Some progress on house repairs after a slow start and then screening our new bedding plants from attacks by our doves preceded by phone arrangement to sell £1/4m-worth of Kode shares as the US shuttle disaster report is published, journalists join printers in boycotting Murdoch’s Wapping and both in South Africa and The New Forest vulnerable Blacks and Hippies alike are savagely deprived of shelter as their homes are wrecked as a sober reminder of extreme right-wing politics which should be learnt by Austria when choosing their President!
Morning tea and then a slow start, as I stayed in bed to read the weekend’s newspapers. Breakfast in my pyjamas, then up to shower and shave quickly. By the time I had arrived downstairs, the carpenter had come to put the hinges on the balcony doors – the old ones had proved too week to stop the doors sticking. I worked on successfully adjusting all of the internal doors, but he made less progress, breaking one of the cast iron hinges and failing to stop the other door sticking. I started the morning by going out to the doves – they had been attacking the bedding plants again and so I put out some lettuce and later rigged up a mesh screen to keep the fragments on the bird table. Back and fro between the doves and the house, as I also adjusted both of the girl’s bedroom doors to fit properly by taking a strip off of the bottom. I tried to contact Nicholas de Zoete to discuss the sale of our Kode shares, but he was out all day and so I had morning coffee and settled down to watch the test match.
A depressing performance by the England team, as their batsmen collapsed today and left the Indian team to score only 130 or so to win tomorrow. Gower seems certain to lose the English captaincy, scoring only 8 against Mike Gatting’s 40. Lunch of our beef from yesterday with a salad and we think that this is the best beef we have ever had. More door adjusting this afternoon, as I work on all of the door catches to make them fit properly. I phone my Mum to invite them to visit on Friday and to arrange to pay for her Parker Care chair as a birthday present. Once the girls came home, Di took Debbie and Della into swim, whilst I stood over Daniel and got him to do some revision. He was most reluctant, but I insisted. He now has exams in less than two weeks’ time. It was quite warm today, but very windy and so I had a big job skimming the surface of the swimming pool and cleaning out the filter baskets. It will soon need a backflush and vacuum again, but it is worth it to see the family enjoying themselves and learning to swim well at the same time. Worked on after tea and got a return phone call from de Zoete at last. He will try to sell our Kode holding for over £2/share tomorrow, which would actually raise £250,000! Out to lock everything up and put the ducks away. My new duck feeding bowl and egg basket are proving most satisfactory. In late and then a false alarm on external channel 6 is a mystery, as I assume it is to do with all of the work we have done on the balcony doors today. Up late updating my journal and watching the TV news. The US shuttle disaster enquiry report has at last been officially published, with the expected conclusions:- the crash was caused by a design fault in the solid rocket booster ‘O’ ring seals and there are major defects in NASAs management, safety and communications structures. The report did not tackle political pressures to meet military and commercial launch schedules, however, and some observers see this influence as critical to safety criteria. In a brutally sad end to the Hippy convoy, police, numbering hundreds, dispossess them of their ‘un-roadworthy’ vehicles and insist they walk off their site and to unknown destinations. They are now without a roof over their head and are very bitter, after the seven day’s grace period has been disregarded. There is a continuing international regret over the appointment of ex-Nazi, Kurt Waldheim, as Austria’s new President and the Austrian Chancellor resigns. In a blow to Rupert Murdoch, journalists on the Sun newspaper have voted to stop going into the new Wapping plant. In South Africa, six people die at the Crossroads squatter’s camp, as right-wing, black vigilantes attacked their rivals, leaving everything waste in their path. Thousands were made homeless by the fires and destruction. Another dull day tomorrow, with some rain, but at least the wind is due to veer westerly and drop in speed from its gusty strength of today.