Family illness strikes and Debbie makes the breakfast, Pat takes her to school and then Norma and Charles come over to help me before an evening colouring in my Hayling View garden plan and hearing how Marilyn’s rabbits are eating our plants as France received the ritual Western condemnations for sinking the Rainbow Warrior although the CIA are now implicated in a Nicaraguan bombing and Liverpool remains a battlefield between local and central government
Another poor night and this time both Diana and Daniel were taken ill. First Daniel was sick all over his room and this triggered Diana off and so, when I woke up, they were both ill and Di was unable to make the breakfast or get the children to school. Debbie and I made breakfast and she was good to get herself dressed and her lunch box ready for school. I took the cordless phone to Di so that she could phone for our neighbour, Pat, to get Debbie to school and for her parents to come over earlier to help out. Daniella did her bit by staying asleep a while and then Debbie got her up and fed her on bread & butter and rice crispies! Daniel was not fit for school and spent the day at home. Unfortunately, it was the only day that Joan does not come, but soon Di’s parents were here and set to work.
My back was still sore and I could do a minimum of work, but I showed them both around the garden and they helped me identify a few new plants. Another gloriously sunny day and this warm spell is proving really nice. It takes until lunch for the mist to clear, but then the sun gradually comes out and warms everything up. The builders arrived in force today, delivering a skip and setting to and demolishing a few walls. They relieved the first chap, who had by now taken out all of the cabinets. In late afternoon I went into town and got a fair set of felt-tip pens and, after the Jacksons had left, I spent the evening colouring the front and rear garden patios of my Hayling View plan. It is looking quite good as I am finding to each shrub, labelling it and painting it in the exact colours, but it tends to merge into greys and greens from a distance. The gardener mowed the front garden lawn today and complained that the rabbits of Marilyn were eating all of the bedding plants again. This is proving quite a problem of logistics and relationships. Both Daniel and Diana slept all afternoon and most of the evening and so I worked on my Hayling View plan until about 11.00pm, before making myself a bedtime drink and listening to the TV news. In the news today both the UK and US have condemned the French sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and, in another indictment of security forces, US journalists are blaming the CIA for a bombing on the Costa Rica/Nicaragua boarder, in which Nicaragua rebel leader, Eden Pastora, was injured. Much film about the crisis in Liverpool with Kenneth Barker, Environment Secretary, refusing to meet the Liverpool leaders until they cut their spending, and the others refusing to change their plans for council housing building and poverty relief. In Mexico the last few victims are rescued alive, including two more babies, buried for 5 days. The stock market sinks again, but gilts rise at the falling US dollar; that will make UK exports impossible, but keep the inflation rate down.