Readers may ask - how long will this go on?
Tuesday May 19th
ABD. Did not write
this today, but on the 20th.
Reason – just dilatoriness I suppose.
We had a long site meeting to talk about electric fittings this morning,
and the day seemed to escape after that.
A long walk in early afternoon, returning from the beach via Durley
Chine, and West Cliff Green, which is another unexplored area for us. Then I spent a very long time washing
Lindsay’s car. Too tired for Victoria
this evening. (Sorry this paragraph is
so unexciting, but then lockdown life is like that.)
Wednesday May 20th
A very long sleep.
Perhaps due to taking an antihistamine for what I took to be an insect
bite on my leg. It was either a horsefly
or (hopefully not) tick bite that I had scratched off.
I had needed something from a supermarket yesterday, and
while there I saw a man in what I would take to be classic ‘Zoomwear’. From the waist up he was immaculate – neat
shirt, well tied tie, sports jacket.
Below he was sporting baggy pink shorts and deck shoes.
Incredible news that President Trump is taking
hydroxychloroquine. I suppose that if he
believes everything he says then it must be true that it works.
Today I have golf again – hooray! Tee time is 1250 hours, a little easier than
our struggle to get round in the gloaming last Sunday evening.
Rod Liddle writes well in the Sunday Times – an article
pointing out that nobody has the strength or will to take China to task for its
appalling record on virtually everything.
Just a couple of sentences and you will get the drift:
“Too many excuses are made for China – again, usually by
liberals. Its tyrannical state
capitalist government is dismissed as simply being another variant of that
vigorous new thing, ‘Asian Democracy’ – that is, what we used to know as
‘fascism’”.
“It is China’s triumph that it has managed to combine the
most brutal aspects of communism with the most brutal aspects of capitalism.”
A par three on the tricky 18th today made me
forget some of the golf in-between tee-off and finish; that and the beautiful
day. A lovely supper of fish, fresh
English asparagus, and Jersey Royal potatoes rounded off by a return to
Victoria. She and Albert have a lovely
time as guests of the Duke of Atholl. I keep
expecting her to nuzzle up to Albert (she does a lot of nuzzling up but then
there are quite a few children to get through before his death in 1861), and
say ‘Albert, let’s look for a little place in the Highlands of Scotland.’ Albert’s death was allegedly from typhoid
fever. But Helen Rappaport, in ‘Magnificent Obsession’ makes a
reasonable case for Albert succumbing to a severe recurrence of Crohn’s Disease. No post mortem was performed and we will
never know.
Thursday May 21st
ABD. A lengthy walk
today, 8.2 miles, in a loop around Parley and the Stour, once again noting the
BA aircraft sitting on the tarmac. But
beautiful summer sights as well – a pair of swans with 8 cygnets, an egret, and
roses round the doors of the cottages. A
laburnum tree in full bloom brings a recollection of a friend’s remark of 40+
years ago that they are ‘exam trees’, so called because they are always in full
bloom at the usual time of school and university exams.
Catastrophe in the evening when Lindsay knocks her glass of
Maçon-Villages over the Jackson Pollock jigsaw.
Now the pieces, when they have dried out, will be even harder to
place. No more wine is served to her
until supper, safely sitting in another room…
Friday May 22nd
An overcast day with a very strong wind. Cloud clears to sunshine but the wind remains
strong, such that driving round the harbour this morning there are any number
of kite surfers and windsurfers scudding across the white horses in Whitley
Bay.
Victoria last night was deeply involved with Sir Robert Peel
and the repeal of the Corn Laws, the import tariffs designed to protect the
interests of English landowners and farmers.
The Free Trade which resulted improved the food supply at a lower price
for English labourers, but the eventual swamping of the market by American and subsequently
Russian grain meant the decline of British agriculture, and a dependence on
imported foodstuffs which almost cost us dear in both WWI and WWII. I labour this point because of the modern day
relevance of imported goods from Asia, and particularly China. Corona virus has resulted in a natural
belligerence and antipathy towards most things Chinese. Indeed, a survey today shows that 40% of
Britain believes that China manufactured the virus. There is an understandable Jingoistic
reaction amongst our people, such that many believe we should take care to not
become so reliant on imported goods in general, and China in particular. The installation of Chinese-manufactured
Huawei 5G networks is a case in point.
