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Monday 30 August 2010

1949 Sepember

September. Home to chores and depression. War anniversary. Mr Roberts. Jean Wickens. Pound devalued. Odette. Hilary's manners. Russia's bomb.

Saturday, Sept 3rd
Came home by the 1.45. Usual depression coming back to the chores, dustbins, and the customary disorder of School House.

1949 August

August. Honey crop. Fra Rheumatico. Droitwich. Nora copes. Crisis time again. Priestley's Home To-morrow.

Tuesday, August 2nd
Got the honey carried off by Tom (Wheeler) and Vernon and started extracting. Heavy crop.

1949 July

July. Satin brassieres at Regatta. Freda Cripps. Attrills. Vernon Mills. Nora meets Mary. Weepy Miss Hunter resigns. Rolf from Denmark.

Monday, July 4th
On Thursday Nora and I took tea down to the Bucks side and watched the rowing. St Peter’s Hall, our crew, did well but were beaten after a good race.

Sunday 29 August 2010

1949 April

April. Ravishing Lucy in The Rivals. Charmian, Donald Cook. Budget, no tax relief. Swiss holiday: unlimited cakes and meat, £110 for three.

Sunday, April 3rd
Saw The Rivals five times so pretty much know it by heart. Had a good Sir Anthony, Sir Lucius not so good, but a ravishing Lucy with very high voltage indeed.

1949 May

May. Labour at 1/3 an hour. Wilk propositioned. Row with Miss H. Berlin blockade lifted. Shanghai falls to Mao.

Saturday, May 7th
Fetched five colonies of bees from Benson, £35. Very busy with bees and garden.

Wednesday, May 11th
Returned boxes to Ewelme [Benson?] with Mary and had first picnic of year at Long Grasses, but cowslips nearly over.
Had thought of buying caravan but gave up idea after two visits to nasty rogues in Bucks.

Saturday, May 21st
Working on bees with boy to help, but at 1/3 an hour it becomes expensive. Usual summer rheumatism. Had to pay for visit to masseur in Reading.

Sunday, May 22nd
Spent day with Mary. We drove up to Kingsclere and went up on Downs. Took lunch and tea. After tea were both filled with desire, but the wind was strong, the weather doubtful and the ground a hard bed, so we went back and after the cowslips had been put in water she came out of the bathroom, put her arms round me and said ”Now!”

Monday, May 24th
Wilk has our temporary master and ex-RAF pilot in flat over her and he has made proposals (query of matrimony) to her. She is 15 years older than him and in bad health, so she is much puzzled what to do, poor dear. Miss H to-day had a row with me; difficult at best of times, but now worse than ever. Says she regrets having come back. Same here.

Wednesday, May 25th
Sports day – went on half an hour too long at least. Rather cold wind but the rain held off till we had finished. Quite a number of records broken. Always find the relay races get me, the handing on of the baton from summer to summer, the touch of life and so on.
(The Russians) having raised the blockade of Berlin because defeated by the airlift, they are now delaying and holding up traffic, so to-day only two trains got through.
Shanghai has fallen to the Communists. Fresh forces being sent to Hong Kong

1949 June

June. Miss Auty on Tito. HGS concert. Vth Form to Macbeth at Stratford. Rats at 2/6 a piece. Regatta crew. Makins.

Whit Monday, June 6th
Phyllis and her husband James down yesterday. He very silent. She full of her journey to Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. Phyllis likes success and now takes a rather poor view of Tito as she does not consider him a success!

Sunday 22 August 2010

1949 January

January. Donald Heath. Whitchurch shepherd. Tommy Handley. Awkward encounter at Henley cinema. Charles I centenary.
 
Saturday, January 1st, 1949.
Went up to London in morning. Met Mary at National Book League and went to Paisa, an intelligent and amusing Italian film of war in Italy, divided into separate episodes dealing with war in Italy – landing in Sicily, the Americans in Naples; in Rome; the attack of Florence; three American chaplains, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish – as guests in a monastery; the partisans in the marshes of the Po delta.

1949 February

February. Shirts in ruins. Fox hunting. One millions tons for Berlin. The daily "woman". Shepherd. Herr Meisner from Bremen on Hitler's Germany.

