Wednesday June 4, 1980

_. Extremely hot. Frank Dixon's operation was a success but only one [kidney] stone was removed. It's Bessie Dixon's 58th birthday. We sat in the garden drinking lager. Ally stormed around like an enraged puma, into the house to avoid the heat, and then out again. I sat in a deckchair beneath a tree observing the dramatic scene with amusement. Bessie told me, in strictest confidence that 'Alison is so like Frank's mother'. She said it with a face full of fear.

Swilling lager reading a women's magazine and an article on the 'idyllic' marriage of the hideous Dai Llewellyn and Vanessa Hubbard.

After a ham salad we went to Winchester. Ally spent her birthday money on oddments for Ash Tree Cottage [alias, 5, Club St]. The shops were the last place I wanted to be. We are so much happier when we have money.

Tonight we went to meet Graham and Gill at the Otter at Otterbourne. Back at 10:30 to the Plough at Itchen Abbas. Midge told Ally that her perm makes her face look 'softer'. I could tell from the moment we walked in that she was thinking of something suitably bitchy to say.

-=-