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She’s just had sixteen days off from The Shining, whilst Jack Nicholson’s back recovered, but is now back on the 8.15 to 8 routine at Elstree. She very much wants to borrow my tape of ‘Eric Olthwaite’, which she raves about, to show Jack and Stanley. Now there’s a thought.

Wednesday, August 9th

What a silly business I’m in. In what other walk of life would a 35-year-old company director be signing his tax return for the year whilst dressed as a Jewish shepherd? This was my first full fitting of the costumes for Brian – the project which will affect my tax bill more than anything else in the next couple of years.

Friday, August 18th

At the TV Centre for the dub of’Roger of the Raj’.

A depressing day. The show still lacks the humour of ‘Tomkinson’ or the impact of ‘Olthwaite’, or the good old reassuringly familiar territory of ‘Murder at Moorstones’.’Roger’ is quite an ambitious little script and needs to be very tight to work. It still is loose and lazy in vital areas – the acting, some of the lighting and the serious dearth of close-ups, which could have been used to great effect.

So today needed patience, time and tolerance. None of these seemed to be forthcoming from the dubbing editor. He was brisk, rather curt, and gave the whole session an unenjoyable and uncreative tension.

But the faster and less patient he became, the more I dug my heels in, voicing every suggestion and every tiny idea. Then at eight in the evening – after nearly ten hours’ solid dubbing – it became obvious we’d need more time and, as the show wasn’t due to go out until probably 1980, it seemed that such a thing wouldn’t be out of the question! The editor suddenly brightened, admitted he was tired, and made various constructive suggestions that we should all have talked over at ten this morning when we started.

As had now become an almost annual event, we escaped for a few days to Mary and Edward’s rural retreat in the Lot Valley.

Wednesday, August 30th, France

Woke at a quarter to eight and creaked my way downstairs as noiselessly as possible and pulled open the big, old, well-weathered wooden front door of the house.

The grass and the surrounding fields were in shade, as the sun does not mount the trees on the hill behind until nearly ten o’clock at this time of year. But it was dry, as it has been every day, and crisply cool. Not a breath of wind stirs the trees. The only sound is a distant dog barking and a very cod cock crowing. Everything feels fresh, clean and renewed.

Monsieur Crapaud, as we have christened the warty-backed toad who lives down in the bathroom, is easing his way around the shower floor – and we gaze at each other for a moment as I sit on the lavatory. Then he makes his stretched, rubbery way towards the door, where he hangs a sharp right turn and crawls under the washing machine.

Then into my white shorts, socks, gym shoes and ‘Central Park’ T-shirt from Macy’s and begin my last pre-breakfast run. Up through the woods – an uphill start and very vicious – through gorse bushes on the path with freshly spun spiders’ webs catching at my face. But the nearer I get to the top of the hill, the nearer I get to the sun and to the open ground.

Finally out of the gloom of oak and sweet chestnut saplings, beneath tall pines and into a sun-filled field of maize in hard red earth. Three times round this uneven rustic race-track (with three sprints), then down the far side of the hill and across a ridge covered in blue anemones, with copses and small, irregularly shaped, irregularly stocked fields of maize and vines and weeds and pasture, where sheep with bells graze on either side. And hillsides empty of buildings stretch away to the north-east and south-west, their colours softened by the subtle haze of morning sunshine.

I drank it all in today – my last run through this Elysian countryside for a year or more.

We’ve been in France for eight and a half days. The weather so warm, dry and settled that I estimate we spent 16 hours every day in the open air. They were commonplace and unremarkable