Showing posts with label yorkshire ripper. Show all posts
Showing posts with label yorkshire ripper. Show all posts

20200330

Sunday November 18, 1979

_. Wet day. In bed again until after 1pm. Ally and I had 'breakfast' and sat with Mama. Papa was out on police business, no doubt truncheoning the youths of Guiseley. Later we went for a walk in the freezing rain and got a thorough soaking. Back at home we toasted ourselves before the gas fire. Ally was persuaded to stay the night because of the cold and the lurking Yorkshire Ripper. We watched TV until 12:30.

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20200128

Tuesday September 18, 1979

_. Hectic day at the YP. Sarah is ill now. ______. Home at 4:30 on the bus with the new EP reporter, Hopkiss or Hopkins. He's only 19 and makes me feel quite elderly. He says he is allergic to alcohol, which makes me laugh behind my newspaper. A reporter with an allergy to alcohol is like a prostitute who is allergic to sex.

Dad announces that he is now on the 'Ripper Case' for three days a week. The fiend doesn't stand a chance now. It will all be over by Christmas. I cannot imagine that the mass murderer is a Guiseley chap. Mum was horror-struck when I suggested that it might be advantageous for Dad if the murderer kept his head down for three years until Dad retires. Wouldn't it be a doddle? Nobody found this remotely amusing.

JPH came for dinner, and is slightly better than yesterday. As he left, the child said: "See you, Shortie."  Such a witty child.

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20190723

Thursday September 6, 1979

_.Uncle Harry arrived this morning at dawn and I had an encounter with him in the steam filled bathroom. He is so thin, and emaciated, like Gandhi in fact.

To work really early, which shocked Kathleen. At lunchtime to Da Mario's with Sarah and Eileen, and had a good nosh, but spent almost four English pounds, far too excessive.

Tonight Uncle Harry wanted to eat fish and chips. The seclusion of a broken down caravan on the windswept coast of Cumbria is no place for an intelligent Yorkshireman wo actually understands the problems of the Middle East and Palestine. He should perhaps be President Carter's secretary of state. I was so impressed by his knowledge of the Balfour Treaty of 1922. Poor Harry like many Rhodeses is wasted. A life of ridiculous waste. Am I going in the same direction perhaps?

Jim, Margaret, Lynn, Dave and Ally came over. We all discussed the dreaded Yorkshire Ripper, and attacked again on Monday in Bradford. Ally seems to have taken it very much to heart. She's terrified.

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20190618

Wednesday August 29, 1979

_. Warm and sunny. We chopped down the hideous lilacs in the garden and watch the suffocating conifers breathe a sigh of relief. Dad loves nothing more than hacking away in the undergrowth. He has several very 'Yorkshire Ripper-like' instruments, varying from heavy hammers, to butchery utensils and the usual tools associated with a journeyman joiner. Although I consider myself a tree conservationist I am happy with the result.

Went to the YP at 5pm. Had mounds of filing to do. Saw Charles who didn't seem too bad after the orgy last night. I do not envy him going off to Borneo with Linda Shaw. The YP was a waste of time.

Home in a taxi at 12. The driver was insignificant and lacking in colour. Obviously Jewish and addicted to tobacco. We discussed the weather and the current performance of Leeds United, which left me as cold as Karl Marx. I don't give a damn about Ray Hankin or John Hawley, or whether Adamson should sell them or not.

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20170314

Tuesday April 10, 1979

_.  Jim Rawnsley insists that the so-called Yorkshire Ripper is none other than the Earl of Harewood, our ugly royal opera fanatic. Jim's theory is that he [the Ripper] has to be a member of the Royal Family in the tradition of Jack the Ripper, of Victorian London, who undoubtedly was Edward, Prince of Wales. I smiled at all this as we journeyed to Leeds because Jim expounds his theory in such a charming and amusing way. Wouldn't it be marvellously embarrassing for the YP if this was so? Whilst the fiend was in the boardroom swilling gin and humming along to Wagner with Gordon Linacre, forty thousand journalists are scouring the county searching for clues. Sadly, the identikit mug shots of the supposed mad man bear no resemblance to his Lordship. Another likely candidate, according to Jim, is Brigadier Kenneth Hargreaves, the former Lord Lieutenant of this charming, picturesque county.

