July 27th 1981

The penultimate day at work!  We arose at the usual hour (after, of course, the usual breakfast – milk + marmalade sandwiches.)  For the third week running, we were doing the same run, all the way down to the ocean in the area just south of the park, and by now it was getting tedious.  The 4^th member of the team this week was a guy who’d brought his dog along.  It seemed cruel to us, dragging a poor animal around for that distance, but then, it’s none of our business.  The work dragged a little, + at the end Gerry took us to another spot just to finish off, which was a bind, but again it wasn’t too late when we finished, and this time Gerry dropped us off at the shop.  Danny + Terry were both there, along with Lilith, Terry’s daughter.  We paid Terry $100 for the use of the shop, and bought Danny a copy of Duke for the use of his camera, then spent an hour or so chatting, playing with Lilith, taking pictures, drinking coffee at the corner café.  Then Val and I both receive complimentary haircuts (at least, we assumed they were complimentary), Val from Danny, me from Terry.  They did good jobs too.  I had bought the materials for our lunch, and so we made our excuses + left, to do some shopping in town.  We were quite hungry by now, so stopped once again at the statue on Dolores to eat a splendid meal – cheese, tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches, with 7-Up, followed by apple squares, a rich cake from a local bakery.  Terry passed just as we were finishing, + gave us a lift to town, then some shopping – a couple of 8-tracks for the car stereo, a pair of socks for Val, and a book for me.  We were looking for one for Aneema, but couldn’t find anything suitable.  However, did notice a good selection of hardback Vonneguts going cheap – I succumbed and bought “Jailbird”.  Left to myself, I probably would have bought the lot, but Val was annoyed at just one.  Walked back, and straight to bed, to read, watch telly etc.  Saw an old episode of “I Love Lucy” – haven’t seen one of those for so long.

I had long been a huge admirer of Kurt Vonnegut, with Cat’s Cradle one of my favourite books ever, but this probably was not the time to expand our library, especially with hardback books.  Interesting that I am referring regularly to taking lots of pictures, for I don’t know what has happened to them all.

I need to make a pretty major correction to previous posts – for some reason lots of the diary entries referred to Jim Crenna – his name in fact was Jim Cranna, and he was a pretty major player on the improv scene. Another movie reference; apparently, he was the barman in a memorable scene from “Mrs Doubtfire” (never having seen it, I can’t be more precise.) If you’re interested, see https://www.sfgate.com/art/article/Jim-Cranna-a-godfather-of-SF-improv-comedy-dies-11133347.php