1980

Sweltering in the heat

   9.26pm. At Summerlands. We have few letters coming into the office at the moment, so decided to return to keep the garden watered and to attend to the fish with tail rot. We came down in the Mini again, leaving Springfields at five past two, and arriving at about 5.30pm. The windscreen shattered when we were about five miles from Glastonbury. I pushed the glass out to be able to see. We called at Street on the way here, for Freda to do the weekend shopping.

   We sweltered in bed last night, and learned this evening that the temperature, at least here in the West, never fell below 65 degrees, the highest minimum temperature ever recorded in the area. The temperature was in the 80s today. I was up early to pray and started work in the office at 7am when I continued stamping the Rhodesia cards “Zimbabwe.” After finishing the letters I typed cassette peel-off labels for the Lancelot Pinard tapes offered with the newsletter.

   Dad went to town for me to obtain details of the visit of the Bluebell Girls to the Alexandra Theatre later this month. He also went to the Reference Library to see if they had a book containing details of how to cure tail rot in goldfish (but they hadn’t) and to the Collector of Taxes, Stephenson Street, to ask for a tax refund to be made to us direct instead of being credited to our account at Glasgow. We are not paying any tax at the moment, as I am receiving only £10 per week, and Janet is not being paid any salary while she is away.

   There is still no word from Janet. Her mother phoned before 8 this morning in an anxious state, and I have phoned her this evening so that she knows where we are in the event of Janet phoning her. I am very depressed and am finding it very difficult to settle to anything again. Tony phoned as usual this morning and actually spoke to Freda to request a meeting with us, but I do not want to see him.

   I phoned Mr Lintell after unloading the car, and arranged to take it in at 7.30am to have a new windscreen fitted. After tea I copied a new Daisy Osborn tape When Women Become Winners onto the first tape they sent me of the same title, which was faulty.

   There have been freak storms today and torrential rain in some parts causing flooding. We came through a rainstorm towards the end of the M5. Incredibly, Glastonbury remained dry, and there seems to have been no rain since we left last week.

The natural reflects the spiritual

   9.24pm. I got up at 6.30am this morning, prayed, took Freda a cup of tea in bed, then at 7.30am took the Mini to Mr Lintell’s to have a new windscreen fitted and the heater attended to — it has been sticking on. I had to wait five minutes for Mr Lintell to arrive, then walked back home, weeping a little for the great sadness I feel for Janet.

   After breakfast I began typing the 1980 stock list. Freda went shopping and was away a long time. She returned at midday, having been to see Mr [Rocco] d”Ambrosio, and Nellie and Gladys, and delighted me with a book, Swedenborg’s The True Christian Religion, which she had bought for me from the second-hand bookshop. She had gone there specially to see if they had anything by him.

   Freda returned just as Mr Lintell was ”phoning to say the car was ready. He brought it to the house and I drove him back again, then spent until lunch time reading my new book.

   After lunch I read some more, then spent the afternoon watering the garden and digging up thistles. We came indoors for a few minutes at 3.45pm to have a cup of tea, and watched a few overs of the Test Match with the West Indies at Nottingham. I went to sleep for a few minutes, then we went outside again to resume our labours.

   After tea I read Emerson’s Essays on “Swedenborg, or the Mystic,” and “Love.” Later we watched Anthony Dowell and the Royal Ballet dancing Four Schumann pieces, his String Quartet in A Major, Opus 41, No 3. We are now listening to Pastor Dave Bailey speaking on “Effective Evangelism,” a tape we brought back from Garden Grove. Is Janet there I wonder?

   Freda’s psychology was exactly right in giving me a book. Many many times one of us says what the other is thinking. Yesterday, as we neared the junction with the M4, we were overtaken by a brown Daimler (or Jaguar) with an S registration. I perceived that Freda was about to say, “Brown seems to have been a popular colour that year,” so instead of waiting for her to say it and then my saying, “I knew you were going to say that,” I said it first. Then Freda said, “I was going to say that,” and I said, “I knew you were: that is why I said it first.”

