti-American march seems to have been a damp squib. Fewer took part than expected, about 25,000. Some 6,000 broke away from the main march and pushed the police codon in Grosvenor Square but without provoking the police or making it necessary to use either truncheons or police horses.It seems to have been a physical and moral victory for the British policeman
Thursday, Oct 31st - To-night Nora rang up. She did not want to come by train, but, to save expense, would prefer bus. I offered to meet her at Lechlade to which she could get a bus directly from Reading. This roused Mary’s fury. It was waste of money. Why couldn’t Nora come by train. She had lots of money. She had twiddled us all round her little finger. We couldn’t (or wouldn’t) stand up to her. She Mary was kept short of money and had to ask her mother to get he an anorak for Christmas. I am afraid I got rather cross and said if I liked to drive to Lechlade why shouldn’t I? She then got quite hysterical and said everyone hated Nora, Lise couldn’t stand her. She was ‘a hateful woman’!
Wondered whether to put Nora off for a week, but finally decided to leave it and hope for the best.
Friday, Nov 1st - Got a cheque from Dockar-Drysdale and gave Mary £5 for getting Christmas presents.
Saturday, Nov 2nd - Nora arrived to lunch at 1.10, Lechlade about 30 mins. She brought some very charming snaps of Nicholas and Jacob. Luckily the visit passed off without any further rows with Mary.
Sunday, Nov 10th - Honorary nephews and Winnie and Gwynne to lunch and tea. I wonder what they will develop into from such a tight and respectable presbyterian family and how they will break away from Mum’s influence which obviously counts for most in the home.
Wednesday, Nov 13th - Stupid architect has muffed planning, said the barn was a school, so County Council turned it down as change of use!!! and said it must have a car park too. Wished I’d never employed the man.
Monday, Nov 18th - What a week! Last evening, Sunday, after supper Mary said I had someone else. She felt sure of it. Could I look her in the face and deny it? Who was it. To-night she continued to force me to give her a name after I had gone to be and would not leave me alone.
Tuesday, Nov 19th - With boys to Tewkesbury, Hailes. When I got back to Clanfield rang up M and said I could not face another night like last. I was not going to sleep with anyone. Drove to White Hart, Nettlebed. Here rang Cherry and finally got her to come out to dinner. Sat in the car in the car park and told her what had happened. The hotel said they had no single room, so C invited me to Henley. Had her bedroom and she moved next door. Alphonso da Ponte was across the passage. I was utterly exhausted and glad to have a hot drink brought to me in bed and go to sleep. Woken with morning tea in bed and breakfasted with Alphonso. To Dorchester, and at 11.30 C came to the Excelsior and we had lunch.
Decided to tell M it was C though C was against this. Met Mary at Chipping Norton at 5.30 from Oxford. With much misgiving told it was Cherry when she came in to say good night. She took it well now she knew.
Monday, Nov 25th - I thought things were going better but at breakfast M burst into floods of tears and said I would not touch her!
Tuesday, Nov 26th - Took Mary to Dr King’s surgery at 9.0. Met for coffee at 10.30. M said King very sympathetic. Told him she was under emotional strain as husband unfaithful, replied ‘Good God’. Wanted to see me at 11. Went round. Spend some time filling and lighting his pipe. Said in fucking, which Mary told him took me a long time and made me breathless, was ‘at risk’ and should warn me. Replied that doctor at Radcliffe said should exercise to the limits of capacity. Would see Mary again in a week.
A funny morning for Stow 1968 from Stow 1931 [start of affair with Con Dart] - 37 years on. From The Talbot to the Dr’s surgery!!
Thursday, Dec 5th - Rather foggy. C drove over about 7 and we had dinner at Bay Tree where she stayed the night, driving me back and forth in her car.
Sunday, Dec 8th - Mary started up again at supper till midnight. Would I give Cherry up? She had grandchildren and Alfonso. She, Mary, had nothing except me. Our marriage had been good and could be good again if I would abandon C.
Wednesday, Dec 11th - Clanfield a.m. Got hyacinth in pot. Excelsior.
Thursday, Dec 12th - Back 9.30. Clanfield p.m. Tea Burford. Mary up by taxi, 19/6.
Saturday, Dec 14th - Freezing cold. At 7.0 off to Burford Grammar School to Messiah. New to Mary who not bored as I thought she might be. A good orchestra and chorus but soloists not distinguished.
Sunday, Dec 15th - One of those days when things fail to connect! Cherry to arrive to talk to Mary while I to see Fortsyte Saga at Vi Vorgan’s 7.25 - 8.15. Came out at 8.15 and as arranged drove to lay-by beyond Merrymouth to wait for and meet Cherry. A bitter frost, waited nearly an hour and was just going back when she arrived. Told me meetings at fortnightly intervals agreed and was starting for Henley, but pulled up further down lay-by. Car refused to start. Battery flat!! Came down lay-by and banged on window of C’s car. Heart! Brown pill! She had stopped for coffee and drove me home. M suggested go into Graham’s. Did so. Car would not start with handle so got out nylon rope I carry and he towed it when it fired, so just got home to bed exhausted at 10.30.
Tuesday, Dec 17th - Just as going to bed after 10 when Mary began about interview with Cherry. If she agreed to our meeting fortnightly would I promise never to go off with her when she retired. Feel endless opportunities in speech and writing for failing to communicate, but agreed. M seems to think marriage can to certain extent be rebuilt.
Friday, Dec 20th - Write Con, tell her I shop in Stow and often think of her. How young we were! Rector rang up and asked me to read one of the lessons. Said I was a heathen, but he said it didn’t matter if I could read well.
