Thursday March 24, 1983

 More cold and more wet. 

YP abysmal. Carol's penultimate day. Kathleen and Sarah discussing what present to buy Carol. They are going to give her flowers too. Our office is reminiscent of ancient Rome. The machinations. Went out to the building society at lunch time.The balance now stands at £100.30. 

Home to a grumpy Ally who is furious about work and in a temper all night because of it. I phoned a pub at Shipley for a part-time job advertised in the T & A. Phoned Jim Rawnsley who only returned from India yesterday. He will readily give me a reference and told me that he had been told in strictest confidence that certain people at the YP didn't want me to go. He had seen John Thorpe. Good old Jim. I knew he would hate India and he found the food and general poverty something of an ordeal. The remainder of the delegation from Leeds went on to the Taj Mahal but Jim escaped to home after ten days. I phoned a French restaurant who want bar staff. They said I would have to see the manager at 4pm tomorrow. No way. To bed at 10. I look at 'Black Mischief' by Mr Waugh. Don't read much.

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Wednesday March 23, 1983

 Still wet. We awoke in our little bunk at 6:30 and had the traditional hot bath. I concocted breakfast for Piglet, who came bustling in looking like a peach. ________. I must be a frightening sight leering over my boiled egg looking like some unwashed Dickens character. 

At the YP. Told Bob Cockcroft that Lord Yarborough's daughter is engaged. Just think, it might be my very last tip. Went to buy a metro card at lunch and called on cousin Jill. I said: "I have news", and she squealed amidst the slingback shoes "Oh, Ally is pregnant!" No, it's not that exciting I assured her. I told her I am 'retiring' from the YP and she looked at me as though I am raving mad. Tim is working in London. I told her about the party and went off on my bedraggled way.

A chilli extravaganza. Ally is sick of the sniping and in-fighting at Chestnut House. The health service is now like El Salvador. Even Jean is sneaky. It looks like the meal we owe them isn't going to materialise. Ally, speaking very generally, loathes women. Coronation Street tremendously funny. Hilda Ogden should stand for parliament. Saw Dallas too. We are soap opera fanatics. Ally washed out, and we contemplated bed at 9pm. 

News: the pound has fallen against the dollar to an all-time low. I have never been able to understand international finance. Tomorrow is Michael Foot's Waterloo - the Darlington by-election. Michael Foot is of course the horrid Mr Bonaparte. Did you know that the Belgian royal family descends from the 3rd Earl of Elgin & Ailesbury, a Jacobite? And, oh yes, poor Prince Claus. He's really flipped this time. Bed at 9:15.

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Tuesday March 22, 1983

Bitterly cold. The snow has gone but it is here in spirit. Eleven days to go at the YP. It's hard to believe that I am finally escaping. You, dear reader, must be relieved too because I've groused on and on about the place since I started 10 long years ago. As they say on Coronation Street 'You are a long time dead'. Why spend life doing the mundane. I am going from unemployed library assistant to an unemployed author, or rock star.

Ally phoned. She has got £160 'back pay'. The swines at the AHA may be down grading her from higher clerical officer to personal secretary, but her salary is supposedly guaranteed for five years. However, if she is there at Chestnut House in 1988 something will have gone hideously wrong with our plans.

I told Sarah that I am leaving to go work in a bar and she smiled weakly in disbelief. Home at 6. Ally cooking. Mum and Dad came at 6:30 from the Queen's on Daisy Hill Lane where Dad had been engaged in conversation with a former military policeman who had been at the training academy with Dad in Surrey in 1954. Dined on Yorkshire puddings and a liver thingy. Saw the second bit of a film about Saints Peter and Paul, like Monty Python's Life of Brian. Raymond 'Perry Mason' Burr played Herod Agrippa. Farcical. Papa slept throughout. We afterwards studied my grandmother Rhodes's birth certificate. Ruth Allen Upton. Could the father have been a Mr Allen? Sadly, we'll never know. We surrendered our room and retired at 12-ish. They have had a couple of _______ from Magdalen College Oxford staying at Waltergarth. A case of Waltergarth Revisited.

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