shortcut for 'previous revision'

I find myself wanting to have an easy way to know the revision numbers of
the head & previous revisions on a branch often, and it seems the only way
to do that is via cvs log.   For example:

1) cvs log -N -rMyBranch MyFile.c
2) Manually look at the log and find out the most recent revision is
1.86.2.4 and the previous is 1.86.2.3
3) cvs diff -r 1.86.2.3 -r 1.86.2.4 MyFile.c

or, I'm in a branch, and want to merge the latest revision from another
branch:

1) cvs log -N -rHEAD MyFile.c
2) manually look at the log and find out the most recent is 1.234 and
previous is 1.233
3) cvs up -j 1.233 -j 1.234 MyFile.c

cvs log -H shows the "Branch." shortcut, for the latest revision on a
branch.
I'd really like a shortcut  for the previous revision - maybe "Branch.."?
That would simplify my examples above to:

cvs diff -rMyBranch.. -rMyBranch. MyFile.c

and

cvs up -j HEAD.. -j HEAD. MyFile.c


Is there such a thing?  or a script that can be used?

Thanks,

Scott