Day of light rain fighting my chest infection and planning for 1985 as Government sequestrators hunt for Miners Union funds and the Ethiopian air-lift gets underway
I awake still suffering from my chest infection and we decide to get a doctor’s appointment today. But first I read The Financial Times and my morning mail of SPD circulars and British Telecom share issue information. Breakfast of melon, toast and fruit juice and then washed and dressed to make a start at the office at 9.15am. Diana manages to secure a 2.50pm appointment at the Doctor’s and so I spend the morning filing papers and bringing my 1985 diary into action. I copy across all entries from my existing 1984 diary, the biographical details, addresses and also equalise information with my electronic Executel diary. Then back home to lunch when I notice that the weather has turned to light rain, but the doves have still not found a way into the holes in the dove cote and continue to stand on the ledges outside.
Then, after lunch, I completed our applications for a 9 ¾ % Government Stock tap issue and set off for my doctor’s appointment. He examined me thoroughly, listening to chest and back and also my memories of past troubles and then pronounced a simple infection only and that I had been unlucky so soon after the last one. A long course of antibiotics, expectorant for the cough, but also a precautionary X ray. I went off at once to Hinchingbrooke and was back in St Neots afterwards in time to collect the prescription from Calcutts Chemist and post my letters. News today of £3M of NUM funds being transferred to a Dublin bank account and is frozen by the Irish courts. The sequestrators have still not found a further £6M. It has given rise to some issues of legal principle which will be fought in the time to come. The Coal Board claims an increased drift of miners back to work. At a Miner’s Delegate Conference, the National Executive and delegates backed the leadership stand. The colliery management union met Ian McGregor for three hours to complain of the treatment of senior management. More court challenges soon at BL where the union’s strike held and only a few turned up to work. Under new employment laws a ballot is needed to replace the mass meeting, but the TUC refuses to accept this. In the US, Reagan is odds on favourite for re-election in a mass-media, showbiz campaign and Mondale clings on to straws. The Ethiopia airlift is now well underway and relief succeeding at last with help from East and West.