Friday December 29, 1978

New Moon 19:36

Margaret made a cup of milky tea and I was almost sick over Fieldhead Road. Snow and ice. Susan and Peter brought me home at 11:30am. I collapsed into bed.

Mum woke me at 4:30 for a curry. I then laid in a chair and stared glumly into the television set. Do you know I haven't been into a pub for a drink of alcohol for almost a week? Am I perhaps cracking up?

Mummy seems to think I am exceptionally quiet but why should I always be acting like a circus act or member of the Royal Shakespeare Company? I just want solitude and quiet. Peter and Susan are in a similar frame of mind.

Dad took to his bed at 8pm saying he had 'flu. Mum doesn't look much better.

On the hosiery counter until Day of Judgement

Poor Uncle Albert died 9 years ago today at Pudsey. I remember crying like a baby whilst doing my paper round. Isn't death a useless, wasteful end? God should perhaps devise a way whereby at the age of 70 everybody goes instead to work on the hosiery counter at British Home Stores, or take up Involuntary Service until the Day of Judgement. Think how beneficial we all would be to the economy? No, on second thoughts, I'd rather just fester away.

When you think about it he (God) has everything worked out, hasn't he?

-=-

Wednesday January 4, 1978

_.The Christmas tree came down tonight and the festival of Yuletide is well and truly done for another year.

Marita: premonition.

Marita gave me a lift to Rawdon from Wellington Street and she told me that her grandfather had died on Dec 27, and that she had a premonition of the event whilst at David's on Boxing Day. How can such a phenomena be explained? When the nursing home phoned on the morning after the party she knew before answering the call just what the news would be. Weird really.

_______. You'll be pleased to know my scars have just about healed over. My nose is slightly marked at the bridge but elsewhere is mended. Dom Melville's final interview with my assailant was a travesty of justice. In fact he took the side of the lad who assaulted me, saying he (Kirk) 'is a nice, quiet lad.'



-=-

Tuesday May 31, 1977

CB: completely flattened

A horrible, sad day. Christine rang at about 10 and said she wouldn't probably be able to attend my Silver Jubilee party. She sounded so strange, and her voice was full of sadness. I asked why, and she told me her father had died yesterday evening. I was thoroughly lost for words and shocked. She cried a bit and I think I blurted something about going to see her straight from the YP and then put the phone down.

I last saw poor Mr Braithwaite on April 29 and to think I will never see him again leaves me cold. Death is a wicked thing. In CB's shoes I'd just fall to pieces.

Left work at 4.30. Marita picked me up on Wellington Street. I told her the news and questioned her as to whether it's quite right calling in on somebody so soon after a tragedy. She thinks it can well be a comfort and so I'm encouraged. Christine is ashen faced and quiet. She hasn't quite grasped what has happened yet. Mrs B was sat smoking and did not stop talking. In fact both of them were constantly chattering about irrelevant topics and only when a lull in the conversation occurred it became obvious that they're acutely distraught. Christine's eyes were full of tears. The poor things are completely flattened. God knows what they'll do. Mr B was always the life and soul of the party -  & even I, who barely knew him, thought of him as a kind, warm and tremendous character.

CB brought me home at 5.30 and the whole family offered some sympathy and comfort.

Although the evening was sunny and bright I felt cold & miserable.

I rang Carole at lunchtime but only her obnoxious boss was in. Said I'd ring back but never got round to it.

Tony rang at 8 to say he's finally received communication from Denise in Australia. _____________.

Just watched TV until midnight and thought constantly of poor Christine and her mother. Even Lynn, who'd been working at the Hare, reports that they've all heard the news. To bed with Anne Boleyn by Marie Louise Bruce.

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Wednesday July 30, 1975

In just over one weeks time I will be boarding an aeroplane for the very first time. Obviously, I'm longing for a holiday, but I'm not all that sure about flying. Never experiencing anything like it before I cannot be afraid, because one can only be worried about something if one knows what that something is. I do not. People say it's similar to being on a waltzer at a fairground, or riding on a double-decker bus down a badly constructed road, but 300 people do not die instantly when a bus runs out of petrol, and neither are people dashed to death on a fairground ride. That is my worry. Don't get me wrong. I'm not scared of dying. I just want to die in better circumstances that's all. Is not wanting to drop 30,000 feet out of the sky onto a sun-scorched moutnain range a fear of dying? I don't think so. I want to die in bed, sometime in the middle of the next century, surrounded by weeping, middle-aged grandchildren.

