Part 87: Wednesday 27th December 1961, 10.30p.m.

Very cold, Mum poorly. She stayed a couple of day’s at Sam’s. We went round there yesterday for  couple of hours, home by hired car – 20/- plus 2/- tip. The kids more of a handful than ever, bless ’em. Aunt Debbie round to-day. The kids screaming blue (why blue?) murder. I was typing an article – Polish-Russian elements in Yiddish – in the study. Eventually I was able to pacify P., who was furiously demanding “little R” – he can now recognise most of the letters of the alphabet. There’s no question of my forcing him; he asks me to “do letters.”

Financial situation still dodgy…without translating commissions it will be a struggle to keep heads above water. Am glad got the Polish-Russian Yiddish article out of my system, even if the J.C. don’t accept it. [it was published by the Jewish Chronicle]

Break for ice-cream and raspberries and coffee.  Azoi geht ess – even in my holiday to get two hours a day to do my schoolwork (have to get February half-yearly exams done; difficult, have to test 3M on “commerce”, spend most of the lesson threatening them with lines, detention), see to accounts, corres; and any “literary” work or study – is kreass yam soof. Well, well – abee gezinnt, abee gezinnt.

Advertisements

The 23 Enigma by Max Witriol

Many years ago I seem to remember Ben Elton doing a comedy skit in which he lampooned young people who voted Conservative – he could forgive older people for voting Tory, but to do it when you’re young was to his mind unthinkably pathetic. Leaving aside the assumption that young people can’t think for themselves and choose to vote Conservative, I must admit I went along with this thinking and, to my shame, was a bit of a lefty – mainly due to the musical influence of Paul Weller, Billy Bragg and the other “anti-Fatcherites” of that era.  

However, I would flip Elton’s diatribe (especially now I’m all grown up) and say that while it’s one thing for a young person to vote Labour, for anyone over the age of 23 to do so is unforgivable – especially given the current state of the Labour Party and its appalling leader. We still see “older people” and, even worse, Jews among them, clinging to the view that the Labour Party is not infested with antisemitism. At best they say that Corbyn hasn’t done enough to address the problem  – they apparently still haven’t cottoned on to the fact that Corbyn is himself a vile antisemite.  And they are working to get him elected.

But unfortunately we live in a world where Conservatives  have also been totally influenced by left-wing thinking, especially in the realm of what might loosely be termed political correctness. Take Theresa May – as much as she is infinitely preferable to Corbyn, what is there to say about someone who allows hundreds of terrorists who have been fighting for Isis in Syria back into this country?  Or who oversees 23 thousand people on the MI5 terror suspect watchlist, but takes no action against any of them. Then when an attack happens we inevitably get told that one of the attackers was on the list  – like it’s an accolade, coz, hey, it’s been proven even more accurate than the weather forecast. A classic case of bolting the gate and then blowing it apart with dynamite.

But of course when anyone suggests that these 23,000 traitors should be locked up, let alone deported, they are instantly branded as a raving racist lunatic. Not only are they not locked up,  let alone deported, they are allowed to roam freely and, in many cases, claim housing and all other benefits so that they can carry on their treacherous plots against their host country. Future terrorists not only walking freely but being financed by the government – so effectively the nation is paying for its own destruction.

23 again. That was the number of Russian diplomats that Mrs. May expelled recently in the wake of the Russian nerve gas attack.  Yes, she overnight grew a spine and acted with decisiveness, strength and alacrity when it came to the aftermath of a single incident. I’m not criticising her for that action per se, but contrast that with her behaviour vis-a-vis the Islamist crisis in our midst and you see someone who is only prepared to take action when she feels the media and world leaders will go along with it (and yes, they largely climbed aboard).  A truly decisive and effective leader would tackle the would-be jihadists with absolute disregard for the politically correct lunatics who have taken over the asylum.

Small wonder then that she aligned herself with critics of Israel’s actions in protecting themselves from being invaded and massacred. “Show more restraint” she chastised the IDF for doing what they had to do to stop the bloodbath that the Palestinians were craving. I have to say, the excellent Michael Freeman showed far more restraint than I thought was humanly possible when interviewed on various TV programmes and asked why Israel acted like it did in the Gaza crisis.  I would have been tempted to say: “because we’re not mad, suicidal lunatics like you lot”. Then again, that’s why he’s the diplomat and I’m not.

Part 86: Monday 23rd October 1961, 2.30p.m.

