Eventful, if dry and anticyclonic, day ended listening to cuckoo and thrush after rescuing a New Zealand boat crew suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning, attending antique auctions at St Neots and Wisbech, studying Mepal bridge, made famous by the Mascotte cruise in 1894 and tending my ducks and doves as 40,000 Ethiopian refugees two miners are given life for the concrete block manslaughter and Francis Pym claims to be strengthening the Tory party by opposing Thatcher’s excesses
A late night reading the local papers and then a late morning dawdling along as I ate breakfast, read the paper, and listened to radio programmes on parliament, business receivership and natural history. Eventually, at 10.00am, having washed and dressed, out to the birds. The baby dove is near feathered, with white tufts, but the ducks only laid 9 eggs overnight. Still, with 5 dozen sold lately, there is no need to take any duck eggs to the market. The post was late too and no messages of note at the office. Off by car alone, then, first to St Neots to look at the furniture auction lots and then the long drive through Huntingdon, Chatteris and March to Wisbech for the viewing day of an important antique auction. Eventually got there and parked my car in the town centre, walked around and bought an auction catalogue from Grounds (£1) and a street map of the fens (£1.20). I took lunch at a self-service café and then drove to the viewing hall and spent about 3 hours looking round. A fair range of quality antiques – perhaps too high quality for me – and I did not find anything worth returning tomorrow for. Best was a drawing set (but not as good as mine) and an antique furniture maker’s tool chest, full of block planes for copings and gougers. Having looked thoroughly at all the silver and furniture to increase my knowledge, I set off eating a vanilla cock-ice and eventually found Elm Road and the Old Coaching House antique showrooms. Asking for plain, antique, fiddle flatware, the helpful lady directed me to a drawer with a few pieces in it. No table or tea spoons of interest, but I found an SH/DC salt or mustard spoon of late period and bought that for £12.
The old dear hardly wanted to let me go and delayed me in conversation over the great Bunker Hunt silver era; but eventually away and drove for home. On the way I made a detour to Mepal and looked at the bridge. The 1894 ‘Mascotte’ photo collage that I picked up at St Ives auction – featured this bridge as the starting point for their voyage. If it was the same scene, it had changed a great deal, for a large concrete road bridge had replaced the wooden walkway seen in the photograph. The pub, if the same, is called the ‘Three Pickerels’ (baby pike). A fast drive home and too late to organise a barbeque. It had been a very warm and sunny day today, at last. Home to a tea of hamburgers with ice cream to follow, then to take Daniel to task over his classwork as he claimed no prep. Interrupted by a worried Eddie from a few doors up, who tells of a crisis. A New Zealander had staggered to his door overcome with carbon monoxide fumes, with his wife down under at their boat in the same condition. It seems that they had hired a cruiser that had an exhaust leak and were overcome. We unmoored The Lady, took off downstream and took the casualties in tow; eventually mooring them at Eddies plot so as to be reached from our landing stage. A doctor had been called and administered oxygen and made the lady sick. They recovered and I put The Lady to bed and tended the ducks and doves. The doves were hungry tonight as I had been out all day and, immediately afterwards, they fed the chick and settled down for the night. Out after in the setting sun to write my journal for the first time on my riverside patio and new garden furniture, before in to sort some papers and catch up on the news. The two Welsh miners, who dropped a concrete block onto a taxi driver and killed him, were convicted of murder today by a 10-2 majority and got life imprisonment. The third defendant was cleared and walked free and denied that they intended to kill anybody. Francis Pym declared tonight that he intended to strengthen the conservative party and cites today’s opinion polls, which put the conservative party third, as the need to change course. David Steel predicted that this share of votes would give the Alliance 166 MPs in a general election and the pressure is on the Prime Minister to respond. The Bradford football fire victims were identified today. One family lost a grandfather, father and son; another, a father and two sons. Wembley Stadium has been examined ‘with a fine tooth comb’ by fire officers and pronounced safe for Saturday’s FA Cup final. In Ethiopia, 40,000 refugees have trekked back to a relief camp that had been previously burnt to try and disperse them back to their homes. In a vote today NACODS, the pit deputies, voted for an overtime ban to protest at the Coal Board closing pits without undertaking the review procedure that was honourably negotiated during the dispute. The government is proposing widespread changes to the public order laws. The weather forecast to stay dry and anticyclonic, but cooler breezes will prevail in East Anglia. The day ends with the sounds of a thrush singing in the riverside trees as it began with a cuckoo this morning, calling as it flew between crack willows on the meadow opposite.