Wednesday February 21, 1979

_. Mother thinks that the bath is inflicted by a malignant disease, because a mysterious brown patch is slowly spreading over the previous white enamel.

My new hair goes down well at the YP. Sarah thinks it's gorgeous, and dark, sultry beauties throughout the office are flocking around me as though I'm Christopher Reeve.

Alexandra Bastedo: so beautiful.

Back home Mum says I look hideous and Sue, in a hail of laughter, says the whole family have clubbed together for my birthday to pay for me to fly to the U.S for a face-lift. Swines. They don't realise that at 24 I'm beginning to look haggard and baggy and that I need constant reassurance from family members. I need somebody, every day, to point out that I am a God in trousers, a living Jupiter. Ought I to be contemplating to settling down with a wifey, for a life of companionship? Or should I continue as I am in a life of dissipation? Answer: YES, BLOODY YES.

Ran down to Guiseley Library at 5 and picked up "Mrs Jordan" by Brian Fothergill ~ a biography of William IV's mistress. To bed at 11 after a night in front of the smouldering TV. Alexandra Bastedo is so beautiful. 'The Aphrodite Inheritance', a thriller series set in Cyprus, ended and with it my eight weeks affair with Miss Bastedo.



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Thursday February 15, 1979

_. Like most Britons I am now suffering from 'pnuemocallaghanicosis'. I have taken to my warm bed with a book.

Meanwhile, outside we are heading for a second ice-age. Giant mammoths & fur clad sabre tooth beasts are roaming around, and are quite the vogue. Old age pensioners, clutching red pension books, are being encased in glacial formations. Archaeologists in the year 4062 will be gasping and falling over themselves with delight on finding these perfectly preserved, if solid OAPs.

Debbie Harry.

Snuggled all day with the tale of Mrs Jordan and the Duke of Clarence, aka King William IV by Jean Plaidy. I will have to look at some serious work on this very interesting subject. I did read something years ago, before the ice came. I did emerge from my pit at tea time and later sat looking interested and alert with Jim and Margaret.

Saw Debbie Harry on Top of the Pops on the BBC and have decided that Miss Harry is perhaps the most perfect specimen of the female sex ever to have walked the planet. She is the twentieth century's answer to Helen of Troy, Lillie Langtry and Bessie Braddock.

To bed feeling slightly better but resolved not to attempt the YP tomorrow.






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Tuesday February 13, 1979

_. I am sniffling and glowing this evening undoubtedly struck down by a heavy cold. Dad says it is only to be expected the way I go around only half-dressed in the middle of winter. This is rubbish. Three hundred people at the YP are all sneezing and germ spreading and so it would be something of a miracle for me to escape.

Rubbish is piling up in the streets thanks to the striking refuse collectors. This filth could give us all the bubonic plague, or 'Black Death', and this would put my piffling, unassuming chill into perspective, wouldn't it?

[I do apologise that my handwriting is different because I am writing this in bed. ] I have laid hands on one of Mummy's books. It's by Jean Plaidy and entitled 'The Goddess of the Green Room' based on the life of Dorothea Jordan, mistress of King William IV. I don't usually read this slushy fiction, but after glancing at it I find it quite interesting. If anyone found me with it I'd go crimson. Surely, to read anything is better than not taking up a book at all?

Saw a bit of TV tonight and played cards with Susan and Peter. I just cannot stop sneezing.

The Queen is still in Kuwait and spent the day visiting oil fields. What else is there to look at?  We are told that the Prince of Wales is to spend a day at No 10, Downing Street and sit in a Cabinet meeting. This too is making history. The Queen is making sure that her successor will have some intimate political knowledge, and that an 'Edward VII' situation will never be repeated.

Heard on the late news that Reginald Maudling, the former Tory Cabinet minister, is on his last legs. His kidneys have given way.

To bed with Dorothea Jordan at 11pm.

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Tuesday June 27, 1978

Moon's last quarter 12:44

I have been looking at my ancient diaries to see what I have done on June 27 in previous years and it has left me quite sad and reflective. One thing's for sure ~ June 27, 1978 isn't going to say anything outstanding.

This day in 1830 was a different matter altogether. On June 27, 1830 King William IV was proclaimed throughout the land and the bells pealed, as did the potatoes, carrots, and mangold wurzels. Poor William IV was probably an idiot. He was unpopular, and his only claim to fame is that he sired scores of children to an actress, Dorothea Jordan ~ and they all took the surname FitzClarence (William had been Duke of Clarence). His wife, Queen Adelaide, produced 2 sickly daughters who died in infancy. William's demise in 1837 after a thoroughly unstable and feeble reign saw the accession of Victoria the Great ~ his niece.





Ode to William the Fourth

Poor William,
You were stupid,
I've often been told so at least,
I think you were best in the navy,
You're the King I remember the least.

Bum!Bum!

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