Friday August 1, 1986

5, Club Street, Lidget Green, Bradford BD7 2PB 

Better day. Sunshine. Up at 7 o/'clock to a sunlit room to see Ally changing Clementine white of pallor and with sunken eyes. The broken nights are doing her no good. She was feeding at 1:10 and then again at 6. Poor Clemmie is sproggy and has a cough and matted eyes. Samuel and I had a fried repast and took our morning constitutional to the Co-op and the newsagents. The Daily Telegraph dominates with the coming sanctions against Pretoria which the PM has fought against for ages. Sir Geoffrey Howe doesn't seem to me to have any bottle whatsoever. The PM mut know what she is doing. Later, Samuel played in the garden hung, nay festooned, with washing. I joined him and sat on the wall with a copy of 'Moonfleet'. Sat baking like 'Fergie' (the ginger Tom from down the street). Mince for lunch, then peaches. Samuel has an excellent appetite. The midwife made her last visit and she looked bog eyed when I said: "see you next time". One never knows, does one. We had a card from Delia Collis in which she says our choice of names is beautiful.

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Thursday July 31, 1986

 Waltergarth, Horton-in-Ribblesdale

Waltergarth.

We woke up in a big, sweaty heap. Ally, Samuel and I in the same bed. It had been a rough night because Ally had to switch on the lights to feed Clementine, which woke Samuel who leapt from the bed and bounded around like a competitor in the Commonwealth Games. We went (Sam and I) to find Dad, who was cooking breakfast for his guests. To get out of mischief Sam and I went and poked around in the fireplace and got it blazing. Fire. How many hundreds of generations have stood in wonderment at the sight of a crackling, spitting new fire? We had our breakfast when the walkers left at 9 o'clock. The usual 'full-English'. I put a quotation by Virgil in Dad's visitors book which wasn't appreciated. 

"Begin, Baby boy: a child that has no smile for a parent will not be thought fit inviting for dinner by a God or taken by a Goddess to bed."

I took Samuel down to the river in a misty rain and we lobbed rocks into the grey waters under the bridge. Spent some time looking for a Troll. Bought Dad some bread (three loaves), and a Daily Telegraph for £2. Disgusting. We left at 1 and we were home before 3. Ally knackered. A health visitor came and injected Clementine, stabbing her in the foot which made her scream. Lambs liver a la Chernobyl for dinner. Collapsed tonight. Sneezy, &c. The beginnings of a cold? 'Minder'. Campari.

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Wednesday July 30, 1986

Dad with Samuel & Clementine.

 5, Club Street, Lidget Green

Up early. Ally had been up in the night and had fed Clementine without waking me. I just snore through the zoo-like hullabaloo. So different than when Samuel was tiny, and Ally says it's much easier this time. My services are no longer required. Heavy rain. We phoned Dad after breakfast and left for Horton at 10:30. Me at the wheel. A long journey. I arrived with a thick head and took some of Mum's paracetamols. Poor Waltergarth. The place depresses me. Mum's empty perfume bottles in the bathroom and her old faded flowered dressing gown hanging behind the door. Her hair curlers in the cupboard under the sink with fine strands of her golden hair still entwined. Ghosts everywhere. 

Clementine's first visit to Waltergarth. We hardly know we have her. She just eats and sleeps and then lays midst the white broderie anglaise cooing and gurgling. I tasted Mum's orange wine (April, 1984 vintage) which is excellent. We always said we'd sample it when Clementine arrived. Dad had four lads staying there for B & B from 6pm. They were wet and bedraggled and had been out in the hills for five days and they fell in front of the fire and clamoured for the Daily Telegraph with heart warming enthusiasm. The youth of today are obviously not all loutish. The children were all tucked up and asleep for 8pm. Ally and I went to Settle for a couple of hours. The Talbot Arms and then the Little House restaurant for yet another exquisite dinner for £23. Returned at 11 sated. Clemmie still out cold.

