A difficult beginning.

Oh dear, 2010 has really not started very well at all – I am quite distressed. I have asked Ellis to allow absolutely no visitors across the threshold whatsoever, and Mrs Swann is bringing me a cup of Earl Grey and two aspirins. Honestly, what a fuss; I do think Ponty was unreasonable.

Naturally he likes to go out with his friends on New Year’s Eve – I believe he was heading for Town with the intention of meeting up with some other young people in Trafalgar Square, where they were all intending to have a lovely time and possibly pop into a nearby hostelry for a little drink at some point. I did rather wistfully enquire if that Complete Saddho would still be of the party, but after staring at me in blank amazement for a moment, Ponty appeared to recover his wits and said with a guffaw that his friend had urgently to head East to quell a revolution. I must say Ponty does have some exciting associates, though I should have thought a political uprising is no laughing matter even at this safe distance.

Before he went up to Town yesterday he asked me as a favour if I would record a television programme for him – normally Eustacia would do that, but she was taking a nap and Ponty seemed in a hurry to set off, so Ponty asked me if I would do it for him.

I wish now that I had been sensible enough to consult Eustacia, and then I would never have made such a silly mistake. I suppose I felt proud that for once one of my dear children had seen fit to entrust me with something important, and had faith in my ability to master the management of electronic controls, which I realise has been shaky in the past. Results have been uneven, and I am the first to admit this.

But I was determined to do it by myself, if only to prove that I could: and I see now how foolish I was to act with such arrogance.

It was not that I failed to set the recording function. I got out the little booklet that came with the DVD recording machine, and followed the rather longwinded instructions with care and success, despite their being written entirely in Spanish.

I must confess I felt a little surprised that Ponty was so keen to avoid missing an episode of Supernanny. I might have seen the sense in watching it myself a few years ago, but Ponty has no children of his own – or at least – well, never mind; Ponty is not married.

So it was not until late this afternoon when Ponty, having returned from Town and slept in until after luncheon, emerged in his dressing gown to catch up on his programme, that I discovered my mistake.

With a puzzled expression on his face Ponty watched the first fifteen minutes of Jo Frost correcting the ways of a shockingly insubordinate three-year-old who was in the habit of exerting perfect tyranny over its cowering parents – and then erupted with a bellow of rage, showering upon my unsuspecting head the most blistering attack of really disgraceful expletives.

I was completely bewildered.

Eustacia enlightened me later, after she had come down to see what all the fuss was about. Apparently it was not Supernanny at all that Ponty wanted me to record, but Jools Holland's Annual Hootenanny: but, honestly – how was I to know? It sounded like ‘Supernanny’ to me!

A Complete Saddho!

I am just so excited!

Ponty’s friends do often leave so much to be desired, though it causes me great sadness to say so of my own darling child. The memories of last New Year’s Eve still make me shudder. And I fear even now he has not shaken loose from the frightful Débris Bonbon. Sometimes when he returns from his trips to London I see a smudge of white face-powder on the shoulder of his jacket, and a faint smear of garish rouge upon the curve of his jaw. And then I know.

For one thing, ‘Débris’ is a man’s name, surely? I would have imagined a lady should be called ‘Débrisse’, should she not? Such vulgarity of affectation. A young woman should be proud of her femininity. I can still see her today, making her way up the staircase to our guest suite, and hearing a faint ‘Oh, my Lord! Who the feck is that?’ emanating from Sybil‘s bedroom doorway. I am sure Débris is a credit to her profession as a ‘Sweetie Rapper’, but I am not convinced she has a place in my son’s affections or a hope of lasting connection with our family.

I felt obliged to have a quiet word with Ponty on the matter of his intimate circle as the Christmas festivities subsided and I felt the approach of New Year’s Eve press upon me like the lowering stormcloud of a threatening migraine.

He listened with some surprise as I expressed my reservations on the subject of the young lady’s character and background. ‘Good Lord!’ was all he said for a moment; then crossed the drawing room to pour himself a glass of whisky.

