Tuesday September 25, 1979

_. John's 23rd birthday. Sat by the record player all day listening to my favourite tunes. Ally, Sue and Peter dropped in for lunch and I made the bacon sandwiches. God, it was good to see a few faces. It's no wonder that so many housewives turn to the bottle. Solitary confinement in the home must surely drive them over the top. Housework must only take a couple of hours. What do they do after that? Poor buggers. The nauseating DJs on Radio One don't help either.

To the YP at 5 and spent the evening with Gilberto - our man from Chile. No news. Everything quite dead. Home by taxi at 12. The driver had little to say. I thought we might become airborne as he had his foot flat down on the accelerator.

Ate like a horse and took up Adolf Hitler.

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Wednesday September 19, 1979

_. Warm day. Sat in the garden with Mama and Adolf Hitler.

To the YP at 5. Just Gilberto and I. ______. Made my exit dead on 12 and made my way home with a most knowledgeable taxi driver. He went on and on about Cambodia and the dreadful regime of Pol Pot. He explained the history of the Khmer Rouge Republic and life of Prince Norodom Sihanouk.
Yawn.

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Wednesday August 29, 1979

_. Warm and sunny. We chopped down the hideous lilacs in the garden and watch the suffocating conifers breathe a sigh of relief. Dad loves nothing more than hacking away in the undergrowth. He has several very 'Yorkshire Ripper-like' instruments, varying from heavy hammers, to butchery utensils and the usual tools associated with a journeyman joiner. Although I consider myself a tree conservationist I am happy with the result.

Went to the YP at 5pm. Had mounds of filing to do. Saw Charles who didn't seem too bad after the orgy last night. I do not envy him going off to Borneo with Linda Shaw. The YP was a waste of time.

Home in a taxi at 12. The driver was insignificant and lacking in colour. Obviously Jewish and addicted to tobacco. We discussed the weather and the current performance of Leeds United, which left me as cold as Karl Marx. I don't give a damn about Ray Hankin or John Hawley, or whether Adamson should sell them or not.

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Thursday August 11, 1977

A hot day. Sat in the garden with Mum and Susan until lunchtime and had the occasional lager. Just like been on holiday again. The temperature was in the 70s when I set off to Leeds at 4pm and if there's anything I feel least like doing on a hot, summers afternoon, it's work. However, it's inevitable for plebeians such as I.

Just me and Wendy at the YP until I left at 11.

Grouse: family reunion?

Hundreds of thousands of grouse will be having family reunions in the moorland heather tonight no doubt reminiscing on past escapades together and chanting the occasional prayer. Some of them will weep, or at least do the grouse equivalent, which is, I think, when they bash their wings together whilst frantically squeaking. Yes, tomorrow is the Glorious Twelfth.

Home in a taxi with a witty driver who, on parting,  bid me "Goodnight and God Bless". Who the hell does he think he is? The Pope I suppose.

Made a couple of salad sandwiches and retired to my chamber not particularly knackered. I've been a good deal worse.





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Sunday June 26, 1977

3rd after Trinity.  After watching the sun rise above Ilkley Moor I decided to go out and investigate. A cuckoo summoned me from the heather (or was it in a tree?) and I pursued the calling for several miles up hill. I went up past the College of Education and past a white-washed cottage near a babbling stream where I lay down and snoozed. After some time I staggered back to the flat with a police patrol car keeping vigilance over me. It was about 6am when I got back and Tony was up and about. He was in fact opening all the letters he'd received this week from his bank manager. It was too much for me and I went to bed.

Ilkley Moor.

We ate eggs and bacon and fried bread at about 10 and then sat around saying what fools we are and how we should know better, &c.

Tony attempted to analyse Carole once more but I feel at times like this that he's got the whole thing wrong or else I'm a lunatic. He always comes to the conclusion that I am to blame for her unstable behaviour.

Home for 11. Lunch with the family. Watched the film 'The L-Shaped Room'. Passed into a coma in the chair and don't feel remotely ready to go in to the YP.

Down the lane at 4 and in the office for 5. Wendy worked tonight too.

Home with the taxi driver who once lectured me on snakes bite remedies. Tonight we discussed the latest Leeds (Ripper) murder and capital punishment. We agreed entirely and I am seriously thinking about nominating him for a parliamentary seat at the coming autumn general election (just a guess). The Taxi Party. Ah, yes, I can see it now. For a start I'd grow a small black moustache and then I'd exterminate all the Scots.