Saturday May 23rd
Sunny day, but very strong wind. The weather front has passed by but is
assaulting the north west of Scotland and the Hebrides. Having cycled all the way up the Outer Isles
two years ago, I have taken a lively interest in the weather in Stornoway (Isle
of Lewis) ever since. It is rarely
pleasant there. The proprietor of a
cycle shop in Stornoway told us that the average windspeed, day in, day out, is
25 miles per hour.
Dominic Cummings, special adviser to the PM, has been
criticised in the news today for making a round trip to his family in
Durham. Seems like there was severe
family illness, but the facts are yet to come out. The press really do not like Mr Cummings, and
one can see why. He is usually seen
slinking along towards Number 10, looking slightly scruffier even than Jeremy
Corbyn, with a rucksack on his back. He
is, I think, regarded as a Rasputin like figure to Mr Johnson, an éminence grise. He was pilloried recently for sitting in on a
SAGE meeting, which is supposed to be restricted to ministers and their special
scientific advisers, though we understand it was just as an observer. In demeanour he is the opposite of the usual
Whitehall civil servant mandarin, and he clearly raises antibodies.
My friend Glenys, remarkable seamstress, has sent us two new
fetching masks, a bright print for Lindsay and a musical one for me.
This afternoon we finished the Jackson Pollock jigsaw. It has taken three weeks, with at least some
time each day devoted to it. Now I can
get on with ‘Restoration’, the first ten or so chapters being much devoted to
bodice ripping. It reads a bit like
Fanny Hill, though the self-deprecating style of the narrator, the 17th
Century Robert Merivel (a fiction), also reads a bit like P.G. Wodehouse at
times. Merivel being the rather dim
Bertie Wooster figure, with a rather more shadowy butler or personal
servant. Rose Tremain is obviously
buried within the parlance of 17th Century language, though I am not
sure if she is trying to stay completely within period. The narrator refers to himself as a
Renaissance Man at one time, a term not coined until the 20th
Century.
We have been dilatory with exercise for the last two days,
but plan a bike ride tomorrow.
 |
| Convergence (1952) |
Sunday May 24th
Back to ABD, with some abatement of the wind. Vigorous bike ride this morning which I
termed the Tour de Turlin Moor (a very local reference that I don’t expect
overseas readers to catch). Excellent
cycle routes from Poole Bridge into Hamworthy Park and on to Turlin Moor with a
return route through Upton Country Park.
The reason for haste this morning is that we are guests (in a public
space and distanced) of a friend who has an excellent picnic for us with a very
nice Provençal rosé (Ch. Minuty). In the
later afternoon we visit Salterns’ Marina, which is open for socially distanced
gatherings on members’ boats, together with a disco from the roof. Altogether a lovely day.
 |
| Canford Cliffs - could be the Cote D'Azur |
Monday May 25th
Bank Holiday.
ABD. The Prime Minister defended
Mr Cummings yesterday in the daily briefing, but the feeding frenzy is in full
swing, one Tory MP talking of ‘using up our political capital’. There are poems, songs and a T-shirt
commemorating Cummings’ so-called ‘Lockdown Tour’. Where will it end?
It ends (or rather it doesn’t; see below) with a press
conference in the garden of Number 10.
Having heard Cummings version of events, in what seemed like a
reasonable statement of the facts, he was viciously, or should I say,
voraciously attacked by the hypocrites of the media. The plain fact is: they don’t like him and
whatever he does will be wrong. They do
not like his disdain and for that he won’t be forgiven. A press conference and Corona briefing by
Boris Johnson and a medical mandarin took place at 7pm, much to my own upset,
displacing Paddington 2, the movie which would have brought a distinctly
feelgood factor, from our screens. When
again attacked by the newshounds (what an appropriate epithet), the PM fairly
justifiably said, ‘Look, you’ve had your chance to question Mr Cummings this
afternoon and I haven’t got anything to add!’
Looking at online news and newspapers it would seem that the journos
have divided along party political lines over the issue.
I’ve given enough of my own precious column space to this
issue. I can’t believe that Trump,
Macron, Moon Jae, Merkel, or Bolsonaro are losing too much sleep over the
matter.
We had a pleasant, though warm, walk this evening on Talbot
Heath. Temperatures are set to climb
even higher in the next few days.
Lindsay is to return to London.
She is worried about her daughter’s mental state at the moment after her
38 year old husband’s heart attack.
