Tuesday February 1, 1977

Go to Pudsey at 12.30 to have lunch with Auntie Mabel. She makes a massive meal and gets great pleasure from stuffing me to bursting point. She shows me a pile of old newspapers including a copy of the Daily Herald from June '53 featuring the Coronation and a pathetic magazine of the love-match between Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon.

After the enormous lunch it's to Pudsey cemetery to find my great-grandparents Wood and Wilson. We're soon amidst the gravestones conducting a search of Pudsey's dead centre.

Sarah Ann Wood (1866-1926)

My Wilson grandparents have no headstone, and after an hour wallowing in the mud we find the Wood grave beneath a holly bush. My great-grandmother, Sarah Ann Wood (nee Carling) died December 22, 1926, aged 60 (born 1866?) and my great-grandfather, Harry Wood, died June 13, 1928, aged 69 (born 1859?). My great-uncle John Cyril James Wood, also in the tomb, died September 4, 1924, aged 19. An interesting find. Back to Mabel's for tea and a night in front of the TV. I'm sure she enjoyed today's macabre adventure. She was only a child when she last visited her grandparents' graves. Leave her at 9 o'clock and home by 10.