What he said next set my mind at rest. Do you know, I had simply no idea that Ponty had refined associates of a spiritual persuasion among his acquaintance, and I am so relieved he does. For my own part, I have given pride of place to the rather odd seasonal greetings card with the design in shades of dun and grey created from shreds of torn paper, bearing the sweet message ‘With love from Rowan and Jane’: but Ponty I felt sure had no such uplifting connections.

What was my surprise when he set down his whisky glass with decided emphasis upon my ormolu display cabinet and announced: ‘Mother; I’ll see what I can do. What say you to my bringing home my good friend the Nobh of Bhutta who happens to be in England at the present time? He has recently been ordained as a Complete Saddho and has come for a little holiday after his six months’ pre-ordination retreat and the ordeal of all the tongue-piercing and circumcision and so forth. Bring him over for afternoon tea, what? Only snag, he isn’t used to the dashed English damps and he had a touch of pneumonia when I saw him up in town before Christmas – so it might be all off. But you’d probably like him better than Débris. Completely teetotal – never touches a drop; never smoked a spliff in his life, eats nothing but cracked barley – and sky-clad except for high ceremonies.’

It is typical of Ponty to be drawn to the more exotic variety of cleric (and ‘sky-clad’ means nothing to me) but it is certainly a relief to discover that his circle of friends includes souls of serious and sober inclination.

I have asked Ponty to write down ‘the Nobh of Bhutta’ for me, so I can verify in Debretts how best to address him without inadvertently causing offence: I know all too well how sensitive on the matter these overseas dignitaries can be.

Perhaps 2010 will prove to be a more stable year than I had anticipated.

A shocking reversal of allegiance.

It is not often that I am shocked. Many believe that if one is so fortunate as to be comfortably provided for in this life, then one has no idea of adversity, cruelty or horror: but it is not so – not necessarily. Behind the dignity and reticence of the conduct of a lady may lie the most surprising tapestry of experience. I think I can say I have seen life, and had plentiful opportunity to observe human nature in considerable variety. I am not easily shocked.

At first when Ponty chatted about being a Buller man, the reference meant nothing to me. I initially assumed he was referring to his enthusiasm for Bull Terriers: a noble breed of dog unfortunately tainted by association with some aggressive and irresponsible owners. Later when Ponty mentioned in passing being part of ‘Bullingdon blinds’, I had hopes that he might have made investment in a worthwhile and steady business venture – he is a sensitive soul beneath a rather arresting exterior, and I thought that home décor might prove soothing and balancing to his spirit, but it turned out that his reference was to something else entirely.

Even when I had found out what the Bullingdon Club is, it was not Ponty’s membership of it that shocked me. A very exclusive dining club, known, I discover, for destructive binges – membership by invitation only. It goes without saying that its membership is restricted to the very wealthy, as new members are initiated by having their rooms ‘trashed’. The club holds an annual dinner, with occasional smaller dinners to welcome new members. Because they know they will not be welcome in any restaurant, the booking is made under an assumed name: at the conclusion of the dinner, either designedly or simply because the members are drunk, the young men attending the dinner set about damaging and breaking the tableware and furniture, breaking windows – generally destroying their dining environment. Because of their wealth, the members pride themselves on paying for the damage, often settling in cash on the night (so I am told). Even so, they are not welcome guests in any establishment.

I cannot pretend to be astonished to find that Ponty should be a member of such a club. In my eyes, Ponty will always be the wide-eyed little boy, full of eagerness and wonder, that once he was: but I recognize that in the world’s eyes he has travelled a long journey from where he started out. It is a prestigious club, a great honour to be invited to membership, so I have heard – and Ponty would find this seductive. He is naïve in some ways, though he pretends to sophistication.

