Sunday August 24, 1980

_. 12th Sunday after Trinity

Have a blocked head, sniffles, green dribbles. Warm enough to sprawl in a deckchair in the garden, and I did so clutching Joyce Grenfell's autobiography, a well-written tale. The book is on loan to Mum from Auntie Mabel. Joyce's husband, Reggie, is the brother of Lady Waldegrave and Lady Ballantrae [killed in a gale last March in Stranraer, when a tree fell on her], and Mrs Patrick Campbell-Preston, Lady-in-Waiting to the Queen Mother, and Joyce is a niece of Lady Astor [Nancy], the battling MP, who gave Churchill heartburn. No name dropping from Joyce in the book of course. I've worked it out for myself.

Ally came here in her break at 3:30 and stayed until 6. She says she really thinks she should not have bothered coming because I am 'snappy'. So snappy in fact that my deckchair almost caught fire. Fortunately she found it funny. I saw nothing funny. I'm always grumpy when unwell. I sat gasping like an asthmatic pug, drowning to the sound of Tony Blackburn  from the depths of my transistor radio.

Mum and Dad went to Giovanni's until 12:30 leaving me watching TV. Saw the end of the French saga about Molière. Bed late.

-=-