Sunday November 11, 1979

_. Remembrance Sunday
    22nd Sunday after Trinity

Spent a long day at Club Street with Ally and Dave the Sailor. I am besotted with Ally's stereo machine. So much so that I now aspire to be a Radio 1 DJ like that great man Tony Blackburn.

Dave is a decent chap, and I do feel very sorry for him because I think he thought his weekend with Ally would follow a different course. After all, we do know what sailors are, don't we? Poor boy. I doubt whether he will be quick to return, even though he has been made very welcome. Ally is of the same opinion.

The spitfire remains incapacitated and so at 7, we happy threesome, took a bus to the White Cross and had fish and chips. By now Dave the Sailor is so subdued I am feeling uneasy. We were so relieved when a bus came at 10 and took him off to Leeds. Saw Ally onto a bus back to Bradford at 10:30 and walked home in the rain. Hilda and Tony are being entertained by Mum and Dad. Uncle Tony is now a Rotarian.

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Saturday November 10, 1979

_. Dave the Sailor arrived. Out this evening with Sue, Peter, Ally and the sailor to the White Cross. Many of the locals are heavily bandaged, covered in bruises, and missing vital limbs. The landlord explained that a recent brawl had raged in the hostelry which had resulted in nothing short of a massacre.

We went back to Pine Tops with wine for further revelries. Out to the Woolpack at Yeadon with Sue and Pete. They took us to a house party on the Coppice Wood estate. We bumped into Jill and Tim and they came along to the party. Today is Tim's 20th birthday. The host of the party, a miserable soul, reigned over the proceedings. The sailor had a fracas with another guest and so we made a speedy exit. Jill and Tim carried us off to Bradford taking lots of booze from the party in the back of his van.

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Friday November 9, 1979

_. Ally phoned me this afternoon to see what I intended doing this weekend. I told her I would ring back in the evening after Dave the Sailor's arrival. I worked until 5pm and then went over to the Eagle Tavern on North Street with Dave Pitts and Steve Burnip to Bob Cockroft's party. [He is defecting from the EP to the YP and is to be Fred Manby's replacement on the People column]. I only intended having a couple of drinks, just to be sociable, and my financial situation is far from healthy, but the paralysing effect of alcohol rendered me insensitive to respectable banter, and I rolled around the walls sloshing Timothy Taylor's ale  over all and sundry. Home by bus at 10:30. I went to see Margaret Phillips at the fish and chip shop on Victoria Road. She came across as cheerful, but said something to the effect  that she occasionally feels her late husband's presence in the vicinity of the deep fat fryer. A framed portrait of the late John Phillips takes pride of place above the list of shop prices. At home I'm still quite pissed. Watched John Cleese and Michael Palin in discussion with Bishop Mervin Stockwood and Malcolm Muggeridge on the subject of the new [Monty] Python epic, 'The Life of Brian'. It's a film I cannot wait to see.

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Thursday November 8, 1979

_. Out with Sarah at 12 to Da Mario's for a belated birthday nosh.  She was in a better frame of mind today. it is good to be seen out with Sarah walking around the town. Sarah in her finest furs. We do attract a few turned heads and envious glances because she is an imposing lady.

No buses, and so I got a train at 5:20 in pouring rain. Took a bath and went out with Lynn and Dave to Ally's at 7 for dinner. She dished up a splendid dinner of prawn cocktails, steak, strawberries, &c, and the wine flowed in usual abundance. We left at almost 2am. Lynn joked about 'Dave the Sailor' arriving tomorrow which wasn't well received.

Dave the sailor is from Devon, but an old friend of Ally's from Winchester. He contacted Ally a few weeks ago to say he was going on leave, and that he wanted to 'be smothered' in Yorkshire hospitality. Ally agreed to this without giving it too much thought. She's like that, isn't she? Dave is all very well propping up the bar in the Plough. He's quite manageable there, but is it right that he should be in Ally's house, just the two of them? Does the sailor have designs on the dear girl?

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Wednesday November 7, 1979

_. Sarah's 27th birthday. She refused to celebrate or be even remotely cheerful, but I gave a large card with a verse of my own composition. I can be quite poetic, you know.

Jennifer Myers, the wife of my cousin Derek [son of my mother's sister, Eleanor] gave birth to a son today. I believe the baby is to be called Oliver, but this has yet to be confirmed. Hardly an earth shattering event for me because my cousins, and half cousins number over fifty. My poor mother was a great-aunt at 28.

