Saturday 5th June 1937

Have found new digs in a cottage at Eastwoodbury (charming name!) in the country just outside Southend. It was lovely there this afternoon, so quiet… sunlight and the greenery of grass and hedges and trees… Then I cycled back to Southend – and the High Street. What can I say about High Street? Only mutter terrible oaths!

This evening I sat listening to a band on the Cliffs. A Czardas band – Younkmans. That strangely delightful gypsy music… it can best be described by a much used word – “haunting”. Sitting silent, watching the movement of the violins, hearing the throbbing refrains, one dreams most fantastically. (But all dreams are fantastic!) If dreams came true! They sometimes do…
One is half intoxicated by melody - then the girl in the next deck chair says loudly to her companion, “Oo! Look! Look there! Doesn’t the sky look a funny colour there!”And one wakes up.