Monday July 23, 1979

_. Eventually climbed out of bed at about 11am and waited for Garry and Bill. The bar was open but neither Dave or I could face having a drink. Garry came in saying his car is 'off the road', and so Dave offered to drive me home. ___________.

Home by 2pm. Mum looks well. She filled us in with all the news and gossip which took us until about 5pm. Poor little Catherine has a heart defect of some kind - probably a hole in the heart. Maria took both babies to the RC church yesterday at Burley-in-Wharfedale and had them christened. It is a sad thought on which to reflect that my tiny, innocent niece is banned by law from ever becoming Queen of England.

Susan and Peter are having an engagement party at Otley on Wednesday night. Dave G cannot make it.

Billy is shattered by the Ibiza experience and has vowed never to go on holiday with us again. They, the lads, stayed to tea, and left for Stockport at about 7pm.

Ally was particularly shy, and dashed off for a sauna with Sue. Susie's hair is permed again.

-=-

to be continued

Wednesday April 18, 1979

_. Packed up my troubles in my old kit bag, and smiled, smiled, smiled.  Well, not quite. In fact I loathe preparing to go away and despise traveling and all the inconvenience attached to it, and do not enjoy a holiday one bit until I'm sitting in the hotel bar with a full glass. Suit cases are hideous objects. In fact, I'm looking at one right now. Red it is.

Spoke to Dave G in Stockport and we joked about the recent violence in Bournemouth. I said I'm going to push a few old girls off the pier and into the sea ~ bath chairs and crutches too. But Bournemouth so conjures up a vision of red geraniums set out in regimented gardens, cluttered with elderly ladies with blue rinses, staggering around the sea front clutching onto one another. I see elderly, long retired colonels, with yellow moustaches, and wilting spats. In fact, I picture nothing young or youthful at all. The arrival of ten lads from the north of England will send a gust of cold air up the crinolines of many a dowager duchess, as they cough and wheeze themselves from the latest Des O'Connor show to the garden of remembrance. Goodnight. Lights out at 1:23am.

Spike Milligan was good tonight.

-=-

Thursday July 6, 1978

Last day at the YP for a fortnight.

At home I said goodbye to Mum and Dad and Lynn. They'd been to say farewell to Edith and Ernest, who leave for Paignton next week. No doubt we'll see them in September.

At 6:30 this evening went with Sue and Pete to the Shoulder of Mutton where we met Chippy & Gus for a few drinks before leaving for Stockport.

We went to Stockport at about 8 and stayed at the Hollywood for the evening. Bill and Garry made an appearance and once again my hair style was the focal point of the conversation.

I do not intend writing page after page for the two weeks I am away. Traditionally I write from notes as my journal hasn't travelled with me since 1976 when I'm sure _____________.

When the pub closed we hung around for about half an hour and then piled into taxis to Manchester Airport. Checked in at midnight. The sexy, blond air hostess informed us that the flight would be leaving slightly EARLY.

-=-

Friday January 20, 1978

Snow, ice and generally an anti-social climate. I am going to join (Uncle) John in Lanzarote, Canary Islands.

David G.

Dave G makes a state visit to Pine Tops once again. The summer holiday is the main topic of the weekend conference. Poor David is more bald than ever.

We went to the Fox and Hounds where Pete M, Chris and Steve Hudson were assembled. They brought the news that they are not joining us abroad this year. Peter Aristotle Niarchos Mather Onassis, Junior cannot afford to go!! Obviously, I believe him. Chris has plans to go on a walking holiday in South Wales and visit an elderly maiden aunt in Canada. He too must have lost a slate or suddenly developed an aged attitude. Steve was his normal, pleasant, quiet self. _______. Martyn, we are told, is still in the running. ______. Home at 11:30 to a wine tasting session. We go to Bradford tomorrow to sort out the holiday 'problem'.


-=-

Tuesday May 24, 1977

Phoned Carole this morning to arrange Thursday night's meeting. Yes, it's Oakwood Hall, folks. She has not much to say other than she plans to wear the white creation with rope and other ornaments hanging from it - the one she wore one evening last June - when I asked her why she couldn't afford a proper belt. She always calls me 'Pet'.

