Myself and my contractors trying to work on a bitterly cold day between two freezing nights which froze the River Great Ouse in one go as the NGA assets are sequestrated by the courts, leaving striking print workers without support as East/West spy swaps seem to be proceeding and more suggestions that Nelson Mandela would be next
Awake to my morning tea on an obviously cold morning. In fact, temperatures down to -10degC last night and the day altogether the coldest in February for 40 years. The paper and then breakfast of toast and fruit juice, whilst gazing out. The river had frozen in a single night (it normally takes several of advancing ice packs), the trees and exposed grass covered with a rhyme of ice crystals and a haze in the air that did not let the sun through until late morning. Showered, shaved and dressed and let Di go out to the shops in St Neots, whilst I lit the fire in the office and resumed sorting my papers.
Progress painfully slow again and the whole process quite depressing. Even with the fire, the slight N. easterly air movement (it was hardly a breeze) filtered through onto my feet and ankles and made them quite numb with cold. The carpenter came to patch the ceiling in the hall and build up most of space under the stairs with cupboards. A builder put a ventilator in from the changing room to the outside via the pool toilet, but put in in too low for my taste. The pool contractors came and fiddled around with wire reinforcing bars and moved more stones into the cavity, but the ice defeated their pumps and they could not achieve a great deal. Pete also looked rather forlorn in the bitter cold and so I got him to tidy up the inner garage and move up some logs from the riverside, where they had been cut. The soil down there too solid to be moved or worked. Coffees from Joan and Di and then a lunch of bread rolls filled with cold turkey from yesterday. Back to it this afternoon and by then had finished most of my personal files, but left a good deal more in the way of odd items to properly store. Out at 4.00pm as the hazy sun had gone in and the doves were roosting. They still fed hungrily, but I could not get the ducks to venture from their pool of clear water to come to the slipway. I checked on The Lady and found the fan heater working well to protect her. It does not give out enough heat for domestic use, but is fine to keep the chill off the boat. A nice tea of steak and kidney pie and then an evening tending the family and updating my journal. News today is of the High Court ruling the NGA in contempt and sequestrating all £17 million pounds of their assets as well as applying a fine of £25,000. As Brenda Dean, their General Secretary, says this is a swinging attack on the union and shows how one-sided trade union legislation has become as they are hampered from supporting their members. Bad news also at Westland, where the European Consortium has failed predictably to buy the 20% of shares needed to block the Sikorsky deal in their tender. The outcome still hangs in the balance, with the Board back as favourites to make this US alliance. The East/West spy swap is on for Berlin tomorrow and it seems Russian dissident, Anatoly Shcharansky will be released, which seems to clear the way for South Africa to release Nelson Mandela in a strange trade-off. Chaos still reigns in the Philippines as the National Assembly (the Marcos-run parliament) takes over plans for an official count of the results, but neutral observers discredit the process due to the ballot rigging and interference with the ballot boxes. In the meantime, both sides claim victory. The cold weather affected the motorways again and crashes killed four, including a mother and her 7 and 12 year old children. It is fashionable for the police and media to blame mad drivers, but I think it is a design and systems problem and humans just react predictably in the situation. The answer is more use of trains for freight and long journeys and better equipped cars and roads for the lighter load of essential vehicles. In a rare item of good news, the Children-in-need TV appeal raised a record £4.4 million – double last year. Lastly, despite ministers jockeying for position, Thatcher states her will to lead the party for another parliament and, in response to calls for a different leadership style, says that ‘at 60, I am too old to change’. God help us! More weather forecasts of -8degC to -14degC in East Anglia tonight and the temperature predicted to stay below freezing all day tomorrow.