Wrote to Ally and phoned. She is busily knitting. Cousin Tricia is her current victim, or rather her baby is. I phoned her again when Mum and Dad went to see Sue and Pete.
I went to bed with Robinson Crusoe. I get the impression that he and Man Friday were on the peculiar side.
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_.Sun came and melted the snow. Britian is now knee deep in rotting, dead lambs, all caught unaware in the snow surprise of the weekend. We are also swimming in something else. I'm talking about canine excretia. Alighting from my bus this evening I proceeded to skid and slide, like a male version of Robin Cousins, in the numerous dog turds evenly spread over my homeward route. Britain is indeed in decline. The BBC 9 o'clock news failed to mention that Princess Michael of Kent had left hopsital with her newly named daughter. Kenneth Kendall went on and on about Bobby Sands [and the battle for his 'Slimmer of the Year' title], and Ringo Starr getting married, and listing endless boring Scottish League football results, but not one mention of the royal infant. She's been named Gabriella Marina Alexandra Ophelia Windsor. Gabriella is a good European RC name, and one of the baby's Austrian ancestors. Marina is for her grandmother the late Duchess of Kent. Alexandra for her aunt Mrs Ogilvy. Ophelia for the character in Hamlet who went bonkers and drowned herself bedecked in garlands. The baby was of course born on Shakespeare's birthday. We are told, in the press and not of course by the BBC, that the Lady Gabriella, eighteenth in line of succession to the throne, is to be known as 'Ella'. I'm unhappy with this. Sounds very un-English and calls to mind the wobbly, and collapsed 'Ruritarian' thrones of Europe.
The YP was a drag. Spoke to Ally. She had been in Bradford looking at baby clothes. Phoned her at 8:30 and our chat ended on a note of discord on the subject of money. Why is money the cause of all our problems? Why do I ask such stupid questions? Appropriately enough, the Monday film on the telly is 'For a Few Dollars More' - Clint Eastwood again.
Mum and Dad had been to the bank, and to the valuers, Oliver, Kitchen & Flynn, who are visiting the Stonehouse this week. At £75,000 I cannot see any difficulties.
To bed at 12.
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_. Low Sunday
I eventually went outside and shifted a bit of snow just to let the neighbours know we aren't taking Alaskan citizenship. Ate beans and eggs and things for breakfast, and tolerate Sir Jimmy Savile, KG, OBE, on the radio. [No doubt he'll soon be Lord Savile of Stoke Mandeville].
Ally made herself beautiful - a rhapsody in blue no less, and at 3:30 we climbed into her coughing little French car, and onward to Guiseley. Snow has devastated the Pine Tops garden. Like a Mount St Helen's eruption. Conifers flattened, daffs squashed, &c.
Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Mum and Dad went with David B at 7 to the Stonehouse Inn, where a deal was made. George is selling the inn for £75,000 and it's now down to Mum and Dad to come up with the cash. Valuers and bankers on the case. Ally and I, laden with sherry, went on to Burley and sat holding the baby for a couple of hours. Home at 11. Pub talk. Too exciting.
Ally leapt into my bed. I've been reading Robinson Crusoe.
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_. Club Street has disappeared beneath a white blanket of snow which persists throughout the day. We ventured outside and walked down the middle of the road [the paths being too heaped with snow] to Morrison's to buy minced beef and other vital provisions. Ally looked a belter in her blue wellies. All was well until a large, fat rat emerged from a snowdrift and ran across our path. Ally took off like Mary Peters at the 1972 Olympics. Back at Club Street for 3:15. Ally made one of her delicious lasagnes. It is a dish that I'm sure would convince any IRA hunger striker to change his mind. Ally and her Prestige Crock-pot could be the saviour of Anglo-Irish relations.
A marathon tv session with a box of Mr Kipling's French Fancies. Randolph Scott in two westerns, Dennis Weaver in a Hawaiian-themed thriller. Shelley Winters in a ludicrous 'black magic' type thriller, and then a Hammer Dracula epic.
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_. Snow fell over night throwing everything into chaos. Sat giggling with Ally at breakfast watching the snow swirling across the Bradford landscape. One wouldn't believe it's May next week. To the YP. Phoned Mummy. She expressed surprise that I wouldn't be going home tonight, but I do want to spend the weekend at Club St. Women! Only days ago I was treating home like a hotel.
I escaped the office at 4 to battle on to Bradford on a smoke-filled omnibus. Didn't get to Club St until after 6. Had a huge dinner, steak and kidney with dumplings. A romantic evening looking out at the falling snow. Snuggled down watching our tiny, black and white, and illegal tv.
News: Sick of hearing about the IRA hunger striking MP Bobby Sands. _________.
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_. St George's Day
Harry, England and St George, and all that. Spent an hour in Leeds Market looking for suitable pork chops and new potatoes. I approached a little red faced woman on a veg stall and asked for some spuds. 'What quantity?' Floundering, I came away with 2lb.
