Debbie at a horse show on Sundance
Debbie at a horse show on Sundance

Up early on a fine if quite cold day to take Debbie to the stabvles and collect Sundance for the Brampton Farm pony cub event. Away after some problems boxing the pony and to arrive after getting lost a while for a quite disorganised but useful day. Once back home, I edited the FOCUS copy with Derek Giles to add local Eaton Socon issues.

The first IRA attack of 1990 in which an extreme Protestant taxi-driver was killed by a car-bomb in his taxi as his 16 year-old daughter sitting beside him escaped with minor injuries, The Russians report rioting for three days by many of their citizens along 85 miles of the Azerbaijan/Iran border. A new Vatican envoy, "a Latin American specialist”, has been sent to Panama to help with the negotiations on the future of former President Noriega

All up early on a fine if quite cold day to get ready for Debbie's horse-riding event. At least we were reasonably-well prepared and, by 8.30am, Debbie and I had arrived at the riding stables. I spent some time fitting my lights to the horse-trailer (as its own were not properly working) and left Debbie to groom Sundance. Then we had the game of getting him into the trailer. Unfortunately, our ruse of feeding him in there did not work because we were too slow in closing the tail-gate up and he backed out frightened again. Eventually, I got him in by parking up close to a wall so that he had nowhere to go. We got to the venue, a farm in Brampton, after getting lost for a while to find the day a rather confused sequence of events. I entered Debbie for just about everything but first she lost her way around the course, and then Sundance took it into his head to go racing off with her. This led to the advice and conclusion that we are going to need a "Pelham Bit", which exercises more control.

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Still, Debbie said she was glad that we went, although the day in the cold with long waits interleaved with frantic physical activity left me quite shattered! We were left to cope very much by ourselves which has confirmed me in my view that we are doing the right thing in making alternative arrangements for the future. Once home, I had a rest for a while, tea, and then did some work on my press cuttings before Derek Giles came round and I corrected that questionnaire that I did for him last night and then noted a number of Eaton Socon issues to form the basis of the local version of our next FOCUS. This evening's news is of the first IRA attack of 1990 in which an extreme Protestant taxi-driver was killed by a car-bomb in his taxi as his 16 year-old daughter sitting beside him escaped with minor injuries. It now seems that the higher estimates of up to 70,000 killed during the Romanian revolution were a gross exaggeration. Some 4-5,000 were actually killed. 60 former associates of the former President Ceausescu have been jailed, including all of the former Politburo members which now await their fate. The Russians report rioting for three days by many of their citizens along 85 miles of the Azerbaijan/Iran border. Border guards and their families have been threatened and, during an attack on a bus convoy, one person was killed and three injured. A new Vatican envoy, "a Latin American specialist”, has been sent to Panama to help with the negotiations on the future of former President Noriega. The acting Head of State of East Germany, Manfred Gerlach, has said that the remainder of the Berlin Wall will soon be coming down.