Thursday January 28, 1982

Nellie [left] and Edna Rhodes.

 Black morning. Lay moaning beneath my quilt.

The rail strike continues. At the YP I took at 10 minute lunch break so to escape from the office at 4. Sunny, warm day - Cornish pasty in Park Square.

After lunch Ally phoned from home. She felt faint at the office and has a crippling tummy ache, and is now snuggled down with a book. __________. What will be, will be.

Wrote to my spinster cousins Edna and Nellie Rhodes, twins, who live in Bramley. I picture two sweet old dears not unlike the ladies in 'Arsenic and Old Lace'. It's a little sad writing to cousins, living not ten miles away, whom I have never met. Dad says that his memory of them in the 1950s is that they were very smart, strait-laced old things. Will they tell me where their grandfather, John Rhodes, was born in 1866?

Home at 5. Daylight. Ally in some pain and very weak. We had a pizza. Lynn phoned to report that Christine Airey has given birth to a son. _______________.

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Wednesday January 27, 1982

 No desire to climb out of bed, but we must. I should appreciate my job. It would be quite wrong to pack it in and lay, idle, when the country has 48,000,000 unemployed school leavers. No point in moping. Perhaps Mrs Thatcher should hand over the running of the railways to the unemployed. That would put the wind up Ray Buckton. Perghaps they should force the ASLEF members onto the lifeboats and let them see what it's like doing a proper job. Michael Rhodes, 26, is insane.

The BBC is on the slippery slide. I see little difference between the nine o'clock news and ITN's 'News at Ten'. Is nothing sacred? The Princess of Wales brings cheer to the hearts of this largely sombre nation by smiling up refreshingly from the front page of today's Times. HRH is appearing on stamps throughout the Commonwealth to celebrate her 21st birthday on July 1.

Yorkshire puddings and steak and kidney with Poppet, who was feeling decidedly wobbly, and lay upon the settee, like an Elizabeth effigy, whilst I did the dishes. Afterwards in front of the TV, and later in bed, I thumbed through copies of the Family History magazine, kindly lent to me by Steve Burnip. A Malcolm Fawbert, from Cleethorpes, claims that the Fawbert family are excusively concentrated in the Leeds/Bradford area, and with the exception of only one or two generations, all can be found in Yorkshire. His earliest finds are Abraham and Elizabeth Fawbert, of 'Colbecke' [surely Holbeck?] Leeds in 1560. Direct line back to Isaac Fawbert 1782, baptized at St Wildfred's, Calverley, son of Timothy, son of James. Fawberts are also mentioned in Calverley in 1710 and 1714. I will write to Malcolm and see where Edward Fawbert, my great-great grandfather fits in. 

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Tuesday January 26, 1982

 Steve Burnip is a good lad. He keeps slipping me gems of a genealogical nature and today, when he caught sight of my Wilson [family] tree, he was amazed by the detail. It is warming to have got back to the days of Trafalgar without having to do much hard detective work.

Ally tired and pale tonight. _____________. Home at 6. Out at 7:30 to dinner at Burley in Wharfedale with Lynn and Dave [bearded]. Sue and Pete were dining too and she is bulbous and red and ready [for the baby]. She has to go to Leeds for the accouchement. We had cottage pie and rhubarb crumble by lamp light and drained three bottles of wine. Frances screamed each time they put her down and so she joined us at the dinner table, playing with beer mats and a red dummy. I suppose it's quite wrong to spoil a child at this age but I cannot help enjoying her tiny, yet commanding presence. Even Peter made an attempt to approach his niece and it is dawning on him that babies, for all their inconvenience, are here to stay.

Home after 11. ________.

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