Wednesday July 30, 1975

In just over one weeks time I will be boarding an aeroplane for the very first time. Obviously, I'm longing for a holiday, but I'm not all that sure about flying. Never experiencing anything like it before I cannot be afraid, because one can only be worried about something if one knows what that something is. I do not. People say it's similar to being on a waltzer at a fairground, or riding on a double-decker bus down a badly constructed road, but 300 people do not die instantly when a bus runs out of petrol, and neither are people dashed to death on a fairground ride. That is my worry. Don't get me wrong. I'm not scared of dying. I just want to die in better circumstances that's all. Is not wanting to drop 30,000 feet out of the sky onto a sun-scorched moutnain range a fear of dying? I don't think so. I want to die in bed, sometime in the middle of the next century, surrounded by weeping, middle-aged grandchildren.

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Saturday December 7, 1974

YP until 4. Doesn't feel like a Saturday at all. The papers are full of the 'plane crash in Rawdon last night, in which eight men died. I wondered what all the fuss was as I passed through Rawdon. Never seen so many ambulances in one place at once.

Kathleen had a go at me this morning about doing a days' work! I sit biting my tongue because if anyone does two days work in one day it's Mr Bloody Michael Bloody Rhodes!

Do filing till 4, then attempt to get a bus home, which I do successfully at 5.30. All the buses are packed out and I don't fancy having to use West Yorkshire transport after my pass expires on Dec 21. It's back to the trains for me.

Dog tired on my arrival at Pine Tops and sleep in the chair whilst the TV moans miserably in the background. John, Lynn and Dave Baker go with the crowd to Philip Cartwright's annual Conservative Christmas orgy - attended by the Right Honourable Giles Shaw, MP no less.

I see a film with Mum and Dad and sit with a glass of horrid sherry and a packet of Polish cigs. Bed at about 12. Makes a changing staying within the precincts of ones own home.

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