New Year's Eve. Disappointed at the New Year’s Honours List and then shopping for shirts before back to Cambridge to collect the children, with Debbie having contracted Chicken Pox and then seeing the New Year in with Daniel
New Years Eve. We awake at 7.30 and I bring in the paper from the hall that I had ordered whilst Diana prepared tea in our room. I turn straight to the New Years Honours List and am immediately upset that Eddie Nixon, IBM’s Chairman and Chief Executive, is awarded a Knighthood with no executive of the UK computer industry recognised with any honour whatever. Kenneth Barker, however, is made a Privy Councillor. After my personal run-in with Margaret Thatcher, I was not expecting anything personally but how this government can believe, as it seems to do, that it is not important to encourage a UK manufacturing industry is beyond me.
The Prime Minister’s decision will encourage all UK clients to believe it is all right to buy IBM and will also discourage the sterling efforts of truly UK computer companies from trying. Apart from that the lists are full of the normal excess of political honours and I am suitably disillusioned with it as a result. The Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, declined the opportunity to recommend any for political honour and the SDP leader, Dr David Owen, was equally critical. Down to a splendid hotel breakfast and off by taxi to Piccadilly Circus where, by arrangement, we caught the Round London Site-Seeing Bus for a 90 min tour of all the London landmarks. Although, the driver was at great pains to point out, there was not to be a formal tour guide; the Driver provided a non-stop commentary and thereby earned a good tip from all concerned. Afterwards we walked back from Piccadilly Circus via Regent Street and Oxford Street and dropped in on High and Mighty to purchase for me 4 shirts, 1 pair of pyjamas, a tie and a woollen jumper all reduced in the sale. To the car and home by retracing our steps to Puckridge where another royal lunch at The White Hart. Afterwards we returned to Bar Hill by mid-afternoon for tea with Mrs Jackson and to collect Daniel and Deborah. They have been reasonably good in Diana’s parents care but Debbie has now developed Chicken Pox and has the spots all over her back. She is, however, brave with it but a bit miserable. After a tea of sandwiches and mince pies, Diana to bed early, Daniel to play on his computer and myself to catch up on my journal for these two days past. Then an evening reading and playing monopoly with Daniel before welcoming in the New Year in small part, Diana having, as usual, retired early now having the same cold as the rest of us.