{Secret Committee}[10th April 1968]

[Redbook1:14-17][19680410:1200]{Secret Committee}[10^th April 1968][Age 16]

10th April 1968.

12.00 noon.

Yesterday evening, at a dinner, D disclosed to M and me that the secret committee to oust the government had decided to meet at this house.  Despite D's emphasis on the urgency of the situation -- D thinks that Wilson is now at the lowest point of popularity and that he will rise again quickly -- they had decided not to meet here till after the first of May.  This also means that I shall be at school.  I asked M if she could write and tell me about it, she said yes, but D said probably not.  At that moment the others came in with the second course and we had to stop.  He also mentioned some names of members of the committee.  One, I think, was Michael (?)  [...]; another could have been the Secretary of the Conservative Party, but I am not sure.  I shall report any further developments which come to my ears.

            As my mother has just had a baby, the house is rather full of domestic staff -- that is, the modern polite no-class-nonsense term for what used to be called servants.  There is A[...], the French au-pair girl, who is very pretty but is becoming rather overweight on C[...]’s puddings.  C, who has just finished working for us today, is a cook, also young and pretty but rather reserved and strained, and with little sense of humour against herself.  She has done the cooking for M.  She is, I think, called C[... P...].  Her food looks exotic but turns out often to be rather plain, though her braised liver is very good.  N[...] is the newly-arrived nurse who looks after L.  She is also young, and very nice, but she is not all that pretty.  Mrs T is the daily help, who comes in from 10a.m. to 1p.m. most days and from 10a.m. to 4p.m. on some days.  She does not come at weekends.  She is an invaluable help in keeping the house clean: help?  -- She does it all herself!  She is also very cheerful, very large, and has a nice singing voice.  She is middle-aged and married, and her only son O is [...].  There is a story that her husband, when he saw the pain and mess that was involved in having her son, said “I promise I'll never do it again, I promise!"  -- and he apparently hasn't!  She is the best kind of British working class, and we all like her enormously, though B teases her unmercifully.

            I got up at about 10.30a.m. this morning to find that D had already gone to work -- surprisingly early for him, he must be on something important -- had a bath in potassium permanganate-sprinkled water (I am trying to get rid of Athlete’s Foot, which I have had for about two years now), no breakfast as usual, and did some Chaucer.  Then M gave me a lift to Victoria station on her way to visit Lily, her dress-maker.  I walked down the central roadway on the "Brighton" side where it said "no entry" and bought some Smarties for the Easter Hare to leave in C garden.  Then I got a refund for two of the three tickets to "Romeo & Juliet" (Zeffirelli) which we hadn't used -- the third hadn't been sold -- less 10% fee -- and caught a Number 11 bus from outside the Grosvenor Hotel.  I took a ticket (8d) to the Classic Cinema (King's Road, Chelsea) but jumped off short of Sloane Square because we were stuck in a traffic jam and I was late for lunch.  Lunch was H’s own soup and chops with greens and mashed potato.  After that H left.  M went off to have her hair done, the three children and N went out with [...,] the eleven-year-old golden labrador and [...,] the eleven-month-old black labrador, to the Royal Hospital grounds on the banks of the Thames.  They came back at about 4.30p.m., and we had tea -- I just had a cup of tea and a meringue.  At about 5.30 K, ([... ...], living in our basement) came in and had some tea.  N has just taken L up to the Nursery.  I can hear the television talking downstairs -- I expect S is watching it (she is a T.V. addict).

            I shan't normally write such long accounts, but one or two are a good thing as they may give some idea of my daily life.

            Last night D said he thought that the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in Memphis might solve America's internal problems by making its people taking a new and startled look at themselves.  I know what he means, but all I can say is -- Kennedy's death didn't stop violence and death in the USA.  Could it be an attempt by the Communist Chinese to foment civil war in America and distract them from Vietnam?

            I discovered a way to turn the state plastic tracks of the Triang 'O' gauge railway into the long radius curved tracks -- by cutting them on the outside rail and taking them together with P.V.C. tape, keeping the cut ends slightly apart.  Do this a lot and you've got a rather bumpy curved rail.  I am now soaking the experimental piece of rail and water to see how it stands up to a soaking.  It seems to be O.K. so far after about half an hour.

            I am planning to build a railway in 'O' gauge (Scale: 7 millimetres to 1 foot, Gauge: 32 millimetres) and round the garden at C.  As eventually planned it is quite ambitious, and will cost more than £133 at the present cost of track -- but that is a final plan which may take years to complete.  Thanks to the new taping idea, the track laying itself is easy and quick.  It is the laying of the wood on which it runs (on piers) that is complicated.  I laid a test track last summer which has survived the winter, but it has shown me that I need deeper holes for the piers and only one 6” nail in each pier to hold the planks on -- but larger holes so they will slip out more easily.  I have decided to lay double tracked from the beginning – single track makes life too complicated, and is difficult (on a model) to double afterwards.

            D has just come back.  He says he's going to meet someone here this evening, which is unusual.

[PostedBlogger28082012]