Thursday May 24, 1984

 Moorhouse Inn, Leeds

A brighter day. Queen Victoria is celebrating quietly somewhere. My Uncle Albert always referred to her as a 'bad old bitch', and he should know because he was five when she died. I told old Jim in the tap room that today is Empire Day, and surprisingly he had never heard of it. Blimey, he's 83. Wasn't the empire still going strong in the 1920s?

Men came to convert us from oil to gas. It was one long tea break. The British workman has never worked under pressure. Other than myself that is. Oily footsteps everywhere. An old man in the tap room complained that his beer is flat. He should drink it quicker then, shouldn't he?

At 4 we went to Linfood and carried Samuel around. Looking at 42 gallon jars of tartare sauce, &c. I could easily become obsessed with bulk buying. 

Took the evening off. Ally took down all the curtains and washed them. I sat and watched Sir Robin Day's 'Question Time' followed by a Scottish murder drama set in 1889. Sir George Young, Bt, MP was one of Robin's guests. His father-in-law is the sculptor Oscar Nemon. 

Ate steak sandwiches and went off to bed.

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