Fine in the morning, thunderstorm & fairly heavy rain in the afternoon. Earth too wet to do much. Started preparing place for a row of broccoli. Peonies almost out. Rambler (yellow) well out.
16 eggs
Mould° for concrete slabs. The shaded bits are nailed on (simpler than cutting tenons). A & C are each made in one piece, then jammed up against B, the ends of the sidepieces fitted into slots & weights placed against the ends. A & C can then be drawn away as the concrete begins to set. Except for B, then whole could be made of 2” by 1 /2 “.
Orwell Diaries 1938-1942 
Oh dear, what can he be up to now?
…
BTW, what happened to all the other Orwell blogsters. Remember the egg jokes, the political analysis, the haiku even? I feel a bit like at the end of a party when you suddenly realise all the guests have gone home …
Dunno. These entries may not inspire as much reaction.
Ha! I feel the same; personally I was happy with gardening and husbandry chat for only so long; I assumed Orwell’s diaries would be filled with the minutiae of life in fear and expectation of the inevitable war. I really didn’t think he’d be getting on with his life so successfully, especially given that Coming Up For Air is basically all about the upcoming war and how much the world is about to change. This is no fault of Orwell’s of course; how was he to know his diaries would be published in blog form 70 years on- I wonder if the diaries would be different if he’d known- would he have included more current affairs and fewer hen houses? I think the diaries will become more interesting soon with the outbreak of war (not that this is a good thing I should stress)
The long droughts between blog posts and egg reports drove me mad.
My self-diagnosis reveals that I had overexposed myself to certain ephemeral matrices while skipping, tra-la, to and fro through the wormhole.
My self-prognosis shows that, since actually knowing the future for the next 70+ years is what caused me to snap, I am incurable but harmless and non-contagious.
~~~~~
I think George knows we’re here and is messing with our minds with those ABC’s and missing dimensions.
I suspect those might be the footings for the Windolite-enhanced chicken coop.
We’re all more busy in our gardens, of course. This is the first spring/summer of the journal, and it seemed like there was a lot more participation over the fall/winter. I suspect/hope lots of us who have been reading since the beginning are still here, lurking.
About today’s post: imagine choosing whether to use nails or cut tenons!
Do I have more time,
Or more money? Thought Eric.
More money, it seems.
Steve, Thanks for the haiku.
I, too, have been reading every day, thinking that George would write something about what was going on in Europe and hoping for more comments. Is everyone still out there?
Here in the Chicago area we’ve been having way too much rain for June. But today the sun is shining, and all the flowers are beautiful. I’m enjoying them without having to plant them or weed, since I’m in a retirement home.
Greg, CAL, don’t worry, he starts a war diary in a two or three weeks.
Eric is British after all, therefore he must carry on.
George is almost finished writing Charles Dickens. I don’t think he is raking in the big bucks from his writing at this time, so I think maybe his day job is trying [while he can] to make sure he will have at least some egg money to survive on [and food] in the uncertain months/years to come.
He could see the dark clouds on the horizon from Marrakesh (Coming Up for Air).
‘The unspeakable depression of lighting the fires every morning with papers of a year ago, and getting glimpses of optimistic headlines as they go up in smoke.’
George Orwell 19 October 1940
Re Steve: speak for yourselves, northern hemisphere persons! Here in Canberra we have the frosts, the fogs and the sub-zeros to keep us indoors.
JL3, you’re right about Orwell not earning big bucks at this time. Homage to Catalonia flopped, it only sold a few 100 copies; Coming Up For Air had only just been published; he hadn’t done much reviewing or other work at this time.
Coming Up sold well, the first print run was of 2000 sold out and a reprint run of 1000 came out very soon: he earned about £1 per week from it over the next year or so (about the same as a couple of hundred eggs per week).
And yes, at the time of writing this he was writing the essays for Inside the Whale & Other Essays (the others being Charles Dickens and Boys’ Weeklies, see http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/ for copies)
Phil Barker~~
10,000 Thank You’s for the link! Much appreciated.
Phil Barker, thank you so much for the link!!!
James is there a place online where you can read the whole journal instead of having to wait for it here over the course of 4 years? I noticed you quoted from his later journal so I thought you might know. I’ve seen bits and pieces of his later diaries in a war diaries book I have where they have diaries from several people, but I was wondering if Orwell’s whole journal was already published in full in the public domain instead of just the gradual feed here.