A return to routine after my recovery and the rectification of our heating with more building work on our upstairs en-suite shower-room and the downstairs poll room tiling before lunch with Diana and Norma and listening to Debbie reading her books with Daniel returning from school, doing chores and bringing improved school assessments. This as PC Havelock was finally charged with shooting Mrs Cherry Groce that triggered the start of the Brixton riots
Slept well and first awake at 6.15am to remind Diana that this was her declared time to rise! She made the morning drinks and brought them after an hour or so and she reports that the heating controls had worked fine. I got up for a breakfast of porridge, but then went back to bed to read the morning post and paper. A large, but fairly insignificant mail – mainly computer journals, which is a feature of Thursdays. I read the computer papers (they contained the normal discouragements of this anti-industrial era), then the local papers, the letters and finally the FT.
In late morning I decided to get up and went downstairs to wash down and shave, before dressing for the first time in a while. I sat in the lounge to watch the TV and relax and was soon joined by my Father-in-law, who was visiting for the day. We chatted a while and then I took him around the building works to see progress since they last visited. The plumber was here today and was fitting the shower tray upstairs, before putting in the bidet and sink. Mr Cheeseborough and John were carrying on tiling downstairs and should be finished in a few days. Then to the kitchen, where we waited for lunch with Di and Mother-in-law. Di had prepared a nice meal of fried sausages, broccoli and spuds and we ate etc and chatted for a while. Then to the lounge and later to watch more snooker on TV until Daniel came home from school. I got him to put away my ducks and feed the doves which, though tired, he did. He brought home his latest assessments today and I noted an improvement – at achievement, but particularly of effort as well. I supervised his homework, had tea and then (as the boiler had gone out for the third time today) and I was feeling a bit tired, I decided to go back to bed for the evening. I watched a few documentary programmes on the portable colour TV on environmental and social matters, before the news came on. I also managed to read a little of Debbie’s story to her and, in turn, listened to her whilst she read a whole section of her reading book. The weather today was bitterly cold again, with a strongly reinforced and biting easterly wind that followed another hard frost. The sun is rising higher each day, though, and I am sure that, once the weather breaks, the transition and activities of plant/animal life etc will be very remarkable. News today of a customs crackdown on gold smuggling, designed to capitalise on the VAT element of gold trading and, worse of all, Johnson Matthey Bank at the centre of it. Since the collapse of JMB it has been run by the Bank of England and so there was yet another row in the Commons over it. Inspector Havelock, responsible for shooting Mrs Cherry Groce at the start of the Brixton Riots, was charged with unlawful wounding today. The DHSS moves at last today in respect of the cold weather payments. They have written to all offices urging staff to give priority to payments and publicising the scheme. The Liverpool Labour Party are meeting tonight, in spite of the party being suspended by central office, to discuss the threat of disciplinary action that will undoubtedly lead to suspensions of the activists. Unemployment was down today in December’s figures, but the underlying seasonal trend is still up. A Handsworth riot report, commissioned by Birmingham City Council, put unemployment as the main cause. Mrs Thatcher has told Ulster Unionists that their strike will not defer the Anglo/Irish pact. Weatherwise – more of the same.
Subsequent note; Cherry Groce later died of complications from the injury....