I was not even shocked to discover that the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson; our Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne; and our leader of the Conservative party and would-be Prime Minister, David Cameron, all were members of the Bullingdon Club. I was not shocked by the revelations concerning MPs expenses, and I am not shocked by this. What did people think human nature was like? What did they imagine went on when people were trusted and left on their own to tell the truth? How could anybody seriously be so simple-minded as to imagine that MPs were without exception upright, honest souls, beavering away industriously for the good of the nation, beacons of exemplary frugality, never opportunistic, sleazy or corrupt? I am disappointed to learn that George Osborne, Boris Johnson and David Cameron all coveted membership of a group whose sole purpose was destruction, debauchery, depravity, decadence and the distasteful flaunting of excessive wealth – but not shocked. They are all, underneath, a little like my Ponty; cheerful, well-meaning, not as bright as one might have hoped, wearing their morality like a Sunday suit to please the electorate – too tight in the collar, too starched and too slender-cut: a relief to remove at the first opportunity, in favour or something far looser, dirtier and more comfortable. I understand.

No. What has shocked me is this. My father, his father, and his father before him have all been staunch members of the Conservative party. In my family, to vote Conservative meant to vote for freedom, for the right to make what one could of one’s own life with one’s own money and one’s own effort: to protect and order one’s own family and land according to one’s own vision and standards. To rely on no-one, answer to no-one, and shake free of all these itching, biting, carping, infuriating entangling rules and regulations so beloved of the Labour party. To me, Gordon Brown’s proud announcement that the interference of Ofsted is to extend its suffocating tentacles even into the lives of the under-twos is not welcome. Is no baby to have a childhood, freedom to play, to explore, and simply dream? Is no teenager to be left with time to waste – to compose poetry and music, to play guitar and build tree-houses and camp in the woods, to rage against the system and conduct terribly dangerous scientific experiments, and sound-proof the barn with egg-boxes for a home-made recording studio? Are they all to be monitored and examined and driven at targets every second of every day? Whence will come our inventors, our explorers, our musicians, our playwrights and poets and philosophers once the Labour party has finished forcing every child into a health-and-safety shaped politically correct clone of a dreary respectable middle-management bureaucrat who feels free to sneer at any white middle-class Christian but is appalled at the notion of inadvertently distressing a militant Muslim?

What has shocked me, finally, after all these years, after so weighty and proud a tradition, even though I promised to vote for darling Ponty (I was so proud when I found he was to be an MP) – is that I have come reluctantly to the conclusion that, if it is true that David Cameron, George Osborne, and Boris Johnson were members of the Bullingdon Club; then, nanny state or not, Gordon Brown has my vote from now on.

The quick-witted and trenchant reaction to pandemonium of Dylan Pugh

The thing is my darlings, I have to say, I just don’t know how we would have got through last Thursday morning without Dylan Pugh. Indeed, I have still as it is been simply too distracted to write anything whatsoever, even here in my diary, which ought to be a discipline as I think you will surely agree.

Well!

It all started at about 5 o’clock on Thursday morning. Henry and I had just returned from our world cruise (only a short one – it’s such a small world nowadays isn’t it, as everybody keeps remarking) and we had intended upon a little lie-in.

Now personally I had not been disturbed in the slightest – that is until my sleep was shattered by a thunderous exclamation of ‘Sink me!!’ from the region of the balcony. I raised myself somewhat groggily upon my pillows. Groping for my lorgnette and simultaneously fumbling for my torch, I combined the use of these to discern and illuminate dear Henry’s scarlet dressing gown billowing wildly merged in with the voile and gold silk of our bedroom curtains upon the wave of an incoming gust of wind, the balcony window being apparently thrown open. Fearing the worst (though unclear what that might in fact be), I quavered ‘Henry?’ and he appeared,in the dressing gown, through the balcony window, inexplicably clutching what by squinting I discerned in the torchlight, moonbeams and beginnings of the dawn to be binoculars. They must have been to hand on the ottoman, as the things from our brief holiday were not yet all tidied away.

‘Were you taking a little air, my darling?’ I enquired.

