Friday November 4, 1977

Leeds, or Atlantis?

Refused point blank to enter a place of alcoholic liquid consumption this evening. It is my own personal protest at the increasing rate of alcoholism which has taken place in the United Kingdom in recent times. By 1996 the whole of Yorkshire and Humberside will be submerged beneath a vast lake of lager, Beaujolais and Pennine Bitter. Leeds will be a pickled version of Atlantis.

I phoned Chapel Allerton (Hospital) to enquire about Carole and they told me she was back at Otley (Hospital) and so I phoned that obnoxious place where a nurse told me she is still seriously ill and not seeing vast deputations of visitors but if I want I can make an appointment and pay a brief visit when nobody else is in attendance. I'll go on Thursday next week with a box of chocolates or something. I shall always love her even though I find her exasperating and diametrically opposite to everything logical. Love is weird. I wouldn't have believed it possible that a couple with so much love for each other could make such a tragedy of what could have been an everlasting, idyllic relationship.

Tonight I stayed home with Mum and Lynn. Dad was out on constabulary duties until 10. We watched TV until the power workers plunged us into darkness at 11.06pm. Lynn and I sat laughing by candle light and retired to bed, in good spirits, before 12. The electricity was returned in all its glory at midnight and the evil power workers must have been grinning all over their faces at the success of getting 55 million people into bed.

-=-