Whereas my popularity had been rising over the period immediately prior to this, I now experienced a few set- backs. And it may be evidence that I was difficult to get on with at this time. Hitherto I had always regarded Graham-Wigan as my best friend at m'tutor's, but I now fell out with him. We had in fact been drifting apart for some while, with his own friendship firming up with Ganzoni, who was our mess-mate. What I disliked in particular was the way in which they tended to gang up against me, deriding my ideas or opinions. And G- Wigan himself had a sharply sarcastic tongue when it came to disagreement.

There was an occasion when we were alone in my room together and he was making his usual brand of derisory remarks. I suddenly felt that I'd taken enough of all this, and lashed out with my fists for several blows to either side of his head. He was sitting in my armchair at the time, and promptly curled up hedgehog- fashion. So he wasn't hurt, but the damage had been done and it took long to repair. He and Ganzoni later suggested that I find someone else to mess with next half: to which I replied that such was indeed my intention.

My own friendship with Adam Fergusson had been firming up recently, and I would have liked to persuade him to become my mess-mate. But he was reluctant to split from his present mess-mates, who were Cunliffe and Mander. This led to the development of my friendship with Richard Timpson, who had been messing on his own for some little while. And thenceforward it was Timpson and Fergusson whom I regarded as my best friends at m'tutor's.

There was now much ill feeling however between myself and my former mess-mates. Both parties were concerned to get others to appreciate how we had been wronged. And there was one factor which now turned against me, in that I lost the friendship of Simpson, who had recently been elected into Debate - as Senior Wet-bob. I believe he had been told by Hugh Lawson, who was the kind of new friend he had acquired from this transition of status within the tutor's, that he should distance himself from those of his former friends who were still a long way junior to the chance of getting elected into Debate; and his friendship with myself had in all probability been called into question. Anyway I now discovered that Simpson was putting on airs whenever we happened to meet, as if I should understand how etiquette demanded that he should keep his distance from me. But I responded to this unwisely with a sense of hostility and grievance, so that the coolness then became aggravated into dislike. And there were quite a few people, such as Parker minor and Thomas, his mess-mates, who accepted his judgement that I was difficult and unyielding. So this group now threw their support behind Graham-Wigan in his antagonism towards myself.

What really shook me however, was when a couple of halves later, it was G-Wigan rather then myself who got elected the first into Debate. Although he was in the remove above my own, he was a bit younger than myself, so I regarded this as a grave loss of face. And when rumour reached me that the decision to blackball me had been unanimous, it sank home just how unpopular I'd been making myself of late, within the groups senior to my own.

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