   Emerson quotes a verse in his Essay on “Love”, which expresses something I have been feeling about Janet: “Thou art not gone being gone, where”er thou art, Thou hav’st in him thy watchful eyes, in him thy loving heart.” At times the sense of her nearness has been almost incredible. I have had this same feeling of nearness two or three times since Freda’s mother died. I felt Mum was “there” when I lay on the floor with my injured foot.

   All my life I have known that the things that happen to us in the natural are but reflections of what is happening to us in the spiritual. I have observed this in our home being flooded; in Janet’s guitar G-string being broken, in her being deceived into thinking that what she was given to replace it was rare and precious (Tony’s words about Janet’s virginity, but the silver string was commonplace and cheap); in her being sick after she had been with him.

   Perhaps the shattered windscreen, which marred my vision, signifies the clear outlook I am now to have; and perhaps some of the heat is going to be taken off me.

   10.01pm. I got up at 8.45am this morning. Over breakfast we read a pamphlet which had come from Chalice Well. John Simmons died last October, and the new custodians Moya and Taras Kosikovsky sound as though they have the right vision and feeling for the place.

   I spent the morning in prayer and then read Swedenborg on “Baptism.” Freda went for a walk before lunch; I stayed behind in case the phone rang, but it didn’t. I wish Janet would phone.

   I washed up after lunch, as I had done after breakfast, then did some more reading and had a sleep. Later we had a cup of tea then worked in the garden until tea time. I dug up a lot more thistles.

   After tea I washed up, then dug up more thistles, and filled buckets of water for Freda to water the garden. Later we came indoors to watch “First Steps,” in which Dame Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin were teaching children at a Yorkshire Ballet Seminar.

Margaret Cameron

   10.30pm. We arrived back in Birmingham at 5.00pm. Twenty-five minutes later Janet phoned from Le Seure, Minnesota. She said the Seminar had been perhaps the greatest experience of her life. It was wonderful to hear her rejoicing in the Lord; I could not help but weep with joy as she told me the great news — Richard Roberts now having a new wife, Bro. Roberts raising $1,000,000 in the meeting, one partner giving him a cheque for $150,000, the City of Faith now 60 storeys high and one building completed and faced.

   For the first time I feel tonight that Janet will not marry Tony. When the phone rang I had just been reading a letter he had written her, which was particularly cruel and unkind. Earlier in the day, at Summerlands, I had written him a letter in answer to his last two or three to me. Then, on the way into Birmingham, we had called to see Mrs Jones, who was as miserable as usual and resentful of Janet staying overseas so long. Janet must have phoned her mother within minutes of my leaving there.

   We got home at 5.00pm. Dad had brought the letters round to the house, and the first thing that I noticed was that more than £1,000 had come in. There was a cheque for £622.62 left us in her will by Mrs [Margaret] Cameron of Silloth. We lost touch with her when she had to be taken into a hospital or nursing home a few years ago, and her sister returned one of my newsletters with a curt note to say that we wouldn’t be getting any more money. It grieved me so much that we could not even go to see her, but I little thought she would remember the work in her will. The will spoke of me as “Evangelist Brian Williams of Acocks Green,” so must have been made at least 20 years ago, perhaps soon after the Crusade I had at Silloth — my first ever — in October or November, 1957. So she had faith in me from those very early days, and happily I have a tape-recording of her voice from all those years ago.

   Then there was a cheque for £340 from Arthur, and various other gifts in response to the newsletter, so I feel a lot of heat has been taken off us today. Praise the Lord.

   At Summerlands this morning I typed the letter to Tony Guy, checked a tape and erased two reel tapes on one of the Brenell machines, and helped Freda water the garden. After lunch I washed up while Freda painted the lamp-stand in the dining room. We left Summerlands at 2.15pm, stopped at Walton for petrol, then drove up the M5 as usual.

TUESDAY 30th SEPTEMBER 1980