"IT'S ALL ON FLOWERS AND IT MAKES ME SICK"

"Get in on the big pop movement", says Rave.

T H U R S D A Y,  2 4  A U G

Back to beastly weather.

Rave came. It’s all on flowers and makes me sick. It’s not the flower idea that makes me sick but the fact that everyone is treating it as a "big pop movement", like a pop cult. People are going to wear flowers to be ‘in’, not because they represent 'the beautiful people’. Micky Dolenz says something rather good about the Monkees: “We're supplying easy entertainment and happy music for the kids who got left behind by the Beatles’ progress”!

Lucy came at 11 for tennis coaching. Millions of other kids down the garden the whole morning. At the end, Ma asked Mr Lawson in for a drink. He’s a bit wet but quite sweet really. He skis as well, in fact, he nearly became a ski instructor.

In the afternoon I began on a sewn picture for Grandma. The design is mainly of flowers (you can't get away from them). The painter began on my room.

“Alan Price was on T.O.T.P. with his fab new one ‘The House That Jack Built’! ”

Honestly, he was utterly adorable, he looks such a nice person. And his voice is swoonish.

After supper we saw ‘A Hard Bed to Lie On,’ the Malcolm Muggeridge programme, this time on a Cistercian monastery in Scotland. Beautiful photography and very well done. He spent three weeks with the monks and they were so sweet, most of them. There was one fab one who looked after the sheep. “If I wasn’t sure of going to Heaven," he said, "I wouldn’t stay here another day.” At least he’s honest!

Went to bed with prickly indigestion.