‘Odds fish, woman!’ he boomed in response, which I must say I found a little terse, even given the hour of the morning: ‘Damnee, what do you take me for – a fitness fanatic?!’ (anyone who has seen Henry in nothing but a dressing gown would instantly discern the humour of this rhetorical interrogative)

‘No darling,’ I replied, with what I felt to be remarkable forbearance at so early an hour: ‘then what are you doing out on the balcony?’

‘The blasted garden’s full of sheep!’ said he. ‘I heard shouting “blehh” and “buuurrr” and “baaaaw” and got up to look.’

Have you ever been to Bolton Abbey Church? It is most amusing. There are sheep all round about, and during the sermon one can hear them. The effect bears an uncanny resemblance to Prime Minister’s Question Time at the House of Commons: ‘Hear! hear!... Booo… hahaha…. Hear! hear!’ and so forth. It’s hilarious: adds no end to the sermon. But I digress.

‘Come in, Henry,’ said I in crisp tones, being now sufficiently awake to be in command of the situation, ‘and don some more suitable apparel.’

So Henry, grumbling a little, put on his long johns and my cardigan, and rushed down to investigate the sheep. Feeling that some moral support could improve things, I threw a negligee swiftly about my shoulders, and without stopping even to pin up my hair, I made haste to follow him, dashing first up to the top of the house to bang on Mrs Swann’s door in case she could be helpful. It was still dark.

All this activity made a considerable amount of noise, and as I thundered down the stairs I glanced back to see Mrs Swann emerging wild-eyed and tremulous from her attic (I must ask her where she purchases those voluminous black night-dresses – so striking) at the same time as Eustacia and Ponty flung open their bedroom doors crying respectively: ‘Mummy! For heaven’s sake!’ and ‘What’s up, Mater? Burglars?’

I think Mrs Swann took the latter remark as an assertion rather than a query, because she began to scream hysterically. Then she missed her footing and fell down the stairs.

‘See to her, Eustacia!’ I commanded sharply: ‘Ponty – come and deal with the sheep!’

Ponty came rolling out in his Hawaiian boxer shorts and that ridiculous T-shirt of his that says 667 – NEIGHBOUR TO THE BEAST and bare feet. Well – to be fair we were all in bare feet except Henry who had on one carpet slipper like a terrible parody of Cinderella. Dimly, as we clattered though the front door into the garden, I heard Eustacia making a call on her mobile phone, saying loudly ‘Yes! Ambulance! Directly!’ It seemed a wee bit extreme and then I was seized with alarm – perhaps Mrs Swann had injured herself; possibly fatally?

The garden was indeed swarming with sheep.

Henry was creeping up on them, hoping to head them off towards that gap where they get in. Seeing his strategy, I sidled to the west, to block possible egress through the yews. In case you are having this read to you, may I clarify I am referring to topiary not females? All would have been well I believe, had Ponty not left the door open when he followed me out. He surged into the fray, whirling his arms energetically and shouting ‘Shooooooo!!! Shooooooo!!!’ This is never effective with sheep.

In the first glimmer of the dewy dawn, I saw the first signs of panic in their vague pale forms – then the flock broke and they began to dash crazily back towards the house.

Distracted momentarily by the sound of an ambulance siren and a blue light flashing in the lane, I did not see what caused Henry to bellow: ‘Confounded idiot boy! Nincompoop! You blethering incomparable half-brained nitwit!’ – until I turned round to behold the last woolly rump entering the house.

We dashed in after them. This panicked them even more. One ran downstairs and I heard a cry (Cook – I recognized her voice), most of them mobbed the drawing room: six tackled the stairs.

Taking two stairs at a time, even at fifty-two and in a negligee, I followed in hot pursuit. Gentle reader, when I breasted the rise and came level with the landing, on the left I heard Eustacia saying Hail Marys with Mrs Swann (she is Polish, I believe – Roman Catholic at any rate, and very devout), while ahead of me came histrionic bleating from our bedroom.

Standing in the doorway then, I surveyed the scene. All six sheep stood tightly together on our bed, facing me in a defiant phalanx. The curtains billowed dramatically in the night wind. A cloven ovine foot had inadvertently made contact with Henry’s projection clock that I gave him last Christmas, casting eerie purple data up onto the ceiling (5.21am).

