Monday February 16, 1976

Bitter cold day but sunny all the same. At work by 8.30 and manage to finish everything by about 1 o'clock. Carole rang me at 11.15 and asked if I want to meet her in town for lunch. We meet at one on Commercial Street and buy a few bags of crisps and I have a tongue sandwich from Lewis's, and we go sit in the part near the church opposite the Merrion Centre. We laugh and throw food for the pigeons and clown around like eight year-olds. I have to be back at work at about 2pm and she has to meet the Dowager Lady Phillips at C & A - who is suddenly conversing with her daughter again after what seems like weeks of silence and animosity. I bump into Auntie Eleanor and cousin Jackie whilst leaving C & A. Auntie was her usual sarcastic self and Jackie tells me she's to be a bridesmaid for a friend of hers on March 13. ________________.

Home at 5.20 and tell Mum about my meeting. Weddings appear to be at the bottom of most family disputes & squabbles and I think that when my turn comes along, if ever, I'll run away to Gretna Green and have it done with little ceremony and with no aunts or uncles to be seen anywhere.

Have salad for tea and leap into the bath. John rushes off to decorate a bedroom at the Macdonald seat & I marvel at his vitality. Since the day his intended marriage was made public he's gone completely scatty. Out every night visiting priests and painting bedroom ceilings in nice pale yellow for the little bundle of joy expected in September. I'm glad I'm not in his shoes. Fatherhood is all very well, but I'd like to be grey and smoking a pipe by then.

-==-

Sunday February 15, 1976

Septuagesima. Woke up at 11.30 with a hangover. I must have been pissed last night.____.

I don't like the way Christine treats Carole at times. No love is ever lost between them. One thing that's particularly grating is the way Christine insists on calling Carole "Fanny" in a very cold manner.

Marlene, Frank & the children come round after lunch and they bring John a little engagement gift.

Carole rang at 2pm and we went to see 'The Return of the Pink Panther' at Leeds with Susan and Peter at 5pm. The film is hilariously funny. Peter Sellers' accent is brilliant. We got a bus home - the the White Cross - and the four of us devoured fish and chips at Harry Ramsden's. Carole felt as though one of her headaches was coming on and I deposited her on a bus homeward. I returned home in a descending fog.

Poor Carole is still having parent trouble and it all stems from the business about me being 'tight-fisted'. The Phillipses are funny buggers and I have long harboured the opinion that Lady Phillips is deranged and psycopathic, but it's hardly my place to go into the old hag's faults here in these pages. She is so horrible that she would in fact make a perfect mother-in-law.

Bed at 12 o'clock midnight.

-==-

Saturday February 14, 1976

Valentine's Day. Get up at 11.30 and give Carole her Valentine's card in person. Mine hasn't arrived and she's worried about the whereabouts of it. It arrives in the afternoon. I also received a card from Christine, which is a birthday card for a one-year old and it has me in stitches. Get no others, but it's two better than last year at least which proved Valentinecardless.

Mum and Dad go out after lunch and John messes about with his car whilst Maria, Lynn and Sue go bridesmaid dress purchasing. Mrs Macdonald has taken it upon herself to decide what everybody is wearing at the forthcoming wedding.

Down to the Hare tonight after collecting Carole from Oakridge Castle. Mrs Phillips is a bit ratty about Carole not going home last night but at least she's speaking which is a gigantic step towards re-establishing diplomatic relations.

After the Hare Carole, Christine B and Chris and I go to Bingley and then up to Oakwood Hall which is a laugh. I get rather pissed. The four of us pile back to Pine Tops for coffee and a riotous session follows in the lounge where CB takes a fancy to Mum's new sheepskin rug. Mama is roused and shouts down saying "it sounds like a fairground". Not another word was spoken.

-==-

Friday February 13, 1976

Friday the Thirteenth. I'm not superstitious at all but just thought I'd mention it.

After a hard day at the office I find refuge and solace at the Hare & Hounds. John takes me down at 7.30 and I stand with Stephen Barstow, who hadn't heard of John's insignificant item of news. I do down to collect Carole. The Dowager Lady Phillips is on her usual sharp form and tries to make me feel small, in her usual smiling fashion, saying that John looks years older than me & is obviously more mature. I agree entirely with her which throws her off track. Leave for the Hare with Carole by my side.

Chris, Christine, Peter M, Andy & Linda, Carol Smith and a slim-line Christine D are out in force and a good night is had by all.

Peter ascertained his view that we should still go on holiday together despite John and Chris backing down. We will have a good time together, despite Christine B's jokes, and two weeks in the sun will be shear heaven. It's something to look forward to on these shitty, cold, freezing February nights.

Carole and I creep into the tap room for a traditional quick one and at eleven I don't want her to leave me and so I drag her onto a bus with me and bring her home.

Sit with Sue and Pete watching a useless Vincent Price film in which he was transformed into an Edward Heath-like fly and flitted about strangling undertakers. It was in black and white too, which didn't add to the excitement one bit.

