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List of Maps and Illustrations
- Edited by Patricia Malcolmson, Robert Malcolmson
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- A Soldier in Bedfordshire, 1941-1942
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Frontmatter
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- A Soldier in Bedfordshire, 1941-1942
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Editorial Practice
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- A Soldier in Bedfordshire, 1941-1942
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Summary
Denis Argent was a good writer. His prose is clear, precise, and largely free of errors, and his handwriting is reasonably legible. While, then, there is little to correct or to puzzle over, his diary and almost all other Mass-Observation diaries were written in some degree of haste and were not intended for publication, and thus some editorial interventions are essential. Our alterations have been mainly in the following respects: (1) revisions of punctuation, in the interest of clarity and consistency; (2) paragraphing – we have generally presented his writing in longer paragraphs than those he composed; and (3) the standardization of usage regarding capitals, numerals, dates, acronyms, titles, and the like. These are all technical changes that do not bear on the substance of the text.
The main editorial interventions concern the deletion of material. Between September 1941 and May 1942, Denis Argent wrote considerably more in his diary than is reproduced here. The material deleted is, broadly, of two types: first, Denis's comments on and critiques of both cultural topics – books, magazines, newspapers, music, and films in particular – and political ideas and developments, notably the conduct of the war and national politics; and second, day-to-day military routine while he was billeted in Bedfordshire, much of it boring, repetitious, and inconsequential. These deletions are especially significant in Part Three, which covers the longest period of time (some five months). By contrast, there are considerably fewer deletions in Parts Two and Four, and only a handful of deletions in Part One (this initial section of the diary is marked by a sense of the novelty of arriving in Bedfordshire and his excitement with his new posting). Each of these three parts presents his diary writing for a relatively brief period of time – that is, for between four and six weeks. The division of the diary into these four parts is entirely a function of editorial judgement. When substantial portions of the diary have not been selected for publication, we have usually summarized their character and noted the main occurrences reported during those days (some of them during leaves spent outside Bedfordshire).
In choosing what to publish, we have been particularly concerned to include all the testimony from the diary that pertains to places, people, events, and activities in Bedfordshire during the third year of the war.
Acknowledgements
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- A Soldier in Bedfordshire, 1941-1942
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Part Three - A Long Winter, November 1941 to March 1942
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- A Soldier in Bedfordshire, 1941-1942
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- 05 August 2023, pp 73-136
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Summary
From early November, there was much routine in Denis's life as a soldier, and in his diary he talks a lot not only about his work (much of it fairly tedious) and the words and actions of his fellow soldiers, but also about radio programmes, music, periodicals and newspapers, news from battle fronts, films, government propaganda, books read and visits to the public library – and since he had opinions about most matters, these too are frequently recorded. The selections that follow omit most of this material and highlight instead both evidence that relates directly to Bedfordshire and those of his experiences that are distinctively coloured by his posting in Bedfordshire – that is, experiences that would probably not have occurred at all, or would have occurred differently, had he been posted somewhere else. A consequence of these editorial principles is that, for the following four months, up to early March 1942, a smaller fraction of the original diary is reproduced than in the other three parts, and that the text of Part Three, although it is the longest part and covers the longest period of time, is presented more selectively.
Monday, 3 November
Back to the job on the sewage soaking-pit. Bomb-disposal boys are now on the job alone – the KRRs weren't there today. But the new thing there was a batch of Italian prisoners who were working grubbing-up spuds just up the hill from us. As none of us knows Italian, and as the prisoners know little English, communication wasn't exactly easy. But I was most interested to note the impact of ‘the enemy’ on our boys. We tried to talk with them, using such internationally-understood words as ‘jig-a-jig’. We’d soon got to the stage of mutual showing of photographs of wives and women. They offered us chocolate and tubes of Rowntrees clear gums in exchange for fags. In fact, I think I could say definitely that fraternization took place.
Coming back to our ‘camp’ fire there were such remarks as this, from a 25-year-old Plaistow electrician. ‘It seems a shame, don't it?’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Well, here am I, f_____ browned-off with being thirty miles away from home – and here are all these poor bastards thousands of miles away from their homes.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘they’re the enemy, officially, aren't they? And this is war.’ ‘Mm’, murmured the browned-off conchie, feeling there was something wrong somewhere.
