Farnborough
June 17^th, 1970

Dearest Machi and Den,

I hope I wrote you about May 22^nd or so, after Sheena's visit, but I don't remember saying I was near enough to The Close to go after I put Sheena on the train, staying about an hour and getting home before dark (total) about ten. It takes me less than an hour.

The following weekend was the one when Hugo sang very nicely in the church - the man who is to do Phil's stone (if we ever come to a decision), wife and son stayed on to supper, though Claudia wouldn't stay unfortunately. They are a very interesting family. The son, in his thirties, sends Americana all over England. He lives in a sort of museum of American things, closely associated with the American museum at Bath. I do want to go and see them both. I mean the museums.

That was a full weekend, literally, as Hugo and family were here as well as Lee, though Inigo slept next door. Hugo's family and I set out early on the Monday for the aunt's, no the uncle's really - Mr Bulmer who runs the cider firm. We stopped three times to let the babies out, once finding a very nice field, with a view and out of the wind, for our lunch, and later in a beautiful valley in Wales, with short grass, a salmon stream, and swings! We went a long and very pretty way, leaving at 9:30am and arriving at seven. Coming back we went within six miles of Ned. That part is just on the edge of the most lovely mountainous part. Hugo drives fast and the roads are winding. Inigo threw up all over me, into Andrew's head. When Jennifer took him into a johnny at a filling station, the sight of it made her sick too. I don't know that I think two such long journeys for just a week's visit, with two such little bored children, would be worth it to me.

Of course when you get there it is a marvellous spot, with miles of sandy beaches, inlets and outlets, rock cliffs, sailing, the lot owned privately by the Bulmers. Plus the farm, animals, lots of walks and beautiful wild flowers of every kind. Mrs Bulmer said once they collected about a hundred different kinds. I was intrigued by little roses right on the ground, near the sea. Fields of blue bells, too, of all things, right in the open, sea thrift, of course, and masses of gorse and broom, violets, scillas, and ever so many I didn't know. The children had great fun in the sand and the sea, though the weather could have been better. It was sunny most days, but a chilly wind which one had to get out of, if possible. Jennifer swan twice one day, and I went in up to my middle to try and retrieve a boat. It wasn't all that cold once you got in, especially if the tide was coming in on slightly warm sand. Jennifer expects to go back for another two weeks before she goes to France.

The aunt is a most unusual person, who never seems to go to bed until after midnight, and is up at 7:30. I think that is why she gets so much done. You never saw such meals - lavish and excellent, dish after dish I'd call a day's cooking but she never seemed to be doing it, and she'd be painting a wall, or gardening, and come for a walk at any moment. We had two kinds of meat pies and about four cold meats for a lunch - sweet pies, caramel custards, zabaglione, things cooked in cider, flamed in brandies, excellent vegetables, baskets of fruit on the table, and cheeses bought by the pound.

There was an old range in a large fireplace in the dining room, in which the center of the stove was like an open fire. Plates were warming there, toast was toasted, and bacon was cooked every morning: a huge grill full and one took what one wanted. A serving table at one side of the room held all the food. You helped yourself to lunch. She helped you to supper. Any one who offered, helped. The dishes weren't washed after lunch because she said there was always lots of time while she was cooking supper to do them. She had huge built-in racks where all plates and bowls could drip. All the china was in one double-doored cupboard, no special arrangement but you could see from what was left in where to put away. It seemed to be a very easy method. Never ever have I seen so many cooking pots and pans, casseroles, &c, mostly French. She had five dozen plates and smaller ones to match and that simplified matters. Anyone who happened along set the table, no napkins, always great jugs of cider on the table. I am told she often has eighteen people staying, and always one or two au pair girls in the summer that help. The babies sat up at the table, and it is all very simple for Jennifer. Two huge dogs are lying around, the floors are stone and spills don't matter.

Mr Bulmer came for the weekend. There is a man named Tom who is a teacher and comes every holiday and does the garden as much as he wants. It must have been a lovely formal garden many years ago. Now it is a battle to keep near the house cut down and somewhat weeded. You realize it is only a summer, or holiday house. The main building has about twenty bedrooms, very sparsely furnished, but she was working on another one in an annexe. Every night we played Racing Demon - a sort of double solitaire. I kept shutting doors of which there were plenty, and very large. They have four sons and one daughter - all unmarried. Joan BT thinks it is because she is too domineering, and Joan says the boys will never take their friends to stay there. She is a large, rather masculine-looking woman, and I was holding my breath toward the end of the week that she wouldn't change her skirt, and she didn't. From the Monday we arrived until the Monday we left she never took off a green plaid skirt - though she did change from green to brown stockings, and a variety of tops or sweaters. She couldn't have been nicer to us.

I call Andrew a baby, but of course he isn't - but very grown-up for three, and you can reason and argue with him. He knows the days of the week and woe betide if you don't do something on the day you said you would. He knows better than to disturb his parents in the morning, so always comes to me and I read to him. The first morning in the other house we stayed (Yorkshire), I heard little feet pattering all around at 7:30 but he never did find me and went back to his own room and played with blocks. He picks up everything you say. "Isn't this a grand house, Mollie?" "Don't you wish you had one like it?" (That was the Rolls Royce).