I am enraged and spitting blood at the bloody civil servants strike, which is affecting the payment of my national savings certificate. I need £120 in May [to pay for my holiday] and things don't look very bright at all. The pigs wouldn't be on strike at all if only this country had the proper leadership. What are we coming to, for God's sake?

I have been reading my journal from five years ago and do you know I seem to have been more intellectual and mature than I am now. Writing about Napoleon III and his social policy I was. Blimey, it's quite frightening but I've already forgotten most of my history and Napoleon III means little or nothing to me now. Is my brain rotting away?

Mum and Dad went off to see Marlene and then Mabel after tea. They say they will lend me the £120 until my national savings money arrives.

Sue is full of cold again and her nose is glowing like a furnace. Pete arrived and we watched the Academy Awards on TV.

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20130121

Tuesday February 7, 1978

New Moon 14:54.  Shrove Tuesday.

Duke of Clarence.
Frantic day at the YP. Had an interesting conversation with the cartoonist 'Speed' about Jack the Ripper. He says that the Freemasons did away with the prostitutes to cover up the fact that the Duke of Clarence had married a prostitute - and a Roman Catholic one at that - and that a child had been born of the union. He went on to say that the baby, a daughter, grew up to be the image of her grandmother Queen Alexandra, and like HM was as deaf as a post too.  Very interesting and quite laughable.  I do like old 'Speed'. His theories on many topics are never without large loopholes and are always open to comment.

Jack the Ripper.
'News at Ten' were filming in the office today for something in connection with the activities of the current (Yorkshire) Ripper. One of the victims wrote to Malcolm Barker three and a half years ago complaining about the conditions of foster children in Leeds and now she's on a mortuary slab. Fame for the EP once again.

News: Builders have unearthed Kign Henry VIII's palace of Bridewell in Fleet Street; Lady Sarah Spencer's first christian name happens to be Elizabeth; its's Shrove Tuesday and I had six or seven pancakes for tea. More details later.

News from YTV. Yes, they've rejected my application. I am unaffected by it and suffer no damage to my ego. The loss is purely YTVs.


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20120805

Sunday June 26, 1977

3rd after Trinity.  After watching the sun rise above Ilkley Moor I decided to go out and investigate. A cuckoo summoned me from the heather (or was it in a tree?) and I pursued the calling for several miles up hill. I went up past the College of Education and past a white-washed cottage near a babbling stream where I lay down and snoozed. After some time I staggered back to the flat with a police patrol car keeping vigilance over me. It was about 6am when I got back and Tony was up and about. He was in fact opening all the letters he'd received this week from his bank manager. It was too much for me and I went to bed.
Ilkley Moor.

We ate eggs and bacon and fried bread at about 10 and then sat around saying what fools we are and how we should know better, &c.

Tony attempted to analyse Carole once more but I feel at times like this that he's got the whole thing wrong or else I'm a lunatic. He always comes to the conclusion that I am to blame for her unstable behaviour.

Home for 11. Lunch with the family. Watched the film 'The L-Shaped Room'. Passed into a coma in the chair and don't feel remotely ready to go in to the YP.

Down the lane at 4 and in the office for 5. Wendy worked tonight too.

Home with the taxi driver who once lectured me on snakes bite remedies. Tonight we discussed the latest Leeds (Ripper) murder and capital punishment. We agreed entirely and I am seriously thinking about nominating him for a parliamentary seat at the coming autumn general election (just a guess). The Taxi Party. Ah, yes, I can see it now. For a start I'd grow a small black moustache and then I'd exterminate all the Scots.

-==-

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...