Sunday January 27, 1980

_. 3rd Sunday after Epiphany

Up at 10. Ally took me to Manningham Lane and then she went to the Belfry. Spent 44p on a bus fare just to take me to Hawksworth Lane. Bloody ridiculous. At home I brewed lashings of hot tea for my slumbering family. It was like a scene from 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', bodies in all the bedrooms. I sat with the Sunday papers, wobbling and pulsating. Philip Ziegler has been commissioned to write the official biography of Earl Mountbatten of Burma and is to have access to the Royal Archives and the Broadlands papers. I have read Ziegler's 'William IV' which is excellent.

It is impossible to escape from reading about the steel strike. Big deal. So, they've stopped making cutlery. Don't most people just use fingers these days? My chain of thought was broken by my father snoring loudly. I am sure that the gas fire cannot be right. People are seldom conscious in the sitting room, at any time of the night or day.

Ally arrived at 3:30 and we all dined together. Tonight we watched 'The Misanthrope' by Moliere, but I found it a silly play. But before act 3 at least four members of the family were unconscious, and Ally left before she could fall victim to the gas fire. Later watched a profile on Robert Runcie, the new archbishop of Canterbury. To bed at 11:15 with a filthy novel.

-=-