‘Hermione!’ roared the voice of my beloved from the hall: ‘it’s the ambulance men for Mrs Swann!’

Dylan Pugh is not normally residential with us. I have no idea what he was doing in Sybil’s bedroom, and I shall not enquire. He is Henry’s personal secretary – a paragon of efficiency and unflappable in every circumstance. On this occasion he switched on the light in the passageway, and directed the ambulance men to Mrs Swann and Eustacia, who was calling ‘Here! We are here!’ in the near-dark of the attic stairs; then he appeared at my side, not as in his photograph at the top on this entry, but wearing an eau de nil silk wrap that is definitely Sybil’s. He gestured to me to move aside somewhat, in the direction of the wardrobe. I obeyed. Calling seductively in a low crooning voice, while rattling some kind of cereals in a bucket, he tempted the sheep. Nervous at first, and distrustful, they hesitated. But greed and curiosity overcame them, and they followed him like the Pied Piper of Hamlin down the stairs.

Pugh then took charge of the stray still blundering destructively round the kitchen, ejecting it through the scullery door into the yard, instructed Cook to make tea, and lured the drawing room party back into the wild.

He recommended Henry and me to adjourn until morning to the guest suite, which we gratefully did, and never have I so felt so deeply appreciative in sipping a restorative cup of Earl Grey.

Pugh dealt with Mrs Swann’s situation (she was shaken, but not injured beyond a degree of bruising), gave the ambulance men tea as well, and phoned out for a team of trouble-shooting cleaners to rectify the wreckage before elevenses, by which time Henry and I were ready to face the day (we took breakfast in our room on a tray).

I am so grateful to Dylan Pugh for his masterful intervention. He really is a gem. But though I expanded upon his incisive and enterprising action to Henry in the most glowing terms, I thought it best to gloss over how he came to be in our midst at five o’clock on a Thursday morning.

The Thieving Cow

My neighbour came to visit me today. We are so very much out in the sticks here that hardly anybody just drops by – apart from the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Reverend Coleshaw Grimm of course, upon whom one can rely absolutely for assiduous devotion to duty. The nearest building is the Thieving Cow at the end of the village, a public house that Hermann and Gerda Backfatt took over two years ago.

I believe they advertise home-cooked food as one of their attractions, and I think Mrs Backfatt first began to call here to purchase some of Sybil’s herbs for her chef. The cooking herbs I mean, of course, not the other ones – at least, I assume so.

And then Mrs Backfatt seemed to take to us rather, and pops in from time to time when her full schedule permits - for running a public house is indeed no small venture, and the Thieving Cow is immensely popular. She is very frank and sometimes surprising in her conversation. Last time she was here, she gradually inclined in my direction until she resembled the leaning tower of Pisa on the verge of a landslide and whispered in the tones of a coy conspirator that she had been to Knightsbridge to purchase a strapless brassica. I felt a little nonplussed for a moment, but I hope my face did not betray any bewilderment.

Today she was brimming over with excitement, wanting to share her news, poor thing – her husband is a more taciturn individual: approaching the concrete bollard level in fact; abnormally under-vivacious. Anyway dear Mrs Backfatt practically shoved Ellis into the door-jamb in her haste to enter the drawing room.

‘What do you think?’ she cried as she swarmed in my direction (Eustacia had to leap adroitly to prevent an upset of the tea-table): ‘Bärbel’s poinsettia has had nine puppies! Nine!’

Eustacia and I nodded and smiled in delighted amazement: ‘Nine is a lot for a poinsettia,’ Eustacia volunteered; ‘do you have any photographs yet?’

Eustacia can really be very tactful, when she tries.

Apparently there will be photographs when the bitch will let them near. Poinsettias, Mrs Backfatt assured us, can be astonishingly possessive.