Looking in the guidelines, it is permissible to travel to provide care
for a vulnerable person, and this is really what she is doing…
Tuesday May 26th
The weather (will it continue?) reminds me of the summer of
1976. This lockdown has made one remarkably
reflective. I wonder if others find
that? The present is so different for me
however. At 28, I had just started work
at King’s College Hospital as a Cardiology registrar. For various reasons, even with only 5 months’
experience in the catheter and pacing labs (they were one and the same in those
days), I was already shouldering a large amount of the clinical workload. Boiling days in a non-air conditioned room in
a lead coat and a surgical gown meant that by the evening I was exhausted. I was living in a flat owned by the late
notorious Mr Rodney Ledward, FRCS, FRCOG (qv), naively without a rental
agreement (I am sure he wasn’t declaring the income), and this ultimately led
to unpleasantness and a frightening dénouement when he and his brother tried to
forcibly evict me just before Christmas.
When his cavalier, heartless and unskilled treatment of women in Ashford
was eventually exposed in 1996, I mused that I could have told them a long time
before that he was a ‘bad egg’. A bit
like James Bond in ‘From Russia With Love’, or at least Donovan Grant, Bond’s
would-be assassin, Ledward was very fond of using the ‘Old boy’ preface and
suffix to many of his sentences. Whether
he drank red wine with fish I do not know.
But I do know that during that summer, so wonderful for many, I felt
tired and lonely much of the time. No
doubt part of the melancholy is due to the content of Rose Tremain’s
‘Restoration’ which I finished this afternoon.
I very much enjoyed this novel, which is essentially a journey through
the failings of a man, almost a parable of the seven deadly sins, though I
haven’t counted whether she missed any out, with an element of redemption at
the end. It made me reflect on my own
mortality and my own shortcomings. Set
in the 1660s with a substantial dose of the Great Plague, and subsequently the
Great Fire, so there are certainly echoes that chime with our times.
This afternoon a brisk walk including the beach between Alum
Chine and Bournemouth Pier. Scenes
reminiscent of a Bank Holiday in August, temperature 27 degrees.
Wednesday May 27th
ABD. It’s hot and it
is getting hotter. Round of golf this
morning. All square on the 18th
so honours even. Site meeting to discuss
landscaping the new house build in the afternoon. Little else done. Cummingsgate rumbles on. Many memes around his decision to try a drive
from Durham to Barnard Castle to check if his eyesight was okay for a drive
back to London – an eye chart for example, with Barnard Castle written on it
line by line with a progressively smaller font.
A picture of Barnard Castle with the ‘Should have gone to Specsavers’
logo on it. Etcetera etcetera.
 |
| The Barnard Castle eye test |
Thursday May 28th
ABD. How could I have
let my diary entry of May 17th go without mentioning that it was our
first hearing of a cuckoo this year?
Numbers apparently declining.
Many chores today, and one feels at a bit of a loose end without the
Jackson Pollock jigsaw to do, or indeed ‘Restoration’ to read. Start in on ‘The Song of Achilles.’ This evening is meant to be the final ‘Clap
for Carers’, the woman who started it very wisely saying that it has had its
day and should stop after tonight.
Governors’ meeting this afternoon with the use of Microsoft Teams, which
gives good reception and fairly clear pictures.
Feel it’s best to leave my camera off and my mike on mute, so allowing
the usual suspects to have their say.
Interesting presentations on the Covid situation (improving) and the
route back to normality.
 |
| 'Clap for Carers' cartoon, Telegraph |
Yesterday marked the 80th Anniversary of the
Battle of Dunkirk, or at least the evacuation of Dunkirk. The more detailed investigation of this on TV
yesterday evening suggested that the two-day lull which allowed many more to be
rescued was due to a power struggle between Hitler and his Panzer commanders. If the commanders had got their way they
would easily have stopped or forestalled the evacuation and many more deaths or
POWs would have been the result.
In science news, it does seem that the results with remdesivir
now justify its use in attempting at least to ameliorate the disease of
Covid-19. In the UK the official (proven
positive) death total is 37,837, with a daily deaths number of 377. There is something of a tail in the
previously steadily falling numbers. The
USA has now recorded over 100,000 Covid-19 deaths. Although the President is clearly an
incompetent loudmouth, the Economist points out that its decentralised decision
making has been moderately effective, and its death rate per 100,000 population
is no worse than many European countries.
