Thursday March 26, 1987

 Moorhouse Inn, Leeds LS11 5NQ

Clemmie.

A miracle has occurred. No, I haven't encountered the Virgin Mary on the local refuse tip, and I haven't suddenly found the ability to turn water into Old Brewery Bitter - but Clemmie has slept from 6:30pm last night until this morning. Samuel woke me at 7am and that was my first call to consciousness since 12:30am. Felt pounds better for a good nights sleep and I splashed around in the bath singing "La donna è mobile" at full throttle. Our darling Clemmie has given us eight months of sleeplessness. Ally insists that Samuel had a similar sleep pattern, but I do not remember quite so much sleeplessness.

King Fahd of Saudi Arabia is here on a State Visit. No booze at the royal banquet and so poor Denis Thatcher had to drink from his Queen Mother-style hip flask. I do wish that the PM would ask the King to confer an earldom upon her husband to celebrate the '87 victory. Disraeli ennobled his wife, and so we do have a precedent.

From the Telegraph: A restored figurehead, identified by the Prince of Wales as being of the young Queen Victoria, was unveiled yesterday by the Duke of Kent at the Royal Naval Engineering College, Manadon, Plymouth. The carved figure was always believed to be of Queen Adelaide, wife of William IV, until Prince Charles visited the college and pointed out that it could not be a consort queen because it had the orb and sceptre which denoted monarchy. Researchers from him right.

Dorothea, Viscountess Head, who has died aged 79, was a brilliant portrait painter, far above amateur status. While she excelled at painting children, perhaps her most remarkable portraits were of eminent citizens of Nigeria (where her husband the 1st Viscount Head was High Commissioner in the early 1960s), notably the charismatic Sir Abudakar Tafawa Balewa, the "golden voice of Africa", of whom she was especially fond.