Not long after having Hugo I realised that there is not much you can actually do while feeding a baby, except gaze adoringly at them. Gazing adoringly at your baby soon wears a trifle thin, especially if they choose to feed every two hours, so I bought a cassette tape (yes, a tape ~ it was a long-ish time ago) of Diary of a Provincial Lady and hooted my way through several feeds. Recently I was lucky enough to get a copy of Persephone's Diary of a Provincial Lady and I swished through it faster than the arrival of Lady Boxe's expensive car. The diary records the daily ups and downs of family life in the 1930s, when being a mother of two and wife to one has its own (hilarious) difficulties, not least because the bulbs won't grow, the servants are threatening to leave and one never reads the right books, sees the right exhibitions or wears the right clothes.
January 22nd.- Robert startles me at breakfast by asking if my cold-which he has hitherto ignored-is better. I reply that it has gone. Then why, he asks, do I look like that? Refrain from asking like what, as I know only too well. Feel that life is wholly unendurable, and decide madly to get a new hat.
