Virginia and Leonard Woolf: Monk's House, Rodmell, Sussex

The garden near the house.

This is a terrific place for stalkers of VW! It's very tucked away and hard to find. When the Woolfs bought it they had already bought somewhere else, but this property was to be auctioned and VW fell in love with the garden. When they bought it they had to sell the other house they had bought. The house was very small and ramshackle, and the kitchen was always prone to flooding - it's two steps down from ground level. All the floors are tiled with terracotta slabs and the walls are very thin; like a hut, and to go there when there was no heating can't have been enjoyable. The Woolfs added hot water and a toilet to the facilities. I can't imagine their servants can have been exactly thrilled with the kitchen.

The Woolfs did well here - Virginia found it a good place to write, and loved the view and the walks and Leonard took over the garden, and as their income improved, he employed a full-time gardener.

The green walls give the house a freshwater feel - and there are many artistic presents from Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell

Like other notable authors, such as Roald Dahl, Virginia wrote in a wooden “writing lodge” tucked into the orchard garden, where she was surrounded by views conducive to creative thought, in an undisturbed sanctuary. She kept a diary and there are very few entries which do not mention the garden. While Virginia was not a passionate horticulturist, her husband, Leonard, became one.

The story of the garden at Monk’s House, which was the garden of her writing life, is fascinating. It was started in 1919 and its creation illustrates the satisfaction, love and challenges that a garden provides as well as the friction occasionally generated. “The garden was sometimes 'the third person in the marriage’,” according to biographer Victoria Glendinning. Virginia would have to tear Leonard away and she would make him book “walk” time.

For Leonard, who started off as an amateur but became an expert, developing and tending the garden was totally absorbing. He would graft his own fruit trees, tend to and add to his massive collection of cacti and train his sweet peas in the way his sister-in-law, Vanessa Bell, did at Charleston, 10 miles down the road. He grew copious fruit and vegetables with the help of Percy Bartholomew, his gardener, keeping immaculate records (including detailed costings) and selling the surplus at the Women’s Institute market. When Virginia and Leonard were in London, a hamper of produce was sent up each week. Leonard was keen to learn and founded the Rodmell Horticultural Society in 1941.

The garden is lush and has delicious smells - a mini lilac tree, mint and rosemary. ~wildflowers grow among the planting. The orchard has long grasses with buttercups and bee hives, which Leonard started. There is a smooth bowls lawn facing a view of a chalk escarpment. It is lovely on a dull day, so on a sunny day it must be a veritable paradise.

it didn't occur to me to wonder why we decided to go. We had to meet A's dad somewhere - this was roughly midway - and I thought it would be interesting, to me, anyway. Here Virginia enjoyed her creative work and also had fun entertaining her many friends. Virginia and Leonard's ashes were scattered in the garden and it seems like the happy ending to a story. The National Trust can't over-prettify it because it was already very pretty. It feels like something from my grandparents' time - that time which is just out of reach, out of memory - and that's the time I find most fascinating, and I also think it was one of the best times for England, when talented people led relatively simple lives and did not strive to be extraordinarily rich.

Virginia Woolf's diary, part 1, 2nd post

Virginia Woolf didn't "do" introspection and whether this is right or wrong I don't know. Perhaps she feared that looking inward would damage her confidence. She preferred merely to record events and describe them with her own bias, which again, she didn't analyse. She used her diary in the following ways:

1. to loosen up her writing style - for example, to practice making unusual similes. She wrote it as quickly as possible "before tea". Could be any time - before tea! But she was involved in writing novels and reviews at the same time, so this writing, a record her life, allowed far more freedom.

5th Jan 1915 After lunch we took the air in the Old Deer Park, & marked by a line of straw how high the  river had been; & how a great tree had fallen across the towing path, crushing the railing beneath it. Three bodies were seen yesterday swiftly coursing downstream at Teddington.

26th Jan 1915 I wrote, as usual, over the fire, with an occasional interruption by Lizzy [an inept maid] who is like a rough coated young carthorse, with muddy hooves.

 e.g. 8 Sept 1918  Yesterday poor Bunny came for the night, bringing 8 combs of honey, for which he charges 2/6 each. .. Poor old Bunny! He is as if caked with earth, stiff as a clod; you can almost see the docks and nettles sprouting from his mind; his sentences creak with rust. He can now only lay hands on the simplest words.

