Day working on the sale of Comart, my own finances and Microcomputer Industry affairs as 40 striking miners are held in Scotland
Up at 8.00am and to personally prepare the morning drinks and serve them in bed to the family together. Then the kids had prepared the breakfast and we all ate as usual. To the office at Grove House for 9.15am and to retrieve my water jug and work out my priorities. Then phone calls on Comart, BMMG and personal business at last ordering my new phone and answering machine. I also touch base with Nigel Smith, now returned from holiday, and make arrangements for tomorrow’s dinner meeting prior to the BMMG Council Meeting the following day. Then by ‘phone arrangement’ off quickly to see Roger Brittain before lunch, and, over an hour or so, to decide in outline how to divide up the £2 ½ M investment portfolio.
Then home for a salad lunch and pot of tea which was very soothing for my sore throat – I had been sneezing all morning with a head cold. Back to Grove House and to phone back Richard James who has been discussing the completion arrangements with Ted Randell of Kode. The outcome is a letter which will be copied to me that proposes the meeting in St Neots and restricts the business to a simple top-company director’s meeting and not all of the subsidiaries as requested. The matters of bank mandates and registered offices will be left to future meetings to change if desired.
Then I heard the news of the financial difficulty of FTS (Future Technology Systems) and the voluntary liquidation of Shelton Instruments. I phoned Sir Monty Finniston’s office who has taken over the executive chair of FTS and offered my help via his secretary. Then called Nigel again and briefed him before having to rush off to my Financial Advisers. To the Post Office to buy for both Diana and myself £5,000 worth of 27th issue National Savings Certificates and then on to the Bank to discuss arrangements and rates for putting my £1.8m on Friday’s treasury deposit.
Home to a family tea and after to take a call from Sir Monty who is grateful for my offer of help but will take until Friday to review things. Then to put the ducks away, watch some television with Daniel and so to bed. News today of more trouble at the Scottish pits with 40 held and also of Neil Kinnock’s fighting defence of Labour MP democratic election procedures. More of the same in the EEC as Germany’s Hans-Dietrich Genscher complains of Britain’s eternal budget wrangling as leading the EEC to decline.