An Autobiography of an Ancient Athlete & Antiquarian

AUTOBIOGRAPHY and others in the "Wilhelmina," one of the new skimming dish-type boat, over Hickling. . On 27th August at Beeston I made 32 hits out of 48 for r ro, which with what little I made, as usual at 80,. brought me up to 127. Next day I began to move into 28, Surrey Street, in doing up which I had spent some hundreds, and slept there by myself on 28th, 29th and 31st. Not hearing any hooters or early noise as at St. Leonard's I congratulated myself on comparative quiet, but I had yet to learn of the piano, and the intolerable and wanton noise caused by the rowdy inmates of the Girls' Friendly Society opposite. From early morning to late at night the inmates, mostly servants out of place, were simply allowed to run loose. They played (?) on the piano by thumping it at the bass and treble with their elbows, sang most unmelodiously at all hours, and nightly had a steeplechase over chairs. They succeeded in getting me out of the house after a shorter stay than I bad ever made in one place. I can't say I was as sorry to leave the heights of St. Leonard's as I bad been to leave my Hampstead houser It certainly was a most interesting site, with jts great mysterious well. which I shrewdly suspect to be Roman, its memory of a great Roman coin found in the garden, the ruins of the Old Priory, and its absolutely unrivalled view down on to the city which lies under it. But it was the most exposed and windy site in the city, and many a night ihave the gales kept us awake by beating fiercely on the windows and depositing a salt coating carried over the land from the sea. Then again, the way up from the road was terribly steep and bad for a man who thought he had heart trouble, and the so.il of the hillside poor in the extreme, to an extent which made good gardening almost impossible, except for poppies, for the manure lavishly applied one week was washed down the steep hill the next week. The giant parsnip or false celery was the only thing which flourished in it, and it did flourish. On the rst September we all moved in. On the 3rd I again did fairly well at the Smallburgh Meeting, and on the rrth improved a bit more, doing 132 at the Woodgate Meeting. After many months abstinence from port I had three glasses, but they were from a real cellar. First saw Dr. Hales, of Holt, a very nice Dr. Johnsonian man.