The Adventures of Grace Russ

Grace Enid Baglin's Diary - based on letters (1977-1985)

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Friends - who needs them? - 8th March 1977

I got very depressed last week and almost gave my notice in at work, but fortunately for me my boss had just had a row with someone else in the office so that when I went into his office I could feel the vibrations coming off him and decided to wait until Monday - by which time, of course, I felt quite differently about the whole scene. So maybe it was just as well that he had changed from his usual `Winny the Pooh' into a prickly hedgehog. I think it was just the fact that my `lodger', namely Joan, had been getting me down. She talks non-stop and as I have a woman in the office sat opposite who keeps on nattering away all day - even when I am typing she still chats, and I find this makes it very difficult to concentrate on my work; but to go home and have the same situation again is just one too many. Last night for instance, at 11.30 she said "I won't keep you up as I know you have to get up for work in the morning"…. BUT…. the last time I looked at the clock was when I wearily raised my head from my pillow and saw it was 02.10…AND SHE WAS STILL TALKING! I don't know really when she finally gave up as I had dropped off to sleep somewhere mid-sentence. However, last weekend really took the biscuit. As you may - and there again you may not - know, Dennis has a friend in the next block to me and he very often spends the weekend there with John and his wife. Well…. I suppose being so near he must have found out that Joan was living in my flat and we wasn't at all happy about it - naturally! SO…. he came on Saturday and said if I could afford to take in waifs and strays and cranks off the streets I could afford to take him in for a weekend. What fun and games: I had the two of them at each other's throats - each feeling that the other should be the one to get out - and best of all when it came to 01.00 a.m. in the morning there we were arguing who should have the bed! Then I really lost my temper and said `it was my ****** flat, and my ****** bed, and I was****** well going to bed and they could do what the **** they liked'. At least I got some sleep but I don't think either of them did. Still, looking back it was quite an amusing episode, but not so at the time. Still, that's life isn't it? It always seems much more amusing after the event.

My lodger i.e. Joan, disappeared last Friday. I rang Greta today after getting no reply from Jim, and Greta said Joan had rung last night to tell them that the place she was going to in Orpington had just rung up and said they had changed their mind. So she is back to square one it seems. Meanwhile she is staying at a Boarding House somewhere in Bromley and all her gear is packed in my downstairs room! I don't know when she will come to get this and it pongs a bit as half of it is the stuff she buys in jumble sales to sell on her stall in the market - and some of the old second-hand cloths are none too clean. When she went on Friday she didn't say `Goodbye' or `Thanks' or anything. She just wasn't there when I got home, and I haven't seen or heard from her since. She just walked out in what she stood up in and took her handbag and dog and left all the rest! A bit of a cheek really isn't it.

To The Auction - 19th August 1977

I thought you might be a bit worried about me yesterday, and so to prove I am a `good and dutiful daughter' I am letting you know at once that I am all right, and that I HAVE NOT be a `naughty girl'. Well - only a wee bit - by playing truant from the office. But, as usual in my case it backfired on me. (Do you remember the tooth I had out in Reading? And the pint of Blood I gave at the Donor Session in Moorgate? - And all the other incidents of similar ilk?). Well, as I particularly wanted to go to one of the big Auction Rooms in London, and as this would probably be my last chance to go to one, I arranged with a girl in the office to tell my boss on Thursday morning that I had rung up to say I was `not well' and had `a funny tummy'. And would you believe it, when I woke up yesterday I really wasn't well, and I really DID have a funny tummy? (I could see that old typist in the sky wagging his carriage-return finger at me and saying "That's what you get for telling lies!). Anyway, well padded up, and with a spare toilet roll in my bag, I set forth to meet Jim at Orpington Station at 9.30 and we caught the next train to Charring Cross where he introduced me to Mike Glukchick? (I don't know how to spell it, but that was how he pronounced it). This Mike is the father of the boy who has been held recently in the Ukraine. There is still no news of his son and Mike said he feels he will never see him again. Mike came from the Ukraine himself some 30 years ago as a refugee, and he told me that he pleaded with his boy not to go there for his holiday, but his son just said "Oh Dad you are so old fashioned, all those things happened 30 years ago and it is all changed now". Mike had a good business going in Canada which he build up after leaving the Ukraine, and it was in Canada that he met his English wife (the boy's mother), but she became homesick and wanted to come back to England after they were married, so he sold up and started up another business in Greenwich and he also worked nights at Farnborough Engineering (that was where he first met Jim) but his wife never really settled down and finally left him and the boy. He eventually married again, this time to a Polish girl, and apparently had quite some difficulty in getting her out of Poland in the first place. He made us laugh when Jim asked him how his second wife was going on, and with a saucy twinkle in his eye Mike said, "She no ****** good either - will have to send her back to Poland". He works on No. 4 gate at Charring Cross Station as a ticket collector now, and when we came through yesterday morning he greeted Jim as if he were his long lost brother. "Ah Jimmy" he said, beaming all over his face, "How are you my old friend? It is a long time since we met. We must go have a coffee, yes?" So we all went off together for half an hour and had a most interesting chat and a coffee (I did wonder if it was his tea-break, or if, like me, he was just playing truant for a while, but I didn't ask him). Anyway, my first impression was that he was a nice man, genuine type etc, but I have discovered from past experience that you have to know someone for a period of time before you can really say that about anyone (I do, anyway).

The Big Auction - 23rd August 1977

However, I was telling you about my day out on Thursday. It was really a pleasant `fun' day. After we left Mike at Charring Cross we went over to the Sale Room and `viewed' the ceramics which were coming up for auction at 2pm. There were some really beautiful things there, and some that looked nothing in particular, and it was surprising when later in the day some of the things I thought didn't look like much fetched quite a high price. I think the most attractive items were a set of none plates with portraits of `young maidens' (the catalogue description) painted on them and signed by various people, a few of them were signed by Wagner. These raised over £1 000 in the auction.