First day mid-term. Slight ear-ache, slight sore throat, slight spottiness on legs with irritation, but – abee gezinnt. P. sleeping in cot, M. running around with bottle in study. Hope to slip off with E. to flicks to night, Doreen and Alf baby-sitting. Nothing much to report; K (Kruscheff) talks about exploding 500 megaton bomb, which presumably could annihilate 50, 500 ? million people (500 million people is probably an exaggeration; why don’t you know your facts, Witriol – though, of course, I imagine one has to allow a “margin” of an odd million or so). A.J.P. Taylor, in a review yesterday, says his guess is that at the end of the century a few thousand people will be eking out an existence in caves, though the guess of the historian whose book he was reviewing was that millions of people (how many millions?) will be living in unparalleled happiness. Hinchcliffe, who I believe I have mentioned here before, certainly takes a gloomy view and told me he was seriously considering migrating to somewhere “safer” – India or Nigeria, say. He says, as far as I can judge, rightly – that one ought to have serious Civil Defence plans, as Sweden has. Apparently the latter country can get all its population deep underground and keep them there for weeks (months)?).

Part 85: Sunday 1st October 1961, 4.35p.m.

Leo Youngerwood’s mother passed away. Mot [?] took Sam [brother] and myself to the funeral at Bushey. Normally, I would have gone to Dinmore House with E. [wife, Edith] and the children; this Sunday Doreen – Alf’s [Edith’s brother]  young lady, more of her anon – would have taken us there in the car. However, Mot took me back home and I had a little shloof (why do we tell Philip to have a little shloof, davvke? – there’s nothing particularly emotive about the word, yet somehow one talks to him, and he repeats “goin’ have a shloof.”) Yes, Doreen – a charming girl…and runs a smart car. A schoolteacher, now teaching infants, but she did have the scholarship class, with which she got fed up. I never reached the heights of taking the scholarship class; well, well. Watch these pages for future developments.

Yesterday I received a piddling little job. A proof slip with the printed characters on it (Hebrew characters): Lama Ha-miklat ha-zeh shonneh mikol ha-acherim? (It’s quicker for me to write be’atiyot latinot than Hebrew proper, in either print or cursive, and this even though I have to think about the transliteration). The printer evidently knew no Hebrew and had got several of the Hebrew characters wrong…Stupidly, I translated Miklat as gramophone record (for which the Hebrew, of course, is Taklit). Incidentally, it’s Maklet, not Miklat. My one-volume all-Hebrew dictionary doesn’t give Maklet, but the five-volume one, an extraordinarily generous and useful gift from my late uncle Menachem, does; it means radio set (as well as telephone receiver). Anyway, I rectified the error. I charged ’em 10/6 –  a purely nominal fee – for what really ought not to have taken more than fifteen minutes from the time of opening [the] envelope and putting mine in our nearby pillar box. The rectifying post-card took another five-ten minutes.

Part 84: Wednesday 13th September 1961, 8.50p.m.

Rosh Hashanah has come and gone, on Mon. & Tue, 11th & 12th. Every year now I get the feeling that I am going through some charade; for the last ten years the world apparently, has been on the brink of self-extermination, and we go on blowing our shofars and going through the rest of the rigmarole. School started –  for me – to-day. Pouring rain but morale initially on the whole good. I have a form, at last; a lower 1st year form, but with only one or two exceptions they all wore school uniform which, at least, was heartening. Present mood rather black. Rushed to Friern Barnet Evening Institute for enrolment duties only to find Newman – the principal – had forgotten that he had asked me to do enrolment this evening and tomorrow evening. I suspected there might be a shlemozzle as I had not heard from him in writing…Anyway, he ran me home and I introduced him to the family. Philip announced that he had cut off boobbe. Newman was familiar with the word, I asked him how he came to know it. He said the children of his neighbour were always talking about their boobbe. His neighbour turned out to be Norman Eckert, who was at Forest [Teacher Training College] with me. He did history, I remember, and was very keen – now has an S.R. post, of course. I remember his telling me he was assistant stage manager at the Yiddish theatre in Stoke Newington.

