Sunday 17th December 1933

Afternoon – just after dinner. A moment ago I took my last puff at my last cigarette – a delicious Abdulla Salisbury. No more now, until my pocket money arrives. Horribly poor am I. What of the future? Shall I still be poor in ten years –thirty years old? And in three years, when I’ll be nearly twenty three? There is a wise saying, think I heard it in Leicester, which runs – “If a man is not gallant at twenty, strong at thirty, rich at forty, he will never be any of these things afterwards”. Just been thinking of those lovely dreams-words in that idyll-song:

“There’s a little brown road rollin’ over the hill,
To a little white cot by the sea,
There’s a little green gate, by whose trellis I wait,
While two eyes of blue, Come smiling’ through…..”

Wouldn’t it be heavenly to have a love like that! Not forgetting two eyes of blue!
A lone walk in the dusk, just a while before tea. Up Egham Hill, and down towards the railway crossing. Here I waited, while a goods train rumbled by. Then hastened to Magna Charta and fireside tea. Nearly bedtime now. The weekend has crept by – just a matter of waiting for the next meal and waiting for Monday.

“Monday morning here again! Back, back to work again!” That was what I thought a year ago; I no longer dislike my work now.