My darling Henry

Today, I feel so terribly tired. They say, don’t they that seventy is the new forty? Today I feel as though the fifties are the new eighties. I look in the mirror, and this slightly cynical patient lizard with its watchful eyes and straw wig looks back at me. ‘Good morning,’ I say; and the lizard mouths the same words back at me.

My darling Henry came home yesterday evening. Things always feel more right in themselves when he is home. There is something uncannily comforting about Henry.

This last month or two he has been back and forth to New York and Washington and Berlin, sorting things out and making the world run properly. I have not the faintest idea, in truth, what this entails; apart from aeroplane flights and well-pressed suits, and a remarkable stamina for board meetings. Part of Henry’s ethical outlook is his belief that one should work for one’s living – actually for real money I mean, not only contributing usefully to the executive processes of charitable foundations and whatnot, though of course Henry does that too. So he spends a great deal of time attending things and making decisions; giving permission for people’s lives and commercial ventures to begin, or end, or change direction. I am not quite sure how many companies Henry owns or directs – a lot I think, but I suppose it might even be none at all; I have not even the most tenuous grasp of these matters. Simply being alive at all and remembering to be polite and figuring out how to get both legs of my stockings on without getting them twisted has always seemed challenge enough for me.

Anyway, dear Henry is home for the weekend, which is simply lovely. I always look forward to him coming back so very, very much; life slips into its socket again if you see what I mean. Even so, it can be a little alarming at seven o’clock in the morning, when I am sitting in bed sipping Earl Grey tea in a tranquil manner, watching a flight of birds through the window, and Henry enquires briskly: ‘So! What’s on the agenda today?’

‘Agenda?’ I quaver weakly. Henry takes in at a glance that there is no future in pursuing this line of enquiry; so he outlines for me the projects he has in mind for his own itinerary – usually enough to fully occupy a short month (February, I suppose).

After a little while his own enthusiasm sort of loops back and re-infects itself, and he goes bounding off to the shower: then bursts in upon Cook to check up on the progress of breakfast. After he has dressed, of course.

And then I don’t really see him any more. From time to time he comes blowing into the drawing room, or wherever I am, in search of important papers, or his spectacles, or needing me to jog his memory – the name of the man who bred our dogs or the disease that Aunt Fenella died of; that sort of thing. Sometimes we take lunch together, though I prefer to have a tray on the sofa; a little smoked salmon and cream cheese on an oatcake while I leaf through this week’s copy of The Lady, looking at the pictures mainly – words are so draining, don’t you think?. Henry usually lunches in the dining room surrounded by horseradish and chutney and Gentleman’s Relish and pickles, eating crunchy things very fast because his mind is already galloping wildly through the late afternoon and he has to catch up.

We often eat fish for dinner. Apart from Sybil, who prepares her own slightly unusual concoctions. I must say, Cook is very patient with us.

There comes a moment when after much wrestling effort, Henry and his day fall apart exhausted: at which point he turns on the television for the news, pours himself a whisky, and falls asleep.

I make my way back to my dear snuggly nest at about ten o’clock. I like to keep the curtains drawn back, so I can see the moon and the stars and the clouds. So beautiful. I lie and watch them, eventually drifting off to sleep. After an hour or so Henry tiptoes in and puts the light on, clatters around a little as quietly as he can, blows his nose and whatnot, finally leaning across to give me a goodnight kiss of great affection before settling down to one of these rather sophisticated political novels: ‘Goodnight my sweet darling,’ he says. I do love Henry.