Adolf Hitler continues to provide great entertainment on these long, autumnal evenings. I don't despise the chap either, which is odd. No, I am no fascist or National Front supporter. Hitler may have been mad, but then so was the German population for tolerating him.

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Tuesday November 6, 1979

_. Back to the grindstone. In fact the YP is nothing short of a labour camp. One might as well emigrate to Czechoslovakia and lend support to the Charter 77 malarkey, because my working conditions are no better than those of your average commie dissident in a cheap eastern bloc republic.

No work seems to have been done in the office since I left for my weekend break on Friday lunchtime. I worked from 5pm. Poor Gilberto is having trouble with the news desk. Chris Oakley, for all his south American wanderings, is making rude and heated noises in high places re Gilberto's command of the Queen's English.

My taxi driver this evening was a deaf mute.

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Monday November 5, 1979

_. Took our leave of Chillandham Cross at about 11:30. Up to Oxford and then to Woodstock, where we had a couple of drinks in the empty pub there. Blenheim Palace is closed until March next year, not that we had time to inspect the Oxfordshire culture anyway. The northward journey saw a deterioration in the weather, and freezing rain pelted the car as we trundled along. We emerged from the car at Stratford-on-Avon to inspect the town. My first visit to the home town of the Bard since December, 1974, when I joined Dave L and his college cronies on a marathon pub crawl. We went round the town like Dickensian urchins staring into restaurants and breathing heavily on cake shop windows. Heading up the M1 at 6:30 we saw almost every bonfire north of Watford. Smoke drifted over the motorway.

Ally is a petal.

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Sunday November 4, 1979

_. 21st Sunday after Trinity

To the Plough at lunch with Ally, Graham and Gill. It's an afternoon soiree for Graham who is resigning as barman to become an executive in Gloucestershire. Gill and I sat with pale and ghastly faces, gently moaning. A pity really because the salmon and hot punch looked very good. Ally ate like a horse and put away my share. I was very happy to quit the pub at 4:30 though.

The evening was weird and peculiar. To a dinner party at Graham Smith's place. [He was Ally's boss when she was employed at Wessex Area Health Authority]. We sat down to dine but only Ally and I ate. They watched, saying they were dieting. Who the bloody hell throws a dinner party and refuses to eat? Charlotte fussed over her cats, Oscar and Biggles, kissing them with nauseating regularity. Strange and odd, but aren't they all odd in Hampshire?

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Saturday November 3, 1979

_. Today we went to lunch - the whole clan - and sat eating long overdue toasties next to a roaring log fire. Fiona is a miniature version of her mother. Ally and I then went supposedly shopping into Winchester, but having little money bought nothing.

This evening out with Graham and Gill to Tolworth near Guildford. After drinking in a couple of taverns we went on to a house party at the flat of Graham's friend, Richard. Crowded. The wine flowed. A revolting tart with a plum her mouth actually suggested to me that Hadrian's Wall ought to be demolished and re-erected at Watford. 'Good idea', quipped I: 'We don't want the likes of you venturing up north.' Drank far too much wine with Gill. Ally didn't drink because she was at the wheel of Mrs D's car. I was hideously sloshed. Home at 5am.

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Friday November 2, 1979

_. Ally came to Leeds at 12:30 and we were soon on the road to Winchester. The car was packed and rattled along like Stephenson's Rocket. I was starving, not having eaten all day, but was banned from snacking until we reached the designated picnic site at Bladon in Oxfordshire. We arrived at 5 and inspected the church yard wherein lay the remains of Winston and Clem and various other Churchills. Such ordinary, mundane, unobtrusive tombs considering such great bones rot beneath, yet moving in a strange way. A pathetic looking white bouquet had been placed on Winston's white slab. I took a few photos but felt uneasy photographing gravestones.

We sat giggling in the car eating edam cheese with some violence and tormented the village cat who came to investigate. I wanted to make a Martini, but it was hardly the time or place. On to Winchester for 6:30. Barbara and Frank are there with daughter, Fiona, aged 10.  Mrs Dixon fussed in her usual manner. On to the Ship at Alresford and then the Plough at Itchen Abbas.

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Thursday November 1, 1979

_. November at last. The season of fireworks and falling foliage. I almost said tis the season for scarlet clad Yeomen of the Guard to file through the dark cellars of the Palace of Westminster in search of some foul plot, but Her Majesty is giving it a miss this autumn. One state opening of Parliament in June is quite enough for one year.

Ally came over and so does Lynn, without Dave, who is at home in bed with one of his headaches. Lynn blames the malady on the pork pie he had for lunch.

Jim and Margaret came later.

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