 2. to keep her hold on reality because she has had a history of  psychosis; here she writes soon after a bout of illness only about the simplest facts.

e.g. 7 Aug 1917 Queer misty day. Sun not strong enough to come through. Went to Brighton after lunch. German prisoners working in the field by Dod's Hill laughing with the soldier, and woman passing. Went to Pier; tea at Booth's horrible men at our table; staged at Lewes on way back. Bicycled back from Glynde. 

3. to record her life's events with her own personal slant and interpretation

e.g.  Last Friday (14th June 1918) we went to a League of Nations meeting. The jingoes were defeated by the cranks. It was a splendid sight to see. The chief jingo was H.G. Wells, a slab of a man formidable for his mass, but otherwise the pattern of a professional cricketer. He has the cockney accent in words like "day". He was opposed by Oliver, Mrs Swanwick and Adrian. There were also present such gnomes as always creep out on such occasions - old women in coats & skirts with voluminous red ties, & little buttons and badges attached to them - crippled, stammering men, & old patriarchs with beards, & labour men, & ourselves.

e.g. 10 Jul 1918 Rain for the first time for weeks today & a funeral next door; dead of influenza. 

e.g. 12 Jul 1918 Great storms have been beating over England the last 3 days, the result of the Bishop's importunity, God being, as usual, spiteful in his concessions, & now threatening to ruin the harvest. 

4. to air her prejudices  

e.g.  4th January 1915. I do not like the Jewish voice; I do not like the Jewish laugh: otherwise I think there is something to be said for Flora Woolf.

e.g. I bought my fish and meat in the High Street - a degrading but rather amusing business. I dislike the sight of women shopping. They take it so seriously.

 e.g.  On the towpath we met and had to pass a long line of imbeciles. ...and then one realised that every one in that long line was a miserable ineffective shuffling idiotic creature, with no forehead, or no chin, & an imbecile grin, or a wild suspicious stare. It was perfectly horrible. They should certainly be killed.

e.g. The odd thing about the Woolf family, to me, is the extreme laxness of it. In my family, the discussions and agitations that went on about the slightest change in one's way of life were endless; but with the W's it doesn't much seem to matter whether they turn farmer, run away with another man's wife, or marry a Polish Jew Tailor's daughter.

 5. to remark the small things that give her friends and acquaintances personality

e.g. 27th Jan 1915 She seems to like everyone equally, as if they were all the same. She told us how she used to go to bed with a basket of socks by her side, so as to start darning first thing in the morning.

e.g. I talked mainly to Ermengard - a rare visitor, but somehow familiar. As L. remarked these country women get a slow bovine manner, rather refreshing to my taste. She breeds prize bulls, plays a double bass in the evening & writes improper stories for children. She seems to have settled into a corner absolutely fitted for her, where she exists pleasantly, having a Quaker faith now to round her off. I got the impression of some large garden flower comfortably shoving its roots about & well planted in the soil - say a Stock, or a holly-hock. 

e.g. Adrian looks immensely long, & his little bow tie somehow gives him a frivolous rather than distinguished air, as if a butterfly had settled on him by mistake. He has some job in an office.

e.g. 23rd Jul 1918  Lytton & Carrington were alone. No servant was visible & most of the waiting seemed to be done by Carrington. She is silent, a little subdued, makes one conscious of her admiring & solicitous youth. If one were concerned for her, one might be anxious about her position - so dependent on L & having so openly burnt the conventional boats.  