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Tuesday May 20, 1975

Hot day. At lunchtime I have a few photographs taken for my ten year passport. They look really grotty, but not all that bad when you think it costs about £2 to be photographed by a cravat-wearing Old Etonian with a lisp and double-barrelled name for something very similar, but probably a bit more glossy. Don't take this as an insult to Lord Snowdon please, because nothing was further from my mind. OK, he may be an Old Etonian with a camera, but he doesn't lisp, and hasn't worn a cravat in donkey's years.

At 4.30 armed with a bottle of Lucozade I marched on Leeds Infirmary and threw myself upon my ailing aunt, the one and only Mabel Paine. I didn't recognise her at first because she seems to have lost a good deal of weight since we last met, but otherwise she was very cheerful. The thought of having cancer worried her to death (Oops) of course, but they've assured her now that it's all clear. No more treatment required, and by Sunday she'll be a free woman again. I really despise hospitals. The smells and the general lay-out make me weak at the knees. It was so nice to get out into the fresh air at about 6 o'clock - away from the stench of death and illness. I only hope to God that I'll never have to spend any length of time in such a place. Mind you, by the time I'm 60 they'll have done away with hospitals and they'll be injecting OAPs with cyanide. The nice, easy way out.

See 'Edward VII' at 9 o'clock, and retire at 11.

-==-

Thursday September 13, 1973

Grandfather's send off. Go to Benton Park in the morning and come home at 12.0. Mother, Dad and I leave for Pudsey to collect grandfather's oldest friend, Joe Dickinson. He seems upset when he gets in the car, and Dad diplomatically keeps him talking to prevent him dwelling on the sadness. Arrive at Liversedge, or was it Heckmondwike (?) at 1.30. The four of us go for a coffee. See Uncle Harry at 1.45.

The day is somewhat cold and overcast and the five of us go into the local park in order to kill time before 2.30. Auntie Janet comes running into the park to tell us that Auntie Jadwega is coming on the bus (from Nottingham) to Heckmondwike, where we can then meet her. By 2.30 she is still nowehere to be seen. We can do nothing but leave for the chapel of rest without her. Uncle Joe, Auntie Ethel, Jeremy and Janet and young Nicholas are coming down the street with Uncle John and Auntie Sheila. Arrive chapel for brief prayers. Grandma, looking very brave, with her sons, arrives. Thus, we are all assembled. Still no Auntie Jadwega.

Go to the crematorium, where Auntie Dorothy is waiting. No Uncle Les or family. Terrible service - the Salvation Army. It's not as though I have any prejudice against the Salvation Army, but they made it such a theatrical affair. It's not as if Grandfather ever possessed a tamborine. The cremation was terrible. All ultra-modern and repulsive.

It appealed very much to my sense of humour when, at the end, a hymn came on the record player and the curtains were drawn across the coffin. Somewhat like a Dave Allen sketch on tv. One cannot beat a good traditional burial. Auntie Janet was screaming at the end.

Leave at 3.10 for Grandma's at Nelson St, Liversedge, where about 20 members of the Rhodes family are gathered. Auntie Dorothy went immediately home of course. Pandemonium! Auntie Jadwega arrived in a taxi at 3.15 - all in black with a massive black umberella. (She's the Polish-born wife of Dad's brother, Uncle Bert). She was very distressed of having missed the funeral of her father-in-law. Still half in and half out of the taxi she was shouting in her thick Polish accent: "Oh I could cry. We go first to Wakefield, then to Barnsley Oh so slowly. I vos so mad." The noise she was making had everybody out on the street and Grandma with Auntie Janet came to investigate. She bounded from the car and embraced Grandma. "Oh I am so fumigated!" (I think she meant to say she was 'fuming' with rage and not fumigated.) Poor Auntie Eddy (her nickname) had come all the way from Nottingham only to remain at Grandma's for 10 minutes, clutching her big umberella between her massive knees. I think she must be 16st.

Anyway, I hope she really didn't mean 'fumigated' or else our house is lousy today. I may joke, but I love her really. Leave at 3.45. Take poor Joe Dickinson home and bring Auntie Jadwega back to Pine Tops for tea. Spend a quiet night. Mum is being experimented on by Aunt Jadwega, who is a masseuse.

After Dad had taken Eddy for her train at 8 he went out for a drink with Mum and Uncle Harry, my favourite uncle on Dad's side of the family. They came home at 12.0. with loads of drink, and we all sat until 2am. Uncle H stayed the night.

What a day!

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