A dry and mild month favouring the Hayling View building and landscaping during which we still find time for one last boat trip and a stay in a London hotel but I was suffering from a back injury for much of it and retired fully from Computer Industry affairs but could concentrate on my video filming and archiving as an outcome. All sorts of conflict with the PLO after they planned several terror incidents after their suffering at the hands of Israel and the crisis in South Africa deepens with ever more government repressive measures and resulting casualties. Back home Thatcher keeps Britain alone out of political and economic measures to respond to that and runs foul of Commonwealth and The Prince of Wales who is also concerned at the many unemployment riots that culminate in the murder of PC Blakelock in my old district of Tottenham where I was brought up. East/West nuclear arms talks shed a ray of hope but still Cruise missiles are deployed in Holland despite mass demonstrations and soon will be in the UK too.
And so ends the month of October – an unusually dry and mild month for the time of year, with plenty of sun during the shortening days of autumn. The builders have now been on site for a month, have done most of the inside work on the house next door and will be entering this side any day now to get the rest of the conversion under way. We have now bought Bill’s plot and taken down a number of the small trees and shrubs, forming a good number of logs for eventual burning as fuel and also a large pile of foliage for November the 5th’s celebrations. The earth from the building excavations has been put into the hollow and we will soon have this new plot ready for the arrival of a workshop. My three new doves have arrived and second colony established in the riverside garden, in their retaining wire mesh cage. The rabbit incursion was warded off but a deer buck made a celebrity appearance. The kitchen, and its appliances were ordered and swimming pool project design finalised. The family are well, and we manage a boat trip and a hotel weekend in London but recent videos of Diana swimming have resolved her to visit the slimming clinic for advice and she may actually follow it this time.
My back problems still persist and I wait for my first appointment with the physiotherapist with increasing impatience. It certainly affected our recent trip to London and is a particular problem on the eve of all of our house moving, where so much rearrangement will be necessary. We managed a last boat trip before The Lady was laid up for the winter. I have now ceased all industry work for the time being, which is a shame given that my friend and successor Nigel Smith was taken to hospital after a heart attack but, without an office or the health and enthusiasm to pursue it, it is better to leave the tasks to others rather than try to do it and fail and the BMMG LAN meeting faltered as a direct result. Apart from these minor problems, my plans continue to come to fruition and my increased appearance at home has strengthened my relationships with the children and helped them to develop and mature into quite well balanced individuals. A new preoccupation with the current video technology records this progress. Elsewhere, the country and the world still stagnate with a rising tide of unemployment, unrest and extremism. Isreal attack the PLO and Tripoli is destroyed and an Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro with 400 people on board is hijacked by Abbas’s Palestinian PLF. US fighters force down the Boeing 737 with the PLF hi-jackers aboard as an outcome. The South Africans develop an even more repressive regime that cannot prevail. as they decide to hang black poet/leader Benjamin Moloise which incenses the UN and the Commonwealth Leaders Conference but Thatcher still resists sanctions as her Majesty, the Queen hosts Commonwealth dignitaries aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia and tries to restore our reputation. The Prince and Princess of Wales are interviewed and Charlie’s informal and off the record comments on the inequalities in Britain are revealed and his call for an enquiry into the City riots is rejected . Winnie Mandela condemns Thatcher as a ‘Fascist’. And the South Africans extend the State of Emergency to Cape Town and rounds up scores of anti-apartheid opponents and then starts suppressing press coverage. The deflationary economic and right-wing policies of the Thatcher government still lack the necessary condemnation of the electorate and I do not see change coming soon. As a result unemployment reaches 3.35million. 300 youths rioted in Toxteth, and then more on the Broadwater estate in my old district of Tottenham, the latest trouble spot, as Winston Wilcott has been charged with PC Blakelock’s murder Peter Walker, the last moderate in Thatcher’s Tory government warns of the dangers. A succession of motor way pileups with many deaths highlight the dangers of fog on the new roads which culminate in the worst ever motorway pile-up thag kills 13 and injures 35. Thousands mass for anti-nuclear demonstrations against Cruise missile in Britain and Holland but the Dutch government agree to deploy them in the end after US pressure. Back home, 28 GCHQ servicemen charged with spy offences were acquitted after a waste of £4m persecuting them at Thatcher’s whim. Out of all this gloom, some hope emerges from the US/USSR arms limitation negotiations because the Russians seem to be serious and worried about the US ‘Star Wars’ technology.