Departures and Arrivals. Eric Newby

bar all entrances, which gave us a feeling of being besieged. Thwarted, they blew the lids off two half-filled dustbins, with spectacular results.

       6 November.

      Fine early, gloomy later. Scour countryside with Mr P for stone suitable for grotto building. Those quarries that have it want £11 a ton and another £10 on top of that to get it home. Our last load of similar stone cost £5 a ton. Late in the afternoon find a worked-out quarry at Ashburton, said to be a thousand years old, which is on the point of closing for ever. £5.50 a ton if we sort it ourselves, so we pick out about 4½ tons by hand with the help of the last quarryman – the others have been made redundant. This quarry is the epitome of melancholy: trees on the cliffs above shedding the last of their leaves down the sheer black walls, defunct machinery, rusty coloured pools of water, the last small heap of usable stones – reminiscent, with a dark, tall-spired church looming over us, of the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich. The negation of a Jolly Folly; but what a place to do away with oneself.

       7 November.

      A lorry arrives in the a.m. and deposits the stone from Ashburton with such a thunderous noise that neighbours rush into the street thinking that someone’s house has collapsed.

      At this time I was trying desperately to write a book, but I soon gave up. It was obvious that Mr Perring regarded me as being on permanent call. As soon as I got started writing, I had to wheel more barrow-loads down to him. One Sunday, in order to snatch a whole day of uninterrupted work – he worked on the grotto Saturdays too – I wheeled down about fifty barrow-loads. On Monday I got it in the neck. ‘Don’t you go getting me more than five loads at a time, or I’ll be stugged,’ he said. ‘Any road, a lot of what you brought is a load of old rummage.’