6.  and as a store of material to use in stories and novels (can't separate this and the previous very well.)

e.g. 1st Feb 1915 In St James's street there was a terrific explosion; people came running out of clubs; stopped still and gazed about them. But there was no Zeppelin or aeroplane - only, I suppose, a very large burst tyre. But it is really an instinct with me, & most people I suppose, to turn any sudden noise, or dark object int he sky into an explosions, or a German aeroplane. And it always seems utterly impossible that one should be hurt.[used in Mrs Dalloway].

e.g.  28th May 1918 Harry Stephen told his old stories, wrinkled his nose, & alluded several times to his great age. He is 58. An undoubted failure: but that has a freshening effect upon people; they are more irresponsible than the successes; but yet one can't call Harry exactly irresponsible either. He is modest; humorous; all his pride for his father and ancestors. He still takes out an enormous pocket knife, & slowly half opens the blade & shuts it. [VW used this for Peter Walsh in Mrs Dalloway.]

e.g. 1 May 1918 We [Leonard and V] had a  tremendous talk about the Equator. In the middle of a demonstration with two pebbles ... this diverted my attention. A serious reprimand had to be administered.. It was discovered that I took the Equator to be a circular mark, coloured dull red, upon the end of a football. The ignorance and inattention combined displayed in this remark seemed so crass that for about 20 minutes we could not speak. [VW used this too in Mrs Dalloway, see previous entry.]

7. and of course, for enjoyment.

e.g.  28th May 1918  The heat was such that it was intolerable to walk before tea; we sat in the garden, I indolently reading, L. not sitting but gardening. We had the best display of flowers yet seen - wall flowers in profusion, columbines, phlox, & as we went huge scarlet poppies with purple stains inside them. The peonies even about to burst. There was a nest of blackbirds against the wall. Last night at Charleston I lay with my window open listening to a nightingale, which beginning in the distance come very near the garden. Fishes splashed in the pond. May in England is all they say - so teeming, amorous & creative.

Don't think about nothing

Theodor Zeldin : the Hidden Pleasures of Life

Reviewed in the Evening Standard. Apparently, he caused a storm at the Hay Festival by his observations on mindfulness. He's against it. People are, he says, wasting their valuable thinking time on meditation and mindfulness and should stop trying to clear their heads. The practice is distracting  people from discovering more about themselves and the world around them.

Many of us have gone with the notion that focusing on our breathing going in and out is the solution to depression, stress, mental illness and the human condition generally,

"and somewhere near you there's a session where for £25 an hour, you can sit with other likeminded people in front of a candle, holding a leaf or similar, focussing on your breath and projecting compassion at the others.

Nothing actually wrong with this, of course, Free world and all that, and there's much to be said for focussing on the present moment rather than worrying about past and future - as the devil in C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters observes, there's nothing worse for us than being perpetually distracted from the here and now. 

But paying for being in the present moment is the commodification of common sense. You can get a mindfulness session for free, you know, by going into your local church and sitting in silence at the back [you can sit wherever you like], contemplating the altar. [This is my way.]

 What's more, there's quite often a reason why we shouldn't be sitting focussing on our breath going in and out and why we should be thinking about other things. The danger of this Buddhist-lite embrace of the present is passivity. It can mean accepting rubbish work conditions, unsatisfactory family life, bad politics. Chilling out doesn't make for activism. And certainly projecting compassion at people does much less good than, you know, actually engaging with them."

I must find out more about Professor Zeldin: he has written quite a few books.

John Singer Sargent at the National Portrait Gallery

I went to this yesterday - I booked the last time slot on the last day of the exhibition. I think the staff had just decided to let everyone in because it was incredibly crowded, but there was a lovely hushed atmosphere among the crowds (of course, lots of people have those audio commentary things). The lighting was dim apart from the subtle lighting showing the pictures to best advantage, and it did remind me of going to church on a particularly Holy day.

Oh what beautiful pictures! Mainly of men, friends of the artist, often his fellow-artists like Monet and Rodin, and some musicians like Faure. (This blog programme does not have e acute.) There were many other musicians I have never heard of.

The interesting thing about John Singer Sargent was that he was a very international man. His parents were American but he was brought up in Italy and other countries as his parents lived economically in various European countries. He went to Art School in Paris and was happy making his name in France until his portrait of Madame X caused a scandal; he made her look too sexually available for a married woman. He came to the UK and seems to have liked life here, and he also made a series of paintings of his fellow artists in Italy. So he was in two senses a man of the world. You get the impression of someone who networks well and knows everyone worth knowing and has understood his business really well, but the paintings have this wonderful shine to them, and the way he renders black coats, for example, is lovely. Because this exhibition is only of portraits it probably doesn't do Singer Sargent justice as a painter in the round. He painted his own way, and although he rather wanted to be an impressionist like Monet, he was more old school, like an Old Master with some new American pizzazz. His pictures seem to show how much he liked drama.