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Sunday May 22, 1977

Sunday after Ascension. A pity about last night because I liked the girls. But half a bottle of Scotch inside Tony finished off the relationship with a certain sordid flourish. It's unlike Tony because he isn't usually rude like that. he made endless apoligies about it afterwards pacing up and down the flat with his hair standing on end saying: "silly, silly boy".

I sat in a chair by the open window watching the sunrise but fell into bed wearing socks and shirt at about 5am waking seven hours later.

A brilliant, hot, sunny day. After a bit of cleaning round Tony and I got to the Rose and Crown for one final Sunday lunch drink. Then it was back to a deserted Pine Tops for coffee, a bath and slices of cheese on toast. There was no sign of any of the family when I left for the YP at 4.45pm.

Tony: pacing around with hair standing on end

Poor Tony _______.When he drove me home from Ilkley this afternoon I just sat and laughed at him. We laughed about Carole playing hard to get. Who would have believed any of it?

Nothing of interest at the YP. Telephoned Mama who says she spent the day at John & Maria's. Left at 11 with my eyes feeling like lead.

The taxi driver seemed to have an interest in the English language, particularly slang, and demonstrated his interest by the use of several words of a very coarse nature in some of his sentences. He was also a keen follower of the pop scene taking a particular interest in the charming songs performed by the Stylistics.

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Thursday May 12, 1977

Met Carole at 7.30 at the White Cross and we got an omnibus to Bradford. The new bus station is like Versailles. All carpeted with piped music, and chandeliers hanging like great foxgloves from the ornate ceilings. In fact it looks as if Bradford City Council have had some help from Rubens or Van Dyck.

Carole is strangely quiet. We laugh at the fact we have to return to Shipley to go on to Bingley and the realisation that the visit to Bradford's 'Hall of Mirrors' could have been avoided is like a blow on the head with a mallet.

In Bingley for 9 o'clock. After a few drinks we walked to Oakwood Hall for 10.15. Peter N was in with his friends again. Carole and I had a good talk about the past year. (Oh shit, the ink is going all the way through the bloody paper for some reason). We decided that we are getting on better this time round. Home in another taxi at 2am. The taxi driver smoked a large cigar and sounded like an Old Etonian. No doubt he's a poor hereditary peer who cannot afford to get down to the House of Lords.

Not seeing Carole until next Thursday. I have thoroughly enjoyed it.

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Wednesday May 11, 1977

Don't hear a bloody thing until Mum and Dad come in for lunch at 1.45pm. Sat yawning over a cup of tea and then opened my mail. Two bloody letters. One from Helen Malin which points out I owe her £1 and not vice versa. Oh shit. I said that the royal baby would be born in the spring or summer of '77 and if it arrived any later I would pay up. What a horrific thought. The other is a letter from Kathryn. It is perfection itself and I settle down to reply and before I know where I am it's 4 o'clock and time to go to the dreaded YP.

Diary: red ink works wonders

Charged down the lane and got at bus. At the office for 5. I made enquiries about coaches for Saturday returning Sunday. Peter Mather amazes me __________.

Work was busy and tiresome. Ursula is very nice to work with. I do believe I experienced an erotic dream about her the other night. Of all people. I must be daft or something. How do you like my change of handwriting? Mrs Monkman, who left number 60 yesterday, gave me the pen. I do believe her brother sent it to her from Japan. One would have thought that the Japs would have caught onto the biro by now. I still think this nice red hue works wonders. Blue ink became so depressing.

The taxi driver tonight was no leading authority in any field. If he was he didn't bring it into the conversation.

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Sunday May 8, 1977

4th after Easter. Cloud and drizzle. Breakfast on kippers. Tony rang ______. I suggested going out and he laughed and said he was just thinking about getting pissed. We went to the Shoulder of Mutton for an hour and discussed all the things we've discussed thousands of time before.

Tony

Home for 2.15 and had lunch with all the family - even John, Maria, JPH and Auntie Mabel.

Work from 5pm until midnight. Ursula was her usual cheerful self. Home in a taxi with a comedian of a driver who spent six years in the army in Aden and Edinburgh. He tells of hair curling tales of lesbians in the jungle, suicide squads, severed limbs - the lot. The conversation was heavy with four letter words beginning with F and ending in K, with a U and a C in the middle. Salt of the earth, some of these taxi drivers.




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Sunday May 1, 1977

3rd after Easter. Wet day. Not going to say much because it was such a normal, uninteresting day. The Silver Jubilee is looming. The poor Queen is going to be exhausted by autumn. Bless the Old Girl.

