Wednesday August 6, 1975

Incredibly warm day. Meet the gang in the Hare. We all sit outside, and we, that is John and I, say goodbye to everyone until the end of the month. Christine B is in tremendous spirits, and I'm quite sure now she regrets not going out with me when I asked her.

Miss Akroyd and 'Mr WH Smith' join us. The second time since Saturday!_______.

Home on the 33 bus with the two Christines. I fell and grazed my hand giving CB a piggy back, but this is soon forgotten when CD robbed the sum of 94p from the West Yorkshire Bus Co, and we both dashed to Harry Ramsden's for fish and chips.

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Tuesday August 5, 1975

Eek! It's only four days until the holiday! My first ever aeroplane journey! Two whole weeks away from all those worries!! Oh, the sun! The sea! The women! Aaarrgghh!! All these exclamation marks are too much to bear!!

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Monday August 4, 1975

Holiday in Scotland and Irish Republic. A beautiful day again. See in the paper that the temperature in Roundhay Park (Leeds) yesterday reached 90 degrees farenheit, and if that isn't some kind of miracle I don't know what is.

A historic day indeed. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother is 75 years-old today, and I'm sure she'll manage to give us 10 or 15 years more brilliant service in the future. Saw on the 6 o'clock news a sizeable crowd sing 'Happy Birthday, Dear Mother' to her outside Clarence House, and I only hope Willie Hamilton was watching. People like him must really feel as though they are banging their heads against a brick wall on days like this. The Queen is throwing a party at the palace this evening and all the Royal Family are attending except the Prince of Wales, who is on a fishing holiday in Iceland.

Dirty little (news)papers like the Sun are known to say that when it's cold over here the Royal Family board planes for sweltering regions on the equator. But here we are at boiling point in Britain, and Charles has boarded a plane and fled to the Arctic!

A feature in the EP says the Queen Mother is the first Scottish-born Queen of England. I am damn sure that one of the Plantagenets took a bride from over the border, and just for the record, the Queen Mother is a Hertfordshire lass! Sometimes I wonder just where we dig up our journalists.

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Sunday August 3, 1975

10th after Trinity. Go bugger off. 93F throughout the UK. Holding a pen isn't advisable in such weather conditions. The hottest day since July 1948 - 27 years?

Saturday August 2, 1975

The same applies today, and that is: Go away will you? I'm sure you've got better things to do than sit here reading old diaries which aren't of any importance at all.

Dave Baker's party. Need not say any more. I know what went on, and I'm the only one that matters.

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Friday August 1, 1975

OK, so its the first of August. I don't see why that should signify a sudden flurry of the written word herein. If you must know, I'm feeling remarkably lazy, and not at all creative. Bye, bye.

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Thursday July 31, 1975

Pay day. And a party over at the Central in honour of Alan Brooke and Peter Milburn, who are leaving to join Pennine Radio. The EP won't really be the same without them.

At 5.30 we all went across to the upper room of the Central, where Malcolm Barker and Geoff Hemingway are holding court like Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

A small crowd gathers to pay homage to the two who are leaving us, and Geoff Hemingway makes a brilliant speech. Sarah and I nip downstairs to the bar, and I'm sloshed well before 7 o'clock. Kathleen goes at about 7 and I stand with EP reporters. Sarah is deep in conversation with Angela Barnes and Roy Holland and we have little communication until she drags me, like a wailing schoolboy, to the last bus. I profess my undying love for her, as I always do on these occasions, but I don't think she likes the idea.

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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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Tuesday July 29, 1975

Another hot day, but cloudy. I don't fancy writing tons of literature today. Michael Rhodes is feeling incredibly idle.

Monday July 28, 1975

Lovely hot day. Summer is back again. The papers are harping on about the Prince of Wales's latest girlfriend. However, I'm not even going to mention it, because it's obvious to all intelligent life forms on earth, that these women who are frequently linked romantically with the prince are nothing of the kind.

I am going to say something about another guest of the Queen at Windsor this weekend. Namely Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia, the biggest royal t**t this side of Nell Gwynn. I know she's a relative of the Duke of Edinburgh, but I fail to see why Her Majesty should wish to be seen associating publicly with her. I can't see the logic. They don't go near the Harewoods at all, and he's only been divorced once. Princess Elizabeth has had one divorce and her 2nd marriage to Neil Balfour can hardly be called happy and stable. Tut, tut, Ma'am.

Home at 5.30 after a miserable day at the YP. It's now obvious that Sarah is impassioned by another, so to speak, because I laid a bet on with myself that she wouldn't patronise my party and she's cooled off thoroughly in her approach to me. However, I am not going to worry about it.

Carole rang from St Ives at about 7 o'clock and I wasn't very polite with her because I had just overheard Peter telling Sue that he'd seen her in the Fox with another bloke last Thursday. I'm not the jealous type, but it is a crafty, underhanded move on her part: especially after she got on at me so much because I said I liked going about with Sarah occasionally.

Dave B, Peter, 'George' all come round, and I give 'George' a guided tour of the garden. Mum and Dad ring later. They've been in Cromer today. They seem to be having a good time.

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Sunday July 27, 1975

Miss Dibb got me up at 10.30 and I really did feel fit and well. So too did Christine, but poor Dave B had gone down vomitting like Lynn. They are so alike when it comes to being sick.

No damage had been done, and all was well. Sue and the girls began with the meal, and John managed to sup seven pints of canned ale before 1 o'clock. At 1 Chris came for us, and Peter and Martyn joined us at the Commercial and later at the Hare. Back home at 2 for lunch after meeting Andy, Pete M and Keith. Andy always laughs at John as though he's some kind of comedian. I sleep after lunch until about 3.30, then I have the gruesome task of preparing for work.

Alison drives me to the bus stop in Dave's car, and I get a bus arriving in Leeds at about 4.45. Work until 12 and get a taxi home. Nothing much happened and it seemed to drag by. Home at 12.15 and they're all in bed - even John, who usually spends all his time at 'George's'.

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