The drive to Yorkshire was just as fast, but entirely different, being mostly on a motorway, at a steady sixty or so, stopping at the places provided, with high chairs for Inigo. Even so it is a hellishly long way. My car this time, Hugo driving up, but he came down on Sunday (his new job started Monday) and I drove the rest of us on Tuesday. We have been having a heat wave, and it was terrifically hot on the motorway. And indeed in London. I packed to get away on Wednesday evening, but hadn't seen Lee and suggested he bring cold supper for all of us to eat in Hugo's garden, by which time they all thought I ought to sleep at Hugo, so I came down the next day. That was a Thursday.

Then on Saturday I had to go nearly all the way back again, with Joan, to a lunch and lecture at Eton - a yearly meeting of the Friends of Friendless Churches at which Ivor was giving up, and handing over. I accepted more than a month ago, without knowing what it was exactly, but wished I weren't going when the weather turned out to be so nice. Just to carry on, Sunday was too cool, with a sharp wind, and today, Wednesday, it is really cold outside and I am even reluctant to get out and put up the wire across the house, necessary for my climbing rose. And still no rain. We are having quite a serious shortage. My grass was watered all the time I was away - luckily, and from the house it looks like an established lawn. Close up there are a million weeds (why?) and some bare bits. But it is marvellous to have it green again, and the places we didn't re-do look awful in comparison. Never did I see such unfortunate grass sowed on a person. I ought to sue that man. One of my pines is stone dead, and also a nice box from Claudia. It's 54 now. I read that it had gone up to 100 in the Lakes. I was never over 86 at my north exposure. What Andrew calls my north garden.

I hadn't spoken to Claudia ever since May 24^th, until two nights ago. I knew she was away in early June. She sounds very busy and I won't go to see her this week. I ought to weed all the time, but you have to water first, and besides it seems sort of hopeless. I paid the woman over two pounds worth of weeding while away.

On the strength of that paragraph I went out to weed - and it is now the end of the next day. I have spent all the time on various things in the garden except a bit of machining on the patchwork quilt for the guest room. I could finish it if I worked two or three days all day. We had a light rain last night. The back garden is damp but the front dry. It's very funny that. Near the front of the house never gets any rain, and the whole place on that side dries up so quickly. I would be embarrassed to show my garden and say I've thought and done little else for just about a year now. There's really nothing to see in the way of flowers and the shrubs in the beds aren't in the right places, and I've only put in perennials that were given me and often didn't know what they were. I am only a gardener in the sense that I like the constructional part, but can't plan the growing effects. Last summer was hours on the path and the beds, and back terrace. And the grass wasted hours of my time last year, all to no purpose as it was removing stones and all that has been dug up again.

I wish I would spend more time cooking. Have tried to make myself get a bit ready for Lish Pittard tomorrow night, but haven't. The country around here is now very lovely with elder everywhere, In early May everything is white blackthorn, then everything is entirely white May and you can't believe there can be anything else at all, there is so much. My it's lovely, too. And now here is all this other lovely white.

Yorkshire was later than the south, and the part I went to was pretty rolling land, cut up by hedges - all May. Very nice. The people we stayed with - the Oddies - have a lovely stone house, surrounded with all sorts of outbuildings (it was a farm), and these buildings make courts and walls, besides which there are also specially built walls. The windows are very big, and all look onto beautiful walled gardens on two sides, and the front onto a lawn, with ha ha overlooking a flat field, and in the distance, hills. Beautiful groups of trees around - it is many hundreds of years old, but they've only had it six years and already are thinking they must sell and move south. She has to spend the winters in Malta where they have a new place and it is so far for their son to visit on weekends during the summer. Their other son is in Australia. The Bill Oddie who is Hugo's friend is the boy whose rooms Hugo took over in Dublin, and found money cheques, forty-six unwashed shirts, and I don't know how many pairs of socks.

My bedroom was twenty-five feet square - a beautiful room to wake up in with the two large windows looking onto the distant view, and every piece of furniture a nice antique. The whole house was in very good taste - delicious meals, cooked by Mrs Oddie, helped by her husband and Connie the daughter-in-law - and this time the table set with all the loveliest things, and both lunch and dinner good wines - and as Claudia wrote, gin and tonic, pimms, or bourbon (Old Kentucky) on the rocks around the swimming pool. We swam every day. Andrew wouldn't go in. Inigo adored it. They certainly are different little boys.

Mrs Oddie had last Christmas presents all wrapped waiting for them, blocks for Inigo which Andrew played with steadily whenever we were indoors. They were both extremely good. The only sad thing was that the little Oddie girl was quite sick the entire time, and Connie was looking after her a lot (Mrs Oddie up in the night a great deal) and Bill was getting more and more depressed about the elections as every poll sounded worse. We can't imagine why Wilson has suddenly got this vast support. Both Bill and Connie were going from house to house canvassing in London.

For the first time ever I felt rather lonesome and pointless living up here all by myself. Maybe I have had too much gaiety. But I am also depressed about the elections.

I went to a Shell party - held every two years, so Phil and I didn't go last time. I thought I would enjoy it but it made me rather depressed. Such a lot of driving around - and much too hot in the car. Bill doesn't think there is a hope of my getting permission and now he is working on a more expensive plan - enlarging Phil's dark den as it was that room being made darker that they won't allow. Also the poor little London garden looks very sad and so needs watering. I really don't like going to that house while it is so neglected, and needs spring cleaning, and I can't find anything as I still haven't sorted out enough and every drawer is stuffed - &c. &c. It was too hot to sleep too - which sounds absurd.

Mrs Acworth - the wife of the Pittard godfather - has just phoned that she is bringing a suitcase around. I've just tidied myself.

Letter ends ...