Queens of England.

I see Gillian likes old queens - I do too, and two of the book-collecting variety just came into the shop. I like that sort even better. They set up a cry of grief to hear that I'm planning to close next year but I'm afraid their visits won't keep me in bread and butter let alone jam and without a bit more incentive I would really rather extend the internet business and peel myself off this seat. I'm looking forward to having more free time. My neighbour asked me what on earth I would do with myself - that really won't be a problem!

Recently my spare time has been spent putting together a family collage of photos for both my grandsons. Now Sandy is boarding weekly he has a space above his desk to fill with pics and cards. Mostly so far it has been favourite shots of his pony but he wanted some family as well. Finlay who is further away but able to shout a sentence or two down the phone at me about his activities ('dogs walk in dunes') is also getting to the stage of wanting some pics on his bedroom wall. It's fun. The last time I did something like this I drew Asterix and Obelix, TinTin, Winnie the Pooh, Moomintroll, Little My, the Snork Maiden and all the other characters that filled my children's childhood and stuck them in between the photos. At the moment I don't have that sort of creative drive and finding images on the net isn't the same thing at all.

Another biography of a Mitford came my way: 'Life in a Cold Climate' about Nancy whose novels I read when I was staying with my mother-in-law many years ago. They made me laugh then and continue to do so. I was delighted when I discovered that as I had suspected the characters were taken from her family life so that once I had read all the novels there were still the 'real life' accounts of these extraordinary women to be enjoyed. It began an interest in the social life of England between the wars which 'The Camomile Lawn' by Mary Wesley illustrates in much the same way, light, gay (I have to use the word though it has been despoiled) way. They were terrible times, not only for the out-of-work lower classes but for the Mitfords themselves, of aristocratic stock but quite poor and with big houses to run. They were cold and uncomfortable, theer mother raising money for much needed help by raising hens and selling the eggs. It's a time that seems to have brought out a defiant frivolity and frenetic desire for FUN. Nancy, before during and after the 2nd war had a difficult life wih miscarriages and faithless partners. She did her bit to help the Spanish refugees held incarcerated in France because the French really didn't want them. She worked on the ambulances as did my own mother and in a Red Cross staion ('writing names on the foreheads of the dead or dying.') Through all this she was determined to find everything she could to laugh at. The six sisters all made it their business to be personalities - anything less than a strong personality would have been a failure in the eyes of the family I think. Unity and Diana became friends of Hitlers and Unity shot herself when war was declared, failing to kill herself but destroying her mind (the bullet remained lodged in her brain until she died some years later.) Diana maried Mosley and was thrown into prison for the duration of the war though she had a eleven month old child. Jessica became a communist. They hated each others politics but they continued to write to each other. Diana forgave Nancy for telling the War Office she felt her sister would be a threat to the country therebye adding weight to their conviction that Diana should be imprisoned.

Love them or hate them the Mitfords were a product of their time and reading about them has given me an insight into my apparently heartless mother-in-law who was always so scathing about my earnest and intense personality. Her generation and social stratum developed a sharp wit,a sense of the ridiculous,and an air of carelessness; an attitude which they never really shook off even after it was no longer necessary as armoury.