Portrait of Carolus Duran

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth -This is actually full-length - a very fine picture and likeness

Monet painting - in the style of Monet!

Robert Loui Stevenson - so thin! - and his wife.

Stalking Virginia Woolf

I was rather interested to see Hogarth House, where VW lived in Richmond whilst writing the first volume of this diary, and I was also very interested to find out how long it would take her to walk from Richmond to Kingston. We parked a mile or so out of Kingston - at Teddington Lock on the Ham side, and we walked at a fair pace along the tow-path to Richmond, stopping at Ham House to explore the cellars and shelter from a shower. We went to find Hogarth House, which is in a quietish road not at all far from the shopping streets. The house is rather grand-looking and I think that in the Woolfs' time it was cut in two, and they had only half of it.. There is practically no garden and you can walk down the path at the side (peeking over the wall at the lack of garden) to cut through to the shops. I tried to imagine the town as it was in the first world war: which buildings were there then (most of them) and why VW was so nasty about poor Richmond?! She thought it very vulgar and her favourite thing was the train to London. Then we went to the green (such a gorgeous town) where the Attenboroughs used to live, and then back to the river where we had an excellent beer, and walked back mainly along the tow-path. There must be a shorter way, I think, as it was quite tiring, even though very attractive, and I also wondered what VW wore on her feet. She never complained, in her diary, that her feet hurt; she must have had a great pair of boots but so far (and I am well into 1918) she has been very reticent about her footwear.

the path to Kingston from Richmond

Hogarth House in Richmond

The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume 1, 1915-19 part 1, post 1

Last night I had to get up and check the dictionary

because, during the evening class, I had written ~"defence" on the board and I was suddenly sure it was the wrong spelling! Shouldn't it be "defense"? But the latter, it turns out, is the US spelling, which I occasionally mention but I don't teach.

that is typical of a night after teaching. I go to sleep but I wake up with random teaching-related thoughts and then I have a mental review of the lesson.

In the night I continued reading a book I bought when I was at University "The Diary of Virginia Woolf 1915-9". Although I read it all those years ago I can't really remember it so it's a terrific surprise. Mrs W is living in Richmond with her husband Leonard, and walks to the butcher and the grocer when she needs to, and they walk to Twickenham or to Kingston most days, which must have been the thing in those days as all the Bloomsbury group walked every day.

She likes going to London for the Library and to the 1917 Club, which seems to have been founded as a place for Bloomsburies to meet their young followers. The original Bloomsburies are already minor legends! even though VW has written only one novel at this time. She is making her living (and so is LW) by writing reviews in the TLS and other notable publications. They buy a manual printing press and begin by publishing Katherine Mansfield stories. Meanwhile, Nessa is seeing out the war at Charleston because Duncan and Bunny are conchies and so have to work as farm labourers. Leonard is simply in poor health and after attending many army medical boards, it is established that he does not have to fight. Maynard is working for the government and I am not sure how Lytton avoids the war, but like the others he takes a house in the country (with Carrington). and there are loads more people in the book because VW has an incredible social circle. To start with, she is related to a vast array of people, some rather grand and titled, and some ordinary folk, and then a great number of literary grandees are somehow blood relatives, and then all her friendships seem to be long-lasting and involve more and more people. Yet often she and Leonard sit by the fire and read in the evenings, or play cards, and that's what she likes as much as anything. People make social visits without warning and she has to give them (whoever it is) lunch or tea or dinner, and it must be very difficult because as the war goes on food is in very short supply, and so is coal.

VW doesn't cook anything - she has a couple of servants called Nelly and Lottie to do the cleaning and the cooking, but because of the air raids she and Leonard frequently spend the nights in the kitchen with the servants, chatting away for hours and hours to keep their spirits up. VW doesn't really like the servants but can't manage without them. That's an aspect of her life that is really strange. When she and L go down to the house they rent in the country, Asheham, they have to take the servants too, in the train, and it's weirdly like taking your pets with you. Supposedly she is a revolutionary who wants everyone to have the same: £300 a year is the figure mentioned; so where are the servants going to come from in that scheme of things?