A Soldier in Bedfordshire, 1941-1942
- The Diary of Private Denis Argent, Royal Engineers
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Denis Argent, a professional journalist, joined the British Army in 1940 at the age of 23. He was already writing for Mass Observation, the innovative research organisation founded in 1937. During most of his first two years in uniform, when he was billeted in Bedford and Luton, he kept a remarkably detailed and probing diary. He wrote of street life and other aspects of the Home Front in Luton and Bedford, where the BBC's Symphony Orchestra had relocated shortly before he arrived; daily military routine; bomb disposal; transport; women, sex and leisure; his political views and cultural interests (he loved music and was widely read); the crucial importance of leave to see his girlfriend; and his fellow conscientious objectors - he was in the Non-Combatant Corps, though he later chose to take up arms.
Denis Argent had a keen and observant reporter's eye. He was also highly attuned to the modernist intellectual culture of his time. His is a wartime diary that is perceptive, colourful, wide-ranging, sometimes amusing, and very well written.
Appendix C - Mass-Observation
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- A Soldier in Bedfordshire, 1941-1942
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Summary
The spirit of the early Mass-Observation, its concern for understanding issues of everyday life, and its ambition to lay the foundations for a new sort of social science are well conveyed in a Penguin Special published half a year before the outbreak of war, Charles Madge and Tom Harrisson's Britain, by Mass-Observation (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1939). This was followed less than a year later by the same two authors’ War Begins at Home, by Mass Observation (London: Chatto and Windus, 1940), which presented a portrait of public opinion and morale in Britain during the last third of 1939. A later work sampled the varieties of M-O's endeavours and revealed its considerable range in the field of social investigation: Angus Calder and Dorothy Sheridan, eds, Speak for Yourself: A Mass-Observation Anthology 1939–1949 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). Angus Calder also wrote a useful essay on ‘Mass-Observation 1937–1949’ in Martin Bulmer, ed., Essays on the History of British Sociological Research (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 121–36.
M-O's invitation in August 1939 to its volunteer Observers to keep diaries was (we might say) an invitation to speak out – to give voice, perhaps, to one's own thoughts and feelings; to report on one's own experiences and contacts with others and incidents that would normally not be recorded; to put into words one's own perspective on ‘life’, whatever that might mean for a particular diarist. By the end of the war, around 480 people had written some form of diary for M-O. These diaries are impressively varied, as befits such a subjective genre. Some are almost entirely matter-of-fact; others are much more self-disclosing. Some are succinct, others long-winded; some are stylistically unremarkable, others reveal solid literary talent. Most diarists did not write for long – a few weeks, a few months, perhaps a year or so; the exigencies of living in wartime often got in the way of daily writing, which, at the best of times, is a habit that many people find hard to carry out. However, a few diarists kept at their work; they took it seriously, and commonly wrote a lot – and theirs are the diaries that are most likely to commend themselves for publication.
Appendix A - Conchie Culture
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- A Soldier in Bedfordshire, 1941-1942
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Denis Argent brought his keen reporter's eye to the unusual Army unit in which he worked until the middle of the war – the Non-Combatant Corps (NCC). Non-combatants were men who had successfully convinced a Tribunal that they were conscientious objectors who were willing to serve their country but who did not want to bear arms. The Tribunal then recommended that the man's name be removed from the register of conscientious objectors ‘with the proviso that he should be called up for non-combatant duties only’.
Denis himself developed pacifist convictions during the 1930s. He was an active member of the Peace Pledge Union, occasionally attended meetings of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, an anti-war organisation, and at least once gave a talk at a meeting of pacifists (7 November 1939). He was content to make a contribution to his nation's defence. He did not want to kill but he did want to serve. On 26 January 1940 he attended his Tribunal at Southwark County Court – his preference was to serve in the Royal Army Medical Corps and he had prepared for this by taking training in first aid – and in late April 1940 he was called up for service in the newly created first Non-Combatant Corps. After initial training in Norfolk, he served as a medical orderly in Wales, first in Barry Docks, Glamorganshire, and from October 1940 at a rather remote camp several miles outside Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire.
