A cold, wet, windy and miserable month recovering after our early summer away on holiday and a similarly miserable domestic economy riven by hardship and division as Thatcher holds out against football violence, industrial unrest, Irish activists, South African sanctions and the aftermath of a ruined Commonwealth Games; but the whole family is fit and healthy although cracks start to show between Diana and I as she wants to spend time away and I struggle to catch up with work at home. Shocking news of the Chernobyl Nuclear blast reveals 31 dead and 200 seriously irradiated
And so ends the month of August. After the sun and dryness of July, and with high hopes for this continuing, this has been a stormy wet and windy month and there is a definite autumnal air to the weather at the moment. The tail end of Hurricane Charlie that is causing all of this wind and rain and the coldest August for many years and has already led to five dead on the sea and rivers. The new month finds us all well, with no serious illness or conditions, but we are feeling the strain of the children’s school holiday. We have enjoyed a nice holiday on The Lady and in Great Yarmouth with some highlights such as taking Mr Wells’ Glenda Margaret to the Scroby Sands and hiring a day boat for a tour on The Norfolk Broads. I also made my own nostalgic walk around Horsey. We then returned to tend the house as the cleaner and gardener took their breaks but we were inundated by Daniel’s friends, both male and female. The boys had Clare and Heather around after which Daniel went to Clare’s house to ‘watch videos’! I have plenty to do these days, with the odd jobs and maintenance that the Hayling View provides, and was also tussling with the financial arrangements for the children’s trusts. Di likes to spend as much time shopping and away from the house as possible, which is a bit worrying.
There also followed a divisive day with Diana hosting friends and me, feeling out of it, rowing off to go fishing to get back late for tea but then my thoughts centred on the news that Bill’s wife Vi had recently died of her mental illness. Again, Diana and I go our separate ways as she drives to Cambridge with the girls and I stay back to revive a poorly dove chick and look after Daniel as we fend for ourselves. The children are enjoying a strong social stage to their childhood, as they love playing with their friends and staying at one another’s houses. In July and early August I had never seen the river so busy, but the traffic has stopped dead with the poorer weather. I am still organising the work for our river bank, but we are now proud owners of the complete set of river plots needed to make our games lawn. I have also begun researching Little Paxton history in Cambridge University Library after acquiring my Harraden pictures. Elsewhere, there is much less happiness about. The UK economic priorities of this government leaves the unemployed without hope and future, but the August recess of public life means that little is happening. Soon we will have the political conference season, the cabinet re-shuffle, that will leave Ulster and Industry departments in more confusion, and then the scene will hot up. The American tourists take advantage of the low pound and still flock to East Anglia and make our outings more congested. In my old industry, more doom and gloom, as one computer company after another goes to the wall, the computer retail and distribution channels in a complete mess, and export hopes ending with the demise of Export IT. This agency, which I helped to support, is now starved of government funding and has gone into liquidation. A chink of light as North Sea crude rises $4 per barrel to $15 following OPEC cuts to their joint production from 20m to 17m barrels a day but £4Bn is knocked off the Stock Exchange in its biggest one day fall with lots of bad news at home and abroad. Norfolk’s Lotus car manufacturer threaten to move to Holland due to better grants for manufacturing. The government’s £15m loan to the Cornish Tin industry is too little too late. At least Rolls Royce get the BA 747 engine order, but the Tories now make cuts to English schools, and Kenneth Baker fools nobody with his exaggerated teacher training claims. This month, Labour release plans for an Environment Ministry, which would be novel. After the wreckage of the Commonwealth Games, this week’s European Championships have been a pleasant relief but Thatcher faced angry protests at The Commonwealth Games and suffered the indignity as a Japanese offered to meet the losses of the Games spoilt by her. HM the Queen then hosts a Commonwealth leaders dinner to try and heal rifts but Thatcher’s South African deal is rebuffed at the Commonwealth Leaders Conference and then Mugabe of Zimbabwe pronounces an all-out trade war with South Africa in retaliation for their spiteful response to the Commonwealth nations over the debate. A chink in the South African censorship laws reveal the extent of torture and suppression as South African courts rule for freedom for once. US President Reagan now has to cope with both Houses of Congress supporting sanctions against South Africa as four more blacks are shot there. South Africa’s Helen Suzman wants an inquiry into atrocities as 13 more blacks die in Soweto at the hands of security forces. Back home, 100 Hong Kong British soldiers are sacked after a brawl on the Queen Mother’s 86th Birthday and then she too is taken to Hospital later in the month which, followed by news about HM The Queen having a heart check-up, is a worry but they are both fine in the end. Thatcher has her finger operation and leaves hospital with her arm in a sling and Regan has urology tests but they both recover. John Fleming, the robber implicated in the Brinks Mat Gold robbery, is extradited to face prosecution and in London violent crime figures are rising with rapes, muggings and attacks leading the way. 150 scooterists are arrested on the Isle of Wight and the Birmingham Formula 3000 road race is abandoned due to cars crashing in the rain. Short Brothers in Belfast, a Protestant reserve, orders its staff to stop sectarian actions at work on pain of dismissal but then workers walk out over the removal of Protestant symbols from this Belfast factory. Thatcher and Tebbit returned to Brighton for the re-opening of The Grand Hotel, as the Irish nationalists bombed two police stations and threatened to bomb others. This as thousands of Nationalists march to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Internment and 100 Belfast prisoners starting a hunger strike. The England cricket team seem to have hit form in time for the winter tour to Australia but the football season has started with more crowd violence as a West Ham/ Man United ferry football fight puts back the chances of England’s European football ban being lifted and we seem doomed to stay out of European competitions for 3-5 years, unless thing change. The Kensington shop explosion was caused by a bomb which killed the anti-Ayatolla owner’s son. Elsewhere, Boy George’s American song writer, Rudetsky, dies in his mansion of a drug overdose, the US lose a CIA agent to the USSR, the Libyans are suspected of attacks on British bases and a bank siege in Finland ends up badly. It is now the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall which was marked as Anatoly Shcharansky’s family are given permission to leave the USSR. The Head of MI5 is revealed as a Russian spy and the Tamil ‘boat people’ were smuggled from Hamburg where there have been arrests. British climber Mrs Julie Tullis is discovered to have died three days after reaching the K” summit and all but two are missing from the seven man team. 60 are feared dead as a Sudanese airliner is shot down by rebels, British Nimrod and American Boeing is on for the new AWAC’s order. On the nuclear front, anti-nuclear protesters are banned from test sites but are vindicated when Sellafield re-processing is halted due to sky-high radiation levels. Then news emerges of 31 dead and more than 200 people seriously irradiated as the result of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster. The East/West Summits and visits are now all lined up with nuclear arms control the elusive prize. However, a squadron of US F111 aircraft arriving in the UK and an aircraft carrier being stationed off of the Libya coast herald an attack soon. A former US postal worker shoots and kills 15 colleagues after being sacked in Oklahoma. A horror is unfolding in Cameroon as 1,500 people die from a volcano spewing toxic gas on to them, with thousands of their cattle dead. There is another blaze in France as 24,000 acres are alight with 5,000 workers trying to put out the forest fire. The tragic death struggles in South Africa, Ireland and between Iraq and Iran continue and the African famine is no better, with the worst plague of locusts for 25 years and other natural disasters adding to the misery.