Naomi: dragged me in

Saw part of the 'Edward VII' series on tv and then Mama gave me a lift into Guiseley in torrential rain. I was stood at the bus stop for ten minutes when Naomi drove up, threw open her car door and dragged me inside. Very hospitable of her. Miss K. Moorhouse was a fellow passenger. They were on their way to Denise's for dinner. Eventually got a bus at Rawdon at 5.20pm. Work was up to it's usual mundaneness. Can anything be 'up to it's usual mundaneness?' or have I invented the word?

Taxi home at midnight. My driver was a silent one this time. Not a reptile expert or connoisseur of Rococo architecture as they usually are. The journey home was one of inward thought and general reflection. Poured with rain all the way.

Ate boiled eggs and sat looking at one of the lower class Sunday papers. Queen Victoria awaited my attention in my boudoir but my eyes ached and I had no intention of taking her up tonight.

Isn't it remarkable how some days I fill a page with minute, incredibly tiny handwriting and on other more lazy occasions I can scribe away like something not dissimilar to a moron?

King George V had silly handwriting, you know.

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Sunday April 24, 1977

2nd after Easter. Arose at 12. Edith Blackwell had just been in and Mama had entertained her to breakfast of eggs and bacon of all things. A peculiar thing to do I must say. Mind you, Edith is a peculiar old thing. (Yes, you've guessed correctly - "thing" is the word of the day).

I came down and had a cooked thing and went back up to my thingy and filled in the thing with that thingummy. Thing, Thing and Thing are covered in grease underneath John's thing on the drive. Those bleeding things never work right. I for one wouldn't have the patience to mess around with them. Not rellishing the idea of going into the thing this afternoon. No doubt thing will have left me a note informing me of a proposed catastrophic change in my social life. No Bloody chance, Kathleen!

The Hon Chris Monckton

Sue and I walked round to Ridgeway and took JPH for a ride, walk, push, call it what you will, in his pram. Jimmy was marking essays and breaking wind. He blamed the beer he'd had of late. Maria bundled baby up and Sue and I walked him in the sun up Thorpe Lane and to Pine Tops where he was pandered to and played with by his doting grandmama until his benevolent Uncle Mike returned him home at 4.

To work after dinner. Ursula confirms that Kathleen's plans for Friday nights are as sinister as I thought they were.

Chris Monckton invited me to his Silver Jubilee party at Wetherby Town Hall on June 18. I must go to that one. He has a sister you know and I'm sure a 'Hon' in the family would prove quite refreshing. The Hon Miss Monckton is about my age too.

Home by taxi at 11. The taxi driver talks of the death of the Leeds Rugby League player Sanderson who died on the pitch this afternoon during a skirmish with Salford players.

To my bedroom at 11.30 with Queen Victoria's correspondence with the Empress Frederick and vice versa, 1865-1871.

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Sunday April 17, 1977

Low Sunday. Come to think of it, I didn't feel particularly high today. Don't get me wrong, I'm not really 'low' but I have been 'higher' at former times of my existence. For instance, I was very 'high' on New Year's Eve. Oh, belt up, you fool.

John brought the car up (it ceased to function this morning) and he spent all day with Dad and Dave B messing about with it in sub-Spring-like temperatures on the drive. I read 'Your Dear Letter'. Watched a Margaret Rutherford/Alastair Sim epic. Films of this nature are usually about half way through when Dad comes in and rolls on the floor moaning: 'now you know why so many cinemas closed down in the 1950s'. I happen to like old films.

To the YP this evening. Yes, work. Low Sunday really fits now. Nothing of interest at the YP. Get on with Ursula so very well but need not comment on it here.

Saturday's nationals all fell for the Kensington Palace  'deliberate mistake' re the so-called 'Lord Culloden' fiasco. The Times especially went on to comment on what a delightful title it is, and how apt it should come back into circulation in this year, the 230th since the death of the Duke of Monmouth (sic) lost in battle there. Bollocks, if you pardon my expression.

Taxi home at 11.30pm. The driver seemed quite normal. Oh yes, I do get odd cab drivers occasionally. On particularly odd, at the forefront of my mind, considers himself to be the world's greatest living expert on snakes, and advised me how successfully to run away from one if I'm ever suddenly confronted by a venomous creature. Another is a qualified meteorologist. These cabbies trap innocent, sleepy victims, such as I, and proceed to pour out their secret plans for world domination. Oh, yes. I've met the next Adolf Hitler on several occasions en route from Leeds to Guiseley. What is worse some even attempt to be amusing.

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