Sunday, Dec 22nd - Mild and windy. Sunny. Said to M we have easily the best lot of berries in Westcote. Leopold came in yesterday and said she had been listening to ‘blast off’. Three Americans sent in orbit round the moon. If they manage to start their rocket motor they should splash down in Pacific on 27th. ‘A queer season to choose’ I feel the Duke might have said. All this vast expenditure and technical ‘show biz’ when so many problems on earth need attention. Who wants to go to the moon anyway and what value will some rock specimens brought back be?
Monday, Dec 23rd - Excelsior for lunch. Said to C should take room to 11 o’clock when M insisted irrationally I should return to Westcote. So we had a bath at 3 and 9 o’clock found us in bed looking at pictures of the earth relayed by the spacecraft. C decided to stay the night for which we had paid. I arrived home about 11.30 without incident. We were very happy and contented.
Tuesday, Christmas Eve. Picked up Florrie in N. Oxford to lunch at Westcote. In the evening snow fell and unable to get car started in snow.
Wednesday, Christmas Day - A white Christmas! Breakfast and undid presents. Gave Mary marrons glacé, chocolates, a bird feeder and £10. Florrie to me a cut glass decanter of her father’s. At 10 punctually call to Copenhagen. Spoke to Nora, Lise, Hilary and Nicholas whose lilt was unmistakable.
Dinner turkey and bread sauce, sprouts, potatoes, strawberry jelly and cream, Asti Spumante, of which cork difficult to extract. Slept in p.m.
Astronauts successfully start up rocket which will bring them back to earth provided they hit the correct angle of re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere and do not burn up or bounce off!
Boxing Day - A hard frost last night and ruts and old footprints crisp and crackling. Fixed up bird feeder outside. Big lunch, cold turkey, carrots, sprouts, potatoes, bread sauce,stuffing followed by Christmas pudding, rum butter and Devonshire cream. Valpolicella. Slept most of afternoon.
Friday, Dec 27th - A bitter wind and continuing hard frost but Florrie determined to return to Oxford. Mary had cleared drive yesterday so got car out on rutted road and drove gingerly to Church Westcote and still more gingerly over frozen lumps to main road. Got to Bainton Rd inside an hour. Had lunch on cold turkey had brought with us. Started back about 2. Funeral at Church Westcote and nearly ran into hearse.
Heard at six o’clock that 70 minutes before the Apollo spacecraft with three astronauts had come down in Pacific at first light.
Tuesday, Dec 31st - General opinion 1968 remarkable year (even compared with 1848) but nasty. The Czechs, the Viets, the violence in the Middle East, in Nigeria, the starving Biafrans, the assassinations of Kennedy and Luther King, the riots in the U.S.A. and in France, the upheavals among the students in this country, Powell’s anti immigrant speeches and the support he gained from the dockers and fish porters in London, the threatened collapse of western money, the pound, the franc, the dollar, the constant concern on the telly, radio, political speeches, parliament with ‘the economy’, with ‘prices, wages and incomes’ till one becomes utterly sick of it all. Yet all the time each month Mary said the housekeeping bought less and less and would have been hard pressed at the end of the year unless had been able to find part time teaching at Alvescott and Clanfield.
The clandestine attachment formed with Cherry in the summer went off like a bomb in November but appears to have been sorted out for the time being.
Christmas cards 1968:
Birds, flowers, animals 5
Charitable 3
Topographical 9,
Candles, holly etc 14
Religious 13
Misc 5
Total 49
Index (non-exhaustive) 1968
Alvescott - Jan 27, Feb 29, May 27, June 3, 6, 10, Sep 21. Apollo spacecraft - Dec 22 - 27. Attrill, Norman & Eric - Apr 21, Sep 29, Auty, Phyllis - July 20. Barnes, Marjorie, Jan 16. Butterfield, (Butters), Cicely - see Roberts. Clanfield - Sep 23, Nov 19 . Clayden, Mary (Cherry) - July 24, Sep 29, Oct 6, Nov 19, Dec 5, 11, 15, 17, 23. Collard, Michael - Mar 30, June 23. Czecholsovakia - Aug 22, 27, 28, 30. Dart, Con - Nov 26, Dec 20. Dockar-Drysdale - Sep 23, Nov 1. Hilary (Lise, Nicholas, Jacob) - Apr 7, July 3, 4, 5, 9, 13, 16, 20, Nov 2,Dec 25. Hirons, Edgar - Sep 29. Humanists - May 1,Sep 18. De Gaulle - May 25, DEc 31. Kennedy, Robert - June 6. Kitchin, Graham - Jan 9, Dec 15. King, Dr, - Nov 26. Keble - June 28, Aug 22. Leadbetter, Rev. - June 15, Dec 20. Lipscombe - July 18. Mary - passim and Nov 18, Nov 19, 25, 26, Dec 5, 8, 15, 17. Meara family - May 26, Nov 10. Mountjoy, Alan - Sep 21. Nora - Mar 17, Apr 13, July 5, 9 Oct 31, Nov 2. Pierce, Mrs 'Florrie' - Dec 24, 27. Powell, Enoch - May 1, Dec 31. Roberts, Bertha, Cil, Cicely, Margaret, April 2, 27, June 19, Oct 7. Scotland - July 26 - Aug 10. Stratford - Feb 16, Apr 13, June 1, July 11, Aug 22. Tilley, John Milton - see Alvescott. Wardington, Lord - May 19. Westcote, village - Mar 13, 29, Apr 2, 6, Apr 14, June 8, Aug 24, 25, 27, Oct 11, Nov 13. Wilcock, Roland - Sep 21. Wilson, Harold - May 12. Woodward, Sir E. L. - Sep 7.
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