I made another slow start to the day and saw that the conservatory contractors were not making much more progress and so I called Nick Frost to ask for more effort to be made. I took Della to her Playschool play and Di went to Kimbolton School to see Debbie perform in the carol service. To Cambridge after lunch to get my Apple Mac memory capacity increased and to scan many images for my book and FOCUS newsletters and then late to the St Neots Museum Management Committee after which I could playback my recordings for Diana to see. The US agreed to support direct talks with Yasser Arafat of the PLO and the UK government continues to complain about the Republic of Ireland’s decision not to extradite Father Patrick Ryan.
I was slow to wake and get going again this morning but had breakfast a little earlier than yesterday. The builder’s carpenter arrived early to ease a few doors, let in a couple of edging strips for the tiles at the doorsteps and to grout the tiles on the shelf. A sole conservatory painter worked on at a slow pace and then called for scaffold towers which were brought out by another. It was all taking too long and so I called Nick Frost and asked for more effort to get the job finished as we wanted to occupy. I worked on the Anglo-Saxon chapter of my book and then took Della to her Playschool play which was ‘The 12 days of Christmas’ with Della as the ‘Drama, Drumming’. Di had to go to the Kimbolton School Carol Service to see Debbie and so I was there alone. At least I chatted to a few local mums and took a video picture of proceedings.
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The walk home, lunch, and then it was soon time to drive over to Cambridge to take my Apple Mac and get some drawings scanned into the machine. The images were to be used for my history book and the FOCUS newsletters. I found that the storage requirement for quantities of drawings at the required resolution was in multi-megabytes and so I just scanned the pages that needed processing and we rely on my photocopier. At least they upgraded my Apple Mac main memory from 1 MB to 2.5 MB whilst I was there; straight on to arrive late for the St Neots Museum Management Committee meeting and then home very late tea. Di was still up and so we played back the Playschool tape which was a bit poor but at least Di could see how Della had performed. We then saw the Little Paxton County Primary School nativity play (previously recorded on the same cassette) and thought it rather pale in comparison with what the children were doing at Kimbolton Prep. The news tonight is of the US agreeing to support direct talks with the PLO after Yasser Arafat’s speech to the United Nations. Northern Ireland secretary, Tom King, has called for a review of the Anglo-Irish extradition procedures, as the recent terms of the refusal of Patrick Ryan’s extradition are described as ‘regrettably offensive’ according to Britain’s Attorney General, Sir Patrick Mayhew. The inquest into the train crash deaths in South London has heard that most of the dead are died instantly with the impact of the crash