A mostly warm and sunny month with drier spells and a busy and eventful one for me spending time in Norfolk, preparing my boat for my first unaccompanied sea trip, linking up with Steve Bloom at the Wroxham Marina to help him with their new boat and working out the future of Heronshaw whilst employing a new gardener at home and welcoming family visits.
A new fitted office and further furnishings ordered and a new central heating boiler awaited. Debbie installed Sundance at his new Staughton stables and coped with her riding and Brownie events after suffering a hand injury from a dog bite when delivering my FOCUS leaflets which had its largest ever area circulation.
I advanced my Council contribution, arranging to get the vice-chairmanship of the regional committee of the District Council which I then chaired, and making a difference to district and local governance. Continued efforts on HDC committees as well as Little Paxton Parish Council and Village Hall meetings arguing for improved facilities for the village which led to agreement to re-roof the whole of the front and middle of the hall and to go ahead with a new wood-block floor. I declined/deferred an invitation to be the local LibDem parliamentary candidate and contributed to St Neots Museum and KSS committees.
Di’s brother Charlie and Chrisula had another baby girl Crystal Louise Jackson and Di’s friend Linda Richardson and husband Ian had a rather irreverent family christening at which we were godparents. I lent the £120,000 for Freda to take over Redgrave Post Office and Stores. The Lady was now replaced with the Paxton Princess. A month of exams for Daniel, and a new girlfriend to impress in his new car. Just a few cinema trips and school event outings.
The further IRA attacks, legal problems over Poll Tax implementation, beef boycotts, industrial /economic issues and questionable ethics see the UK government besieged from all sides. Elsewhere at least Bush and Gorbachev have agreed on substantial nuclear and chemical weapons cuts and trade pacts but agrees to differ on the reunification of Germany and faced challenges to his authority by Boris Yeltzin and the rest of the Russian Federation.
In Romania, thousands of demonstrators stormed the television compound and set fire to the police headquarters after widespread electoral irregularity, Iran had an earthquake and a series of after-shock earthquakes and the fatalities may now be over 50,000. South Africa then scrapped their apartheid laws and now have to introduce a universal franchise to be welcomed into the international community.
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My visit to Norfolk brought to an end a most busy and eventful month both for me and the family. I had spent a couple of periods away in Norfolk, preparing my boat for my first single-handed sea trip but also had plenty happening at home as well. Poor Debbie sustained her nasty dog bite but also had Sundance successfully installed in his new stables in Staughton which are far less of a worry for us. She has just about finished off her school time at the Kimbolton Prep and, despite her injury, will still be able to perform in the end-of-school "Upper Operetta" in a few days' time. After much hard work as the house gardener, I employed a new replacement, Mark Bowles, who seems to be settling in as the new man.
It was also a busy month politically as I published the biggest-ever FOCUS and distributing it throughout the St Neots area. I managed to successfully arrange to get the vice-chairmanship of the regional committee of the District Council and then to chair my first meeting which was to the complete astonishment of the sitting Tories! I had accomplished quite a few activities on behalf of the council this month and had even more of my own private administration to cope with. I made the decision to fit out my private office which will prove to be a revelation when it comes to fruition this summer. Freda and Alf have left Heronshaw, which now looks sadder and more forlorn without occupants, and I am no nearer a solution for it, even though I am meeting an architect there soon. I have also had an approach from Ian James of On-Site training in Grove House who wants me to make an investment in the company and be a non-executive Chairman for advice and guidance but I will have to give this idea very careful consideration.
It has been another very dry month and we have needed to do lots of watering to safeguard the bedding plants which are very backward as a result. Life just gets busier and busier. There was some rain later in the month after a dry spell and I planted more bedding plants in what had become helpfully damp soil. Mostly warm and sunny days were punctuated by some chillier ones and I lit a log fire in my office. A more serious worry for us all are reductions in the Ozone layer are accelerating year by year
Our main family event was hearing that Di’s brother Charlie and Chrisula had another baby girl Crystal Louise Jackson. - Di collected her Mum Norma and brother Charlie's children from Sandy to play at The Hayling View on occasion and Di’s father Charles Snr visited during the month and we took him to lunch in Wyboston. We had a merry band of children in the swimming pool; Della, Amy and Katherine, Rebecca were joined by cousins Natalie and Catherine who came over with Di's brother and stayed to tea. Di’s friend Linda Richardson and husband Ian had a rather irreverent family christening at which we were godparents. Another landmark was when I lent the £120,000 for Freda to take over Redgrave Post Office and Stores. A poignant event followed when Di joined me to visit L.H. Jones of St Ives where we saw The Lady for the last time in our ownership, as it was now replaced with the Paxton Princess for which we bought some things at the Ely Boat Chandlers.
