June 19th Monday. Over to Burgess Hill , Joan and I in absolutely blistering heat and returned with the most enchanting (? & naughty) old bitch, tiny, pretty & gay & loving, and obviously intelligent. Called Flash, which we are in process of changing to Sophie. Basty very doubtful, but less hostile than I had suspected at this stage. 

Sophie was Rosemary Sutcliff’s  new dog, a chihuahua who came to live with us in Leicester when Rosemary died in 1992. Basty was Sebastien, her other dog at that time. Joan was one of Rosemary Sutcliff’s housekeepers, who took it in turns with others to live with her and keep house for several weeks at a time.

I am driven back to Rosemary’s diary by a post on Twitter:

@rsutcliff Nice observations and one-liners in her diary: Rosemary Sutcliff would have been a great tweeter! @ ValiantSword?.. DarkQueen ..? [Pam Knights (@pamfic) June 19, 2013]

When I first looked at this day in 1992, in the last diary which was sat on her desk when she died – in my possession now as her heir – I was moved to tweet back:

@pamfic So just went to #rosemarysutcliffdiary 19/6/92 (a Friday), last diary on her desk at her death. A pithy “Can’t remember what did”!  [Rosemary Sutcliff (@rsutcliff) June 19, 2013]

• Other entries from Rosemary Sutcliff’s diaries here
• #rosemarysutcliffdiary is the hashtag I created  a year or so back for tweeted extracts from Rosemary Sutcliff’s diary!