22 August 1938 – 28 August 1938

The character of this summer is extreme drought. Brooks dry. Not a mushroom yet. Sunday is the devil’s own day at M.H.: dogs, children, bells . . . there they go for evensong. I can’t settle anywhere. Beaten after three hard fights at bowls. Bowls is our mania. Reading rather scamped. I’m strung into a ball with Roger: got him, very stiffly, to the verge of America. I shall take a dive into fiction: then compose the chapter that leads to the change. But is it readable— and Lord to think of the further compressing and leavening. Ding dong bell . . . ding dong—why did we settle in a village? And how deliberately we are digging ourselves in! And at any moment the guns may go off and explode us. L. is very black. Hitler has his hounds only very lightly held. A single step—in Czechoslovakia—like the Austrian Archduke in 1914—and again it’s 1914. Ding dong ding dong. People all strolling up and down the fields. A grey close evening.