Friday May 29th
ABD. May 2020 is on
course to be the driest and the sunniest ever in most of Southern Britain. Brisk breeze.
Site meetings with bathroom designer and kitchen designer.
Having previously been a supporter of Boris Johnson, I am
starting to wonder whether my confidence is misplaced. The Cummings affair suggests bad management
and failure to just take control and let him go. It seems that Cummings came up with the ‘Get
Brexit Done’ slogan, which has made roughly half the population hate him
anyway. He is thought to be behind the
current Government mantras as well. I
feel that the ‘Stay Alert’ one was poor – perhaps ‘Be Responsible’ would have
been better chosen. A golfing friend
tells me that there is a new golf shot called the ‘Dominic Cummings’. It’s a very long drive which goes way out of
bounds, but there’s no penalty.
Start in on making some bread. After boring cleaning of barbecue and high
pressure hosing everything, we can do a butterflied leg of lamb outside for our
Friday night supper.
Saturday May 28th
ABD. Will be playing
golf later. Hooray. The other day I picked some more elderflowers
following a friend’s message that soaking them in gin overnight gives a
delightfully different gin and tonic.
Being a better solvent than just water, the gin rapidly takes on a
beautiful yellow tinge and the flavour is excellent. Definitely recommended.
 |
| Elderflower gin - wonderful |
A friend asks me to get him The Times when newspaper
shopping. Having dipped into some of the
writing I am wondering whether to move over to this paper instead of the
Telegraph (yes, yes, I know it’s called the Torygraph but I tend to absorb
politics, and particularly any left leaning opposition online, and particularly
from the BBC). A little while ago the
Times’ 3rd Leader (the slightly comic leader for those not in the
know), led with ‘Romantic Rock Stars’. I
quote:
It is fair to say that
the Romantic poets do not have reputation for sporting prowess, even though
Lord Byron once swam four miles across the Dardanelles just to prove it could
be done.
According to the
verdict of popular history, the Romantics were the sort of young men who had
notes from their mothers – all, no doubt, in beautiful rhyming couplets –
excusing them from games.
Now it seems the verdict
of history has been overturned. A new
book suggests that William Wordsworth, John Keats and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
were pioneers of mountaineering.
Coleridge’s conquest of Scafell Pike in 1802 is thought to be Britain’s
first recorded rock climb, and Wordsworth tackled nearby Helvellyn at the age
of 70.
If only their verse
had reflected this:
“I wandered lonely as
a cloud
That floats on high o’er
fields of corn
And after that John
Keats and I
Made short work of the
Matterhorn.”
Good stuff The Times!
Sunday May 31st
ABD. Following the
gin and elderflower experiment we head to Cranborne in North Dorset. There are a number of walks one can do up
towards Pentridge Hill, and the elderflowers are everywhere. Brambles are festooned with flowers,
suggesting good blackberrying to come.
Wild clematis, and occasionally some honeysuckle covers the
hedgerows. Where once we would see the
buzzards circling there is now a solitary red kite, a sign of the times. It really is a lovely part of Dorset,
Cranborne being something of an idyllic country village. My former colleague’s house, a traditional
redbrick manor house of the 19th century is festooned with roses
growing up the walls. Onwards to the
Pentridge bridleway and down through the village of Pentridge, not an easy
place to pop around the corner for something from the shop or indeed a pub. Back via Blagdon Farm, Boveridge, and through
the woods to Cranborne, laden with elderflowers which we steep in gin and
(separately) in rich milk, for subsequent desserts.
 |
| Honeysuckle |
 |
| Ox-eye daisies |
 |
| Elderflowers and wild roses |
Another culinary experiment this weekend was Paul
Hollywood’s rye bread made with beer and a beer batter. I had been trying to think of a use for some
extremely cheap beer which we bought in a French supermarket, namely
Kronenbourg. I certainly didn’t want to
drink it, having valiantly consumed a couple of cans. It has almost no flavour, but the bread is
good.
Scientific controversies continue with Covid. News is leaking out that the test and trace
approach was abandoned after PHE (Public Health England) failed to have the
capacity to do enough tests. Another
article states that recovered subjects with no antibodies may still be immune because
of immune recognition cells in the nose and pharynx (I’ve mentioned that
possibility before). Another couple of
scientists suggest that asymptomatic healthcare workers and care home workers
are currently the most likely to be a reservoir of infection, and that all such
workers should be tested on a once a week basis. This certainly seems a logical step, and is
borne out by the outbreak at Weston-super-Mare hospital, where all staff were
tested and 100 (6%) were shown to have the virus.
