Day reading and walking in solitude after a Kimbolton family shopping trip and return of Daniel from his school narrow-boating holiday as Scargill and Benn address miners’ demonstration rallies and Thatcher convenes her anti-strike ‘war cabinet’

Up and to read this morning from Pepys 1665 journals of the start of the plague. Then to the mornings papers before a toast breakfast and journey down to the river to let out the ducks. 10 eggs a day is the present average. Off with the family to Kimbolton via St Neots where we shopped. Daniel arrives back from his week’s holiday on a narrow boat cruising the Yorkshires canals and tells us all about his morning fried breakfasts, his work at the helm and with locks and swing bridges galore.

Off together to The Happy Eater and all content to be reunited once more. Daniel and I home and the girls off by car to complete the weekends shopping. Daniel to his precious computer after a painful separation and me to privacy and pleasurable relief before setting off to walk the countryside towards Toseland, following a remote stream south from the Priory Hill area. Home in time for tea and then after by outboard motor and dinghy to inspect the river. The moorhens are now nesting and one with two eggs. The river has now subsided to a stable level and the weather has been most sunny with the cold wind abating a little. All the ducks to their hutch, and then an evening watching television. Diana sleeps again with me tonight, having been in Daniel’s room with her cough recently. It is still bad and still causes her much discomfort. News today of continuing miner’s conflict and demonstration rallies in Nottingham with Arthur Scargill and Tony Benn speaking. Thatcher convenes a ‘war cabinet’ as the opinion polls suggest a majority of miners are for a national strike.