Tuesday, 8th January 2019.
8.15 Have coffee and yogurt listening to the Today programme and checking the stock market. This is a waste of time as I hardly ever buy or sell anything. Send out blog bulk e mail.
10.00 Read more of Stalin’s Englishman. Burgess is now living in exile in Moscow but seeing a lot of his English friends. Mary Fedden and her husband, Julian Trevelyan, visit as do his mother, Michael Redgrave, Coral Browne (both performing Shakespeare in Moscow), Randolph Churchill, Stephen Spender, Joan Littlewood, Jan (then James) Morris, Derek Hill, and many journalists posted to Moscow. My distant cousin, David Ormsby-Gore, in his capacity as Minister of State at the Foreign Office had to advise on whether Burgess could return to the UK to visit his mother. “We cannot hope to obtain legal proof that Burgess has committed any treasonable act while in the Soviet Union or any seditious act … Indeed if he knew how little evidence we had, he would be more likely to be encouraged than deterred.” That strikes me as peculiar.
11.00 Walk up to Richmond in sunshine with the tide rising. There is signage announcing that Sam’s Restaurant will open at the Riverside Studios in the summer. The undergrowth along the towpath has been cleared since my last walk. Many pairs, fours and one eight are on the water. The barriers at Richmond Lock are up.
1.30 Have a mozzarella and tomato baguette and a cup of coffee in Richmond, reading The Times. My first alcohol-free lunch this year.
2.45 Get back to Barons Court on the tube. There are six policemen at the station entrance. The windows of the vacant shops have been papered over so it looks as if the Australian coffee shop may be moving in. Buy ham, from the butcher, and pasta for supper. Already have Seeds of Change Tomato & Chilli pasta sauce in the store cupboard.
3.00 Check stock market again and settle down to finish Stalin’s Englishman, listening to Die Zauberflöte. Burger didn’t socialise with Maclean in Moscow and he never met Philly there – he only defected shortly before GB died. Look up a new word, malversation: corrupt behaviour in a position of trust, especially in public office. Write this post and resolve not to keep a diary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-bXnrQN9AE
Isn’t that a funny thing? A diary doesn’t have to be written daily and is best read in bulk and long after the events it relates. A blog is best if it’s done daily and read regularly.
The blog also has the benefit of the “related posts” button. But I would no more read in bulk all your stock market posts than all your restaurant or church memorial posts, though I have often enjoyed hop-scotching through the serendipities you offer.
I often read published diaries and letters beginning with index-hopping names familiar to me. And then I dive in and DuckDuck the unfamiliar names I come across. With your blog, my commonest research line is to check out the restaurants you eat in – mostly to luxuriate in the expensiveness and expansiveness of your life.
Of course another oddity is that diaries usually have the conceit that they are private, and letters are usually written as private between the correspondents. Blogs are thrown out into the ether: they are both personal and published. Yours is nicely reserved and revealing.