Home life
Getting warmer
Alice Thomas Ellis
Ican't help it. I'm going to talk about the weather. I can't think of anything else. It seems that Greece has got the sun — all of it — and foreign visitors were recently advised to stay indoors rather than inspect the Acropolis or go and watch the natives beating squids to death on the rocks by the seaside. New York too, I am told, was rather warm. Jane has somehow deduced that if we took ourselves to somewhere in Middle Europe we would just about get it right. I don't know what her reasoning is, and anyway it's an impractical idea because we've got to stay here. The school hols haven't started yet. This is incredible since I keep thinking it must be autumn. I don't know why I think this, seeing as we've had no summer — but that is my impression. Rather than hoping for better weather in what remains of this year, I have despaired and am waiting only for the frosts of winter. Every now and then Janet puts on a summer frock, but she is whistling in the dark. Very dark. Caroline rings to say that she can't see to write even in the daytime, and I go to sleep each afternoon as the drawing-room grows crepuscular with the daily, encroaching storm.
Gwynne brought a terrible cold back from Russia (I forgot to ask what the weather was like there) and passed it on to some of us. One of us took it to the Lake District where Jemma is playing in Miss Julie, and I couldn't decide whether it would or would not enhance the quality of her performance in this particular drama. Janet has sore eyes and we are puzzled, as this is usually caused by hay fever and I cannot imagine that pollen is getting around very much. Surely it must all be lying in the gutters in the form of soup, mixed up with the rain. The daughter too has just come home from school with a temperature and a white face, and maybe the Middle Europe idea isn't such a bad one after all. Then on the other hand there are Gwynne's dreadful Soviet sneezes. Perhaps nowhere is safe between the rain and the pollen. Perhaps we are doomed to spend the rest of our lives indoors. I did hope for a while that as it was raining at Wimbledon the telly might show some old films instead, but it didn't. It showed old tennis.
The third son took the plunge and decided to travel to the South of France to see what the weather was doing there. His passport had run out so he went to the post office for a form. The post office had run out of forms. They suggested he ring around to see if he could find a post office which had a supply of these rare docu- ments. None of them had. They said perhaps he should try the suburbs. In the rain? It seems they were on strike at Petty France so at least he couldn't get wet queueing down there.
The eldest son stayed dry doing jury service, but that too sounds a dispiriting experience. A number of people seemed to have been arraigned (there goes the weath- er again) more on misfortune than misde- meanour and most of them were found not to be guilty. Human nature being what it is, we had rather hoped for something spectacular in the way of crime and were faintly disappointed. They were all let out into the streets and the downpours, but I suppose it's preferable to being held on remand. Mary also was on jury service recently and found the criminals less alarming than some of the jurors, one of whom embraced embalming as a hobby and liked nothing better than to regale anyone who would listen with the details of this unusual skill.
I must forget about the weather and get on with Osmosis and Institution, or should it be Institution and Osmosis? I am warm- ing to the theme of who belongs in and who out. A figure in authority was absent from court on the first day of Royal Ascot and we have drawn our own conclusions. What would he have said if the prisoner had failed to turn up because he preferred to be at the races? I hope it was raining.
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