DIARY
We have just come back from our annual visit to the deep south of Ireland. Next year we shall have been going to the same place at the same time of year for 40 years: long enough to have seen incredible changes and, comfortingly, many loved and well remembered features of the place unaltered. The whole scene is beautiful beyond compare. The lie of the land, the river Blackwater, the oak woods of the valley, the needle-fine spire of the Protes- tant cathedral, the view of the bridge from the castle and the castle from the bridge, the brown mountains in the distance and the changing colours of the Irish light make one stand and stare like in no other place I know. Our house is on the road into town'. In England it would be called a village. At Lismore, 'town' is a legacy of 1,100 years ago when it had a university and was a centre of learning, 'a famous and holy city half of which is an asylum which no woman durst enter, but it is full of cells and monasteries, and religious men in great numbers abide there'. The religious men are fewer now and women are all over the place. One is Deryla Murphy. One keeps the newspaper shop which is like a club. In a few minutes I get all the news of the 11 months I've been away, am blamed for bad weather and praised if the sun shines. I'm told of the factory which is just about to open and bring prosperity to the town, of the state of the golf club and the bridge club. These subjects of conversation are recurring like in a dream and, alas, the factory is the most dreamlike of all and still stands an empty concrete shell.
This year there is a health shop next to the cake shop, one compensating for the other, I suppose, and the old draper's has a window full of false flowers for funerals. The window surrounds of Eilish Byrne Hair Stylist are painted a brilliant pink and the door bright blue. You can't see through the glass for the adverts for Sweet Afton. The Medical Hall has lost its jarsof coloured water; its innards of beautiful mahogany drawers have been ripped out, the worming powders and de-horning paste for calves have been moved from among the baby foods and it's like any other chemist now. Some of the shop windows in Main Street show the oddest collection of things imaginable, piled on top ofone another mostly facing inwards and giving few hints to the passer-by as to what the shop goes in for. Papers, a single geranium in a pot, a stray orange and a sleeping cat don't give much away. An iron plate over the Post Office door said in white letters on a pale blue background striped with rust `Yoke Your Team to a Pierce Machine' and under this poetic sentence `Agricultu- DEBORAH DEVONSHIRE ral Machinery Made in Wexford since 1839'. I always admired it and one year I found it in the hall on my birthday. Now it hangs over the door of our sitting room, where it has dried out nicely. The inside of our house is the epitome of what the National Trust people call pleasing decay. I must say it pleases me enormously and I am quite sorry that my son insists on a new carpet for a passage where the holes are said to be dangerous. The trouble is you can't dawdle in that passage because of the Siberian quality of the cold there. You put on a school dressing gown and run to a distant bathroom and have no time to pick your way. As the fashion is to sue for the oddest reasons, I expect he is right about the carpet as a guest's broken leg is only a matter of time.
Iwonder if it is computers which think up such strange names and addresses for the customers of the firms for which they work. Or is it specially dotty secretaries whose minds are on other things while they write? I should love to know. Some are wildly imaginative and endow the customer with a different character, or even another nationality, from the steady old English people they really are. One mail order company thinks I am called `Mr/Ms Hess Of , the subject of an undiscovered poem by Edward Lear perhaps, or a German ex-royalty. (They have kindly sent me an `Exceptional Customer Award suitable for framing and displaying in the Hess Of home'.) A friend is the Viscountess Mrrrrrrrrr. She finds it difficult to pro- nounce and thinks it sounds as if she is getting into a cold bath. Another friend, who is an architect, has become Mr Jebb Ariba, which suggests he was born in Ghana or Nigeria. Liberty's (no upstart mail order company here, but an old- established firm who you might think would get it right) send a proper letter on beautiful paper. Below the date is written `Duchess D.E.V., Chatsworth, Chats- worth, Chatsworth, Bakewell, Der- byshire'. It begins 'Dear Sir' and goes on to describe a dress of 'Tana lawn in a floral print in a particularly feminine style and two colourways'. It doesn't seem to have occurred to them that a Sir might prefer trousers. And I know Chatsworth is big but it really isn't necessary to repeat it three times as it is quite easy to find if mentioned just once. I look forward with interest to more and better names and addresses on the brightly coloured pamphlets which announce that you've won £25,000. Look closer and your find that, alas, you are the only person on the list who has not. Odd.
After spending a day in Oxford I have been wondering what's happened to de- portment. Isn't it high time it was brought back as a compulsory class at school? I suppose there would be a riot and the Narkover-type pupils of 1986 would knife the teacher before the lesson could begin. But if only the girls could see themselves in their expensive creased jumble, slouching about, faces hidden by curtains of hair, compared to how they would look if they carried themselves like Edwardian beauties, there would come about a change which would cheer things up no end wherever young people congregate. The girls are just as pretty as they always were but they go to amazing lengths to hide it. Yet they spend fortunes on make-up and tragic hanging coverings which can hardly be described as clothes. I think they must be longing to sit on juries, for we are repeatedly told that anyone who is clean and tidy and stands up straight is objected to for jury service without further reason.
The other day I was on my way to London airport, ridiculously early for the plane as usual. I stopped to fortify myself for the journey by looking round Chiswick House. It never disappoints or fails to inspire and fill the observer with wonder. It was a horrible day and the only other \ people were a party of Americans, the l) most knowledgable acting as guide. One Imo- asked 'Which is the portrait of Pope?' The woman said, 'There he is. You can always tell Alexander Pope. He's kinda skinny.' `You'll never guess who began Abimelek.'
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