Over the entire duration of the coronavirus crisis and
pandemic, my entries in this diary may have been subtly nuanced, to the extent
that readers may feel I am missing being involved in the medical response. In this they are correct. Having emphasised at the beginning that one
knew it was coming for one’s entire career from entry into clinical medicine in
1970, to not be actively helping in the hospitals at this time is upsetting; as
though one had been denied entry into an elite club. ‘What did you do during Covid, Daddy?’ Well, nothing I’m afraid, son. It reminds me of a strange novel written by
Yukio Mishima, and cult reading during the 1960s, ‘The Sailor Who Fell From
Grace With The Sea.’ The novel itself is
a metaphor for post war Japan, and the concept of Death or Glory looms
large. Mishima, a strange individual,
never recovered from being too young to serve in World War II. Even when he came of age, a doctor
misdiagnosed some respiratory signs as evidence of TB and he was rejected. His preoccupation with this failure underpins
his extreme traditionalist right wing views, his espousal of martial arts, his
formation of his own private army, and ultimately, in 1970, an attempted palace
coup – which failed. He then committed
seppuku. I hasten to add I am not about
to do this because I failed to be taken on at the hospital during the
coronavirus crisis. But it’s frustrating
to have missed the call up. ‘Now, God be
thanked Who has matched us with His hour…’, as Rupert Brooke wrote about a
different amphitheatre.
The major international news item this weekend has
undoubtedly been the killing of a black man in Minneapolis by a police officer
who was photographed, and videoed, leaning with all his weight on his knee on
the man’s neck and throat. Riots throughout
the USA, some of it possibly inflamed by a tweet from President Trump with the
phrase ‘When the looting starts, the shooting starts.’ Large protests even in London and
Manchester. As they say on TV, ‘In other
news this weekend…’, Elon Musk’s commercial space rocket took off from Cape
Canaveral and has successfully docked with the International Space Station.
Monday June 1st
ABD. Ah, the Glorious
First of June. The fourth Battle of
Ushant, was claimed as a great naval victory by both the French and English
navies, but as ever the truth is somewhere in between, not unlike the daily
coronavirus briefings, which I now scarcely watch. Hard to believe when we hung on every word in
the initial press conferences. Deaths
continue to decline; 111 reported yesterday, but if the eased lockdown has an
influence it will take weeks for it to become apparent. Riots continue in the USA. Little to report at home apart from a golf
lesson and several hours of gardening.
We are now in what is promised to be the last two days of the heatwave.
Final episode of ‘Victoria’ this evening. Ends with the Great Exhibition of 1851, and
Albert’s sudden collapse. Series four is
being written at the moment, so it will be a while before I can report further.
Tuesday June 2nd
ABD, but we are promised that it will be the last for a
while. A walk along the beach reveals
very little social distancing. Two card
tables of men playing poker or bridge, numerous tents, and many others. Is this part of Cummings’ legacy? A very hot day. I don’t feel able to sit in the sun until
after 3pm, and by 4pm, despite an engrossing book, one feels drowsy and lackadaisical. 6pm drinks in friends’ garden – six of us
together, as allowed under the lockdown easing.
Perhaps the first social event since March, albeit ‘distanced’. Reluctantly break up the pieces of the
Jackson Pollock jigsaw for onward passage to friends who want to try their
patience with it.
Wednesday June 3rd
Woken by the sound of rain.
During the refurbishment of the house we are living in, no attention was
paid to the gables and overhangs, and the open window has allowed the rain to
pour in. Window closed at 0530
hours. Gentle drizzle continues. Round of golf this morning. Feels quite refreshing to play in this light
rain. Bread making this afternoon. In the evening I persuade Lindsay to start in
on the DVD set of ‘Nicholas Nickleby’, from the famed 1980 production by the
RSC. At the time I thought it was the
best thing I had ever seen on stage, and I still stand by that, though the
other play and performance that stands comparison with it was ‘Jerusalem’ with
Mark Rylance. The opening act is grim
and dour, with the awfulness of Dotheboys Hall, and the appalling Wackford
Squeers. Is there anyone nowadays
writing novels exposing social injustice?
