Sunday February 17, 1980

_. Quinquagesima

Leapt from my bed at 11 in a state of turmoil. I felt as through my throat had been opened with a bread knife. At breakfast I was bombarded, attacked even, from all sides, on the subject of my mindless attitude regarding the 'racket' last night. Even Dad was annoyed. He usually sits munching on breakfast cereal, his mind on greater things, like the state of the nation, President Tito's leg, and the twenty third heart transplant carried out this week. He said that when he was lying up in his bed in the dark, he really thought that Dave and I had brought an Indian elephant into the house. 'Why Indian elephant?' I enquired: 'Are they more heavy footed than the African variety?' It didn't go down well. He snarled and growled, and said that he didn't like been woken up by a circus act in the dead of night. Poor Rowan, the setter. Now banned from Pine Tops.

In the midst of the barrage of abuse I received a phone call from Jacq requesting my presence at the Commercial where she is taking dear, dear Trixie. I walked down to Esholt in the Spring sunshine. Spent a couple of hours in the company of Jacq and her increasingly attractive mother. Paul wasn't anywhere to be seen and we did not discuss him. At 2 I walked back home, in shirt sleeves.

Squabbled with Dad about his brutal pruning of the climbing rose tree which, in happier times, surrounded my bedroom window.

Marlene and Frank arrived with Auntie Mabel and the children. We sat for a few hours pulling other relations to pieces.

Ally collected me at 7. We went to the Fox, where we bumped into Martyn and Peter Mather. We followed them to the Fox at Bramhope, a place I have never liked. Met Chris R, Tony B and Linda [of Brands Hatch fame], who is with a new boyfriend but is still the same hilarious girl.

-=-