Up at 9.30. Ernest Blackwell is in for a cup of coffee with Dad and Sue, and I show him 'The Story of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor' by Ralph Martin (which I bought on Saturday by the way). The book is really excellent and I believe theirs is the greatest love story of all time. To give up the throne for a woman!
Back to this diary peeping lark. I was mad with Carole. Reading someone elses diary is like opening someone elses drawers and reading other peoples mail. It is worse in fact. However, I'll bear no grudges and continue to say horrible things about people whether they are reading it behind my back or not.
She rang me at 11am to ask if I still loved her. Of course I do. She must think I am a cruel swine. I love her in a silly sort of way really, and she is the only girl I have fallen for who didn't knock me off my feet at first sight. Strange really.
Today is Mark Phillips's 27th birthday. I am disappointed really. Twenty-seven years old, two years married life behind him, and still no grandchildren for the Queen. A fortune teller in one of the Sundays says Princess Anne is going to have a baby girl next year. I am no medium, and it certainly takes no magic powers to se that 1976 will see Princess Anne in the Olympics, and no offpsring will appear until late 1977, or even 1980.
Carole comes round with Maria at about 8.30. We sit and drink Campari in the dining room and I give Carole a free hand with the record player. We don't really have the same taste in music, but Tamla Motown is just about bearable. I walk her home at a ghastly late hour and then walk all the way back in a slight drizzle.
Leap into bed with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor which is a tremendous book.
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20100520
Sunday September 21, 1975
17th after Trinity. A very important day for this diary, as you will discover further down in this entry. I arose at about 11am and had no breakfast.
John is still quite ill, but he's getting rude, abusive and obnoxious with everyone again so he must be on the mend.
Whilst Mum is cooking lunch I go round to 'George's' and catch Carole dressed in nothing but a bath towell - very sexy. I lay on the sofa listening to the 'Abraxas' LP by Santana. Carole comes in and we lay in one anothers arms like lovers from some corny love story. 'George' joins us and entertains us by telling us Tchaikovsky's life story. I knew he was a queer, but that was all I could contribute really.
Home for lunch at 2pm. Beautiful it was too. The afternoon was very sunny, breezy and warm.
Carole and 'George' come round for coffee at about 3, and C and I had our photographs taken on the lawn. She walked with me to the bus stop at 4 and saw me off to Leeds where I worked until 10.30. I left one and a half hours early because I was bored sick. Ringing Carole at 8pm she mentioned that I kept a diary. Silence fell, and I then said: 'You've been reading it haven't you?' 'Yes' came the reply, and she announced she was going to bed early. I put down the phone and feel annoyed and embarrassed both at the same time. To think she's read all the things I've said about her, before I even thought anything about her. I've called her a 'bitch' and all sorts. However, on reading my diary in the first place she has committed the biggest offence. I left at 10.30 and was home for 11.15. Carole is at our place and seems subdued. Everyone departs to bed leaving us to discuss things. We are both upset, me for writing such things in the first place, and she for reading it. Walked her home at 1am.
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John is still quite ill, but he's getting rude, abusive and obnoxious with everyone again so he must be on the mend.
Whilst Mum is cooking lunch I go round to 'George's' and catch Carole dressed in nothing but a bath towell - very sexy. I lay on the sofa listening to the 'Abraxas' LP by Santana. Carole comes in and we lay in one anothers arms like lovers from some corny love story. 'George' joins us and entertains us by telling us Tchaikovsky's life story. I knew he was a queer, but that was all I could contribute really.
Home for lunch at 2pm. Beautiful it was too. The afternoon was very sunny, breezy and warm.
Carole and 'George' come round for coffee at about 3, and C and I had our photographs taken on the lawn. She walked with me to the bus stop at 4 and saw me off to Leeds where I worked until 10.30. I left one and a half hours early because I was bored sick. Ringing Carole at 8pm she mentioned that I kept a diary. Silence fell, and I then said: 'You've been reading it haven't you?' 'Yes' came the reply, and she announced she was going to bed early. I put down the phone and feel annoyed and embarrassed both at the same time. To think she's read all the things I've said about her, before I even thought anything about her. I've called her a 'bitch' and all sorts. However, on reading my diary in the first place she has committed the biggest offence. I left at 10.30 and was home for 11.15. Carole is at our place and seems subdued. Everyone departs to bed leaving us to discuss things. We are both upset, me for writing such things in the first place, and she for reading it. Walked her home at 1am.