After a while I usually drift slowly off to sleep again in the lamplight. Henry reads until he is sleepy and then turns off the light. He finds it hard to get comfortable nowadays – it’s middle age you see, it’s not the new twenty-one whatever they may say. So he grunts and rootles around a bit and grapples with his pillows, eventually getting them straight. He begins to drift off to sleep then, but I find one can only have so many goes at it before drifting off to sleep loses its edge. So I watch the moon. After a while (this happens every night, it’s extraordinary, I’m sure a homoeopath would have something to say) Henry suddenly begins to cough. He gropes about for his carafe and knocks his watch onto the floor, and has to put the light on to retrieve it and pour himself a glass of water. This usually does the trick, and he subsides again, re-organises his pillows and starts to drift off to sleep. At this juncture, leg cramps usually strike him, and poor Henry has to jump out of bed and pace around a little, pausing to stand on tiptoe or stretch out one leg from time to time. With a certain amount of determination he is usually able to defeat the cramp, and he snuggles down again and gives me another loving little kiss: ‘Goodnight my dearest,’ he says. Darling Henry. What would I do without him?

He tussles with his pillows for a while and finally gets them straight, turning over with a deep sigh and pulling the duvet around him. In that moment I have to be almost convulsively quick to grab the corner of the quilt before it is whisked away from my side of the bed. I hold onto it firmly then, as I lie watching the clouds drift across the face of the moon.

I listen as Henry’s breathing deepens from its normal tense wakefulness down to relaxation, then into snoring.

The snoring is interesting and varied. Some nights it’s that guttural, semi-gurgling snortle located in the region of the pharynx, or soft palate at least: I believe that must require an open mouth, but one can never absolutely confirm the veracity of this hunch in the dark. Some nights it’s more of a slow, deep, in-drawing snortle alternating with a coy little ‘ptui!’ on the outbreath. I listen, and I watch the moon moving across the sky, and eventually sleep draws me down into the dark blue velvet silence.

And before I know it, the morning has come; the indeterminate beauty of the dawn, and a cup of Earl Grey tea, and a tender little kiss from darling Henry, who wonders what my schedule (!) will be this new day.

My dear, dear Henry. I admire him so, and he is such a marvelous person; so accomplished and important and so devastatingly busy. I wish I could write with more insight and intelligence about the kind of person he is: but at least I have been able to describe the bits I see.

Such interesting views from the train

This morning I received a couple of messages from Eustacia on my mobile telephone. She had an idle moment while she sat waiting for the up train, which seemed to be inexplicably delayed. The first message came in the form of a photograph she had taken (with her telephone, apparently! Amazing!) of the café outside our little railway station here in the Sussex countryside. On the large white fascia-board of this emporium appears in uncompromising orange letters (Mistral) the legend:

ALPHA CAFE
& coffee shop

Eustacia’s second communication, a text message this time, referring presumably to the sign in the photograph, said simply: ‘Two for the price of one! What a bargain!’

Two for the price of one? Oh! I suppose she means because it is both a café and a coffee shop. But surely….

I wonder if she is being sarcastic?

Eustacia has been travelling everywhere by train since she lost her driving license after that unfortunate business last year, which really seemed most unfair to me. Well, Ponty or whoever is going that way takes her out to the station of course, but apart from that she is quite independent.

She tells me (Eustacia has such a sense of fun) that the two best ways of fare-hopping are either to pick up used tickets dropped carelessly by other travelers and stow them about one’s person in pockets, purse and handbag, searching frantically among them for today’s ticket if the inspector comes round (thus giving the impression of being an honest soul who regularly purchases tickets), meanwhile exhibiting mounting feminine distress: or travelling with a companion in two separate carriages having bought one ticket between you, in the possession of the traveler nearest where you have observed the guard to be on boarding the train. The first person offers the ticket for inspection when asked to do so, then moves down the train, passing the inspector, to give the ticket to her accomplice. She says in both cases it is important to conduct oneself in a demure, even prim, fashion, and wear neat, nondescript clothing and not too much make-up. And look vague. I have no idea how Eustacia came across these details of criminal behaviour: perhaps she read about it in a novel.

Oh! She has just sent me some more photographs of the trees so beautiful in shades of crimson, russet and gold – and one of a pheasant standing on top of a farm gate. Sussex is truly the most beautiful place on God’s Earth, and one of the best ways to see it is from the train. I wonder what those two people in the photograph are doing in that dell under the trees there. Goodness me, how extraordinary! Well, I never! Some people have no sense of propriety!