April 1984

A month of successful business accomplishments balanced with private life for I take the family on London Hotel and Great Ouse boat trips whilst also negotiating two competing deals for selling Comart as Thatcher exacts her spiteful revenge against her opponents ignoring The Rev Shepherd trying to preach peace and reconciliation in the Dimbleby lecture as we see the sad deaths of WPC Yvonne Fletcher and Tommy Cooper taking place in public

I started the month with a London hotel family holiday seeing the tourist sights and then enjoy an Easter of very pleasant day trips aboard The Lady before getting work done on her at Buckden Marina. Overall, I was  spending more time on her and the family as the month progressed. We also managed a couple of further day boat trips to Tempsford and St Neots in fine weather. I have found Diana’s long pregnancy and coughs and colds very wearing and have sought relief and distraction as a result but she eventually saw the doctor and made a partial recovery. I took some long walks alone and with the children and this, plus the time spent outside with my ducks, has been a blessing. Daniel was a great help generally and with building landing stages. I negotiated two potential deals for selling Comart and am still trying to remove the UEH Byte Shop option that is blocking the deal.

I still go ahead with a £70K CAD system and new head office and factory premises and approve long term plans for all group companies as I intend to sell them on a ‘going concern’ basis. The DTI supports my BMMG LAN initiative and hints on some potential grant for helping us innovate and install new equipment. It was also a month for dealing with major personnel problems at Xitan and counselling Geoff Lynch accordingly.

The Miners’ dispute smoulders on with some pits striking, the railwaymen out in sympathy and Thatcher is forced to change the law and use the police to crush resistance to her pit closure plans. She also ends 600 jobs at the BBC and gets the Women’s Peace Camps broken up and protestors evicted as she takes spiteful revenge against all those who try to oppose her. This, after she has improved police force pay and staffing levels and convened her anti-strike ‘war cabinet’ in a series of calculated and cynical moves. Ted Heath speaks out against Thatcher’s plans to abolish the Metropolitan Councils.

Tommy Cooper dies on the stage at Her Majesty’s Theatre as it is screened live on TV. the Rev Shepherd Dimbleby lecture highlights social divisions as Irish terrorists shoot a 20-year-old girl teacher, and WPC Yvonne Fletcher is shot outside the Libyan embassy and then two more people are seriously hurt by a luggage claim bomb at Heathrow Terminal 2.

Our mooring plot neighbour, Bill’s sight was failing and he couldn’t easily come to the plots anymore and Debbie kindly went to chat to him. This followed his wife Vi’s deterioration of mental health and also the recent death of Jack; the old-timer who always fished from the plots and once owned the nearby land.