Bananas: grow upwards

At 7pm I go to John & Maria's with a bunch of photographs that arrived this morning. Some excellent ones of JPH and my birthday 'freak out'. The baby won't sleep and the arrival of George (Waite), Jane, Molly and Jim doesn't help really. Molly walks in and goes off on a tangent about her recent Majorca holiday: "The cathedral at Palma was built in 1167 and it took four hundred years to complete and do you know bananas grow upwards? Because I always thought they hung downwards, like that, and Oh the food was first class, and we had lobster one night for an extra £2.67 which was really good compared with other hotels around because a nice girl we met from Manchester couldn't touch the meals served in her hotel, mind you she went with Thomson's who are usually very good and Oh the Caves of Drach were marvellous but the coach there was a bit on the long side and we didn't really like the wine bodegas like you would it's Jim's stomach you know....."  Just a sample of the great Molly for you. Jim gives me a lift home at 9.30.

-==-

Wednesday January 14, 1976

I am completely shattered with cold. My nose glows like a lighthouse all day long and I come home and stagger around the place sneezing and wheezing like an 85 year-old. If I see the month out it will be a miracle. It's always the same every January. Christmas is over and done with and it's as if my resistance tries to commit suicide at the thought of no revelry and tinsel for yet another year.

The holiday is settled anyway. I rang Pete at 7.40am to receive his assent to my booking the Pacific Hotel, San Antonio, Ibiza, from June 27 to July 11, 1976. With his assent given I rang Denise, who at once set the whole system of booking into operation. I'm paying my £10 deposit to her tomorrow night.

Carole rings me at work at 4pm. She's still upset about the events of Saturday night and doesn't believe I've forgiven her foolishness. A child she is, nothing more, nothing less. No argument would have arisen if she had only come to me with her grievance in the first place.

Go to bed at 10pm and decide not to go to work in the morning. John comes in at 10.30 and tells me a horrible tale, the details of which I will recount to you in detail on the next page. But let me say this; something is going to be said and a certain line of action is to be taken which will make certain people waken up round here.

-==-

Tuesday January 13, 1976

I go into work feeling somewhat under the weather. What is more, I feel fed up to the back teeth with everything at the moment and fancy returning to a good bachelor existence.

Carole's had a good innings since last July, and I think it's about time I let someone else have a bat.

I rang Denny and re-booked the holiday once and for all. June/July is when we go.

At home I sit in the dining room all evening busily glueing photographs into a scrap book. It brings back to mind all the good times we had in 1973-4 and makes my present situation seem mundane, boring and dead.

One would think I'd been married for ages by the way I'm going on, but that's the way I feel at the moment.

Retire at midnight with my task still incomplete.

-==-

Wednesday January 7, 1976

Make a start to planning the holiday. John doesn't want the girls to come. That is just one of the many simple facts causing problems here. By ditching Maria for the holiday he expects me to also drop Carole for 2 weeks so that we can have a holiday abroad together with Chris, Pete and probably Keith (Brown). I think this is a bit unfair on Carole, who has set her heart on laying besides me on some distant Mediterranean beach this summer.

David L takes Carole and I to Yeadon to see 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail'. I saw it at Bradford with Gillian Upton last summer, but still found it absolutely hilarious. Carole is quiet, and I put it down to the fact that I'm going off on holiday without her. She says that Maria wants her to go off to Belfast with her this summer. If she goes she'll be a braver person than I am. Going on holiday for a week and coming back legless, eyeless and armless isn't really my idea of a relaxing break. David too can forsee only danger in the girls chasing off to Ireland for the summer.

Home at 11.30 after calling in at the Clothiers for a quick one. Carole's mood gets me down at times. She's not boisterous like me, and I cannot understand the things that madden her.

-==-

Tuesday January 6, 1976

Epiphany. A mild day. Sit at work thinking about holidays and worry over who is going this year and who isn't. John refuses to go away if females are included in the party. (That's his contribution to Sex Equality Year, and all that).