It was a month of exams for Daniel: The first one might have been easy but he then had a more difficult Physics exam to follow which reminded him of his need to study. I was extremely strict but let him out of his chilly room to join us for a Little Chef lunch as a break in his revision schedule. Daniel took a new girlfriend to the cinema in Peterborough one night and enjoyed the experience despite his friends playing the customary practical jokes on his car. He then had three Physics "A"-level examinations in one day and a stressful start to another as he had forgotten his calculator and pencil case with an "A"-level Maths exam to sit; so that I had to drive to Kimbolton and take them to him. Fortunately, he did well in the exam and a Physics Practical exam after I had unwittingly kept him up the night before to do his chores! As a reward for his studying, I went with Daniel to view his new car and agreed he could buy it.
The girls went back to school after their break, but Debbie’s news was all about her pony Sundance. It was less welcome at Offord, where we were about the only livery left and then Debbie found Sundance left out alone in the rain one day. Diana informed Fiona that we were going to be taking Sundance away from the stables and I helped Debbie move Sundance from Offord to his new livery at Great Staughton. I had to witness the cruel treatment by Fiona of long-term helper Sarah Morby, who was being abruptly sent away heart-broken now that she was no longer needed. Debbie had her first evening riding at Staughton, and survived a fall, but then finds an older girl to go on a hack with and a new girl to hack with too.
Debbie went to Guides for her enrolment then to her St Neots Civic Parade for the Guides and Di still supported the Brownies at Little Paxton School fete where Di sells out of Brownies’ prizes. Whilst I was away I heard that Di had taken Debbie to hospital with a dog bite experienced when delivering my FOCUS newsletters and rushed home without calling in at Redgrave, anxious to see Debbie and her hand injury. I arrived to learn that she was being very brave but that she had been visibly shaken and kept having crying spells from the shock and pain. I then had to research the background to Debbie’s dog bite and the dog owner Mr Glynn Taylor before meeting him. He had installed a letter box guard to prevent a similar incident and so I took no further action.
There was the chance to take Della to the Fair this month and I also bought a video player for my mum to see a tape of Dad’s last time with Della. For a change ,I took Diana out for a trip to Ely, via a Little Chef coffee and we came back home via the Needingworth Fish Farm (where Diana chose a golden Koi) and then Di insisted on us going out to the cinema in the evening where we saw the film "Pretty Woman. Di's sister Sue arrived unexpectedly one day for a visit after Daniel had failed to pass on a message! At the Kimbolton School Sports day with Della and Daniel, we met up with Nigel and Lynne Smith., Mum has had a successful stay at Redgrave and I chatted on the phone to her on her birthday and the post office and stores seems to be doing well for Freda.
After my former gardener Pete had left for a full-time job elsewhere, I engaged fully with the gardening task to see what was involved before employing a replacement. It started with a full day of gardening, clearing undergrowth, and having a very smoky and unsociable bonfire and then several sessions after that I became tired after working late nights in my office in between arduous gardening sessions. I mowed the lawns and cut up logs before the rain returned after which I got gardening equipment sharpened and collected spares for the long overdue repairs to equipment. I managed to mow the games lawn early one day and then worked inside on equipment maintenance. I then planted out bedding plants, mowing the other lawns, trimming shrubs, weeding beds and clearing the games lawn boundary ditch. I had an applicant, Mark Bowles, for the gardener/handyman job and, once I had offered and he had accepted the job, I welcomed his arrival, spending time with him to help him start his new job. I instructed Mark in the use of my Atco Club mower for cutting the games lawn grass and briefed him on the gardening jobs for him to do each day. After he completed his first trial week, I decided to take him on.
I was still undertaking Hayling View improvements as two salesmen from the office fitters arrived and spent an hour and a half presenting their portfolios and incorporating my requirements and when they returned with their designs for my new office, I accepted and ordered it. A visit to Brittains in St Neots to order all manner of household furnishings and then to collect office accessories on the way home. The builders also started knocking through to the conservatory from the lounge. A British Gas man surveying the house for a new boiler and hot water system.
My participation as a public figure was growing. I was visited by two schoolboys for help with a project and a host of Brownies for which our swimming pool is the main attraction. I spent time with my new Cllr Sally Guinee colleague, briefing her for Council duties as her leader and she helped me write and edit the Priory FOCUS copy. Sally arrived with her two girls Alex and Adelle who went swimming with Debbie in the pool. I spent a lot of time sub-editing and preparing the layouts for my set of FOCUS newsletters and settled down for a very late working session to complete the FOCUS artwork going to bed after 3.00am. Once they were printed, I sorted out the FOCUS newsletters for delivery for some hours completing much of it, when Hilary Knightley arrived for advice and collected some for delivery.
