Thursday September 13, 1984

Edna at the bar.

with Marlene and Frank

Jayne and Janette

 Moorhouse Inn, Leeds

Our Tramps Convention fancy dress party. A busy bustling day. We went out late this afternoon to a Spastics Society charity shop on Boar Lane and bought Ally a revolting shimmering green dress for £1. She is going to be a particularly well-heeled tramp. We had Sammy Bear tucked up in bed for 5:30 and I dressed in vagrants gear and went down to amuse Maureen and the trio in the tap room.

Tramps: with George and John.

    We stood around sipping Blue Bols and lemonade waiting for more tramps, but they proved very scarce. Edna and Tracey looked splendid but nobody else suitably garbed appeared until John, Janette, George and Jayne, Jacq and her latest boyfriend Philip came in wearing old overcoats spattered with driend mud. Howls of laughter, &c. MM and Marita came too - but dressed up to the nines, fresh back from Yugoslavia. We awarded the first prize to Edna, but sadly Dave the Grave ripped us off and disappeared with the raffle money, or at least £5 of it. He is another one who will have to go. Marlene and Frank came in covered in dirt and stick on boils. We sold fish and chips in newspaper. They didn't go down well and we only four people bought them - miserable bastards. A late night followed. No customers. Just family and the Waites and a volatile couple who kept slapping each other like frenzied animals. MM and Marita looked on aghast. It was good to see Jacq with a young man. Later on he too was walking around in a state of undress and the general state of everyone can only be described as debauched. John had a greasy head of hair and in his old overcoat he resembled Clark Gable or Gary Cooper from some '30s movie. The party fell apart at 2am when George went into a coma. John was, of course, driving. We are told the Waites are contemplating divorce.

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Wednesday September 12, 1984

 Moorhouse Inn, Leeds

The new secretary of state for Ulster (sic) is poor Douglas Hurd. What can she (Thatcher) have against this little Foreign Office mandarin? A new appointment is David Young who becomes minister without portfolio, a privy counsellor and a life peer. He is to get the unemployed back to work - poor bugger. He doesn't stand a cat in hell's chance. The Earl of Gowrie becomes chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. I think that this government has more peers in its make up than any other government since before the Great War. I do admire Mrs T. The pathetic SDP are meeting at Buxton - and oh God you should hear them droning on. A bloody pantomime. They are on the fast train to oblivion. Nobody takes them seriously or sees them as a threat. As for Dr David Owen - Ugh!

Lord Geoffrey-Lloyd is dead. A peculiar obit in the Daily Telegraph says: "he never married but he had for many years, a close entirely platonic friendship with Leeds Castle." You couldn't have much else with an ancient monument, could you?

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Tuesday September 11, 1984

 Moorhouse Inn, Leeds

Another flat night. Karen worked. Money for old rope, &c. Ally was trapped in a conversation with 'FA' and his dotty wife. (He's called FA for his unfortunate sticking out ears - he resembles the FA Cup). I found myself in the tap room sitting with the three inmates of that derelict room watching Mel Brooks's 'High Anxiety' - first saw it years ago at the cinema with Jacq Sate. Still hilarious. Ally not happy with Karen. The girl has to be directed at every customer. We should perhaps club together and buy the girl a labrador and a white stick.

The PM has seen the Queen and announced a re-shuffled cabinet. Ally tells me that the new secretary of state for Northern Ireland is a Denis something or other. Could it be Denis Thatcher?

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