3rd of January 2012, Yorkshire.

On route to Leeds, we have lunch at Bettys in Ilkley, packed with people stir crazy after the holiday.

We're sitting facing the car park and the row of shops beyond.

Me, what is that shop called?'

"'Rupert, which.'

"'Me.

"'It looks to me like hot feces.'

"'Rupert, its fat face.'

"'Betrean a shop calling itself fat face "' and one called hot feces, seems a difference of degree only, with both equally mysterious.

"'Is it a shop where one gets a fat face, hence sweets and confectionery, or an outsized shop?

"'Neither, apparently, just a well-known fashion outlet.

Still, the name seems quite odd to me, if not nearly as unlikely as what I thought it was.

Keep up, I suppose, the message.

24th of January. Well, love, the message. "'Twenty-fourth of January.

"'Well, love, the calls going on,'

"'is what my mother used to say in the early 1960s

"'when I phoned from London,

"'meaning that telephoning to them was still a luxury.

"'On the rare occasions when I was at home and wanted to make a private call,

it had to be on the shop phone, which was mounted on the wall with a separate mouth and earpiece.

So some of one's intimate moments were played out amid sawdust and blood.

Second of February.

...