His position as a medical orderly allowed him plenty of contact with all members of the unit, with members of the Pioneer Corps (who provided military labour), and, less frequently, with members of nearby combatant units. His time was also flexible enough that he was able to fulfil his determination ‘to watch everything with a cool reporter's eye’ (17 August 1940) – a goal that, as his diary reveals, he often achieved. He thought that ‘the whole atmosphere of this Conchie Corps as a whole is different from that of any other conscript unit’ (17 March 1941). The newly formed company was, he estimated, originally about 200 strong; virtually all ‘registered by Tribunal for non-combatant service’, including many like himself who had been recommended for the Royal Army Medical Corps. The company was placed under NCOs of the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps, all or almost all of whom were veterans of the First World War.
Index
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- A Soldier in Bedfordshire, 1941-1942
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- 05 August 2023, pp 189-194
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Abbreviations
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- A Soldier in Bedfordshire, 1941-1942
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Part Four - Good Days, Bad Days, April to May 1942
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- A Soldier in Bedfordshire, 1941-1942
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Summary
The next page in Denis's handwriting is headed ‘Resumed Diary’, and the date is over five weeks after he had last written. He was still based in Luton, and feeling unwell.
Saturday, 11 April
Having felt rather rough on the job yesterday and gone to bed early feeling feverish, I decided to report sick this morning – the first time since I left my medical orderly job eight months ago. And yet I always thought that, with the fruit of two years’ experience of sick parades, I should be taking frequent days off when transferred! What keeps many people from going sick in the Army is the waiting about. This morning was, I suppose, typical of a sick parade. I was waiting an hour and a half before I saw the MO. I didn't mind that much since my cold had abated somewhat by this morning, and since I had a book to read. But for anybody really ill, it's the kind of thing that makes ‘going sick’ almost a hardship. As usual in such places as hospital waiting rooms we had that typical character, the ‘Have I told you about my operation?’ raconteur. This particular RASC guy, about 35, talked for 20 solid minutes about his hospital experiences at Hatfield House, with fulsome praise for the beneficence of Lady Salisbury. I told my tale convincingly enough to get ‘AM.A2’ – back again on Monday, which should entail another day off from work.
Today was the first time, I think, that I’ve been in the main shopping centre of Luton at an early hour of the morning. And even before 10 a.m. there are long queues at fish and cake shops – far more so than I’ve ever noticed in Tunbridge Wells on leave. Called at the gramophone shop to pick up an ordered record, and learnt that records are in short supply to the extent that no orders can be taken for HMV till June, and one may only buy one HMV disc a week from stock. Rationing of some kind may be the next step.
Part One - Destination Bedford, September to October 1941
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- A Soldier in Bedfordshire, 1941-1942
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In early September 1941, Denis Argent was completing his initial military training with the Royal Engineers, and was about to be sent to a posting as yet unannounced.
Tuesday, 9 September
As our departure from this training centre [in Barton Stacey, Hampshire] approaches, one subject of conversation is heard everywhere – where are we going to be posted? Rumours and wishful thinking pass our days.
I stayed in camp this evening intending to do a lot of writing, but it always seems to be 7 p.m. before one can settle down after washing, changing, etc., and then sometime during the evening a trip to the NAAFI for a supper snack breaks up the evening a bit more. Lights out at 10.15 is enforced here, and one way and another I much feel the lack of spare time compared with the hours I had with my medical orderly job [in Pembrokeshire]. More often than not an argument starts in the hut – political or religious, say. I can write undistracted through mere noise, babel or chatter. But when there's a discussion I find myself listening with one ear, then two, then joining in – and the writing I was doing has to be packed up. That happens very often.