She is incredibly nasty about the lower classes and how limited their thinking is; and even though her husband works hard for the cause of Ceylonese luminaries, and she has them round for tea and so forth, she refers to them as "darkies". Then she also tells that Katherine Mansfield smells like a civet cat and it's really unpleasant to be in the same room as her! There are many of these astonishing bits and that's why it's so entertaining.

The war starts distantly from London but by the end there are bombing raids by planes whenever the moon is out, and London suffers, but most of all, can't sleep at night.

Her brother-in-law (Cecil) was killed in the war and she writes nothing at all about how L feels about this, or anything about how she feels, but she and L are now planning to print a small book of Cecil's poems, so I think they do have feelings which she chooses not to share.

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Mrs Dalloway isn't exactly an easy read.

It is, however, if you give it some effort, really quite intoxicating, because it is strange and fresh. In this novel Mrs Dalloway plans a party, buys some flowers, mends her dress, is visited by an old flame, and has a moment with her husband, who wants to tell her he loves her, doesn't, but he does take her some roses and hold her hand. Then she lies down for a while, and in the evening she plays the gushing, warm hostess at her party, which is a very grand party (and the Prime Minister attends).

But there's more to it than this! Is Mrs Dalloway a lesbian, who constantly remembers her darling first love, Sally? (It seems so.) But in her thoughts she often goes to her old flame, Peter Walsh, and her old home, Bourton. And Peter Walsh also goes about London and considers his past and his future.  Is Mrs Dalloway psychologically linked with a mentally disturbed veteran of the Great War? (Yes.) Is Mrs Dalloway a portal to a range of consciousnesses and feelings? - for she feels one thing and the next minute she feels almost the opposite thing, just as people do, so she is not a fixed personality made up of streaks of good or evil, but a different person almost at every second.

On the first page we are told that the doors are to be taken off their hinges: perhaps this is a hint. Things are going to come through the pages of the novel that have not previously come through such portals. We are going to get a first-hand account of what it is like to be psychotic, like poor Septimus, the war veteran, all his strange fears and hallucinations, and also what it is like to look after someone who is psychotic, like Septimus's wife Rezia. We are going to find out how lovely it is to be Mrs Dalloway as she sits and mends her party dress, and how her old flame feels about her - how remarkable she is, how vivid, but with a streak which others call coldness.

From the Wordsworth Classics edition, p 88-9

But - but - why did she suddenly feel, for no reason that she could discover, desperately unhappy? ... but what had he said? There were his roses. Her parties! That was it! Her parties! Both of them criticised her very unjustly, for her parties! That was it! That was it!
Well, how was she going to defend herself? Now that she knew what it was, she felt perfectly happy. They thought, or Peter at any rate thought, that she enjoyed imposing herself; liked to have famous people about her; great names; was simply a snob in short. Well, Peter might think so. Richard [her husband] merely thought it was foolish of her to like excitement when she knew it was bad for her heart. It was childish, he thought. and both were quite wrong. What she liked was simply life.
"That's what I do it for," she said, speaking aloud, to life.

An offering for the sake of offering, perhaps. Anyhow, it was her gift. Nothing else had she of the slightest importance; could not think, write, even play the piano. She muddled Armenians and Turks; loved success; hated discomfort; must be liked; talked oceans of nonsense: and to this day, ask her what the Equator was, and she did not know.
All the same, that one day should follow another; Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; that one should wake up in the morning; see the sky; walk in the park; meet Hugh Whitbread; then suddenly in came Peter; then these roses; it was enough. After that, how unbelievable death was! - that is must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all; how, every instant . . . 

