Breakfast with Debbie who also slept late and then the day on The Lady, securing a router and the correct bit to make my new canopy groove before inside to an aggrieved Diana as Geoffrey Howe calls off his South African visit as Botha refuses to see hime and the Haringey report on the Tottenham riots criticises police actions
A restless night trying to get the temperature right and also thinking of something, but I know not what. I dreamt that I bought somebody else’s swimming pool and that I was trying to make sense of owning a pool at their house by trying to rent it commercially to swimmers! Late getting washed and dressed and down a half hour after the appointed time. I collected Debbie on the way down, who had also slept late and so we had a ‘brown-eyes’ breakfast together that stopped her being upset at being left behind.
I read the morning paper and post after, until it was time to feed the doves. Then into St Neots in search of a tool that could cut a semi-circular groove for my carpentry on The Lady. To the Handyman who stocked nothing, then Fishers to buy the power tool known as a ‘router’, then to a shop in Huntingdon Street to buy the correct bit. I had a trial run in the workshop on a bit of the old wood that I was replacing, after some time assembling and adjusting the tool. Then morning coffee and so I went in to watch the 4th day of the Test cricket. England made a good start to their second innings with Gooch soon scoring 40 before being out. Then a quieter spell and so I went out to finish making the groove in the timber, which I did to perfection. Lunch came after I varnished the new piece before being ready to put it in. More cricket on TV after, to see the end of the morning’s session and then the news and the share prices fall a bit on the stock exchange. Back to it after and, by the end of the afternoon, I had plastered the inside of the new section with Sealastic and started to screw it home. Tea, more cricket to close of play, then, until dark, screwing the section home tight, filling the joints with sealing compound and cleaning off the excess, drilling and inserting wood-rot tablets, then gluing in dowels to conceal the screws and tablets. It was nearly 10pm and dusk when I put The Lady’s covers on and I only managed to water the flower baskets before coming in. Di was unhappy at my lateness and even unhappier at me being not quite late enough to let her get into bed and ignore me. She made my bedtime drink and then slunk off to a spare bedroom to sleep, which was rather unfriendly. She says, however, that she has a headache and is not feeling well. The weather was fine today, with a fresh westerly breeze. There was quite a lot of cloud, but, thankfully, no rain to interfere with my work. News was of the hangings going ahead in Malaysia, despite all, and of Sir Geoffrey Howe predictably having to call off his trip to South Africa, after Botha refused to see him as well. The Haringey report on the Tottenham Riots concludes that the police actions had a lot of deficiencies, but it remains to be seen whether the Home Secretary, who refused to set up his own enquiry, accepts this report’s independent findings.