A hot month but a very successful one for the birth of my our baby Daniella, at the same time as the sale of my company Comart when I also worked on The Lady and tending our laying ducks before starting on my independent industry role whilst Diana was ill and recovering as the miners’ strike and peace protests dominate domestic politics
This was a beautifully sunny month, but too hot for comfort in working until the weather broke much later. I had started it by writing up Comart and Byte Shop Review Meeting minutes as the Group Chairman and ended it as its outgoing Chairman by drafting all of the staff announcements, member and director’s meetings that were needed to complete the sale of the group. Kode PLC continued to present problems for the Comart sale right up to the last moment. Then there was the hectic day of the 3rd July, when the deal was done to sell Comart and Diana gave birth to Della, our third child.
Later in the month, the final sale completion is done and the money was received. I had celebrated by going with Daniel to buy a new 4.2litre Jaguar Sovereign in British Racing Green and then buying him a new racer bike! After the deal was done, each day brought more press and radio interviews. I drove to visit Rob Wilmot at his Thames riverside home and started to get more involved in Industry matters. On the domestic front, I had several walks with the children to St Neots Common and hamburger barbeques by the river and outings with Daniel and his friend Paul on the pitch and put courses and small boats for hire there. Once Diana had recovered, I took the family visit to the East of England show to see the heavy horses. In the aftermath of the birth, Diana has a crisis with mastitis and an enlarged breast and I use to the police to call out the Boots dispensing chemist to get the medicine that she needed and I nursed her through that problem until she could cope. There were health problems with my mum as she has a blood clot on her lung until she recovered. After making something of a habit of it, I was taking it easy on the wine with meals and I had a bad bout of summer ‘flu towards the end of the month and during the heatwave and was rendered quite ill for a few days. During all of this, I had been sanding, filling the cracks and varnishing The Lady, hacking down stinging nettles by the river and trimming hawthorn bushes and then sawing down a row of conifers in front of 39 Gordon Road, which property was then fitted out and became my new office at the end of the month. News was of the Government condemning miners’ intimidation and counter claims by Arthur Scargill of the government using the police for the same thing as Police powers are increased in a new Bill. Now, the miners experience less support from the steelworkers but more from the lorry-drivers as their union expels any strike breakers. Thatcher’s government meet to plan the end of the GLC but defers this for now and they also suffer a defeat trying to ban GCHQ unions. They sell Sealink Ferries and also plan to sell off the National Bus Company. Sterling hovers around an all time low of $1.30/£ and the bank rate increases to 12%. British talks with the USSR about the USA response to calls for banning space weapons. There are 150 arrests at peace protest and Iraq attack Iranian ships again. This month saw a bad fire at York minster and negotiations with Argentina over the Falklands break down