Tiresome day planning for my company sale tomorrow keeps me at the office despite my parents making a visit and then I take Diana to Hinchingbrooke Maternity Hospital and then leave her for the night as police powers are increased for the Miners’ Strike
This was a monumental day as Diana was starting labour in hospital later but it began with me getting up as usual and to the office on time for a personnel meeting with Deana Plummer, a keen and attractive young marketing graduate, who has been unsettled recently with her role and salary and felt she was being held back. A good review in prospect has addressed the situation. At 8.30am June Hamilton arrives to help and we start the last week’s Board Minutes and the redrafting of a Comart Staff Announcement. At 9.30am discussions with an angry Richard James, my solicitor from Ashursts with two projects now giving him aggravation –Kode PLC is still the worst with their multiple advisors and preoccupation with detail at the expense of business concern and expediency. 3/4 phone calls to and fro to advance as much as we can before Richard ran out of time. I have agreed to have the Comart Directors available to meet the Merchant Bank tomorrow afternoon prior to the signing. A lunch of sandwiches and then over to Little End Road in early afternoon to review the latest matters with Derek and John. Kode have input a range of difficulties and then telephoned to refuse a chance for Peter Smith to be at a Byte Shop Directors and Managers briefing meeting this evening for the most unsatisfactory of reasons. In the middle of all this a phone call from Deana to say that my mother and father had arrived unexpectedly!
Of course I couldn’t return home until 6.30pm, by which time they had left. An evening agonising with Diana and Daniel over the performance of Kode and their competence before deciding that the deal must go through in accordance with plan, provided that the terms are right and it is done by tomorrows deadline. Sitting down at the end of the day Diana reports that she is leaking and having a ‘show.’ Upon advice from Hinchingbrooke Maternity Hospital we prepare Diana to go in and call Di’s mother to attend Willow Close so that I can accompany her. About 11.30pm we set off for Hinchingbrooke with suitcase for Diana and a briefcase of papers to read for me. Initial checks were made manually by both nurse and sister and an instrument was connected to measure the baby’s heart beats, movements and Diana’s contractions. Made by Hewlett Packard, this machine gives an audible picture of the heart beats and two pen plotters show the gradations of change. Eventually, they decide Diana should stay in overnight and I should ring at 7 o’clock to check progress. Home on a cold moonlit night to brief Di’s Mum and then both to sleep. News tonight of less than total support by the steel workers for the miners; but the TGWU lorry driver leaders are in support and the industrial crisis continues. News on TV documentaries of both the new Police bill increasing the powers of the police and of poverty for people surviving on the bread line and scrounging on rubbish tips in the North East.