Disagreements and tension threatening the family in early 1988
Disagreements and tension threatening the family in early 1988

Collecting Daniel and his friend Steve from Kimbolton after his very disrupted narrow boat trip and home after lunch out to find the Games Lawn had surfaced from the floods at last when Diana had a sickness bout, blaming me for causing tension, which led to a depressing row for the rest of the day. An IRA bomb explodes near the Belfast City Law Courts, there is more widespread unrest in Gaza and Willie Whitelaw’s family are most dubious about him resuming his post of Leader of the House of Lords, after his recent stroke

A better night’s sleep, but was awoken early by Diana who had her dentist appointment in St Neots first thing this morning. Was up, dressed and ready for breakfast with the girls. Cereal as usual. Readied a few things for Di to do for me on her trip into St Neots this morning and then settled down to read today’s paper. Read on until midday. After the holiday period of small issues, the journalists have been writing enough to make up for it. The drop yesterday on Wall Street came too late to affect most of the writings, but the future looks uncertain indeed. Had time to feed the ducks and doves before we set off in the Range Rover to collect Daniel from Kimbolton. They arrived back in their school minibus and had tales of woe to tell about floods, breakdowns etc that quite disturbed the boating holiday, but they still seemed to enjoy it.

We took his friend Steve Hicks with the rest of us to the Happy Eater at Sandy for lunch. Daniella was a bit naughty and the boys full of tales to tell. We dropped Steve off at Eltisley and then came home in mid-afternoon. I set to work in my office for a while, resuming the task of updating my accounts etc, but it was soon time to go out to the birds and prepare for tea. The games lawn is quite well drained after all of the rain and the river is still up and down like a ‘yo-yo’. Before tea, Diana had a crisis. She ate a canister of chocolate sauce, felt sick and lay down in the lounge instead of making the tea. She has these binges as part of her weight problem and, in subsequent discussion, always blames me for causing the tension that leads to it. I tried to talk to her, but failed. When she is unwell or feeling poorly, she wants to be alone, as she does early in the morning or late at night. After tea I examined my Range Rover servicing records and literature and eventually worked out what was needed to get back on schedule. In fact, the car has been serviced at 1000, 6000 and 9000 miles, yet still needs operations doing at this stage of 1200, such as replacing plugs, points, filters etc. Late tonight I tried to talk to Di again. She saw no reason to apologise for disrupting things and could not talk to me about the problems in any rational way that I could understand. In response to her saying that she was fed up with looking after me for lunch etc, I offered to make my own salad, but this sacrifice does not seem to be any more appreciated. How depressing. The news this evening is of an IRA bomb exploding in Belfast near the city’s law courts. The police had cleared the area after a telephone warning and so nobody was injured. The police think the IRA were to blame. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s officials paid £12.000 to people who tried to get the release of Terry Waite, for ‘travelling expenses’, but the attempt was abortive. They have obviously been grasping at straws. Another Palestinian shot dead in Gaza and from 5 to 13 injured during widespread unrest, whilst Israeli Authorities have stepped up restrictions on media coverage by refusing journalist’s access to the Gaza Strip. It now seems that Willie Whitelaw’s relations are most dubious about him resuming his post of Leader of the House of Lords, after his recent stroke, and this will be a blow to Mrs Thatcher.