Whilst Lord Cambridge was being planted at Frogmore at 2:30 Princess Michael of Kent was giving birth to a daughter at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington. What we have lost in the Cambridges we have gained in the Kents. No names for the latest Windsor have been announced as yet, but Marina is bound to feature in there, and your Elizabeths, Victorias, Alexandras and Dianas are inevitable.
To Lidget Green at 5:30. Dined with darling Ally. Dave G phoned. He wants us to accompany him and the lads to Steak Kebabs on May 2, but I say this is out of the question.
Mum phoned. Our wedding invitations have arrived at Rhodeses stationers.
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_. Mum took one of her monthly swings at me which I took with my usual bluffness and ill-humour. She objected to the way Ally and I had 'moved into' Pine Tops for the Easter weekend and had treated the place 'like a hotel'. How on earth can you treat your own home like a hotel? I sat brooding in front of the TV. The David Lloyd George series has improved with age.
I took to my bed with Burke's Peerage. Frances was a very popular name until the early years of this century and was abundant in the 17th and 18th centuries, but has since given way to Eileen, Brenda and Yvonne.
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_. Miserable day really. I can do nothing right. Dad did nothing but complain about the painting I did in his absence yesterday. I am very annoyed at his attitude. In future he can get on with his bloody work alone. The man is fastidious to the point of insanity.
Back to the YP after my Easter break. Kathleen, in her lengthy absence from us has been thinking up ways to destroy our perfectly good filing system. All the numers relating to files are to go, and we are going all alphabetical, she has announced. In other words Princess Anne will come before apples, and muscular dystrophy will come before music. I've worked with the numbered system for eight years, but now Divorce [2192], Iran [187], Greece [682], Sex[4768], Spiritualism [1063], Sheep [1E], Films [516], the Conservative Government [937H], and such, are to go.
Today is the fifty-fifth anniversary of the birth of Her Majesty the Queen, who is celebrating quietly at Windsor Castle. The Marquess of Cambridge, 85, a cousin of Her Majesty, died last Thursday without a male heir. It is my belief that one day HM will bestow the dukedom of Cambridge upon Prince Edward, a title long associated with the Royal Family over hundreds of years, and cousin George's demise makes this all the more real. Speculation is also growing in the Press that the Prince of Wales is to become the Governor General of Australia after his marriage. I think not. It would never do for Charles to become bogged down in colonial politics, and it wouldn't be right for Lady Diana to bring up a family 'down under'. The future cherubic Wales babies will require Gloucestershire air.
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_. Bank Holiday in the UK [Except Scotland] & Canada
Mum and Dad went off with John at 8:30am to Penrith to tow his car back. I spent the day up a ladder painting the house. Got more paint on myself than the walls. Ally cleaned her car.
Mum, Dad and John came home at 6:30 and Dad wasn't happy with my painting. Bloody charming. Later, watched [for the eighteenth time] 'Where Eagles Dare'. They show this film every Bank Holiday, and every time they think Richard Burton is about to die. Buggered.
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_. Easter Day. Full Moon
Crippled with a hangover. I switched onto the BBC and watched the Pope's 'Urbi et Orbi' address, in no fewer than forty nine languages, and felt much better afterwards.
Mum made a spectacular buffet. All the family gathered. Catherine calls her brother 'the boy'. Lynn and David brought baby Frances, and Maria held her for hours. Sue and Pete came very late. Pete was somewhat reminiscent of a dummy in Madame Tussaud's.
The party was over by 6 and Ally and I stayed with Mum and Dad and we watched 'Murder on the Orient Express' from the book by Agatha Christie. I like the book, but the film is dull. Retired at 12.
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_. Up at 8 and out helping Papa who is painting the house white. He began this ridiculous task yesterday. John and JPH came to breakfast, and Maria followed later with Catherine. Both children looked excellent and although Catherine will be 2 in June she still cannot walk unaided. John found a boiler suit and took up a paint brush to help. It was warm enough for Ally, Mum and Maria to sit on the lawn in deckchairs.
In the afternoon I took an hour off and went with Ally to pay Denise the remainder of our Ios money. Gulp.
Painting continued until after 6. We ate prawn sandwiches with the others. Karen, Steve, Jill and Tim came at 8 and we went to Dave L's 'Christmas' party at Tennyson Street. A successful party, and good turn-out, with far more attending that our miserable nine guests at Christmas. We danced until our legs ached. Hazel O'Connor was perhaps the most played record. John came minus Maria, who was too tired. He consumed vast quantities of whisky. Ally squealed with excitement at the arrival of Jacq and Paul [on a motor bike]. Teachers from Dave's school came in abundance. I sneezed a good deal thanks to the presence of Rowan, the Gordon Setter. The Dibbs came, as did Ian Appleyard, who expects his second child on or around April 27. Joan Lawson, Dave's Mum, wanted to play Debussy's 'Clair de Lune' on the organ, but was out-voted. Shame. Home at 2:30, pissed.
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A warm, gentle day. Ally and I took off to town with Samuel at 1pm. We didn't take the pram and I carried baby for two hours, by the end...