After Di and I had collated the rest, I personally delivered to the outlying properties in my ward and dropped off batches for other helpers to do the same but I had a complaining call from the local Police Divisional Commander, who was upset with the last FOCUS, although the criticism was valid but I typed a long letter to Mrs Ruff, trying to make up for not having asked her to do the deliveries this time! I took part in a satisfactory Liberal Democrat AGM at the Priory Centre and welcomed the Chairman of the South-West Cambridgeshire Constituency Liberal Democrats, who tried to talk me into accepting the Prospective Parliamentary Candidacy and standing for Parliament, which I declined/deferred. I chaired a LibDem candidates meeting about this coming year's St Neots Town Council Elections.
I attended my best friend Nigel's Hail Weston Fun Run hosting and driving Sir Anthony Grant, our Member of Parliament, as a member of the Official party to the chagrin of the three Tory District Councillors. I met colleagues to plan our contributions to the week’s council committee meetings, attending the HDC planning committee one evening, where I spoke on Diddington gravel extraction and was pleased to see our new opposition councillors making their impact. I hatched up and executed perfectly a plan to take over a key HDC committee one evening, which I ended up chairing! I was not very well prepared for my evening HDC Finance Committee meeting but tried my best. I had a Kimbolton School Society meeting at the Castle, where I avoided any onerous tasks, and then a poor Little Paxton Parish Council meeting one evening, but then I contributed to a Parish Council Amenities meeting dealing with a host of playing field improvements. A much better evening meeting as a Trustee of the Village Hall Maintenance Committee, where we agreed to re-roof the whole of the front and middle of the hall and to go ahead with a new wood-block floor. Then a rather disorganised St Neots Museum Management committee meeting.
Another late evening, this time my last at Priory Doom now that Sally Guinee can take over from me! In such time as I had spare, I was sorting through local papers for my news cuttings and attended to correspondence whilst trying to get out from under a mound of paperwork. I prepared my tax information for my accountant one afternoon and had a meeting at Grove House with Online Training where I was presented with an investment opportunity. In my ‘spare’ time I was watching Scotland fail and England succeed in getting to the last sixteen of the World Cup and I spotted a pair of garden warblers nesting under my office balcony.
I spent a lot of time in Norfolk this month, working to prepare the Paxton Princess for our next sea trip, and often travelled via Redgrave to see how Mum and Freda’s family had settled in. I installed Mum’s new video and tape of Dad. Upon arrival, I was unloading my things, securing the boat’s cupboards and catches and planning a boat trip to the Wash in two weeks’ time when the tides seem favourable. I needed to clean the boat before I could do any varnishing and then fitted a VHF extension speaker. I ate a fish and chips lunch in Wroxham whilst getting more materials. I linked up with Steve Bloom at the Wroxham Marina to help him with their new boat.
The further IRA attacks, legal problems over Poll Tax implementation, beef boycotts, industrial /economic issues and questionable ethics see the government besieged from all sides. The IRA mounted further attacks this month as they gun down three young soldiers at a railway station in Staffordshire, explode a bomb on the roof of a Territorial Army building in London, injuring 17 people amongst the 40 students enjoying an unconnected social event then another IRA bomb attack on the Conservative Carlton Club in St James's wrecked the building's interior and seriously-injured four people. To make matters worse, the security video camera at the Carlton Club had been left switched off on the day of the blast which has embarrassed the club and Tory party. There was another IRA killing, this time of an army major in Germany and another IRA bomb kills an ex-RUC man near his north Belfast home. Another IRA attack has takes place in West Germany on a forces training school classroom. IRA team member Donna Maguire, has been captured in a Belgian wood with a companion soon after third IRA suspect was captured by Dutch police with the fourth escaping a roadblock, until being captured on the continent.
The first Poll Tax protesters were in court this month for refusing to pay but more councils were withdrawing summonses for the Poll Tax after court difficulties. The Poll Tax appeal was dismissed in the High Court and now the councils must go to higher courts of appeal and Thatcher’s cabinet remain dead locked over the reforms needed to make the Poll Tax viable as the government retreats from introducing any further laws to allow widespread Poll Tax capping and UK borrowing rises to 1.7 billion in May due to poll tax costs.
There was more trouble for the UK over beef boycotts as three scientists have challenged the government's view that their measures have made British Beef safe from BSE and now West Germany join the boycott of British Beef. Property companies revalue their portfolios with capital losses of up to a sixth in London after Barclays announces that it will have to write off £100m in respect of B.& C. losses as the demise of a major financial services group hits the headlines. The RPI rose to nearly 10% which was badly received by the markets as the CBI say that industry's order books are at the lowest level for 8 years.
