Another slow start to the day after a late night before a morning tending to my domestic chores and being interviewed by a journalist and then time catching up on this journal. This evening, a black-tie ‘Sportsman’s St Neots Charity Dinner at The Priory Centre which was too chauvinist and right-wing for me but I was pleased once home to see that the Tories had lost The Ribble Valley to the LibDems by a large margin. This will bury The Poll Tax for good
Another rather in-effective day as I started quite slowly and was then distracted for most of the morning. Had breakfast in my dressing gown to be with the family for the meal and then slowly showered and dressed. By the time I had fed the fish and done my chores, it was time for morning coffee. I returned a call to a freelance journalist and that took about an hour as he quizzed me on everything we were doing and wanted to know as much as possible about John Major. I then found that the last few pages of my electronic diary were missing which meant more time spent, before and after lunch, getting up to date.
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I progressed my political writing a little and then, this evening, got dressed in my "black tie" dinner suit and was collected by one of the Whitmarsh Sterland partners who took me by car to a dinner. It was the St Neots St Mary's Sportsman's dinner- an all-male event with after-dinner speakers of Tommy Docherty and another. The evening started with drinks at the St Neots Snooker club and then we walked across to the Priory Centre to take our table. An adequate meal, the speeches, and thus a late night. I was not too pleased with the event - it was rather a male-culture chauvinist atmosphere with the speeches quite right-wing and crude in their content. This was embarrassing, if funny, because they had got the help of four girls to sell the raffle tickets (dressed in football strip) and they also had to listen to a series of sexual jokes after already being subject to sexual harassment.
Back home after midnight and then I stayed up and waited for the Ribble-valley by-election result which was well worth it. The Liberal Democrats had won by several thousand votes a so-called "safe" Tory seat and the political effects of this will be to bury the Poll Tax once and for all and to put off any thought of a June election. To bed very late and tired but quite exhilarated.