May 15 + 

Sought out H⁠⸺ as he was watering his petunias in the garden. He informed me he was going to London on Monday. + 

H.: “Mother is coming too.” + 

B.: “Why?” + 

H.: “Oh! I’m buying my kit⁠—shirts and things. I sail at the beginning of July.” + 

B.: “I suppose shirts are difficult to buy. You wouldn’t know what to do with one if you had one. Your mother will lead you by the hand into a shop and say, ‘H⁠⸺, dear, this is a shirt,’ and you’ll reply with pathos, ‘Mother what are the wild shirts saying?’ ” + 

H.: “You’re a B.F.” (goes on watering). + 

“I wonder what you’d do if you were let loose in a big garden,” I began. + 

H.: “I should be as happy as a bird. I should hop about, chirrup and lay eggs. You should have seen my tomato plants last year⁠—one was as tall as father.” + 

B.: “Now tell me of the Gooseberry as big as Mother.” + 

Mutual execrations. Then we grinned and cackled at each other, emitting weird and ferocious cachinnations. Several times a day in confidential, serious tones⁠—after one of these explosions⁠—we say, “I really believe we’re mad.” You never heard such extraordinary caterwaulings. Our snappy conversations are interrupted with them every minute or so! + 

A stagnant day. Lay still in the Park all day with just sufficient energy to observe. The Park was almost empty. Everyone but me at work. Nothing is more dreary than a pleasure ground on workdays. There was one man a little way off throwing a ball to a clever dog. Behind me on the path, someone came along wheeling a pram. I listened in a kind of coma to the scrunching of the gravel in the distance a long time after the pram was out of sight. Far away⁠—the tinkle of Church bells in a village across the river, and, in front, the man still throwing the ball to his clever dog. + 