Paperwork and historical archiving on a wet day during which Della has her first unaccompanied session at play-school and the children used the pool again as British Airways take over British Caledonian, the three assault police are jailed for four years and a new miner’s strike is spreading from Yorkshire.
Awoken during the night by a false alarm in the burglar alarm system and got up to bypass the guestroom door in case that was the trouble. Back to sleep, but restless again near morning, as the room got rather chilly. The last to breakfast after my morning shower and ablutions and sat in my new position between the girls to keep order at the table. The children are quite good, but are too boisterous at mealtimes and make the events a misery if it were not for firm control. The rain drizzled down this morning, starting just before breakfast and only stopping in the afternoon. Pete came and trimmed the lawn edges, cleared up the sheds, but was not able to cut the lawns as it was so wet. I made the easy choice of going to my office to do some paperwork.
Reconciled my accounts, read the paper and then a pile of past and present mail and decided that I must sell the EHP shares from my children’s trust portfolios. Phoned the stockbroker, accountant and solicitor, who all agreed and did the deal in the afternoon. The shares had increased by more than 500% in the past year and were too good to last. Started going through this week’s local newspapers for Little Paxton news stories, until lunch was ready. Watched some Crown Green Bowling at the same time. Di was on edge this morning as it was the first time that Della was to be left alone at playschool. She need not have worried, as Della was as happy as a sand girl. Daniel sat around watching video films for most of the morning, briefly doing a little work on Aquabean when prompted. Di & I had a chat with him over his report from school, which was a useful meeting to correct him on a few points. This afternoon I finished cutting out the local press cuttings and then pasted in about a month and a half’s worth of cuttings into the Little Paxton scrap book. Di had invited some friends and their children around to swim this afternoon and we had the same trouble with the pool boiler again and I had to get it going once more. The rest of the afternoon and evening I worked on the history press cuttings, documents and then catalogued our photographs so that we could always identify the negatives properly. I did get a chance to go down to The Lady and seal a few cracks in the wooden cabin that had opened again in the variable weather. I also put the batteries on charge, as I will have to take her down to Buckden Marina soon. Daniel swam with Jason tonight, after Debbie had previously swam with her friend Emma Law. The main news today was of a surprise ‘merger’ between British Airways and British Caledonian, which is really a takeover. The rest of the UK airline industry is up in arms and meeting in London tomorrow to decide how to get a Monopoly Commission referral to block the deal. At the Old Bailey, three police constables were jailed for 4 years for the assault case. A fourth constable, who joined a conspiracy to protect the others, was jailed for 18 months and a police sergeant, who failed to control them, to three years. A new miner’s strike is spreading from Yorkshire in protest over the new Coal Board disciplinary code, which is described as draconian. Unemployment totals, on the governments measure, had fallen and stayed below 3 million for the second month running. The latest story of depravity sees the door-to-door enquiries in Aberdeen in the hunt for the killer of a 2 ½ yr old baby girl.