28th January 1945

Sunday
Snow very deep.  Horses and carts working silently past the church.  Spent a wasted but delightful day.  Could not force myself back to Wisbech, and after a delightful breakfast with the Sissons, went shopping for them and then heard Mrs. Sisson talk about a scandal on the Colchester bench, about a young girl being sent to a home for prostitutes.  Cr. Maurice Pye is concerned, and Miss Jose Blomfield.  Mrs. Sisson apparently sent a report to the Home Office in her capacity as a Child Guidance officer, and there is a great to-do.

At 12 cycled over to Sherebourne Mill.  In Pound Lane saw Moorhouse’s men carting muck, with 4 horses, 3 of them Suffolks, moving slowly and the snowy fields under the grey snowy sky.  As I turned in at the drive gate, a boy was driving cows over the ridge of the hill, his cries of “hup! hup!” very clear in the cold silent air.  Mrs Belfield and Penelope were there.  She has recently come back from Paris, where she was with the Admiralty.

Joy very kindly gave me a drink of milk, (now such a luxury to me) and a small pot of home-made marmalade to take away.

Home to tea, stayed talking for a couple of hours, went over to speak to dear Mary Ralling, left at 8, having said ‘goodbye’ to Father, and went once more to Holly Trees.  Apparently Poulter’s relations with Hull get worse.  A long and rather pointless discussion, in which I emphasised my willingness to come back, and he urged me never to do so while Hull is there.  In these discussions I always begin to feel a rising resentment against Alderman Blomfield – had it not been for his stubbornness, I should never have left my home.  Yet is that really true?  Was it not time for me to have gone in any case?


Back to Boxted at 11 p.m. and went to bed, hoping for a quiet night.  Few ‘planes about, and an occasional explosion, one sufficiently near to rattle the windows.

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