Turn And Turn About

I dreamed I had charge of a couple of criminals- a man and a woman- with whom I had some sort of deep emotional attachment- and it was my task/job/duty to escort them out of the grand hotel where they'd been making a nuisance of themselves and through an underground cave system. They were unrestrained in any way and the only thing I had to control them with was a triceratops horn- which I was using as a goad. I knew it was entirely likely that they might overpower me and turn the tables.

Then the scene changed and I was punishing them by running a bulldozer across an ancient graveyard, removing an inch or two of topsoil, with the aim of exposing things they wanted hidden and/or destroying things they valued. I had one go at this- and then it would be their turn to run the same bulldozer over the same ground- only now it would be my secrets and/or treasures that were at jeopardy. As my turn came to an end I ran the digger over a patch of ground outside the graveyard where the surface features made it plain some sort of structure lay buried...

I woke- and there was a thunder storm in progress.

Harold And Me In 1947

I've picked up the Nicolson Diaries again- and he and I are sauntering agreeably through the mid-twentieth century. Soon we will reach the point at which our time-lines overlap. As before, he is meeting all sorts of interesting people by the way- Somerset Maugham, Guy Burgess, Kenneth Clark, Ernie Bevin- but is no longer bumping into Churchill on a daily basis. Something Harold omits to tell us is that he happens to be sleeping with a goodly number of the younger male persons who cross his path. Sex seems to have been something he got a lot of- which you'd never guess from the diary- but never took seriously- which you might. He has recently been introduced to Truman Capote- and was charmed. Did they or didn't they? Who knows?

His last grab at a political career came with an attempt to win a by-election in North Croydon- and he followed his defeat with a weary, sniffy article about the experience which was published in the Spectator and must have had his might-have-been constituents thinking "good riddance". He is out of public life, but still gets invited to the parties, is hourly expecting to be elevated to the House of Lords (something which in fact never happened) and is about to embark on writing the official Life of George V- the dullest monarch in a very dull line- and regrets that he'll not be allowed to print the spicy bits, but is flattered that the people at the Palace still value him. He is sane, perceptive, writes very well- and is someone for whom the phrase "unexamined privilege" might well have been coined. He disapproves of anti-semitism but dislikes Jews, believes in Socialism but dislikes working-class people- and I'm not sure I could have stood him in person- for all his charm.