1948 March

March.  St Joan with school. Parcel to German schoolmaster. £35 travel allowance. Five-power European council. Reading nursing home. No baths for hernias.

Thursday, March 4^th

Went to see the surgeon yesterday and decided to have my side (hernia) operated on at the end of term. To my great relief I heard that they allow you to get up earlier than they did in 1939, when I had the left side done just before the war broke out.

1948 February

February. Coup in Prague - who's next: Greece, France Italy? Robert Morley. Ghandi assassinated. Clem protects his manhood. Proud of Miss Hunter. Doctor trouble. Van Hassel Diaries. Tailor trouble.

Sunday, Feb 1^st

Yesterday went up to London. Taken by Margaret Burton to see Edward my son, written and acted by Robert Morley, the story of the rise of a business bandit from small beginnings to a biscuit king and the ruthless way he dealt with his wife, his mistress, business friends and others, all in the interest of Edward, my son, who in the end is killed in the war.

1948 January

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.

1947 December

^{December. Lear at Oxford. Lady Periam at Balliol. Prefects' Party. Country deserted. Joy Richards. State Railways. Toys hard to find. Bad year: began with bread rationing, ended with potato rationing.}

^{Monday, Dec 1st}

^{Exceeding cold, 20 degrees of frost at night. Went over to the New Theatre, Oxford, with 30 children to see King Lear.}

1947 November

^{November. Admiration of Europe. Buttered buns good, Beethoven better. Mayor unshaven, chairman's buttons undone. Potato ration. Phyllis Auty, VIP, does Europe. "I Chose Freedom". Lady Morris. Swedish teacher at HGS.}

^{Tuesday, Nov 4th}

^{Went up to London at half term while Nora went to Dartington - for which the fare is now £2 = 10 = 0. London pretty abominable - even queued on Sunday afternoon to get into National Gallery, food dearer and worse.}

1947 October

^{October. No fight in Russians for 15 years. Milk, half pint a day. World Food conference at HGS. 75 and never seen a film. Nothing so tiring as being polite.}

^{Saturday, Oct 4th}

^{Last week has been beautiful autumn weather and this morning we took our dinner out to the lane past Nettlebed on the Oxford road, making a fire and cooking it in a billycan. The lane is always lovely with berries in the autumn and we got some fine branches of spindle.}

    ^{The date of the last meeting (probably) of foreign ministers is drawing near and it seems most unlikely that will succeed in unifying Germany, and so we shall have a frontier drawn across the country on which the U.S. and Russia will confront each other. Calculated that the Russians cannot fight any major war for 15 years, but the division of Germany will give the Germans endless opportunities of further bedevilling the relations between East and West if they think they can profit by it. Reading (Edward) Crankshaw’s Russia and the Russians.}

^{Monday, Oct 13th}

^{Milk still very short. Getting half a pint a day. Not enough for a cup of tea when you want it. Eating our porridge with honey, but this will not last for ever either. Had some bangers made of whale meat, worse than usual, but whale stew quite good. Should get satisfaction that in the social revolution we are going through more milk is being drunk per head of population and the children are getting more, but should like to have enough milk to have it with my breakfast all the same.}

              ^{Still no rain to speak of; noted particularly the brilliant colour of the hawthorn leaves this year.}

^{Sunday, Oct 19th}

^{Palestine to be petitioned under U.N.O. scheme. We say we are not going to enforce partition but shall withdraw. Whereat the Arabs have said they will fight the Jews.…. Here the U.S. and U.S.S.R. agree - possible because U.S.S.R. hopes to see maximum disturbance in Middle East.}

              ^{Nora has been to Dorothy Wade and thinks she may borrow a milking goat for next winter. Reserve judgement on this.}

^{Sunday, Oct 26th}

^{Molly and Margaret Burton came for weekend. Molly full of her farm at Roel Hill, Winchcombe. Margaret full of hatred for government and very cranky. Said if general election went for socialists intended to leave country, England nothing but a concentration camp; but as Nora says if she left England she would have nothing to grumble at! Molly has bought a pony and harness at Broadway and had a wagonette thrown in for nothing. We had a great bonfire and burnt hedge clippings; I creosoted fowl house.}

              ^{On Thursday the school was closed and we had a teachers’ conference on the world food situation. First an economist from Oxford on the economics of English farming; then old Sir George Stapleton, the biologist, on world fertility, the dangers of mono-cropping etc etc, a grand old man, 75 yet planning for 60 years ahead; never been to a cinema in his life. He arrived in the middle of a film called 24 Square Miles, a survey of an area in N. W. Oxfordshire and examination of rural depopulation, but would not go in. I acted as chairman, told the assembled teachers that when the VI Form heard they were all coming they remarked that there were good cellars and it was near Nov 5th.}

              ^{After this we had a Dr Frost to supper and took him to the Town Hall for a “Doctor in the Wireless Box” evening. It went off very well. How different from the distinguished top-hatted medicos of my boyhood. Very exhausted after all this. Nothing more tiring than being polite to masses of people.}

1947 August - September

^{August, Sept. French children at HGS. Salt baths for sciatica. Another crisis. Miners strike. Clouded Yellow year. Milk cuts. Automatic trans-Atlantic flight. Sugar prices.}

^{Friday, August 1st}

^{Term ended. At Assembly I astonished the school by breaking into French: “Nous voyons avec grand plaisir nos amis francaise qui sont ici ce matin.” The French children are a mixed lot, some far older than ours and all rather unhealthy looking compared to ours, I thought. They are being taken to Oxford, London and Windsor.}