Hot day. At lunchtime I have a few photographs taken for my ten year passport. They look really grotty, but not all that bad when you think it costs about £2 to be photographed by a cravat-wearing Old Etonian with a lisp and double-barrelled name for something very similar, but probably a bit more glossy. Don't take this as an insult to Lord Snowdon please, because nothing was further from my mind. OK, he may be an Old Etonian with a camera, but he doesn't lisp, and hasn't worn a cravat in donkey's years.
At 4.30 armed with a bottle of Lucozade I marched on Leeds Infirmary and threw myself upon my ailing aunt, the one and only Mabel Paine. I didn't recognise her at first because she seems to have lost a good deal of weight since we last met, but otherwise she was very cheerful. The thought of having cancer worried her to death (Oops) of course, but they've assured her now that it's all clear. No more treatment required, and by Sunday she'll be a free woman again. I really despise hospitals. The smells and the general lay-out make me weak at the knees. It was so nice to get out into the fresh air at about 6 o'clock - away from the stench of death and illness. I only hope to God that I'll never have to spend any length of time in such a place. Mind you, by the time I'm 60 they'll have done away with hospitals and they'll be injecting OAPs with cyanide. The nice, easy way out.
See 'Edward VII' at 9 o'clock, and retire at 11.
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