Tuesday February 17, 1987

 Moorhouse Inn, Leeds LS11 5NQ

You should see the bags under my eyes, folks. My face looks like two kilos of King Edward's. 

Evening: Ally and I to Rawdon Rd, Horsforth, the Matthews stately pile. Such talkers they are. A sumptuous dinner awash with wine. Marita had creeping lobelia all over her chest. They are set on this hotel in Harrogate, but are wary and nervous. The shop is sold and their house goes on the market next week. Such a loving couple through. That is obvious. Chatter, chatter, chatter. A very pleasant night. Home at 2. Bev stayed, and looked shattered.

A group of Conservative MPs launched a campaign yesterday to replace the May Day bank holiday with a bank holiday commemorating the life of Sir Winston Churchill. An early day motion signed by 19 backbenchers calls for May 10 to be set aside as a national holiday to allow "British people to commemorate properly the life and achievements of Britain's greatest statesman within living memory". May 10 was th date in 1940on which Sir Winston first became premier.

Lord Crowther-Hunt, the political theorist and constitutional expert, who has died aged 66, had been Rector of Exeter College, Oxford since 1982 and was a Junior Minister at the Department of Education and Science and Privy Council Office in Harold Wilson's last administration.

From the Daily Telegraph: "People who eat African green monkey appear to be more vulnerable to Aids, a leading African researcher said yesterday. Prof. Olufemi Williams, executive secretary of the Organisation of African Unity's Scientific and Technical Commission, said research had found traces of the Aids virus in people who ate green monkeys in Zaire and the Central African Republic. No traces had been found in the Casamance region of Senegal where the animal abounded by people d
id not eat it. Obviously, I have now removed green monkey from the pub menu.

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