Wednesday, 10 September
Still the rumours fly thick and fast. Still one manages to keep up with one’s reading by whipping out a book every time one has a ‘Fall out for a smoke’ or a break on the job. Today I finished Graham Greene's Stamboul Train [1932], read mainly in these short spasms. I read a short book in the course of the evening: I borrowed that anonymous Diary of a Staff Officer in the Battle of France. That shows very clearly the hopeless muddle, the senseless delays in the name of ‘security’, the safety-first outlook which lost us that war – and presumably most of the campaigns since then. When soldiers say to each other, ‘God help the Army if this is the way they fight a war’ (when there’s been some particularly blatant piece of silly camp routine), it seems that at least in the days before Dunkirk the war was fought like that.
I was intending to go to a gramophone recital (Debussy, Richard Strauss, etc.) in the other camp a mile up the road. But a mile's a mile.
Part Two - Billeted in Luton, October to November 1941
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- A Soldier in Bedfordshire, 1941-1942
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Tuesday, 7 October
There never yet was an Army move that I’ve been in that went off punctually. Well before 10 everything was loaded on to the lorry, and the rest of the section was in the other lorry, waiting, waiting. Probably about an hour we were parked outside the billet. We four on baggage party raked out my gramophone from the pile and passed the time with music: splitting the morning air of our select residential street with the Radio Rhythm Club Sextet [featuring Harry Parry on clarinet], the Lecuona Cuban Boys and Ambrose's band. The sight of a portable gramophone playing on the tailboard of a bomb-disposal lorry never failed to raise a smile from passers-by. Just before we left a lady from one of the houses came out and presented us with a bag of apples, and the road to Luton was littered with cores.
Yes, Luton – I see no security reason why the move of one BD section should be treated with secrecy in this diary. The other place which was at first rumoured as our destination was Cambridge. One section (which includes most of the dozen who came from [No.] 1 Company NCC) has moved, the other remains in Bedford.
I suppose the main disadvantage of the move is that I shall now be 20 miles from the BBC Symphony concerts at Bedford. (But that isn't an impossible distance to travel.) In most other ways, Luton is an improvement. Thirty miles from London is very, very good.
Anyway, the journey was uneventful. We ate apples, shouted at civilians from the back of the lorry, and felt cold until, a few miles from Luton, we suddenly ran out of the mist into bright sunshine. (Typical of the shouts: To small children – ‘Where's mum?’ To women – ‘Have you got it with you?’ To old men – ‘Hey! I’ve seen you before!’ Those were the usual shouts. Special cases had special greetings!)
We drew up in Luton outside what seemed a very desirable billet: a detached house in another pleasant tree-lined residential road. There was a stampede to bag the best rooms, and our little gang again managed to get the first floor front bedroom.
Appendix B - The BBC Symphony Orchestra Moves to Bedford
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- A Soldier in Bedfordshire, 1941-1942
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- 05 August 2023, pp 184-186
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With the outbreak of war in September 1939, many major British institutions that were based in London, which was the anticipated principal target of enemy bombs, were moved to safer – or what were expected to be safer – locations. The initial new location for the BBC's Music Department and Symphony Orchestra was Bristol, but when this medium-sized city came under heavy attack in late 1940 and early 1941, thoughts turned to finding a safer home for the Orchestra. As the Orchestra's conductor, Sir Adrian Boult, later recalled, ‘Towards the end of 1940 the raid situation at Bristol had become so tiresome that it was decided we should record our concerts in the afternoon [daytime raids were infrequent] and then disperse to our homes, leaving a few brave engineers to play it. Unfortunately, the quality of wartime recording was very variable, and we had to listen – from our shelters – to stuff which made us sometimes rather ashamed, and this, as well as the actual raids, began to suggest a move to a quieter spot.’
The quieter place chosen was Bedford. ‘After exhaustive enquiry’, according to an internal BBC memo of 5 April 1941, ‘it is apparent that Bedford would be a first class centre for [the] Music Department. It is approximately 50 miles from London and even in present circumstances travelling facilities are very good and include an hourly bus service to and from London. The Town Council and Educational authorities are anxious to give every possible help to secure the necessary accommodation, and are prepared to assist us in every way.’ Bedford was able to provide the Orchestra with the necessary studio facilities, including the Corn Exchange on St Paul's Square in the town's centre, which needed to be and apparently was available for four or five performances a week. (The alternative large studio was the Great Hall of the Bedford School.) Since the Music Production and Religion Departments of the BBC also relocated to Bedford, office space had to be found for almost 100 people and billets for close to 400, including these administrators and other support staff, engineers, and the Orchestra's 90 players.