People do think about sex, in the novel, Peter Walsh refers to it as "the other thing" and realises that it wouldn't be good for him with Clarissa. [How do people know this?] Peter Walsh is getting ready for the party and thinking to himself:

... and yet nobody,of course, was more dependent upon others (he buttoned his waistcoat); it had been his undoing. He could not keep out of smoking-rooms, liked colonels, liked golf, liked bridge, and above all women's society, and the fineness of their companionship, and their faithfulness and audacity and greatness in loving, which, though it had its drawbacks, seemed to him (and the dark, adorably pretty face was on top of the envelopes [photo of his girlfriend]) so wholly admirable, so splendid a flower to grow on the crest of human life, and yet he could not come up to the scratch, being always apt to see round things (Clarissa had sapped something in him permanently), and to tire very easily of mute devotion and to want variety in love...

 I think some people think this style with all its semi-colons, rather too much, but it is such a good attempt to explain how it feels to be alive, and have death at one's back. I am sure Septimus did not want to die, but he was mad and the medical men simply made him worse, and this story is where V Woolf expresses her anger with regard to her own experiences of being mad. She was mad, at times, and perhaps like Septimus kept hearing messages and seeing faces; absorbed with things that were not there and completely irrational.

Post election blues

So basically Scotland is for the SNP - fine. I see the attraction. However, in some constituencies they could have put up a scarecrow and people would have voted for it. I wonder, when the dust has settled and the M.P.s take a look at each other, what sort of show they will make?

Wales is for Labour - fine. Loyal to the cause of the working man.

And the UK, apart from some pockets in the North, is Conservative. I can't believe it! I am beginning to have a theory about people who vote Tory. They love their cars. They love their cars because they save them from having to connect with other people. The idea of sharing anything gives them the horrors. 

I feel sad when I look at my Vote Green poster and think of all the effort we novice Greens put in to field candidates, and how many of them lost their deposits (though many didn't). In the best outcome scenario we would have 3 M.P.'s and we still have only one, although I'm happy to say she increased her majority.

I feel sad when I think of the poor Lib Dems and how, by consorting with the Tories they lost their reputation as an alternative to the Tories. They seemed to have moved to the right and that ruined their chances. I feel sad for Vince Cable who took it very hard, and Nick Clegg who fought a good fight and must surely blame himself. When you look at the map of South West London now, it's blue all the way to Westminster, instead of having that quirky hinterland of yellow. London is mainly Labour, and I am glad about that. 

I feel sad for Ed Milliband who also fought a good fight. For me, though, he was always Tony Blair's man, and every time he said "Look!" I cringed with Blair-horror. I shall be glad to see the back of Ed Balls, and I don't mind if they find some new faces. (More women please?)

The BBC website put up a really informative map of the country on their news website, thanks very much chaps, you were great.

With the Green Party in Brighton

I can't exactly remember why I joined the Green Party. Maybe the change was caused by weeks of listening to "Costing the Earth" on Radio 4 when I drove home from yoga. Maybe it was a terror at the threatening loss of bees. Maybe it was because I miss the sparrows that were 2 a penny when I was a kid. And now if you see one it's something special. Maybe it's because I often watch Russell Brand and his True News (Trews) on Youtube and I felt that I too, wanted to be engaged with politics. I can't remember a specific moment when I felt pushed to do it, but I became part of the Green Surge earlier this year, (when the membership of the Greens suddenly rose) and I'm glad I did.

This weekend is a 3-day weekend so I thought I would spend one day campaigning for Caroline Lucas, our one and only Green M.P., who is standing for re-election down on the South coast.

The Greens email you with notifications about meetings and involvement and as soon as you say you will go they send you instructions. It was quite a cold morning when I arrived at Brighton station rather later than the specified 10 a.m. and I found the "Eco-centre" (a run-down-looking shop with an intercom door) opposite the station after looking for it all round the block, because it doesn't look like anything much. But the girl inside was really friendly, took my details, said I would need some training and then she would put me in a team and send me to a ward.

I was lucky because I was given a lift with 3 other people to Sue Shanks' house out in the Preston Park area of Brighton (this is actually 1 station back from the town centre on the train line). Mike was a very handsome young man from Dulwich, his friend Minnie from Queen's Park, and John, a Maths teacher, was a very experienced canvasser from Brighton. I asked to team up with John as he know what he was doing and was keen to get on with it, and we were given a canvasser's pack and off we went to find the streets. So I didn't get any training, but I had John. John knew the way.

