Wednesday May 31, 1978

Sat in the garden ~ wearing only my shorts ~ compiling this journal today. It has been another 'scorcher'.

Sarah and I went to Parker's (wine bar) at lunchtime. She bought me three or four pints and we discussed taking our 'concubines' out on Saturday in what will be an onslaught on Harrogate. Sarah and I haven't formed a foursome since Aug 1976 when we went out with Peter (Baker) and Lynne Mather.

A hot sticky afternoon filing portraits. You can imagine what bliss it was to sit in my deckchair with a heddy summer breeze blowing round my knees.

Also contacted Jacq who is burnt to a cinder after sprawling in the park all day yesterday. She says she's not eating this weekend.

Uncle Peter's daughter, Julie, is coming to stay with us on Saturday for what's left of the weekend. Peter's children are good kids.

This evening I took a layer off the lawns.

Prince Michael of Kent and Marie-Christine Troubridge have become engaged. The Queen consented in Privy Council this afternoon to her cousin's marriage with a Czech-born Roman Catholic with one ex husband still living. Formerly Baroness Marie-Christine von Reibnitz, Marie-Christine's marriage to Tom Troubridge was declared null a couple of weeks ago. I do not think any member of the Royal Family has married a Roman Catholic since the 1680s. However, I may be wrong. I have just seen the couple on the six o'clock news and I can tell you I would also renounce any claim to the throne to lay my hands on her. She's beautiful.

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Tuesday May 30, 1978

Oak Apple Day ~ and King Chares II's birthday

Very hot and sticky and un-English. Chaotic at the YP. Wore one of Pete Holroyd's shirts to work, and although I say it myself I looked a bit flash.

Dave L phoned me at 6:30. He says he's got a job in pub management with Whitbread in the Gloucester area. He starts in August. Teachers everywhere should mourn his passing.

I altered a pair of trousers ~ transformed them from the baggy variety into narrow legged ones ~

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Monday May 29, 1978

Moon's last quarter 04:30

Spring Bank Holiday (UK, except Scotland)

I was out of bed at 8 making cups of tea for the ladies. Things were hurried and tempers were frayed because Charles Millward, the internationally famous actor, was collecting Trixie at 9. Pete offered to take Jacq and I to Victoria. It was my idea. Why hang round Muswell Hill all day when we had the opportunity to bask in the sun at Hyde Park? This is in fact what we did. From 10 until 5pm we baked ourselves golden brown in the heart of beautious London.

________________. We arrived at Victoria coach station looking like typical holiday-makers. Trixie sent me away with about 20 of Pete Holroyd's shirts, some of which he never had the chance to wear. It was a hot journey home.

Had a photographic session in a kiosk on the motorway at Sheffield. I carried Jacq's gear to the YWCA and got a bus to Guiseley at 11. Mum and Dad are burnt to cinders too.

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Sunday May 28, 1978

1st Sunday after Trinity

Breakfast was fun. Pete S screaming and shouting about his diet resembling that of a Paki's after a large bowl of cold leftover rice was thrust before him. He's got a way with words.

Trixie, Jacq and I walked to the Alexandra Palace were CAMRA were 'throwing' a beer festival. We sat on the lawn drinking pints to the sound of a German band until after 5. Yet another incredibly hot day.

Trixie told Jacq she's buying her a car for Christmas _____________-.

Ate pizza and sank 'real ale'. Jacq was wearing her 'lampshade' outfit __.

Tonight we dined quietly with Trixie and saw a bit of The Godfather with Marlon Brando.

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Saturday May 27, 1978

A hot, stinking day. I felt revoltingly ill and close to death. At 12 we went with Trixie and Pete S to the Five Bells at East Finchley where I performed my 'dead man lying on the floor' routine for anyone who cared to watch. They were all sinking pints of beer like Billy Ho (sic) but all I could do was moan and grovel about in the deep grass with my clammy fingers wrapped feebly round a tomato juice. ________. Trixie Holroyd however is just perfection itself _____.

Another party at Trixie's tonight ~ a dumping ground for homosexuals and Polish refugees with wealthy wives, and women wearing pink pullovers adorned with white beads and with faces that go numb after only two gin & tonics. All called Jack, Beryl, Dick and Celia. The food, chatter, booze and general atmosphere was a delight. Slept in the state bed.

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Friday May 26, 1978

To the YP with Jim and a rucksack full of belongings. A hot, bright, summers day.

At 12 I went to the bus station and grabbed the back seat of the 309 to London. Jacq arrived minutes later and at 12:30 we left for the bustling metropolis swigging from cans of warm lager.

At 5:30 we were at Trixie's ~ & the three of us went straight to the BBC at the Alexandra Palace for a few drinks. Everyone completely pissed.

Party back at Trixie's flat from 8pm. Here all is lost and forgotten in a mist of champagne, elderberry wine, and various assortments of ale.

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Thursday May 25, 1978

That nauseating, wriggling grub David Steel has announced today that the pact with the government will be ended at the close of the current parliamentary session in July in readiness for a clean sweep towards a general election. He must think we've all fallen off a Christmas tree or something, because I can tell you that the voting papers will still be warm in the ballot boxes when the swindling Liberals team up with Mr Callagas and his gruesome set.

Christine phoned today.

Tonight we expected Jim and Margaret Nason but they never materialised. Edith and Ernest are of course house hunting in far-off Devon. So, it was an unusually quiet night, and a hot one.

I'll fill in a bit of the blank page by mentioning Dad's moustache. He first grew one in 1973, but shaved it off in that historic year. His 1978 effort is even better, and I award him top marks for its high class cultivation, colouring, size, lustre, body and exquisite shape. Indeed, the facial adornment just sends the years rolling from him.

Goodnight.

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