Chris too says he doesn't fancy sitting about on the Continent with half the female population of Guiseley, but neither do I really.

Who would have thought that Carole and Maria could have stirred up such controversy. I want to go on holiday with Carole, but not if it's just the two of us. Why nobody rellishes the idea of going in a crowd God only knows. She (Carole) rings me at 2.30 and I tell her we shall have to discuss arrangements so that some conclusion may be drawn on this vital subject shortly.

I get home at 5.30 and Mum is ranting and raving like a lunatic. Sometimes I fear for her sanity because she can carry on in a most hideous fashion when she is so inclined. I get out of her way after tea because we get on each others nerves and I find solace in my room. Fretting about the holiday arrangements, or rather the lack of them.

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Saturday August 23, 1975

Homeward bound. Up with the larks at 7am, and sit about nervously for one and a half hours until the coach comes. John and Chris went down for breakfast, but I couldn't possibly face it. I sat in the empty lounge watching the rain and the waves crashing upon the beach, and the wind howling around the swimming pool and thinking to myself 'Oh God, will the plane make it?' We leave for Palma on the coach at 8.30 and we sit on the back seat along with Gary, Beaky, and Casanova, which is quite a laugh.

On our arrival in rain-soaked Palma we are met by Prince Juan Carlos who says he's sorry that General Franco couldn't come in person to see us off personally, but at 82 years-old he feels too frail to chase about airport forecourts, which is quite understandable really. After the military band send off we're flying at 27,000 feet over Europe at an air speed of 480MPH. We have whisky on the flight, and I feel quite sick over France, but the highlight of the whole thing was landing. Over the Channel John and Chris wanted to go to the bog, and so I pinched Chris's window seat and saw the south of England and London from 30,000 feet up. A tremendous sight. A few people looked queazy, but I managed to keep everything down.

Chris got a coach to King's Cross and John and I were left to find our own way out of Heathrow, which was an aggravating hours chase. After getting a bus to Victoria we find we have four hours to kill in London. Buckingham Palace, No 10, Downing Street, the Houses of Parliament, St James's Park, and God knows how many other places came under our exhausted gaze, and we were so glad to see the coach at 6pm. Four hours and 10 minutes later Mum and Dad met us in Leeds, and 20 minutes after that we were at Pine Tops. Lynn and Dave, Sue and Peter came on the scene minutes later, and we all tucked in to a decent bit of Mama's cooking. After dishing out the bottles (of duty frees) we proceeded to empty a few, and I rolled into bed at 1.30. To quote Casanova: "Well, it's certainly nice to be here." And I think that sums it all up.

-==-

Sunday August 17, 1975

Up at 9am, or at least I was. John and Chris remained asleep until well after 11, but me being the athletic type makes staying abed all morning an impossibility. Sit in the hot sun with a lemonade, and Sue and Jackie from Chiswick join me later.

See in yesterday's Daily Mail that the Birmingham Pub Bombers got life imprisonment. Also saw that London had its worst rain in 100 years. Over six inches fell in under 24 hours!! It makes going abroad seem well worth while when reading items like that.

Chris and I take out tradition dip in the Med after lunch, and at about 4pm it begins to rain & does so for about an hour. We stay in the sea for the major part of it and watch the thunder and lightning crack and flash over the Majorcan hills. Return to the hotel greatly refreshed and the place feels a good deal more healthy for the cool rainwaters.

Don't go to the Caracola Club in the evening, or at least Chris and I don't, and instead we stay in the Manchester Arms until after 1am with Diane and Denise, from Carlisle. They drink pints of lager and I'm on straight pernod. Diane goes home to sleep at about 1.30 and Chris goes off for a walk with Denise. I make my way back to the hotel and clamber into bed where I sleep soundly, undisturbed by the drunken arrival of John at 5am.