Former Energy Secretary, Cecil Parkinson, and Scottish Secretary, Malcolm Rifkind, have both been heavily censured by the Conservative-dominated Parliamentary Energy Committee for making a non-competitive hash of electricity privatization and a complete mess of nuclear power as Japan is embarking on a massive building programme for nuclear power stations. Now British arms manufacturers and the universities face financial stringency and a row develops over the insufficient funding for state schools. The government has refused to finance part of the cost of a high-speed rail link for the channel tunnel and removes £600m and 33 new Tornado aircraft from its defence budget and accepts the European judgement over the repayment of subsidies for the Rover group. Coloroll goes into receivership and there are more problems in the City as certain major companies announce profit shortfalls and executive heads roll.
First the pound sterling and UK stock market surges ahead as the Financial Times carries a story that the government were planning an entry of Sterling into the ERM of the EMS but then John Major was trying to dilute the UK commitment to the EMS and soon Thatcher was already back-pedalling on European Currency Union as expected as she shows herself to be an unwilling traveller on the way to EEC union.. British Airways has grounded many of its aircraft after a windscreen on one shattered and the Captain Tim Lancaster narrowly survived being sucked halfway out of the window. The Guinness trial opens at Southwark Crown Court with Earnest Saunders in the dock and another Tory ethics row erupts as former Cabinet Minister - Lord Young - has taken over a top job as executive chairman of Cable and Wireless after he had promised them only last June that they would have one of the three personal communications licenses when he used to be responsible for telecommunications policy at the DTI!
Then, to complete the misery, there is a record 15% increase in crime at home in the first quarter of this year with large increases in burglary, theft and vandalism. Ireland play and lose a valiant game and are out of the World Cup but England continue to progress.
Elsewhere at least Bush and Gorbachev have agreed on substantial nuclear and chemical weapons cuts and trade pacts but agrees to differ on the reunification of Germany and are still far apart on the tricky question of whether a united Germany can be in NATO. America has ordered the withdrawal of all of their AGM 69A short range nuclear attack missiles for ‘safety reasons’ and the Berlin ‘checkpoint Charlie’ border crossing was removed. Gorbachev faces a renewed explosion of ethnic violence in the troubled Central Asian republic and, back in Moscow, faces his latest challenge to his authority by Boris Yeltzin and the rest of the Russian Federation, and meets rival to agree splitting the Russian and Soviet Communist parties
At least the States of the Soviet Union are looking more like they are willing to negotiate a confederation and a diplomatic peace continues to break out between Lithuania and the Kremlin as the Baltic State considers a "moratorium" on separation. The following week's Soviet Communist Party conference may be postponed to avoid an acrimonious split. Thatcher is out of accord with the rest of Europe again on the eve of a two-day EEC summit; this time on the subject of aid to the Soviet Union.
In Romania, thousands of demonstrators stormed the television compound and set fire to the police headquarters after feeling that the governing party has too close links with the former communist regime. Iliescu’s National Salvation Front won a landslide victory in last month's elections after there was widespread electoral irregularity and club-wielding "miners" called up by the Romanian government have been beating-up anti-government demonstrators and have also reportedly ransacked the offices of the National Liberal and National Peasants parties, the main democratic opposition. The EEC joins the USA in suspending economic aid to Romania. Havel gets another overwhelming victory in the Czech election.
The Israeli - Likud leader Yitzhak Shamir - has held on to power by forming an alliance and the US was trying unsuccessfully to force Israel and the PLO to resume conciliation talks but then after 35,000 were thought to have died in a huge Iranian earthquake, political differences are put to one side as international rescue teams assist. Then Iran had a series of after-shock earthquakes and the fatalities may now be over 50,000. A German company director has been jailed for 5 years for illegally helping Libya to build a poison gas factory near Tripoli. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has re-affirmed the Salman Rushdie death threat and Penguin books have dropped plans to publish Salmon Rushdie's Satanic Verses in paper-back.
After caving into the political pressure. South Africa has lifted the state of emergency, but the end of apartheid wasneeded before the ANC would support the end of sanctions and so South Africa then scrapped their apartheid laws and now have to introduce a universal franchise to be welcomed into the international community. The threats of right-wing South Africans against Nelson Mandela grow and his security is tightened. Former US Admiral Poindexter, a former Reagan right-hand man, has been jailed for 6 months for perjury and US President Bush is abandoning an election pledge to avoid new taxes. The Norwegian super-tanker aground 57 miles off Galveston, Texas, Mega Borg, is still burning fiercely with its cargo of 38 million gallons of oil seeping out. Khmer Rouge guerrillas in Cambodia seem to have resumed the offensive after 11 years of skirmishing.