Epilogue
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- 05 August 2023, pp 173-176
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After the abrupt termination of his M-O diary, Denis's military career continued, although in very different directions, and his political thinking evolved away from sympathy with Communist positions. In June 1944, in response to one of M-O's Directive questions that month, he indicated that he was still politically engaged and enjoyed ‘occasional political argument, though it's now a full year since I ceased to be under the direct influence of a keen 100% Marxist, a CP member who would possibly have eventually had me whole-heartedly arguing with him’. He also ceased to be a conscientious objector. While he continued to appreciate many conscientious objectors individually – though not the ‘complete do nothings like Jehovah Witnesses’ (he saw them as priggish and intolerant) – he had turned away from their ‘blindness to the menace of Nazism’ (Directive Response, January 1943).
Denis left Bedfordshire in October 1942 and began combat training, initially in Bury St Edmunds. His Luton bomb-disposal section was later disbanded, and some of its members (still ‘conchies’) became paratroopers and were dropped in France on D-Day with the Royal Army Medical Corps. In late 1942 Denis transferred to the Royal Army Signals Corps, and in a Directive Response to M-O in February 1943, replying to a request for a detailed report on his activities on 10 February, he reported that he had spent the day with a party of a dozen men temporarily situated in the Unitarian Church Hall in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, undergoing signals training. His training continued for months, mostly or entirely in the North, with Denis and his fellow trainees expecting to become part of the widely anticipated European invasion force – what later became known as D-Day. However, the reality, for Denis, would be different: he was posted to India in late 1944, as part of the Air Formation Signals, and then Burma, where he spent the remainder of the war. There he came to know and appreciate Asian peoples, particularly the Indians with whom he came in contact; he continued to exercise what one commanding officer described as his ‘fluent pen’ by writing frequently for the unit magazine; he acted as unit librarian in addition to his other duties, notably managing the post; and he shared his love of music on a Forces wireless programme. Officers wrote of him during the war as ‘an intelligent’ or even a ‘very intelligent man’.
Introduction
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- A Soldier in Bedfordshire, 1941-1942
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The Diarist and his Diary
Denis Walter Argent was a man who came early to the serious side of life. He was born in Croydon, Surrey, of Huguenot descent, on 13 January 1917. His parents, Walter Stanley Argent and Constance Emily Norman, had met in Chelmsford, Essex, and married in 1908; his mother was the daughter of a publican (of the Golden Lion) and his father worked in a grocery store. In 1921, the family – Denis had a sister, Joan, who was seven years older – moved to Tunbridge Wells, Kent, where they took possession of an early twentieth-century semi-detached house at 20 Somerset Road. Denis's father became a commercial traveller. In 1924, when Denis was 7, his father, then aged only 41, died. Thus Denis suddenly became in a sense the ‘man of the house’. The three remaining Argents led a fairly constrained life: his mother took in lodgers; Denis gave some of his small earnings to his mother as soon as he began work at the age of 17; and his sister helped out as well.
As a young child Denis lived in Tunbridge Wells but at the age of 12 he left during the school year to attend boarding school, the Royal Masonic School at Bushey, Hertfordshire. The school provided a free education to the orphaned sons of Freemasons such as his father. In later life Denis wrote favourably of the quality of the education he received, considering it the equivalent of a public school education without the snobbish élitism. After leaving school in 1934, he worked as a journalist, first for the Tonbridge Free Press, and from 1938 for the Essex Weekly News in Chelmsford, where he was living when he was called up for military service.