Went to Deepdene yesterday – a home for Jewish infirm blind. Koschland [Rev Bernard Koschland, Woodside Park Rabbi] had appealed in the morning at the overflow service for people to make up a minyan [quorum of ten men for prayers]. I turned out to be the only one to have responded. Plaskow, our young – and excellent – chazan [cantor] did a sort of mincha [afternoon prayer service]. The other “visitors” present were apparently members of one Lenga(?)’s committee. He asked if I would care to join the committee. When I said I had to give a hand at home he didn’t press the invitation. Presumably committee membership involves 3-figure donations. The house cost £12,000; equipment £40,000. There were seven or eight women residents at the service, one man. Some of the committee lifted up a lady – I use the word deliberately – with an amputated leg in her wheelchair.

While I was starting on this entry E. hacked me oon a tcheinik about the nappy man. I was unable to register rapt interest. Tension. My fault I suppose. “Nothing more important than your dairy”. I suppose it is a waste of time. It’s not a complete, or even properly selective record, of my trivial (but wearing) round and common task. I suppose all my troubles arise from lack of moral fibre. I ought to go and sit down (Hinchcliffe is going to, also has wife and two children) and invite 3 months inside (and lose job? Hinchcliffe not all that worried, perhaps, about this, because he’s giving up the job anyway to see if he can make a go playwrighting, and he once confided to me that he’d been left some property by his grandfather). Earl Russell, 89, sentenced to week’s imprisonment; Wesker, Bolt and others to one month’s. Got to hand it to them. Russell, one imagines, will get V.I.P. treatment; after all, he’s a Lord, and old (in that order). Wesker? He’s a Yid.

From the photo albums

This gallery contains 14 photos.

Part 83: Thursday 7th September 1961, approx 11am

Overslept this morning, we awoke around 9.15 am. Dreamt a) Had received a bill for transport of books to Ireland, evidently – it seemed in the dream – the books I had sold to Sulzbacher. Clipped to the bills were miniature bottles of liquor. Dream. problem: How to get the bill to Sulzbacher (he had obviously sold the books to a customer in Ireland)? I could not send it through the post unless I packed it elaborately, to avoid the bottles getting smashed. I decided to give the bill to Sam [brother] when he next called, so that he could take it to Sulzbacher (whose house-and-business premises are near him) who, I took it, would stand Sam a drink from one of the bottles, b) I was worried about Philip and Max, I rushed into the shop (sic, at Newington Butts)…to find Philip tumbling down followed by Max. I grabbed hold of them and rushed with them to E. who was talking calmly to Minnie Blatt. E did not seem at all put out or in any way ashamed, her air was one of cool contempt. I remember thinking I must tick her off, but “correctly”, and saying: “Perhaps Mrs Blatt will excuse you now”, and waking to find Philip grizzling.

…It was not until yesterday that I manged to get down to a book on commerce; I am supposed to be teaching the subject to third-year kids next year…In the third year, I gather, it’s just waffle about various ways of retail distribution. Max now definitely walking. He’s a sturdy, happy boy. I can’t honestly say the same about Philip, who seems cantankerous. Philip, it seems to me, will be more emotional, more complex. Anyway, may they both make more of their lives than their old man has done. (And you pipe down, H.L. [ Baudelaire’s hypocrite lecteur])

Went to shool for yoortseit  [for his father] this morning. The new minister, Rabbi (?) Koschland, came up to me afterwards. Was I related to the Witriol who wrote for the J.C? It’s refreshing to find someone for whom the name rings the write-for-the-Jewish-Chronicle bell, and not the aren’t-you-related-to-Mrs-Witriol-of-the-Shabbos-bureau bell.

Part 82: Friday 1st September 1961, 2 pm

In the event [right charge for a translation job, see Part 81] I charged for 4000 Hebrew words at the Institute of Linguists top rate: £10-17-6 per 1000 words. No cheque has come as yet, but presumably this is just a question of office routine. Still, I shall be happier when the cheque does arrive, money seems to be poured into a bottomless barrel here.

Made a successful get-away yesterday, to Stoke Poges, following a Fieldfare ramble [Fieldfare was the pen-name for an Evening News columnist who wrote guides to walks in rural areas of the Home Counties]…

The church at S.P. seemed uninteresting. I didn’t inspect the inside as it was so dark, and I wanted to press on. A defect of this particular ramble is that there is nowhere to take tea en route. I suppose one ought to be thankful there is no “Elegy” tea-house, although I could have done with a cuppa.

