June 23rd June. Midsummer Eve and just what Midsummer’s Eve ought to be but seldom is. Also Mummie’s birthday. J looked in today with a manuscript she wants me to look at. There’s another blackbird’s nest in the front garden, in place of the one the ginger cat took.

‘Mummie’, Rosemary’s mother of course, was my great Aunt, Nessie Elizabeth Lawton, who was born in 23rd June in 1885, in Poole Dorset. (She died in 1955). She married George Ernest Sutcliff, who I knew as ‘Uncle George’ when I was a young boy, on 14th September 1910, in Longleet in Dorset. The driver-handymen (like Ray in recent weeks of this diary) were employed by Rosemary after her father died in 1966: he used to look after the garden – and her – at the house in Walberton where all the events recorded in this 1988 diary take place.

June 19th Sunday. Joan and I and the pups (went) for a run out beyond Amberley taking a picnic tea with us. It was lovely, very hot. Willow warbler singing where we had tea.