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Saturday September 20, 1975
Wake at about 10.30 feeling a bit grotty. No doubt I am about to undergo the horror of pneumonia or tonsilitis like poor John.
At 1pm I go down to 'George's' and along with Carole the three of us go to Ramsden's for fish and chips, which were a bit sickly really. At 2 we get a bus to Leeds where we pass the afternoon. Three hours later we return home on a 33 bus with a pair of shoes for Carole and not much else really. I buy her a box of chocolates and she smiled so adoringly at me when I did so it makes me want to go on buying her things for ever and ever just to see the expression on her face. An incident on the bus was rather maddening. I had one of my rare cigarettes, and a man wearing a bright yellow hat took offence to my doing so. After a slanging match with us he calmed down a bit and began telling Maria why hate hated other people. We all realised he was stark raving mad.
Carole and I go to the Hare & Hounds where David, CD and Peter M join us. Andy and Linda are with us for half an hour or so, but they leave in order to continue with their sexual experimentations, one would certainly think so by the look on Andy's face. At 9.30 the 5 of us leave for the Edwardian Club in Bradford, which is a terrible looking place. We got out of the car and found ourselves knee deep in litter. Most of the slums in the area look like whore-houses and four of us flatly refused to enter the place. David was thus out-voted and we went to the Pentagon where I discovered that my trousers had split up the back. Home to 'George's' at 2am for cheese on toast.
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At 1pm I go down to 'George's' and along with Carole the three of us go to Ramsden's for fish and chips, which were a bit sickly really. At 2 we get a bus to Leeds where we pass the afternoon. Three hours later we return home on a 33 bus with a pair of shoes for Carole and not much else really. I buy her a box of chocolates and she smiled so adoringly at me when I did so it makes me want to go on buying her things for ever and ever just to see the expression on her face. An incident on the bus was rather maddening. I had one of my rare cigarettes, and a man wearing a bright yellow hat took offence to my doing so. After a slanging match with us he calmed down a bit and began telling Maria why hate hated other people. We all realised he was stark raving mad.
Carole and I go to the Hare & Hounds where David, CD and Peter M join us. Andy and Linda are with us for half an hour or so, but they leave in order to continue with their sexual experimentations, one would certainly think so by the look on Andy's face. At 9.30 the 5 of us leave for the Edwardian Club in Bradford, which is a terrible looking place. We got out of the car and found ourselves knee deep in litter. Most of the slums in the area look like whore-houses and four of us flatly refused to enter the place. David was thus out-voted and we went to the Pentagon where I discovered that my trousers had split up the back. Home to 'George's' at 2am for cheese on toast.
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20100519
Friday September 19, 1975
A wet, unpleasant day. Work was quite busy and I was glad to make good my escape at 4.30. The girls are not in when I get home, and I'm told that Lynn and Dave have gone off with the Baker family to Whitby for the weekend. Grief, they aren't home for two minutes before they're off again.
John came home from work rather early and is propping up the tea table and looking far from well. I am dumbfounded to hear he isn't going out tonight, and am even more stunned to see him stagger upstairs to bed at about 6.30. John ill isn't natural at all. He was never designed to be bed-ridden. I loathe it when he's off colour.
I go to Carole's at 8 and sit watching the television with her horrid 11-year old brother until 8.20. (Dave L dropped me off at C's incidentally). Chat with Mrs P and I like her a lot. Now I know where Carole gets her character.
To the Hare and Hounds. Quiet really, and only Dave L, Keith and Helen, CD, and C. Smith are present. At 9.30 we all go to the New Inn. My first view of what could be my future home, and I'm quite surprised really. Cosy with great prospects and I'm warmed within to think it's not a rough hole in the ground. Back to the Hare for a final drink before going to Wikis which is incredibly dead. Everyone leaves at 1am except for Carole, CD, and me, and I suffer the horror of walking up, or rather scaling Thorpe Lane in torrential rain. Frogs and toads were leaping around everywhere, and I felt far from jovial.
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John came home from work rather early and is propping up the tea table and looking far from well. I am dumbfounded to hear he isn't going out tonight, and am even more stunned to see him stagger upstairs to bed at about 6.30. John ill isn't natural at all. He was never designed to be bed-ridden. I loathe it when he's off colour.
I go to Carole's at 8 and sit watching the television with her horrid 11-year old brother until 8.20. (Dave L dropped me off at C's incidentally). Chat with Mrs P and I like her a lot. Now I know where Carole gets her character.
