Fires on alternate nights now, which isn’t so very, very bad, and the weather is slowly improving. Extraordinary how the weather affects my spirits. I had a telegram from Mamma who had remembered my birthday, which is splendid, for somehow I hate its being forgotten. She never remembers till Nan reminds her. But the football, it is enough to kill one. Would you believe it--but J. W. P. gave me a long jaw on the “hopelessness” of my having a bad circulation, because I habitually wore a sweater underneath my waistcoat: It’s a filthy habit, I know, but he drives one on to it with his allowance of fires, and then he tries to blame one: it is an outrage. 1 November. It is freezing again, bad luck to it. B. G. and I in the morning went up to Windsor and got some electioneering pamphlets from the Committee Rooms, and have posted them all over Noat, including the Volunteers’ Notice Board and the School Office and the Library. Later I put them up all over the House notice boards, which scored a glorious rise out of “those that matter.” These people are really too terribly stodgy; they have no sense of humour, though they did faintly appreciate the pamphlet on the maids’ door which said that Socialism was bent on doing away with marriage. This afternoon I had to read fifty pages of mediæval history, which has left my brain reeling and helpless: it is too absurd making one learn all about these fool Goths and Vandals: they ceased to count in practical politics some time ago now, so why revive them? 11 November. Have just conceived the idea of having a gallery of all the people I loathe most at Noat to be pasted up on the door of my room, which has been denuded of the rules of the Art Society since I spent a frenzied afternoon changing the room slightly. Smith, the master, crosses his cheques with a ruler. One comes across something amazing every day here. This is the coldest day I have ever met at Noat, and a very thick fog thrown in, greatly conducive to misery, but strangely enough I am most cheerful, having written a tale called _Sonny_, which is by far the best I have done so far. 15 November. Quite the most wonderful day of my life. It was polling day, so after two o’clock (a saying lesson so we got out early), B. G., Seymour and I went to Strand caparisoned all over with Conservative blue and with enormous posters. When we reached Strand, we found all the Socialist working-men-God-bless-them drawn up in rows on either side of the street, so we three went down the rows haranguing. We each got into the centre of groups, and expected to be killed at any moment, for there is something about me that makes that type see red. However, they contained themselves very nicely while we talked nonsense at them.