After the `viewing', Jim and I went over to have some lunch, but the café was closed for the holidays and so we had a pork pie and beer in the pub. He was concerned about being in the front as he is a bit hard of hearing, and so we went back to the Sale Room about 1.30 and managed to get two seats in the front row, They are doing some alterations to the place and there was a huge rostrum in front of us which looked like a Builder's hoarding as it was three large pieces of wood (unpainted) - a front and two sides in the shape (roughly) of a boomerang. Anyway, we sat there for a while chatting away in muted whispers as it we were in a Church, when suddenly the Auctioneer and his assistant appeared on the rostrum; which gave me the chuckles as from our front seats all we could see at first was their head and shoulders, and I said to Jim "You didn't tell me there was going to be a Punch & Judy act as well", which gave him the chuckles too, but we soon quietened down when the Auction proper started. Indeed I was kept quite busy marking off the prices in the catalogue. Jim's four pieces fetched over £300.

After the sale we were on our way to the bus stop when a Japanese chappie came up and asked us for No. 1 - I thought he was referring to a bus, but he spoke very little English and pulled out a phrase book and pointed to something which Jim said looked like `Departmental' (but as his eyesight is almost as bad as his hearing I didn't feel too confident about it). Anyway, Jim did his `Sherlock Holmes' but and decided that this Japanese wanted to know how to get to London's No. 1 Departmental Store, which he said must be Harrods. Having solved that problem he then started to try to explain how to get there, but as we weren't sure of our own whereabouts at that time it was rather difficult. However, undaunted, Jim asked a passing `Lady' if she could help; unfortunately she happened to be a German but nevertheless had quite a good command of the English language and seemed only too willing to help. However, the little Japanese guessed that we were trying to elicit help and came up close to the woman to try to grasp what she was saying; but as she thought it was Jim who wanted to know, and had no idea the Japanese was in our company, albeit, temporarily, she kept turning her back on the Japanese. I think it was at about this point that I began to feel the hysterical chuckles gurgling away inside me and I know that if these three kept up their weird dancing and prancing on the pavement I wouldn't be able to control my laughter too long. It was SUCH a funny sight. In the end she though it would be best if we got the tube, so we trooped across the road and over three sets of traffic lights to the nearest tube station. We finally arrived at the tube station. We must have looked quite an amusing sight when you think about it. Firstly there was me (and you know what I look like), then Jim, the same as usual with his long hair looking as if it could do with a wash and cut, and as he had been painting his kitchen the night before and only has the one pair of trousers, his trousers were spot marked with white paint, but he did have a fairly decent jacket on the top. His bright red socks and suede shoes just about finished him off. The little Japanese was quite tidy looking, but he was SO TINY, against Jim and myself he seemed more like a little boy , and the fact that he kept running along beside us with quick little steps, and kept looking up into our faces to see what we were saying (or trying to UNDERSTAND what we were saying), made our little threesome into quite a comedy tableau. Being quite bright, we soon discovered that the tickets would cost 15p each, but although every other machine was in good order, the 15p machine was broken down, so we joined the queue at the ticket office. However, Jim had donned his `Sherlock Holmes' cap once again and found out that there was quite a delay on the tubes owing to the flooding of some of the network the night before during the heavy rainstorm…. So he decided that perhaps it would be better after all if we got a bus instead of a tube. Once again our little trio ventured forth back across the road and over the three sets of traffic lights to the nearest bus stop. I must admit that I began to admire the little Japanese fellow for his great forbearance, as I was by this time getting quite confused and I am sure he must have been even more so, but he didn't show it, bless his little cotton socks, in fact he behaved as if he had every confidence in Jim - which is more than I did. We eventually got on a but, which I am certain by pure chance - you know, one of those once in a lifetime flukes, actually did go past Harrods. When you consider that we didn't even know if we were waiting on the right side of the road and could easily have been going in the opposite direction, this was indeed a miracle. We put our new found friend off at Harrods and wished him `Farewell' etc., and he in turn gave us a very friendly grin and bowed as if we were Royalty, and also wished us farewell in Japanese (at least I THINK he was wishing us farewell!). Jim and I then went on to Victoria and caught a train straight back to Orpington where I had ten minutes to wait for my but, and he got a taxi almost immediately. When I spoke to Greta on Friday night and thanked her for `lending' me her husband for the day on Thursday, she thanked me fro sending him home so early and sober! She said she wished he would behave like that more often.

The Intruder - 23rd August 1977

A most unusual thing happened last night. Well, although S.S.Squeak loves Fred (the cat), Fred has never really been too keen on S.S. However, they get on OK together just as long as SS doesn't flaunt herself too much in front of Fred. Now to get to the `unusual' bit, a few weeks ago I noticed a black and white cat on the balcony. It has been there several times since, but never when Fred is around, so I naturally assumed that Fred wouldn't come in until this new intruder had gone away. Well, last night I opened the balcony door when I heard Fred's meow and in she walked, closely followed by the black and white cat. They seemed to be on the best of terms and Fred didn't worry at all about him being in there, but she did `his' at SS in passing. SS Squeak, of course, decided she didn't like this new intruder at all and was most rude to him, `hissing' and `glaring' as if she owned the place - shades of Dennis? So for a while I had three cants in my living room, and I must admit I could see the funny site of the situation. There was Fred `hissing' at SS and SS in turn `hissing' at the black and white cat, but completely ignoring Fred (which I am sure only aggravates Fred all the more). The black and white cat meanwhile ignored both Fred and SS and just got down to pinching the food I had previously put down for them. By the time they, and myself, realised what was happening he had gulped down most of it!