To the Hare and Hounds. Quiet really, and only Dave L, Keith and Helen, CD, and C. Smith are present. At 9.30 we all go to the New Inn. My first view of what could be my future home, and I'm quite surprised really. Cosy with great prospects and I'm warmed within to think it's not a rough hole in the ground. Back to the Hare for a final drink before going to Wikis which is incredibly dead. Everyone leaves at 1am except for Carole, CD, and me, and I suffer the horror of walking up, or rather scaling Thorpe Lane in torrential rain. Frogs and toads were leaping around everywhere, and I felt far from jovial.
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Thursday September 18, 1975
Pleasant day at work. At about 4 o'clock I decided to do a bit of research into the whole business of the State Opening of Parliament lark. Getting out the files for this event from 1952 I attempt to draw up a list of them all, and several interesting facts arose. 1952 to 1974 means 22 state openings, or so one would think. However, only 20 state openings have taken place in the Queen's reign. In 1959 Her Majesty didn't open Parliament at all due to the fact that she was expecting the birth of Prince Andrew, and instead the Lord Chancellor the Earl of Kilmuir read her speech from the steps of the throne in the House of Lords. The other occasion when a state opening did not take place was March 12, 1974. You may well remember that Uncle Harold had just been returned to No 10, and the Queen had to fly from Australia to let him kiss her hands. Because of the suddeness in the rise of Uncle Harold's fortune, the necessary arrangements for the regalia to be cleaned and polished could not be reached on time, and so it came to pass that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II went to Parliament wearing her best Sunday dress and sitting in her Rolls-Royce, to read little Harold's prepared speech. These spectacular splashes normally take place normally take place in the chilly days of late October or early November, and once she opened Parliament on November 5 - Gunpowder, Treason and Plot and all that, &c. However, the eratic ways of our beloved Prime Ministers over the years have deemed it necessary for HM to ride to Westminster once in April, on her 40th birthday in 1966; once in June, once in July, and as I've already said, once in March. Aren't I a clever lad? Being able to fill a whole page with such a distant, uncontroversial topic. And what is more, I could go on for more pages in a similar way. For instance, did you know in 1956 Princess Margaret made history by being the first sister of a reigning Sovereign to accompany the monarch to the State Opening of Parliament? And did you know that the State Opening..... (Cont page 94)
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20100510
Wednesday September 17, 1975
Out again on the town tonight - the sixth night in a row. Carole thinks I'm becoming besotted with her, and I suppose that is why, in her drunken state, she rambled on about love and marriage._____________. I quake in my boots at the thought of marching down the aisle with her. Hell, I'm only twenty years old!
Not wishing to cause any relious strife amongst my readers I'd just like to say that Miss Phillips is a member of the Roman Catholic faith. I am not complaining of course, but me being a terrible mixture of C of E, Methodist, Congregationalist and Hindhu does confuse matters. I may even have to renounce all these for the papist dogma, if I do heed the advice of Miss Phillips, and take her down the aisle, and replace Her Majesty the Queen with His Holiness the Pope in my affections. However, I hope that day never dawns when this last, grotesque transfer of loyalty takes place.
Down to the Hare and Hounds again, and we don't really say much to each other.____________. I laugh at her, and it begins to rain as we walk to Harry Ramsden's for fish and chips. Home at 12.30 feeling decidedly damp.
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Tuesday September 16, 1975
Arrive home at tea time to receive a surprise indeed. Dave B, all nicely suntanned, is stood with John on the drive, and the friendly squeals of Lynn and Sue drift from the kitchen! We were not expecting them until tomorrow night. Lynn bought me a bottle of Campari and John a bottle of Pernod. It sure was great to see them all again. Mum was quite flustered and rushed around cooking a meal for everyone. It was just like old times again. No sooner had tea subsided that we started opening a few bottles, and shortly after that I was speaking to Carole on the phone. She came round at 8pm, and Auntie Hilda and Uncle Tony arrived at just about the same time. We had a few glasses of pernod, and David B took us down to the Hare & Hounds. Just David, Lynn, Carole, me, Christine D, and John & Maria were in. We all came back to Pine Tops at 11pm to continue with the party spirit. Carole became rather intoxicated, and she spilled a drink on me and another one all over the dining room carpet. I walked her round to the Macdonald residence, where she stays more often than at home. _____________________. Even marriage was discussed! That was rather close to the bone, and I only hope the soberness of morning will make her see things in a different light.
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