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Tuesday July 29, 1986

 5 Club Street, Lidget Green

We went out to town this morning to buy Samuel some new shoes. A nice red pair for 'best' and some trainers for 'playing out'. He looks very grown up. A little colt. Just an hour in town floored Ally who was near to collapse. I have warned her that she could be doing too much, too early. We returned for lunch and Ally and Sam went to bed. Later, it was a bright afternoon and we went to the park in Manningham where we found a fun fair where Samuel rode on an apparently never ending roundabout sitting on a fire engine ringing the bells. I weakened and had a toffee apple and it cost me a filling in the process. The park was swarming with eastern types all from our great Commonwealth of nations. Tonight: Lynn and David phoned from Scotland. Very chatty. I watched a recording I'd made of Bette Davis in 'The Little Foxes' (1941). It ended suddenly. Did my tape run out?

World News: The Yorks sailed into Ponta Delgada in the Azores yesterday. The PM is to have an op on her right hand next week. Ella Fitzgerald, 68, has heart failure. Sir Osbert Lancaster has snuffed it along with Vincente Minnelli. The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire is 91.

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Monday July 28, 1986

 5, Club Street, Lidget Green

Ice, wind, rain, &c. Not a typical July. We waited all day for the Philips engineer to come to look at our washing machine. He didn't appear until 4pm when Ally and I were watching a tape of the Royal wedding and laughing at the puerile commentary of the great broadcaster Sir Alastair Burnet. He should really be horsewhipped ... along with the Philips engineer, who charged me £30 just to tighten up the points and connections and did nothing but moan about the inaccessibility of the appliance. British workmen. God Bless 'em. However, the machine was going again and within minutes of his departure the nappies were spinning furiously. All two dozen of them. Ally wrote a couple of thank you letters. Auntie Annie Wilkinson sent £15 and Aunt Elsie a dress. I sat over my D. Telegraph reading of the furore over Michael Shea. The man should go. The palace is standing by Mr Shea and his is defended by Sir W. Heseltine, the private sec, but to quieten things down his head should roll. Damage has been done to Her Majesty and the PM over this. Heseltine has a letter in the Times today which makes it clear that the Queen accepts Mr Shea's version of events and not that of the Sunday Times, who published an article alleging HM was dismayed by Mrs Thatcher's policies. HM wouldn't be so unprofessional. My blood  boils. The poor maligned sovereign.

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Sunday July 27, 1986

 5, Club Street

9th Sunday after Trinity

Samuel and I went for a walk to collect the morning papers and to walk-off our enormous breakfast. I bought a Sunday Telegraph, but weakened and also bought the News of the World. We came back and sat in the garden midst the flower pots. 

Sam always talks to the neighbours ginger Tom cat and is very cross when it declines to answer back. Well, I am on holiday. One must be light-hearted every so often. The latter organ leads with an account of poor Princess Michael of Kent's supposed 'affair' with the Earl of Suffolk & Berkshire, the thrice married millionaire, who is 51. Inside was a tale of the Duke and Duchess of York’s
pre-nuptial Ball at Windsor where 'Fergie' introduced Paddy McNally to Prince Andrew. All good stuff. The Telegraph leads with a train crash. In other news, Averell Harriman has died aged 94.

A warm afternoon. We put a chicken in the oven and took Clemmie out in her pram. Her first walkies. We went of all places to Scholemoor cemetery where the roses were beautiful and where Samuel could run around unhindered. The dead don't mind, I'm sure. Looking at tombstones both old and new one thing emerges very clear and frightening. One is so very lucky now to reach three score years and ten. People are not living longer despite the NHS, Giros, British Rail, Concorde, PVC, penicillin, or Margaret Thatcher. Most disturbing. Bessie phoned. Ate an enormous dinner. Our washing machine went kaput. I phoned Dad who said automatic machines are too complex for the amateur and I will have to call in Philips. Sod it. Sue goes to Scotland tomorrow.

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Saturday July 26, 1986

 5, Club Street, Lidget Green

Susan and Peter's sixth anniversary of blissful wedlock _______. We phoned tonight and Sue seemed cheerful. They were both drinking whisky, a present from Jim Nason. The boys both have spots and they are going to Horton in the morning and then to Scotland in Dad's car. Jill and Tim came here at 7 o'clock with Thomas. Clementine's first visitors. "Where have you got Clementine from -- the name that is?", Jill asked. 