As an adult Denis continued to learn new skills – first in Tunbridge Wells and later (from 1940) as a soldier – acquiring shorthand and typing, and keeping his French and German up to scratch (DR, July 1943). Most significantly, perhaps, he was a prodigious reader (as a glance at his diary will quickly confirm). In his meticulous writing for Mass-Observation, he reported that he had read 150 books in 1941 (DR, October 1943), 106 in 1942, and 80 by August of 1943 (DR, August 1943).
The Diary
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Contents
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1943
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- The Bedford Diary of Leah Aynsley
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- 02 June 2023
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- 21 February 2020, pp 5-62
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Wednesday, 4 January.
I am keeping this diary especially for you Winnnie. I find I have to write such stilted letters to you in Canada, on account of the censor, that you will know very little about us during these war years. So I intend, D.W., to send what I have written after the war is over.
We had a very nice Xmas, but no jollification of any sort. We had the Friday, Saturday and Sunday holiday, which was much better than having to go straight to work on Boxing Day as we have done for the past 2 years. I went out to tea Boxing Day, and on Sunday John [her brother, from Luton] arrived just as I was serving dinner and stayed until after tea. We let him hear my new records, ‘Variations on a Theme of Handel’s’ by Brahms, played by [pianist] Solomon; it takes 3 12” records. Also [her other brother] Jim's new records: Schubert's ‘Impromptu in A flat’ and a Polonaise of Chopin’s.
Before I go any further, Winnie, I must tell you that we are able to have a very good musical education in Bedford. After the intensive Bombing of London the BBC musical section moved to Bedford. They commandeered the Corn Exchange, various Sunday Schools, School Halls, and even the Gas Works recreation hall in Queen's Park.3 Some of the concerts, such as the fortnightly Symphony Concert, are public. Others are by invitation only. Just before Xmas I was at a Symphony Concert conducted by Sir Henry Wood, and on the Sunday evening I was at an invitation concert conducted by Adrian Boult in the Bedford School Hall. This is called a studio concert and you are not allowed to applaud.
John says he has just bought a piano. I am anxious to go through to Luton to try it.
I spent last weekend at the garden. The 2-mile cycle ride to it was very peaceful, with no cars on the road. Two herons were flapping about near Bromham Bridge, and I got off my bike to watch them, also to take breath after fighting a high wind. When I opened the door of the garden hut what a sight met my eyes. Rats had been having a Christmas party with our potatoes. What wasteful creatures they are. There was a pile of potato crisps made by the rats by the door.
Epilogue
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- The Bedford Diary of Leah Aynsley
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- 02 June 2023
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- 21 February 2020, pp 155-156
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Summary
Leah Aynsley's life embraced many of the everyday experiences that would have marked the lives of tens of thousands of English women during the 1940s. There was, in particular, the prominence of time-consuming housework and the provisioning of food and drink (though not, for her, the duty of child-care). A degree of self-sufficiency through gardening was a common and widely promoted ideal, though Leah certainly came closer than most women to realising this ideal. Caring for an ageing relative, as she did for her father, was also commonplace. Keeping tabs on a loved one in the armed forces, and often writing to him, as Leah followed her younger brother's travels and wrote of his welfare during his months of service, was a central feature of many women's lives. Recreational activities varied widely in wartime – and they were fairly abundant, partly because the government acknowledged that they played a role in sustaining public morale, especially as the war dragged on and on and on. Books played a reasonably prominent role in Leah's life, musical performances some role, the radio almost none at all. Her travelling was almost entirely local, and never – with one exception – involved sleeping anywhere but in her own house. Rural life and traditions meant a lot to her, as they did for other women at the time who were mainly town-dwellers. It was frequently easy to get from town to country – very easy for those living in Queen's Park, Bedford, which bordered on countryside – and rural outings in various forms were staples of life, and not only in the warm months of the year. Leah would have been classified as a town-dweller, but much of her energy and many of her thoughts were invested in cultivating the land. While shopping was never easy in wartime, the shops that supplied life's necessities in urban districts were usually located close to home. Several that Leah relied on were located in nearby Iddesleigh Road.
Diaries are rarely tell-all documents. Self-censorship has been common amongst diarists, and Leah was no exception. Some matters that were personally important to her were not fully disclosed (or perhaps not disclosed at all).