MEET THE GRANDPARENTS - AT MEARES!

16th-century Meareshurst ('Meares'), near Ockley in Sussex. The rent was £800 a year

S A T U R D A Y,  3  J U N E

Worked on Robert Frost all day. I've never worked so hard before, and it was difficult to give full concentration. So I made myself a paper cigarette and 'smoked' it - it helped no end!

I had decided not to go to Grandpa and Grandma’s for supper but eventually Daddy persuaded me to. Wore my bluey-green skirt, took Lord of the Flies, and we all listened to 'Le Hit Parade' on the way down.

Meares as beautiful as ever. We met Jean-Paul, the French student who does Grandma's housework. He's rather a weed, and horribly neat and exact, especially when serving us at dinner. I asked him what he thought of Polnareff. To my disgust he said Polnareff’s music is like English pop, also that you can’t tell the difference between him and a girl. I ask you.

Quite a good supper (which Jean-Paul made, luckily): meat in pastry, and white peaches and cream. Grandma told us some more hilarious 'stoeries', which bores Daddy stiff! Then Daddy started describing how their house used to be, you pulled away the curtain in the living room and there was the bath, they even kept hens, so hilarious, then Mummy added they were hens without feathers - by then we were absolutely roaring.

As we left, Grandma got rather flappy when Daddy said I'll probably go to university, all because this ridiculous Austrian girl they met said how immoral everybody at Cambridge is. It is comical – Grandma really does believe that everybody there takes drugs, she is extraordinary! Grandpa’s so adorable though. They both adore each other.

Worked on Lord of the Flies till midnight.

Grandma letting her hair down