Thursday April 21, 1983

 Birthday of Queen Elizabeth II

The fifty seventh birthday of Her Majesty the Queen. Buried in bed beneath my quilt singing along to the National anthem on the radio. Has HM filled the vacancies in the order of the Garter? I expect to see the membership brought up to full strength on Saturday. I like to see good old fashioned aristocratic appointments. 

Biting cold. Went out and bought at Daily Telegraph. Nothing in it by way of scandal or possible stuff for tip money. Lord Buckinghamshire has snuffed it. I was thinking his peerage was doomed to extinction after the dead peer and his successor, but I see the new heir is a baronet with three sons on the Isle of Wight. Lord Brownlow is to sell Belton. Rumour has it that the Prince of Wales wants the place because the princess is reported to be dissatisfied with Highgrove. 

Baked bread and daubed at my Paul Signac copy. Watched an Audie Murphy western on TV. Was he the most decorated American soldier in the Second World War? I think so. 

Ally got off the bus in the company of that horrible tart who used to patronise the Staircase pub up the road. We ate fish pie and watched the news. The Waleses are in New Zealand and we saw them toasting the Queen at a banquet at Government House. Ally says this is such good training for Diana. 

I wrote to Geoff (Hemingway) and Kathleen. Geoff's was a letter of thanks for his assistance with my application forms, and the note to Kathleen was to say thank you for the camera. I never expected to receive such a gift. Carol J had to make do with a dictionary. 

Ally has taken to calling me 'Willie'. I cannot think why. We are in to nick names in a big way and have used them in varying degrees of 'sillyness' since our courtship blossomed in 1979.

We watched the 9 o'clock news together in the dark. An ageing US astronaut is to run for the US presidency in '84. I think Ronald Reagan will stand again. He may well be 93 but he looks great. Many people are capable of making important decisions in advanced age. Look at Lord Denning for instance. In royal news: the Duchess of Kent has had an operation for the removal of an ovarian cyst. Does this mean that HRH is no longer fertile? I am not up on the workings down under. Ally is reading out loud from the Daily Telegraph. She enjoys spotting misprints. We missed 'Soap' on Channel 4.

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