Monday April 2, 1979

_. Sarah is in a much better frame of mind. _____________. Queer weather we are having - snow, sunshine, rain, fog, and all in the space of half an hour. This did not deter me from pruning our roses trees this evening with my usual Percy Thrower-like gusto.

Jacq came at 7:30 to collect a dress from Motherdear and stayed until 11:30 watching a play about Martin Luther King on the TV. She seemed OK and we discussed the party next Saturday. I have said no to food, because the sausages and liver pate only gets trampled into the bedspreads and for weeks afterwards one tends to find peanuts and salmon sandwiches in inappropriate places. She agrees and decide to limit the function to just booze, and lots of it.

John phoned. They are coming down from Stranraer on April 11 because Maria is going for a scan to the Hyde Terrace Hospital. John is quite serious when he says it might be twins.

To bed at midnight with The Secret of Chimneys ~ and finish the book before slipping into a coma.

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Wednesday May 3, 1978

You won't believe this but today we actually experienced sunshine. At one point during the afternoon I was to be seen winding my way on foot from Rawdon to my home ~ without the benefit of waterproof garments of any kind and with only a thin woollen pullover to protect me from the elements. It was indeed a Spring day.

On the BBC 6 o'clock news Kenneth Kendall told us that Princess Margaret is in hospital with gastroentiritis, but no further information is forthcoming. Mum, suspicious as ever, asks me if I know exactly what is really wrong with Princess Margaret. She never believes anything she reads in the Press. She even suggests that Mr Llewellyn's exile to Morocco has caused HRH to make an attempt on her own life! This is unlikely. Princess Margaret and the Earl of Snowdon 'celebrate' 18 years of marriage on Saturday. I do feel sorry for her and the hellish two or three years she's experienced and my advice to the royal lady is get off to North Africa and legalise things with Roddy and tell this feeble country of ours to stuff their £50,000 per annum. Frankly, we don't deserve you, Margaret.

This evening I cut all the lawns (with a lawn mower of course) and then watched the tv until it exploded. My volume of Pepys was upstairs and I was so lazy I couldn't be bothered to go upstairs and bring it down.

Lynn came in at about 9. She's ill again. The poor girl is forever plagued with sickness, tummy aches, constipation, &c, and the doctor seems unable to do anything about it. It worries Mum a good deal. I told Lynn to eat prunes but nobody ever listens to my advice. A great deal of profitable, useful and highly informed information of mine is currently floating around in the atmosphere. Given time I do suppose that some alien power will pick up my signals and make radio contact.

Retire to Pepys, bed and sanity at 12:35am.

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Wednesday October 26, 1977

I was up at 7.30 today but decided to go straight back to bed. Phoned Sarah at 8.30 to inform her of my absence then retired to bed until after 10. I am just miserable, penniless and depressed and nothing on earth could have persuaded me to go into the YP today. I'm not often to be found in this state, but today was the exception.

Dad didn't go to work until 2pm and so we spent a couple of hours in the garden where I pruned most of the rose bushes whilst he foraged happily in the undergrowth.

My thoughts were of Carole throughout the day and I was virtually in a trance. Mum asked me to turn the cooker on and I accidentally turned the wrong nob and set fire to her best tea pot and burned her Formica work surface. I was on another planet.

Didn't see the point in phoning Chapel Allerton. They aren't doing anything until tomorrow and they are all busy people. I'll send some flowers on Friday or perhaps I'll hand them in at the hospital.

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