Wednesday January 11, 1978

Snow, gales and blizzards today. Went to the YP feeling peculiarly industrious and worked without a lunch break until 4:30. Marita brought me to Rawdon which was a help. I ate like a horse on getting home and felt bloated and uncomfortable afterwards.

More 'gush' in the morning papers about Prince Andrew and his 'sweetheart'. Editors throughout the kingdom must have tired of the firemen's strike and the prime minister's visit to India because front page news for a royal prince is quite rare these days.

Ernest Bishop: assassinated.

Reading 'The Scarlet Pimpernel' by that baroness. I really should have read this at 14 or 15 but in those days - Oh how far they seem off now - I was into the heavy volumes of reminiscences of lofty 18th century geezers and had no time for childish fiction.

A play starring Hugh Lloyd on BBC2 caught my attention. This was followed by Deborah Kerr in 'The Prisoner of Zenda', Oh and the assassination of Ernest Bishop on 'Coronation Street' shook the entire nation. The Queen has sent a personal message of sympathy to the surviving cast.

I intended having a bath but by midnight I was no nearer my watery end and I sat listening to the roar of a 70 mph gale on Hawksworth Lane. The late TV news featured our seasonal weather as the main item of information and Mama quivered from head to foot. My God! If we can't have a spot of nasty weather in January when can we? What do they down at the meteorological office expect? A bloody heatwave or something? A sandstorm or a drought? Weather, and talking about it, is the British disease.

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Sunday October 5, 1975

19th after Trinity. Today is the 20th birthday of Mr Michael Matthews. I wouldn't have realised this if I hadn't made a note previously to this effect at the head of the page. I must have marked it down at the beginning of the year. I don't even know his address since he moved to Scarborough.

After a brilliant lunch I ring Carole, who is at 'George's' still. She comes round here at 3 and we watch sexy Deborah Kerr in the 1916 film 'The Prisoner of Zenda'. Corny and cheap but amusing all the same.

Lynn, Dave, Carole and me walk to 'George's' in the hope of going for a ramble over the hills, but it begins to rain and we seek refuge at Dunedin, the Macdonald ancestral pile. I play the 'Kimono my house' LP by Sparks and we all listened to the top 20. After some of the Macdonald cheese on toast I depart forn home at 7.30 so that I can ready myself for the evenings onslaught.

Carole comes for me at 8.20 and after seeing half an hour of television we get a bus to the Hare (10p each!). It's still quiet and different in our favourite tavern. No CB - which is odd for Sunday. Carole and I sit arm in arm until nearly 11 o'clock and I feel bloated after all the lager. I decide to renounce it once and for all, and at the same time tell Carole that my nail-biting days are over. I walk Carole to 'George's' and we sit until after 12. I am incredibly fond of her and hope I have found somebody at last.

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