Making good business progress during a month of awful industrial and political news that strengthens my resolve to sell my company whilst the going is good and to find more time to improve my family life and research our history

A continuing month of microcomputer industry arrangements and managing my company by completing the administration of my group structure, which also involved resolving lending arrangements with Barclays. At times the frost hardly cleared during the day and our premises were constantly cold. I had decided over the New Year period to sell the Comart Group, despite my wife Diana and son Daniel having misgivings, and I needed to make sure that our ‘group house’ was in order for the process to take place and that also involved negotiating with the minority option holder of The Byte Shop group and laying plans for premises expansion too. I had the £3m Kode offer and was considering it but their consultants, PA, were suggesting it took place in two stages.

The Byte Shop and Xitan were getting their first 3-year plans and Comart was getting its quality plan and new credit control policy and I was tackling time-keeping and attendance lapses. I was having good meetings despite me having to suffer the efforts of three chain-smoking directors! This month the Queen has awarded Commodore a Royal Warrant for supply of business computer systems and this after the IBM CEO got a Knighthood which only supported my resolve to sell up in the face if this crass industrial ‘policy’! We still progresses initiatives with the DTI for grants and I supervised merger negotiations between the BMMG and UKITO that were resisted by some of their larger members later in the month. I was organising an Export IT seminar as its Chairman and was applauded and won some generous comments on my handling of the outcome, putting across an amazing degree of information to commercial officers from British Commercial Attaché’s throughout the world, it being our chance to tell them of the potential of British Micros. It may have come too late as already companies like Digico and Almarc were going into receivership and chains like Tesco and Curry’s had withdrawn from the specialist computer business. We fail to get the main DHSS contract but we get big orders from the Anglian Health Authority and are in line for the DHSS Dentist’s scheme. Back home, my attention was with my young family of children and ducks, our boat as we get so many duck eggs that we start to sell them! The alterations had been started to our new house and these involved the addition of a chimney and garden wall before my lovely fireplace then arrived and the new balcony was fitted. We also had the sad job of clearing out No 39 Gordon Road, I was off to Watford to study my family history and this took me to the town history library for records which showed John Broad as the Red Lion publican and also took the opportunity when in London to research my family connections in the late 19^th century. All this whilst Diana was having a hard pregnancy with our third child and lack of outcome for my sexual drive was necessitating me looking after myself increasingly often which fact was worrying me but I then found that she was still up for it when she found out which was a relief in both senses of the word!  My ‘sweet tooth’ was coming back to haunt me as I needed a visit to the Dentist for three fillings. My mother was admitted to The West Suffolk hospital for a successful hip operation and I took the family over to see her in Ward F4. We end the month with family colds and poor Debbie was seeing the doctor this month about her recent Asthma but it now enjoying my prawns! Daniel was growing up and got his own first Barclays Bank account. The news was of Thatcher escalating disputes with the GCHQ workers by banning their union membership such that senior staff who refuse to accept the situation will also be dismissed without redundancy or additional compensation and this despite the combined pressure of Labour and Tory MP’s to compromise on the dispute. Also of the lack of resources for Northern Ireland prisons led to the Prison Governors signing a petition criticising security levels. Unemployment was up to 3.2million and even tobacco companies’ sales have dropped by a quarter, which is one good thing and The Times goes in and out of production due to strikes. Now Thatcher is wanting public sector cuts and personal tax rebates too which she thinks will solve everything but this month brings news of UK miners and French lorry drivers’ unrest as if the present recession is giving rise to the civil unrest that I expected long ago. This, as the government’s popularity drops below that of Labour for the first time since before the Falklands War and with television documentaries showing Electricity Tariff Rises and fuel poverty in England in a very cold, foggy and frosty month. There is industrial action to support the GCHQ unions; public transport is disrupted and the Fleet Street Unions halted the presses. In Ireland, and after a gap of one year, the owners of the Shergar syndicate reveal that the great horse was kidnapped by the IRA and was slaughtered when the ransom of £2M was not paid. Better news as, in the televised final of the Winter Olympic games ice dance championship, Torville and Dean win the gold for Britain and, with it, the ultimate accolade of straight 6’s for artistic expression! Elsewhere Beirut became a real battlefield with UK citizens eventually evacuated ahead and US troops withdrawn due to the almost total collapse of President Gamiel’s Christian regime in the Lebanon as the Druze Militia win successive military battles.  There is also political conflict over the Indian occupation of Kashmir. Senior Soviet politician Mr Chirenko takes over as a safe pair of hands after the demise of their former president Andropov.