-=-

--==--

Saturday August 16, 1975

Once again to the Caracola in the evening. Dance with a beautiful German girl, but we fade out because of language difficulties. If only I'd taken in all that rubbish Mr Martin used to reel out to us at Benton Park. But alas, you don't think of things like that when you're cooped up in class.

Chris leaves early and Denise and Diane from Carlisle come after he's gone. I'm astounded to hear from Denise that ______went round to her hotel room this afternoon, had a few drinks and stormed out after an argument. Why didn't he tell us? ______.

I leave at 2 and come back and sit with a couple of birds from Salford and a drunken bloke from London. They are all stoned, and when a woman from the fifth floor yells down at us to be quiet, one of the girls screams: 'piss off!' at the top of her voluminous voice. I laughed at the crudeness of it all.

-==-

Saturday August 9, 1975

Get into Victoria Coach Station at 5am and immediately make enquiries about how to get to Heathrow. An amiable little porter directs us to a British Airways terminal and we get a bus direct to the airport at 6 o'clock. We make our way to the departure place, and what a relief it is to find Chris waiting! Success! We'd made it! (Forgive the Queen Victoria style punctuation). You have no idea what it meant to know that no hitch had arisen.

Fly at 8.05am. Unforgetable experience. The plane was quite smaller than I imagined it would be. John was near the window, Chris in the middle and I was in the aisle. The sun was brilliant above the thundery London sky, and two hours later we were in the heat at Palma airport. John's case came on another flight, and we messed about for hours waiting for it.

The hotel was reached by about 3pm and we were impressed by it. After all, it is a two star one.

Have two great meals before going out on the town. Find a discotheque called the Caracola Club, and stay until 2am. I am asbolutely sure we shall all have the time of our lives here in Majorca.

-==-

Tuesday January 28, 1975

Ring Chris who informs me that the travel agent can't get us in at any of the places he suggested. He comes round at about 8.30 and we sit going wild through masses of repulsive books in order to select a new list of possible holidays. Mum makes some good suggestions and we end up with 11 different choices - ranging from Italy, Spain, Ibiza, Corfu to Cyprus. Don't fancy the idea of going to Famagusta. We'd end up being lynched in the streets by anti-British rioters.

See another old George Bernard Shaw film on BBC2. 'Major Barbara' or something, with Wendy Hiller and the two new child stars of the period, Rex Harrison and Robert Morley! That showws just how old it is. Sybil Thorndyke made a contribution too.

John and Chris go down to the Hare at 9.30 but I'm too involved with the film to bother about going. Off to bed at 11 with Agatha Christie. (Don't think for one minute that I'm having a liason with old Dame Agatha - when I say 'off to bed with Agatha' I mean with one of her books.)

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Saturday July 28, 1973

Arrive back in England. Home. Bed at 1am. Back in England's green and pleasant land.

It was a very rough, unpleasant crossing from Belgium. Everyone sick - except me. I quite enjoyed it.

--==--

Saturday July 14, 1973

Awake at about 5.30. A fantastically comfortable night. By 6.30 we are in the centre of London. Denny wanted to see Buckingham Palace but the coach avoided the Mall by about 100 yards. Pull into Victoria Coach Station shortly afterwards.

We go into a terrible cafe called The Chuck Wagon. Denny felt sick with the smell of it. John, who felt sick before going in, came out greatly improved. We carried the luggage up the road to Victoria Railway Station. Denny has never been on a train before in her whole life!

On board the train we meet the Cosmos crowd for the first time. We board the 'Princess Elizabeth' just after 9 o'clock. Sail for France at 9.45. A beautiful, calm crossing. See Ostende on the horizon at about 1 o'clock. Unbearably hot weather already. We are all very excited. Sit with Denny as we dock. By 3 we have been introduced to the Cosmos courier, Mary Ann, and we board the sleek coach and we are on our way across Europe...Belgium, Germany, Austria....


--==--

Friday July 13, 1973

Probably my very last day at Benton Park. Quite a crowd turns up. Dave and I promise to meet Christine, Philip and MM in the Fleece at 7.30 on August 31.

The weather is really terrible, and after bidding farewell to the old school I walk to the bus stop in horrid rain. Home by 5.