At this stage in the campaign all the streets have already been canvassed. Our role was to knock on houses whose residents had been out last time canvassers called, and try to find out which way they would vote. The role of a canvasser is to gain information and only partly to engage people in conversation about why they will/won't be supporting your candidate. So where we encountered people who said they would support Caroline we took their email address and checked their phone number, in case they don't vote on the day and we can persuade them at the last minute to go to the polling station and cast their Green Vote.

We had a code for how keen/not keen each voter was on voting Green. We also had a code for people who were rude, etc. Where people were out we put a card through the door with the voter's name on. where our information about the household was wrong we updated it. It was clearly a busy Saturday in Brighton and many people were out doing things with their children and riding bikes and all the usual things people do on a Saturday, but we had enough conversations for me to get to know some of the issues in Brighton.

With some people the Green Party is very unpopular because of its stance on cars. Parking spaces are at a premium and therefore parking is expensive. Some people even have to pay £100 a year to park on the street outside their houses. In some places traffic speed has been limited to 20 miles an hour - this is actually where the residents voted for the change, (according to the leaflet) - but some voters have really hated these changes and are also angry because of spending on cycle lanes.

Another cause of rage and frustration is industrial action by the bin men. The Green Party had to implement a law on equality of pay for men and women and have done this in such a way as to enrage those who drive the refuse lorries. They haven't been on strike for a while but they sometimes work to rule in such a way as to leave certain streets out of the collection.

Any problem that people have is amplified by the local press, which is virulently anti-Green. So complaints make headlines: "Greens are ruining our City" type of thing.

All local councils have had to implement cuts because of funding slashes from central government which is on an austerity mission, and in Brighton these cuts are blamed on the Greens even though Tory-run councils are just the same. In fact, the Greens have done well to protect children's services such as Sure Start centres, which in some areas of the country (probably the most needy) have been closed down.

The Green supporter is usually better-off and able to see the bigger picture, and likes its stance on Trident (scrap it), the railways (re-nationalise), fracking (leave it in the ground), social care (improve it) and the NHS (no privatization whatsoever).

In the afternoon John, whose company I had enjoyed and with whom I had much in common, had to go and do something else, so we said goodbye back at Sue's house and I stayed there to eat. Sue (a Councillor in Brighton and fantastically energetic and brisk, also has a lovely house) and her assistant Carly(?) had provided loaves of bread, butter, cheese, salad, and biscuits. So we sat around the big dining table in the front room and ate, and the young people (they were all in their 20s) all discussed actions they had been on. They were very friendly and intelligent, I enjoyed meeting them all.

 Then I had a coffee (I was pretty tired) and then walked with a young man to the Park for a rally. I had never been to a rally. There was a green bus, from which Caroline Lucas made a speech, and another speaker Mark Thomas, made another speech, and I squeezed into a group photo. Afterwards we milled around and chatted. I took a leaflet for another action for Keep it in the Ground and had a good chat with that young man. Caroline Lucas was there and I asked her for a photo. (She is very nice and obliging).

Then I walked back to the house, got another partner and another couple of roads to canvas and off we went again, but this time we were in a Tory area! You can tell Tory areas by their tidy gardens (mostly paved) which give pride of place to the driveway and car - always a newish, shiny, look-at-my-status sort of car, sometimes a 4 x 4. There is almost no point in talking to the owners of Gas Guzzlers about voting Green. They are almost hilariously short-sighted about all issues, ending and beginning with their own standard of living. They vote by post as they don't like to mix with other people down at the polling station. They are essentially private people, very reluctant to tell you which way they'll vote. We also talked to some very old ladies who told us they would vote Tory because their fathers had. Apparently there is no likelihood of a Tory M.P. down there in Brighton, but Labour may well swing things around. So I wore myself out on this ghastly Toryland but I enjoyed getting to know my new partner Hywel. And then we got lifts back to town, (Hywel was staying in a Green member's spare room in Brighton) and I eventually got home but I HAD NEVER BEEN SO TIRED!

Meanwhile, I was pleased to hear of the founding of the Women's Equality Party until I realised that it will, one day, split the Green Vote, and but they have no policies, apart from thinking that women must have a louder voice in politics. What exactly do they want to do?  all very vague.