Gray’s memorial is surrounded by a ditch; one gains access to it, presumably, via some gardens for which an entrance fee of one shilling is charged. I didn’t go in. Perhaps I ought to go again…spending an hour in the church and gardens and identifying, or trying to identify, the rugged elm and the yew tree’s shade. I have interrupted this entry for a moment – the train of thought will be obvious – to try to track down “joy cometh in the morning” – I got out a P.G.W. book with this title. My big Hoyt’s encyclopedia of quotations doesn’t seem to give it, but I find from Cruden that it’s Psalms 30:5 – I ought to have known. E. has dumped Maxy on me while I’m writing this, but he’s crawling around without giving any trouble.

The day before y., while Aunt Debby [Deborah Coltonoff, my mum’s Aunt] stayed with Max, we succeeded in getting to the Finchley swimming pool. Philip not a water-baby, but perhaps this will come. The pool is an admirable affair, really; a large children’s’ pool, cascades, refreshments, deckchairs. If one could get into it when it wasn’t overcrowded with schoolkids it would be very pleasant.

Part 81: Wednesday 23rd August 1961, 2.20 pm

Was going to say that I was writing this in peace, perfect p; when Alf [brother-in-law] rang, and now Max has awoken from his siesta. However, he is still at the stage of making giant-waking-refreshed-from-his-slumber noises and I may be able to get in a short entry before he demands attention. He now demands attention…resumed 9.20pm.

I suppose I ought to record that the buttock-ankle irritation seems more or less ok now…when I refer to my entry of 14 May, [Part 78] for example, I realise how well off I am.

Have done some translating of press-cuttings (Hebrew) on Orde Charles Wingate. D.F. Long got me the commission – said he wasn’t interested in these “casual” jobs…Perhaps he didn’t realise the extent of the job. I find it comes to 5100 Hebrew words and the Institute of Linguists’ recommended standard rates are from £7-7-0 to £10-10-0 upwards per 1000 words. I have been wrestling with the problems a) what number of words to charge (I can’t count individually 4-5000 words), b) what rate to charge…It’s all very, very sordid. Perhaps I’ll charge @£6-6-0 per 1000 English words, which may seem psychologically less devastating, but as I understand from Alf the English text will run to at least 700 wds, this may be the better bet for me. Ten o’clock, time to retire on this sordid note.

Part 80: Tuesday 15th August 1961, 9.20 pm

The second day of the third week of the holiday. Concocted a review-article on Der Jüdische Witz by Salcia Landmann for The Jewish Quarterly. Must try to get something for it, and the review I did of God’s Wilderness in the previous issue over the initials PAM (with which I am rather pleased – Peloni Almoni Mechudash).

[For] about a year I wrote a full page or more for The Young Zionist (in 1934/5) under the pen-name of Peloni Almoni. And that since then I have resolved that whatever I write, however tripey it is, will be written over my full name. On the grounds that my name would have been known in Zionist/Anglo-Jewish circles and that I would have been able to exploit the publicity. But would I, even if I could have. I had always had rooted objections to being a Zionist official.

Fritz and Esther Ben Aharon here on a visit. She – her father a Witriol, her mother a Balin (my mum’s dad a Balin). They lost their daughter a year or so ago – Tirza, when Tirza was about eighteen. She had been suffering from – I don’t know the technical term –  but for years she could only walk, talk with difficulty. Esther and Fritz fine Chalutz [ Hebrew for a pioneer] types. Esther obviously shattered, but behaved very bravely here. We have entertained them, so have Mum & Sam [brother] & Lily [his wife]. Very difficult for all of us: we have the two kids, who are now more than a handful, bless ’em; Mum, ken en hora [Yiddish –without the evil eye] is 82; Lily is recovering from an operation, Sam had been looking forward to a fortnight’s respite…on Tuesday he went to M/C to see a manufacturer, on Thursday he took them to the National Gallery – and he has a cold anyway.

Am trying to sell up the old library. Have packed up books for Sulzbacher: a run of Jewish Monthlies, Danby’s Mishna, Friedlander’s Guide, etc; coming to just over £5…. Had I not been in such a hurry I would have kept a few [Jewish Monthlies] with some humorous pieces in them – they might have come in useful if I am ever invited again to lecture on Jewish Wit and Humour. Edith just finished off the ironing, 10pm. This, be it noted, is when we are on holiday. There can be no question of going away until the summer of 1963, unless, which is unlikely, I receive some exceptionally lucrative translating commissions. It’s not too bad for me. At least I got away, travelled, for ten days. And I must go away next Easter too. E. has never, I think, been away from the house for more than eight hours at a stretch. Must try to remember this when the inevitable frictions occur.

Young Michael Youngerwood taken to hospital with virus infection; understand much better now.