"Diary of a Provincial Lady" [.]

[fiefoe]

<'am always ready to See Life, in hotels or anywhere else'>

• ...decide to cheer myself up by purchasing evening dress - which I cannot afford - with present-day waist - which does not suit me. Select the Brompton Road..., and crawl up it, scrutinising windows. Come face-to-face with Barbar Blenkinsop, who says, How extraordinary we should meet here, to which I reply that that is so often the way, when one comes to London.
• Dédé (French boy on train) looks about fifteen, but wears socks, which I think a mistake, but must beware of insularity.
• (Confronted with a lavatory door that won't shut:) She finally says in despairing tones that Really, it isn't what she calls very nice.
• Death by drowning said to be preceded by mental panorama of entire past life. Distressing reflection which very nearly causes me to sink again. Even one recollection from my past, if injudiciously selected,disconcerts me in the extreme, and cannot at all contemplate entire series.
  

<her Robert>

• Suggest to Robert, on the way home, that I had better give up tennis altogether, to which, after long silence -... he replies that he does not know what I could take up instead.
• I am moved to exclaim - perhaps rather thoughtlessly - that the most wonderful thing in the world must be to be a childless widow - but this is met by unsympathetic silence from Robert.
• Our Vicar thanks (Lady B.) for coming here today - so many claims upon her time - Robert seconds him with almost incredible brevity...
  

<the provincial society>

• Barbara at length admits that Crosbie has asked her to marry him - he did it, she says, at the Zoo (!) - and go out with him as his wife to the Himalayas.
• Before I can reply, she does so for me, and says that she knows just how I feel. Weak as a rat, legs like cotton-wool, no spine whatever, and head like a boiled owl. Am depressed by this diagnosis.
• On other side elderly gentleman, who says conversationally that this Naval Disarmament is All his Eye. This contribution made to contemporary thought, he says no more.
• Lady B. asks me at tea how the children are, and adds, to the table at large, that I am "A Perfect Mother". Am naturally avoided, conversationally, after this, by everybody at the tea-table.
• Pleasant sense of mutual sympathy suddenly and painfully shattered by my admitting - in reply to direct enquiry - that I am not a gardener-
• Someone... has to be reminded that they, are no longer on speaking terms, owing to strange behaviour of Miss H. about her bantams.
  
• Once more with elderly and efficient (tennis) partner. I apologise to him for this misfortune, and he enquires in return, with extreme pessimism: Fifty years from now, what will it matter if we have lost this game?
• People say, she adds deprecatingly, that just her Smile does them good. She does not know, she says, what they mean. (Neither do I.)
• Little boys .. are told to make friends with (her children) - at which all exchange looks of blackest hatred, with regrettable exception of Vicky, who smirks at the tallest nephew, who takes no notice.

Finally, I like her capitalization. ('Have very often wondered if Mothers are not rather A Mistake altogether, and now definitely come to the conclusion that they are.') 

Self c.f..