TO WESTON MANOR

"It's huge and terribly posh"

F R I D A Y,  6  O C T

Anya heard Olympia last night too. She was in a swoon all day.

Last night Martha tried to get through to William Pitt, but got through to her aunt Kath instead. It asked for “Kath” and then said “First Love Mary”. I do think it’s incredible. Lucy, Tig, Pat, Anya and me tried it at dinner break, in one of the music huts with my locket, but nothing happened.

Ma fetched Chump and me and we went straight home. Changed into my bloomy dress. Picked Pa up from office and listened to S.L.C. all the way up. Finally got there at 8.15.

Weston Manor is huge and terribly posh. It used to be an Abbot’s home and some of it is Saxon. But honestly, our bedrooms are dumpy, and, because they had a ‘function’ on tonight, we were put in the second-best, dead-beat dining room – broken chairs and all.

“I had a dreadful prawn cocktail with tomato ketchup, and Entrecote Bordelaise which was hopeless.”

It wasn’t cooked over a charcoal grill and they made a red wine sauce which the Paris restaurants do, but which is wrong. Still, it was a very cheery meal and the pudding was very nice - oranges in Grand Marnier sauce.

Then music started playing. We thought at first it was records but it didn’t quite sound like it; I thought perhaps it was a group. So Chump and me sort of explored. Upstairs there was a door marked ‘11’ so we went through and came into the minstrels’ gallery - and there was the group, below!!!  The rest of the evening we spent up there, dancing wildly as we watched the ‘function’ people dancing beneath us, with long dresses and bow ties on. There were millions of fab songs - ‘The House that Jack Built’, ‘Knock Knock on Wood’, ‘Then I Kissed Her’. Huge shadows of our dancing figures loomed up on the walls. 

Then we went into the grounds to cool off (I was sweating all over) and found the window just below the group. From there, we could see the view they got of us in the minstrels’ gallery - and it’s perfectly awful, you can see everything. There we were prancing in full view!!!  (One of the group saw us and waved to us so he can’t have thought we were too show-offy.) We then danced out on the lawn making huge dark shadows, and when we clapped at the end of a song someone from inside shouted out, “they’re outside now”!!!

Two more embarrassing things happened. I was fiddling with the light switches when one put a whole chandelier of lights on – right above the band. The other one was when they were playing ‘Even the Bad Times are Good’. Chump and me were loudly joining in on the chorus when the band suddenly stopped playing, and everyone heard us two blaring away. I think they did it on purpose!

Before bed we tried séances in our room, but no luck.