Wednesday, Feb, 2nd
Governors meeting - much fuss and dust and in the end a new motor mower. The Reverend Pachyderm [aka Canon Crosse] attacked cricket in the interests of rowing and said for some reason best known to himself that I had forbidden boys to row!

1949 March

March. Miss H a nuisance. Aldous Huxley. Christianity. Archbishop and AI. Clothes rationing ends. Kravchenko. Atlantic "Pak". The Rivals. 
Tuesday, March 1
School. Miss H back full time, but seems to me very little better, poor woman, and position full of difficulty as cannot suggest she should give up myself or any of the staff either [arthritis was crippling Miss H].

Wednesday 18 August 2010

1948 December

December. Prize Day. Mrs C on headmasters. Jimmy Edwards at Prefects Party. My Hirons. Clayden boys. On road to recovery: brighter outlook.

Wednesday, Dec 1st
Prize Day. Professor Brierley [1889 – 1962, Professor Emeritus of agricultural botany at Reading University] said we are only at the beginning of an agricultural revolution through plant genetics.

1948 November

November. Hatless in church. Gloom about the French. Old Boys' dinner. Barbara Ward. Truman. Miss Hunter in Bath chair. Mrs Clayden.

Monday, Nov 1st
Half term. Went down to Bath on Saturday. Stayed at an excellent Family and Commercial with a formidable but extremely efficient madam.

1948 October

October. "The Gathering Storm". Vishinsky. Sir Cyril Ashford. Mr Haigh's stuffed lion. The Canon explodes. Leslie Bennett. Joad's diary. "Lust for intelligibility".

Monday, Oct 4th
Last Wednesday Mary lent me the first volume of Churchill’s history of the war, The Gathering Storm, so that I was actually able to enjoy it before the day of publication today.

Sunday 15 August 2010

1948 September

September. Russians beaten in Berlin. Stonor Park. Vaughan-Jones. Miss Hunter. The Wilk. Canoe at 2/6 an hour. Conscription lengthened.

Wednesday, Sept 1st
Spent best part of the morning at the end of the harbour pier watching the ships sailing. After tea took the train to Canterbury..… The County Hotel, which was excellent, had to my disgust nothing but glossy American weeklies in the lounge. Poor.

1948 August

August. Dartington Hall. Olympic Regatta - the great Kelly; stands empty; Bertie Bushell. Holiday on Dartmoor.

Monday, August 3rd
Hilary home last Wednesday from Dartington with a most shattering report at which Nora much worried. Does not seem to like adults at Dartington and achieves very little in lessons. The terrific heat wave came to an end on Saturday and today torrential rain and thunder.

1948 July

July. Berlin airlift - peace hanging by a thread. Miss Auty's German story. National Health. "What a lovely profession". Hottest day. Olympic games

Sunday, July 4th
The House of Commons made it clear in a debate that there would be no appeasement. Berlin is still blockaded and we are doing with American help a big air lift of food to the besieged city. The Russians show no signs of giving up so far.

Wednesday 11 August 2010

1948 June

June. D-Day service. Showing too much buttock. Mixed school still controversial. Comus a success. Old Boys' supper. Encouraged by H.M.I. Crisis in Berlin.

Sunday, June 6th
Weather continues fearful. Had a D-Day service on Friday and read them Joshua 1, which I believe many chaplains used at that time. Started the assembly with an extract from The Observer, bowdlerised however as it talked of sending indecent post cards to your most respectable friends.

1948 May

May. Bees removal job. Breaking the law. The brigade of Sound Men. Swan Lake in Oxford, Doctor's Dilemma at W.E.A. Comus.

Saturday, May 1st
Celebrated May Day by going out with curate in a taxi to remove bees from old lady’s bedroom wall. They were behind a beam in the corner, about 3ft 6in high and 8 inches by 4 inches deep and the combs were long and narrow.

1948 April

April. Russians squeeze Berlin. Income tax down. Bull like blondes are said to be. Maugham on lying in bed.

Friday, April 2nd
The European Recovery Programme (E.R.P) has now passed the House of Representatives with a speed and sense of urgency for which we have to thank the Russians….

Monday 9 August 2010

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 4th
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 1st
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.

Friday 6 August 2010

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.