The only comparison to Dickens I can think of with the same stature is
Alexander Solzhenitsyn. A search of
Google reveals a few others, but rarely any consistent oeuvre.
Horse racing has restarted, with wins for Frankie Dettori,
but also one of the Queen’s horses. A
cartoon by Blower in the Telegraph encapsulates some of today’s themes, with
runners such as ‘Clap the Carer’, ‘Wuhan Avenger’, and ‘Barnard Castle Boy.’
 |
| Blower cartoon from the Telegraph |
Thursday June 4th
A bright day, the weather uncertain. The George Floyd protests continue. It has emerged that tear gas was used near
the White House on Monday simply to clear demonstrators such that President
Trump could walk outside to his local church and take a ‘photo-op’ with a Bible
in his hand (I almost wrote Bible in His hand).
What an obscenity.
I did want to write about the loveliness of asparagus, and
of English strawberries, but realise that this is a sad and bathetic response
to the preceding paragraph. But both
will be gone soon.
Friday June 5th
Discover that the architects have designed the lower
staircase window too low for the first six risers, and it will need to be
raised up to allow for this. This is
only one of several issues created by design oversight. At least the underfloor heating pipes are
laid, are airtight to 4 Bar, and are now covered irrevocably in screed.
But house worries are not a readable issue for any other
than the author, so can only report that a Lowry jigsaw, ‘Market Scene,
Northern Town, 1939, has been completed in a day. Farewell Jackson Pollock. But the assembling of a jigsaw of a work of
art somehow gives one an empathy with the artist, and the creative process.
More Nickleby. A
somewhat lighter mood, with Nicholas and Smike now taken on by the travelling
theatre of Mr Vincent Crummles. Cue for
Nicholas’s rewriting of Romeo and Juliet for Mr Crummles’ company, complete
with happy ending, which will end the first play of the two.
I have always loved Schubert’s music. In 1978, the 150th anniversary
year of his death, readers will probably not remember how paltry and
parsimonious was the BBC, at least as regards Radio 3 (it might even have still
been called the Third Programme at that time).
Broadcasts ended for the evening no later than 11pm. An inspired producer persuaded them to
include a Schubert song every night throughout the year, to extend the
broadcasting period. So, after a hard
day of medicine and cardiology at the Brook Hospital (Woolwich), I would lull
myself to sleep with this. Some years
ago, at a cello recital, I met the husband of the professional cellist who
claimed the distinction of the 1978 Schubert late night feature, against the
powers that be (or powers that were) at the BBC. In its new ‘Armchair Arts’ section, the
Telegraph yesterday carried a detailed analysis of the String Quintet in C,
with references to a YouTube recording and its timings. Remarkably, the article details Schubert’s final
move, into his brother’s house in Wieden, Vienna, which took place on 1st
September 1828. By November 19th
Schubert was dead. Yet in that time,
which we might take to sort out a few packing cases, watch some TV, and read a
book, Schubert wrote the great last three piano sonatas, Schwanengesang, and
the C major Quintet. All of this while
steadily going downhill with tertiary syphilis…
And on such a gloomy note…
Covid-19 deaths now just over 40,000, and yesterday 357 deaths, though
the number of new cases is falling much faster, and it would seem that the
number of deaths should surely be very much lower within a few weeks.
Saturday June 6th
A mixed day, with cool temperatures and a colder north
wind. Some rain. Plant some borage seeds in the hope of
decoration for Pimms. Finish ‘Song of
Achilles’ by Madeline Miller. Enjoyed it
a lot. Affectedly poetic writing, but
somehow it works. Is the purple prose a
striving for effect, or is it a device to carry forward what is after all, a
mythic story?
Our salt cellar ran out, and we turned to one from the
cupboard – Sal Del Desierto De Atacama.
Strange how little mementos bring back holidays; and we are all
suffering from a dearth of these just now.
Despite our enjoyment of Dorset, something about travel still creeps in
and brings us both remembrance of happy times past, and encourages us to hope
for more in the future. Like Marcel and
his madeleines, these memories are generally positive, though nostalgic. I am
sure we can also recall things – snatches of music perhaps, a photograph of a
place, or a person, which bring more negative associations. The most powerful, to my mind, are the
olfactory memories.
A friend will visit this evening, and we will have ‘Cheat’s
Pimms’, which brings back memories of Jane MacQuitty (see entry of 21st
March).
And at this point, I should commit this monologue to
cyberspace, with some photographs.
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