Showing posts with label king william IV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label king william IV. Show all posts

20170208

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.






-=-

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.

-=-



20130626

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!

-=-

20130315

Tuesday March 21, 1978

Royal Hotel, Bowness
Mama and Papa returned from the Cumbrian hills. They stayed at Bowness last night at the Royal Hotel, where Queen Adelaide, wife of William IV, once frequented. They are chucking money around like water these days. I am sure it's all for the best. Why stay enclosed in the same miserable four walls when the whole wide world is beckoning? Go on, Ma and Pa ~ go out and let them have it. (If all this is getting just a little too much for you just flick over a couple of pages until I'm back to normal again). Well, what do I have to say for myself today other than discuss the adventures of Mama and Papa? To be frank, nothing at all. I could say that it is the Tuesday before Easter and that I was born on the Tuesday before Easter 23 years ago. Here I am in my 24th year and I'm still a novice at everything with no money and even less ambition. I'm no further now in securing a place in society as I was ten bloody years ago. However, that is me. You've got me and I am afraid that you are all, each and every one of you,  going to have to make the best of me.

-=-

Sunday April 1, 1984

 4th Sunday in Lent Mothering Sunday New Moon Sunny, bright, &c. Smothering Sunday. All Fool's Day. Busy. Rob came and so too did th...