Whilst Diana was off Christmas shopping, and Norma was looking after Della, I was sorting out the copied photos that Colin Howard had brought round and hanging the maps that he had framed and ordering five more from Cartographia in London and then taking Debbie to ride Dylan at the riding school, where its future seems to be in doubt. Gorbachev is stopping over in London on the way to complete the Arms Treaty with US President Reagan, EEC Farm Ministers have failed to reach agreement on an agricultural budget and new measures are being considered concerning genetic manipulation
Awake to my morning tea and dealt with the mail and my financial papers after breakfast. Was fairly late to breakfast, together with Daniel, and only got going a little late in the morning. Colin Howard had arrived with the framed maps I had given him and I spent some time before lunch hanging them up and moving others around. I also telephoned Cartographia of London and enquired after their stock of old Huntingdonshire maps. As they had a variety of them, I ordered five at a cost of about £140 comprising; a 1741 Badeslade & Toms for £15, a 1786 Thomas Kitchen for £12, a 1673 Richard Blame for £45, a 1751 Kitchen and Jefferies for £22 and a 1637 Kip/Norden for £50. I was surprised they had so many of this county in stock! Lunch soon came and Diana’s mother had arrived and ate with us. Di went off to do some Christmas shopping on her own, whilst Mrs Jackson stayed with Della all afternoon. I then spent the rest of the day sorting out photographs, which were piled all over the place.
I packaged up those for Miss Hazelton and those for Mrs Shepherd, then I went through the material lent by Peter Jenkins and photocopied the information on the opening of the Neotia Spa, a series of old press cuttings from a scrapbook compiled by a Miss Sibley in the 1890s. I worked long at this topic and was then interrupted after tea by the need to take Debbie horse riding. She had a hard time this evening. She rode Dylan and kept the reins too short, which meant the instructress was shouting at her all lesson. Yet another instructor is leaving the Fitz Farm Riding School and I wonder what its future holds in store for it. I worked late at my sorting of photographs and had to give up before writing my journal or watching the TV news. From the next morning’s papers, I have gleaned that Thatcher and Gorbachev have agreed to the stopover in the UK of the Russian delegation on their way to the signing of the arms deal treaties in America. The plane had to be refuelled anyway, but the choice of Britain is a clever diplomatic play to satiate Mrs Thatcher’s vanity and perhaps get some movement from her on future nuclear moves, whilst also seeking to influence a politician close to the US President prior to his arrival there. The EEC Farm Ministers have failed to reach agreement on an agricultural budget and now the EEC Foreign Ministers and perhaps even Prime Ministers will be involved. New regulations and licensing are now compulsory for genetic manipulation and cloning in baby test tube clinics, with any ‘attempt to create human beings with certain predetermined characteristics’ to be banned. The White Paper leaves open the question of whether other research on embryos would be permitted. A typhoon moving across the Philippines has killed 270 people and left thousands homeless.