I Stretched Out My Hand Towards The

I Pulled Myself Up And Told Myself To Stop These Ridiculous Thoughts, Wondering Why It Is That We Can Never Stop Trying To Analyse The Motives Of People Who Have No Personal Interest In Us, In The Vain Hope Of Finding That Perhaps They May Have Just A Little After All.

The Small Things Of Life Were Often So Much Bigger Than The Great Things . . . The Trivial Pleasure Like Cooking, One's Home, Little Poems Especially Sad Ones, Solitary Walks, Funny Things Seen And Overheard.

There Are No Sick People In North Oxford. They Are Either Dead Or Alive. It's Sometimes Difficult To Tell The Difference, That's All.

Perhaps There Can Be Too Much Making Of Cups Of Tea, I Thought, As I Watched Miss Statham Filling The Heavy Teapot. Did We Really Need A Cup Of Tea? I Even Said As Much To Miss Statham And She Looked At Me With A Hurt, Almost Angry Look, 'do We Need Tea? She Echoed. 'but Miss Lathbury...' She Sounded Puzzled And Distressed And I Began To Realise That My Question Had Struck At Something Deep And Fundamental. It Was The Kind Of Question That Starts A Landslide In The Mind. I Mumbled Something About Making A Joke And That Of Course One Needed Tea Always, At Every Hour Of The Day Or Night.

Once Outside The Magic Circle The Writers Became Their Lonely Selves, Pondering On Poems, Observing Their Fellow Men Ruthlessly, Putting People They Knew Into Novels; No Wonder They Were Without Friends.