Editing Chips’s diaries is a huge undertaking. Not surprisingly there are a few mistakes.
“Monday 12th August 1940
Breakfasted naked by the swimming bath, pruned more roses and sunbathed and then drove to London in a rather nervous state – constipation, I think, due to grouse eaten twice yesterday.
Footnote: And clearly shot out of season.”
In August 1940 invasion seemed imminent. Chips wrote on Saturday 10th August: “The Führer has apparently said that England would be reduced to submission by August 15th”. Desperate times led to desperate measures.
”An Order in Council is a type of legislation in many countries, especially the Commonwealth realms. In the United Kingdom this legislation is formally made in the name of the monarch by and with the advice and consent of the Privy Council, but in other countries the terminology may vary.” (Wikipedia)
An Order in Council brought forward the start of the season for grouse shooting to the 5th of August in 1940, so Chips’s grouse were lawfully killed even if indigestible.
Sticking with birds, yesterday I went to Brighton to visit the Pavilion built and decorated flamboyantly by George IV in a style that may have inspired Disney. Four of us had lunch in the Camelford Arms afterwards.
It was a cold day and we sat by a wood fire. No temptation to step outside and sit in the Moroccan Garden – must go back in the summer.
Before you ask I’ll tell you. Camelford is a town in Cornwall on the river Camel. Why the pub has adopted the name and the rather bogus Arms I cannot say.
After lunch we went down to the pier to see hardy souls swimming and watch the sunset. We also saw a murmuration of starlings, something I saw as a child at Barmeath and later on a visit to Algiers. It is spectacular bird ballet.
Do you or anyone else know how authentic it is to talk about a murmuration of starlings? It is not mentioned in my 1940s Shorter Oxford Dictionary. Neither is a “parliament “ of owls, and I suspect they are both modern inventions
“Murmuration: late Middle English: from French, from Latin murmuratio(n- ), from murmurare ‘to murmur’. The usage as a collective noun dates from the late 15th century.” Oxford Languages website.