Yesterday to a group conference of the L.D.V.[1], held in the Committee Room at Lord’s…Last time I was at Lord’s must have been at the Eton-Harrow match in 1921. At that time I should have felt that to go into the Pavilion, not being a member of the M.C.C.[2], was on a par with pissing on the altar, and years later would have had some vague idea that it was a legal offence for which you could be prosecuted.
I notice that one of the posters recruiting for the Pioneers, of a foot treading on a swastika with the legend “Step on it”, is cribbed from a Government poster of the Spanish war, i.e. cribbed as to the idea. Of course it is vulgarised and made comic, but its appearance at any rate shows that the Government are beginning to be willing to learn.
The communist candidate in the Bow[3] by-election got about 500 votes. This is a new depth-record, though the Blackshirts have often got less (in one case about 150). The more remarkable because Bow was Lansbury’s seat and might be expected to contain a lot of pacifists. The whole poll was very low, however.
[1] Local Defence Volunteers, later the Home Guard. Orwell joined on 12 June what became C Company, 5th County of London Battalion, and was soon promoted to sergeant, with ten men to instruct. He took his duties very seriously.
[2] Marylebone Cricket Club, the body that then controlled national and international cricket
[3] A working class constituency in the East End of London. Peter Davison
Orwell Diaries 1938-1942 
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George~~
Obviously, I have not allowed a day to go by without at least a visit to your blog since July 1938. In retrospect, your brain logically wraps itself around my apolitical motivation, of this I am certain.
I have been reading much of what you have written as close to real time as possible, although, I must admit to jumping around–forward and backward–during the Great Drought of Posts. You write what you see, what my teenage parents might have seen, though each was several thousand miles away from your locale–Father to the east and Mother to the west. Yes, The Wormhole.
You inspired me to focus on that era in Earth’s timeline, to learn every fact and nuance. Similarly, many years ago, Van Gogh taught me a lot about the late 19th century so I knew how to go about it. As a boy, I once popped the back off of a Timex to take it apart and put it together again (I’m still working on it).
The spontaneity of your microscopic observations into the essence of the moment is metaphorically sublime. Ink, paper, posters and “cribbed” clichés.