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Friday July 25, 1986

 Club Street, &c.

Went again in the car again to Duckworth Lane with Samuel clinging on in the back of the car wide-eyed with amusement at my new found mobility. The Co-op is doing very nicely out of me this week. We went to Cheap 'n Cheerful to give our glad tidings to Mrs Whitehead but it was her day off. Bought some notelets for announcing our child's arrival to friends we haven't phoned. Sarah C and the Rawnsleys, &c. She is a gorgeous fat little thing - like Samuel, but rounder and with a different nose. The little girl has no eye-lashes and of course her eyes are blue. They always are. Clementine has a perfectly shaped head, so unlike some babies, but am I slightly biased? Just think if I go along and collect my grandmother's birth certificate and find that she is really spelt 'Lavinia'! Dad says that his mother-in-law was a rotten speller too. Was she spelling her name 'Levinyer' because she knew no other? Mum's birth certificate definitely says her mother was Levinyer, but I am gripped with paroxysms of doubt.

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Thursday July 24, 1986

 5, Club Street

Sunshine and midwives, &c. Samuel and I went up to Duckworth Lane in the car for an hour and spent it amongst the frozen veg in the Co-Op. We lingered in a newsagents shop over the royal wedding editions. You have no idea how satisfied I am that Prince Andrew is now Duke of York. Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd says that the last time a son of the sovereign married without a peerage title 'appears' to have been in 1374 when Thomas of Woodstock, a son of Edward III, married Eleanor de Bohun. He later became Duke of Gloucester. I cannot dispute this because as yet the plethora of dirty nappies has prevented my researches. I could have been physically sick today over breakfast while reading the offering compiled by our talented poet laureate  in honour of the York nuptials. Called 'The Honey Bee and the Thistle', it is written as a song, and Ted Hughes should be thoroughly ashamed of himself. Come back John Masefield, all is forgiven. I enclose the 'poem' here.

The Honey Bee and the Thistle

Upon this day in Westminster

That brings the Prince his Bride

Out of the Sun there swoops a song

that cannot be denied.

While every television trembles

In the organ blare

And their cardiographs' two butterflies

Are trying to touch in air.

While some weep at the foamy veil

That surges her to bliss

And some drink to the princely hand

That lifts it for the kiss

Before the country's dried is eyes

Or bells begin to ring

That cherub in a shaft of light

sweetly starts to sing:

When all the birds of Roxburghshire

Danced on the lawns, and all the

The Salmon of the Tweed cavorted

Over the Garden Wall

Gold as the Honey Bee

etc etc

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Wednesday July 23, 1986

 5, Club Street

A bright day. Nothing quite like a Royal wedding. Samuel and I went out at breakfast time before the television had 'warmed up' and we did our shopping amongst a throng of housewives all eager to get home in front of the box. It was with great relief that I heard on the 10 o'clock news that Prince Andrew is to become Duke of York, Earl of Inverness, and Baron Killyleagh. Phew. My reputation as a royal boffin is saved. We watched TV all day. It darkened here later and rained heavily. Dr Duck came at 10:15 and Dad at about 11. A splendid wedding. Miss Ferguson wearing a very suitable, traditional frock. Pretty bridesmaids. A relaxed sovereign, and a beaming Grand Old Duke of York. At 3 we went (Dad, Sam and I) to the Kwik Fit Tyre place where the Maestro had new brake pads. We then went to register the baby in her lovely Christian names at Manor Row. Today is Levinyer Wilson's birthday. Quite fitting really.

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Tuesday July 22, 1986

 Moorhouse Inn

Something of a frantic day. Dad with Bessie and Frank moved vast amounts of personal belongings to Club St. I had a stock take. A flash little couple, the Brendan Watsons, came to relieve me here. They've been promised the 'Sir Gawain and the Green Dragon' pub near Mold. The drip with the beard did the stock take, and I didn't escape at the wheel of my vehicle until almost 2pm. I picked up Ally at 3 and took our daughter home. Such a feeling of fulfilment and elation. We had a photo session at Club St. Our visitors departed and left us with our rapidly expanding family. Darling Clementine. Will she perhaps resemble me?

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