Monday July 19, 1976

Overcast, miserable day. Go to lunch at 1pm and purchase a pair of boots I took a fancy to the other day. They cost £17.99 - the most I've ever paid for footwear.

The afternoon is one of nail biting and is passed with much trepidation on my part. Dentists are not my favourite professional people. By the time it comes for me to vacate the YP building I realise just what the Angolan mercenaries must have gone through prior to been dragged out into the street & disposed of.

It wasn't bad at all really. The waiting is the agonising bit. No doubt Colonel Callan was in the same frame of mind as the shots rang out.

Home on the 6.30 33 bus and meet John parked outside the chemist with a pained expression on his face. The car had ceased to function. Maria emerged from the pharmacy and had hysterics over my new boots. She could not believe that I had actually bought them. I pushed the car down onto Park Road - John steering the vehicle and Maria jogging along side - making ribald comments about my car-pushing capabilities. The car did start, and I was home for 6.30. The numbness had worn off by 8 o'clock and I did manage to have fish and chips a couple of hours later.

Ring Lynne at 10.30.

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Tuesday February 17, 1976

A wet damp day again. Carole goes to hospital for a check-up on her kidneys this morning and we meet in Leeds at 1 o'clock again. These ventures out a lunchtimes are rare, and it's weird going out two days in a row!

Things in the news: Angola, Angola and Angola. All we hear about on the TV news and in the newspapers is of the struggles going on in this futile African country where Cubans, Russians and ex-convict British mercenaries are killing each other for a piece of territory that's about as big as Wembley stadium. It doesn't make much sense to me and I think most people are confused by it all too. Ian Smith won't be too happy about it in neighbouring Rhodesia and bloody revolution will undoubtedly follow in that fascist colony now.

See in the EP that Basil Hume, Abbot of Ampleforth is the new Archbishop of Westminster and the next (only) English cardinal. As head of the Roman Catholics in England he'll conduct important ceremonies like, for instance, the marriage of Mr John Philip Rhodes with Miss Maria Christine Macdonald next month.

Carole rings tonight and so too does Christine White just to make sure we know the arrangements for Friday nights excursion to York. Carole's communication was just a gosspipy one. She has a way of aggravating me on the phone (don't ask me why) and I much prefer to speak to her in the flesh. She did say that she will not go for a hospital check-up again and nothing I say will deter her from this point of view. However, the gruesome activities they get up to with her blood samples made me feel sick just hearing about them.

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