Page 639 - Belgrave Diaries(N)_Neat

637

1931

downpour all the time. The D.Gs lights fused several times owing to their electric fire. The Nearchus came in with the parson
from Basrah on board. The Captain came in to D.Gs while we were there. He used to be an officer on the White Star line,
quite pleasant but not very aristocratic. He has come about the outer buoy which got adrift.

Monday 9th Feb

Went along the Muharrak road with Mohamed Khalil and Steele to see about arrangements for the electric standards. It is
getting on slowly. A few people came in to see me. Didnt go out in the afternoon but gardened when it was not raining. The
garden has not suffered as much as I thought it would. Had to move the gazelles to one of the car sheds as their place had
become a stream, made a long channel from the corner of the house out to the road which carried off a lot of water. The
Basrah parson came to see me, he used to be in the 52nd with Jim and knew him very well also in the Flying Corps afterwards,
his name is Minnifie Hawkins, I am not sure how the first name is spelt. Talked a lot about the people in the 52nd who he
knew and about people in R.F.C. most of whose names I had heard. I couldnt quite make him out, he had been at Oxford and
then in the 52nd but he had rather an odd accent. In the evening I dined at the Agency and saw more of him, he was really very
interesting, he was very badly wounded in the war and has a bit of tin or something covering a large hole in his head, he was
over a year in a lunatic asylum and then at a Mission for Seamen in Buenos Ayres and some time as a chaplain at Borstall and
one of the other prisons. He seemed to be a socialist and irritated me very much by remarks about the upper classes and the
Morning Post. He is going back soon to a school for boys going into the Navy at Panbourne in Berks; I am not altogether sure
that I liked him, he was rather too much the breezy parson. The silugi bitch has got distemper and Dr Holmes' one, from the
same litter has got it too. Went over to see Holmes in the evening but he was out, stayed some time talking to her, she told me
another good one about de Grenier. He has some queer meal at 11 oclock, the other day he went over to Walkers, at 1 oclock
saying that his wife was busy writing letters to her "Schoolgirl friends"!!!!! As Walker said they would be contemporaries of
Mrs Noah and the other families in the Ark. He then stayed on till two oclock and kept W from his lunch till then. Mrs
Holmes was very amusing about them.

Tuesday [10 February]

A Communion service in the Agency in the morning at 8 AM. The parson had a very poor voice and mumbled. D.G. was
rather painful. Came back and had breakfast and then went to call on Shaikh Abdel Latif. The mud round his house was
simply awful and he said he had been driven into one little room down below. He said he can remember a year when he was
quite a boy when there was as much rain, but never since then anything like this year. It rained again in the afternoon. Went
over to see Prior after visiting the Kadi and then saw several people in my office among them Rashid bin Mohamed sent in by
his father to sound me about cuts in the Khalifah salaries. I told him they had until now received nine annas in every rupee of
revenue, he said it seemed very little! Played tennis at the Agency, singles with Prior and then the Doctor, played very badly
and then to tea at the Mission. They were not having tennis as the court flooded. Tea at the Pennings house. In the evening I
ate the goose and had nine people to dinner, at least eight and myself making nine, all except the Mission and the Holmes.
Very lively party as D.G. was so fatuous that everyone teased him. She didnt seem to mind and joined in, someone talked of
Tiff's baby at which he said, "Yes, I had to contribute to that, I paid them something every month," He apparently got mixed
with another miserable child the Mission had kept. Prior asked him if the Judge had ordered ... Altogether the jokes became
very free, however nobody seemed to mind. Mohamed put up a very good dinner, goose and rhubarb tart. Played Vingt et un
afterwards and won ten rupees so the dinner paid for itself. The parson was very tiresome and called people "Chaps" an