Working at home on my alarm system and checking on The Lady, the ducks and doves in the cold and frosty weather as trouble rumbles on in Haiti and The Philippines with Papa Doc Duvalier and Marcos in equal bad odour but Tory Grandees use the Young Conservative Conference to make coded attacks on the wounded Thatcher and Bristow’s claim of being offered a knighthood for cooperation resonates.
A much better night’s sleep and then up to my normal breakfast. Washed, dressed and shaved early so as to reroute my burglar alarm after the alterations to the kitchen to hall door. I was expecting the builders to return to do some plastering and so completed the rerouting early, but they did not come and so I had plenty of time and a clear run. I then altered the security safe combination to my private number and tried it out a few times and it worked well. I also filled up my data safe with critically important items, but left the fire file (the fireproof document filing cabinet) until tomorrow.
By 11.00am finished these chores and went to let the ducks out and feed the doves. Diana had returned from her shopping expedition and Della had slept all morning. I worked on until lunch, then read today’s Financial Times, as Diana collected Daniel from the Kimbolton school bus and brought home plaice and chips from the fish & chip shop for lunch. This afternoon I settled in the lounge to watch a rugby league challenge cup tie between Hull and Hull KR, which was exciting, but a bit one-sided. Out after, in late afternoon, to put the ducks away and inspect The Lady to see how well the fan heater was melting the snow and ice that shrouds it. By now the frost had already formed on the grass again at the start of what is bound to be a cold night. Inside to tea of prawns and bread, but Debbie for once did not want to have some, which is a pity. This evening, I put up the new 30-position key cabinet on the wall in the rear hall and then spent a frustrating time searching out, trying and labelling keys. The chore was magnified by breaking finger nail on scores of small rings, running round to try them and missing sufficient spares to stock the pegs easily. Worked late and, very tired, sat in front of the TV trying to summon sufficient energy for some other chores, but failed. To bed, where slept very soundly for the night. News today was of the continued unrest in two regions – Haiti, where ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier had arrived in France with 22 family members for a temporary exile and in the Philippines, where President Marcos and her challenger were deep in mutual recriminations over electoral impropriety as the street violence and polling station tussles grow. Coded speeches at the Conservative Party’s Young Conservative Conference by Peter Walker and John Biffen, setting out different emphasis to Toryism than Margaret Thatcher and Michael Heseltine will go even further tomorrow in a speech on his ‘caring’ policies. The Westland affair rumbles on with the papers concentrating on Alan Bristow’s claim that two Tory Peers offered to sponsor him for a Knighthood and they attack him for not releasing their names.