Conservative Sir Anthony Grant easily won our constituency election with a 57% majority and after a couple of hours of financial paperwork, we started our boating holiday. We visited Mum on the way and found her managing with help from her friends. Some local walks after settling in on The Paxton princess on a chilly and clear evening.
The bad news of last night was confirmed this morning. Overnight predictions of a Tory majority of 13 to 15 seats had grown to 19 and ended up at about 20 in the end. Labour had failed to gain enough seats, the SDP lost all three seats and the Liberal Democrats won some but lost more as the Scottish Nationalists were reduced to 3 seats in all. The Tories actually gained seats in Scotland which let them off the hook. So there will be no changes and John Major has a working majority for another five years. It seems that the reluctant and disillusioned Tories came out in the end at the fear of a Labour Government and the weather had helped this process.
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Now we have the Tories for a fourth term and there seems no way of ousting them under the first-past-the-post voting system whilst the opposition is divided. I decided that Diana and I would not attend the HDC formal reception this evening and we packed up and prepared to set off on our boating holiday instead. With an alternative council candidate in position and my colleagues handling things, I decided not to put my answering machine on as it would only generate problems to deal with. I first spent a couple of hours on some financial paperwork and then we packed up and set off. Lunch in St Neots (to enable us to remember anything we had forgotten) and then away.
We visited Mum on the way and found her managing with help from her friends. One neighbour was mowing her lawn, another coming in to get her a drink but she is still weaker after her illness. The girls enjoyed looking through her old photographs and I particularly appreciated those of dad as a cub and lad. We arrived in Horning around 4.30pm and it was 5.00pm by the time we unpacked and started to settle in. Di made tea and then I took the girls for the long walk to the playground on a fine evening as Diana settled herself into the boat by cleaning all of the surfaces.
I had to jolly Della along a bit but Debbie was pleased to come and I played catch with her as Della sat on a swing. We walked back via Horning village to complete our exercise. A quiet evening writing up my journal listening to Radio Broadland as Diana wrote a shopping list for tomorrow and then an early exit to our bunks. It turned quite chilly this evening as the sky was clear.