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he sees everything in terms of competition. Now he’s not so anxious to withdraw from the States to Ireland; he wants to start a third party with Dr. Spock. 9
    May Buckingham writes: “Dear old Morgan was taken ill in King’s, in Hall actually, a fortnight ago. His legs gave out but his mind was perfectly clear. We brought him here at his urgent request and he gradually got worse. This morning he died. We were able to look after him to the end, which was what he so wanted.”
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    June 16. Last night Don and I spent a good deal of time discussing whether or not we ought to go to the Writers Guild meeting—we neither of us wanted to and we were so snug lying on the bed watching T.V. and eating corn on the cob and fried eggplant. I argued that we actually should not vote against the strike because our motives were personal, we’d be simply voting against it as a personal inconvenience, and we were planning to get out of picketing anyhow, if we possibly could. This was maybe disingenuous but it convinced both of us. Later Jim Bridges called to say that he had arrived at the meeting to find that it had been dissolved without a vote, because someone had raised the alarm that there was a bomb planted in the room!
    Today, Jim tells me that there’ll be another meeting on Thursday night and that a strike vote seems nearly certain. As for the bomb[,] it must have been a particularly false false alarm, because the fire department wasn’t sent for and no one was cleared out of the rest of the hotel (the Beverly Wilshire). Jim says he heard that the meeting last night was very bitter on both sides. One can’t help wondering if the bomb scare wasn’t a trick to avoid the possible antistrike vote, relying on the fact that something of this kind can be blamed on the producers (vaguely) and so used to stir up hawkish sentiment. Also, when a vote is deferred, it is probable that a lot of people won’t show and thus leave the field clear for the determined minority which runs the guild most of the time without opposition. This all sounds fantastic, almost paranoid, and it’s characteristic of the present atmosphere in this country that I should be thinking such things even half seriously.
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    June 19. Jim Bridges has just called to tell me that the strike is off, at least temporarily; he doesn’t know any details. Of course I am delighted. No excuses to be made, no sulks to be sulked. I can get on with the book, which is all I want at present; and it begins to look as if it may be shorter than I expected. I may even get through Frimley in one and a half chapters and Limerick about the same, which would mean six chapters in all, including the three about Wyberslegh and Marple. Then, surely, there would be only two more to finish the book.
    Dr. Allen rather tiresomely discovered that my cholesterol count is too high and said I must go on a diet. And Dr. Ashworth says my contracture is slightly worse and must be closely watched.
    Yesterday a man from the BBC in London named John Drummond called me about a program they are doing on Morgan (he wants me to do a bit of it) and told me that Gerald Hamilton died, on the 17th. Now I feel sorry I didn’t get in touch with him before I left London. I don’t give a damn whether or not he swindled us—though I would love to know, simply out of curiosity. But I do remember all the fun we had together. He had a very cozy personality and an animal innocence, you felt he was only acting according to his nature.
    The day before yesterday, Don had a conversation with Irving Blum. Don has been so miserable lately, feeling that his life is all wrong, not at all what he would have wished for himself, that he isn’t free, that he’s getting old and ugly and, above all, that he is coming to the end of the kind of drawing he has been doing and doesn’t know what to do next. All these statements are unanswerable, because if he believes them