Everyone deserted us at about midnight and what followed was a cosy little three hour session on the good old settee. The things that article of furniture could tell if only it had a tongue beneath one of its cushions. Dad disturbed us at 3am coming in for his supper.

-==-

Thursday February 12, 1976

A wet bright day. At the YP Kathleen has a phone call to say the 1975 edition of Burke's Peerage is waiting to be collected at WH Smith's. I'm round there like a shot and return with the bound volume where, to my horror, I see that it is in fact a revised edition of the 1970 volume, andf even smaller because the royal section now forms a separate book. I think it's a disgrace, and at £38 it certainly isn't worth it. However, before taking it back I photostated the supplement in the front of the volume listing all the peers who have died since 1970, and proceed to amend our tatty volume myself. I then re-wrapped the book and took it back to Smith's. Devious I know.

Elton John is coming to the Grand Theatre Leeds on April 29-30 and Sarah, with her boyfriend Alan, Carol and her sweetheart, Eileen and Michael and Carole and I are going along to lend our support. Tickets are £3 each and we all payed today to get it over with. I'm not an absolute Elton John fanatic but I am curious to see how he performs on stage. The girls in the office will be clamouring to see Carole, because she's always been a mysterious voice on the other end of the phone. They'll be more interested in Carole than in Elton John.

Get home at 5.30 for fish and chips and chocolate cake and gallons of tea.

The Henry Jenkins deal is going through with great promise. Barkers accountants and valuers are working around the clock and we'll have a decision in two weeks.

John and I go down to the Hare at 7.30 and when he goes to Maria's half an hour later I go to Carole's. We have a romantic evening in the Hare and spend an hour in the tap room where all the locals seem to know us now. She really is cheerful and happy.

-==-

Wednesday February 11, 1976

I get up at two minutes to 8 and discover that I've mislaid Jim Rawnsley somewhere. A thin layer of snow covers the ground and John has some difficulty getting (his car) up the Blackwell's drive, and I find myself shovelling ice and snow like Hell, whilst he scatters grit from a bucket.

Catch a bus to Leeds and arrive at the YP just before nine o'clock feeling tired, run-down and shagged out.

See in the papers that Eleanor Dixie, daughter of the late Sir Wolstan Dixie, 13th Baronet, is going to claim the title for herself. She fails to se why women are excluded from holding peerages and baronetcies. I'm in total agreement with this. In fact I decide to write to the Garter King of Arms or someone to lodge my strong approval of Miss Dixie's claim. The Equal Opportunities Act should really have ended this discrimination when it came into force. Opening the peerage to both sexes will help slow down the rate of extinctions, and that can't be a bad thing. Certain ancient titles can of course he inherited by either sex, but these only number 14 or 15, and the total number of peerages amount to over 500 I think.

Meanwhile: back to the office. At lunchtime I still feel listless and washed-out & so I seek an audience of Kathleen, and she tells me to go home. Eileen thinks I'm joking and thinks I'm secretly meeting someone in town, but I get the 2.30 bus out of Leeds.

Lynn and Dad are in at home. Poor Lynn is still one of the unemployed 'school-leaver' types and she says that her qualifications are too good for most offices where she's applied for jobs. They all want dumb, large-breasted blondes, with pea-like brains, just to make the tea and type envelopes. Lynn just isn't the office junior type. She feels desperate really because she's not a lazy sort of kid and staying at home all day just revolts her.

I sit in the lounge with a cup of tea browsing through Burke's Peerage planning my line of attack to get all these wronged would-be peeresses acknowledged.

I got in the bath at 8.30 and Carole came round at 9 o'clock to see if I am still in the land of the living. She goes at 9.20. I stand and watch her skip happily down the lane.

-==-

Tuesday February 10, 1976

A Spring-like day and everyone seems to think that winter's gone for another year - or at least everyone in the office feels this is so.

Sarah sees in one of the papers that Elton John is on at the Grand Theatre on April 29, and after contacting the place she tells me the tickets range from £2 to £3. I shall have to contact Carole on this subject and see if she fancies seeing the midget singer in the flesh. No doubt millions of his fans will turn up on the day in question and hog all the tickets.

Keeping my ever watchful eye on the peerage I see today that a prospective duke is engaged to be married. Lord Settrington, grandson and next-but-one in succession to the Duke of Richmond is set to marry a certain Sally Clayton.

Home at 5.30 to roast beef & Yorkshire puddings with Mum, Dad, Lynn, David & John. Maria bought her wedding dress on Saturday.

David and Lynn are in a roving mood. We meet Carole and go to the Hare at 9.30 after seeing 'Fawlty Towers'. We sit for about an hour chatting about what things will be like in 40 years time and discussing Garibaldi biscuits, which Lynn has never heard of. Carole, poor soul, just cannot grasp my sense of humour at all, and at times it becomes very trying having to explain everything in great detail. Dave brings Lynn & I home at 11 o'clock and I mess about doing sod all for an hour or so.

-==-