9.5 "destined to be moribund”

A wasted day, because I attended a christening that I knew would be like death warmed up. What was I expecting for a party organised by the Wiles-Sunley side of the family – it was “destined to be moribund” as Doris [French teacher] might attempt to say! I felt very uncomfortable in the church, as a dedicated materialist and felt more blasphemous when saying words like God, church...I did say “the” instead of our church, God etc., which was a compromise.

Stayed only long enough to fill my stomach then went – by then already people had divided into their little cliques and sub-groups. Ann, who is very nice in many ways, is bourgeois minded. She repudiates her working class origins by her every action. She is very similar to the stock caricature figure that so often appears in domestic comedies – dominates husband, holidays in Switzerland, silver cruet sets and insists her son called James, not Jim or Jamie. Enough said.

“World at War” was a drag for the first time in the series but the evening picked up after “David Copperfield” – oh, Lawrence’s “Virgin and the Gipsy” followed by a French film, “Une Femme Mariée” – I picked up some potentially useful vocabulary that would never be found in a school dictionary!