On arriving home I find everyone in an excited panic. Mum and Dad have packed all up. Lynn and Sue can hardly breathe with the excitement of it all. By 8 we are waiting to go. Denny arrives at 8.30 with her parents, who go at 9.45. Denny settles down immediately with the girls. Dave arrives by 10 with his Papa. Major Smith and Mrs Smith come round shortly afterwards and pile all our luggage in the cars. Michael Smith takes Mum and Dad in his car. Leave for Leeds at 10.30. A really torrential rainstorm follows. Mrs Smith, who takes John, Dave and I, cannot see the road in front of us. Arrive Leeds at 10.50. Maj. Smith and the girls in the Rover get lost, but they find us after 5 minutes. The coach leaves at 11 and after a terrible incident in Barnsley with hooligans around the bus, I settle down to sleep.

--==--

Wednesday January 17, 1973

Day of rejoicing and excitement because Denny brought £6 deposit for the holiday. Got up at 6.30. and revised until nearly 8. I had a quick breakfast (boiled egg) and rushed off to school on the 8.30 bus. Revising by 9, as was Irene, Christine B, Christine J, and MM. I was very satisfied by the exam paper, and managed to answer four questions. Mr Ayling actually came across from the main school in person at about 11.30. Honour for us all indeed. We spent the afternoon relaxing after the exam and Louise, Denny, Dave, Chris and myself joined in with the lower sixth. June and Janet were in usual form. June is such a nice person. We all went through the usual procedure of being ejaculated from the common-room by Mrs Capstan Fullstrength and the caretaker at 4.15. Groves was away. Lousie wants me to go to Denny's tomorrow afternoon. I don't really want to. Things are much more amusing at school. Besides, I promised I would take my "Fog Theory, by Wyndham-Logg" in. I am still awaiting a reply from Darlington College of Ed. They've been considering me for a week as from Thursday. I think they are waiting for my Biology results which should be out on Monday/Tues. I hope to God that I have passed. I doubt very much whether they'll accept me if I fail. Ah well, that's life. I have done no revising tonight. I consider my daily quota to be done for today. History mock A -level is the next thing, and if I don't begin revising I'll be in for it. But I take life as it comes and stuff the consequences.


-

Wednesday January 10, 1973

Things moved at a phenomenal pace today. Mum instructed me to solve the holiday question before the day was out. At school I hear that Chris has asked Louise, MM, and Liz Richardson to join us on holiday. At 11.15 I decided to take £2 to Rawdon Post Office to put in the savings bank for my hols. Passing Rigg's Butchers I notice the window cleaner working busily, and merrily whistling. I proceeded to the P.O. within 2 minutes I emerged back onto the high street and to my horror found the said window cleaner had collapsed and died on the pavement outside the butchers. Mr Rigg had covered him with a sack. Enquiring at home Dad says he (the window cleaner) was 78. So it's hardly a bad way to go is it? Back at school I was treated for the rest of the day as if I was suffereing from a severe case of shock. Mrs Harris offered to fetch me a brandy from the staffroom - how very touching. Dave and Denise came up at 8 and we decided on a 10-day visit to the Venetian riviera - phew! They remained until 11. Retired to bed at 11.30. Going to Darlington tomorrow - looking forward to it. Everyone wished me luck as I went to bed. I have to be up at 5.45.


--

Tuesday January 9, 1973

One of those days doomed to failure from the start. David and Denise said they'd come to Pine Tops tonight. Chris also decided to come. Mum prepared a get-together over holiday brochures and suggested that D and D should join the family on our Continental holiday - an admirable idea from all points of view. David rang at 7.30pm and said we should go up to Denise's instead - Mum and John were furious at the change of plan. I left in a lousy temper. Arrived at Arthington at 8.45 and we discussed everything except holidays until David's Dad collected us at 11.15. The topics ranged from sex before marriage to abortions, marriage and divorce, and God and the Bible. Nobody had any objections to our going to one of the Italian Rivieras, and we made haste to get home -



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