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Very full day driving to London whilst Norma looked after the children to go shopping before and after a Fountain Forestry lunch and presentation on investment and then tea at The Hyde park Serpentine Café before returning home to check on the dove chicks in mid-evening. This as Patrick McGee is convicted of the Brighton bombing, Bob Geldorf eventually gets the recognition he deserves and the ‘Eminent Persons Group’ aim to force Thatcher’s hand over South Africa
Awake and up in good time, showering and shaving well before breakfast. First, in fact, to the table and was pleased I was, as we were running out of milk and Daniel is quite capable of eating multiple bowls of cereal anyway. Out to feed the doves on plenty of seed and a large lump of lettuce in the wire cage I have made to retain it. I was glad I did, as it soon started to rain. I had time for an hour in the office tidying up my desk and working out my bank balances. Then Di’s mother and the cleaner arrived and we soon left by the Jaguar for our day in London. It rained more and more heavily as we drove and, despite our latish start, there was plenty of roadworks for improving the A1 at Hatfield and a remarkable amount of traffic. Eventually arrived to find a convenient car park beneath Cavendish Square and walked to Robert Sayle in Oxford Street and enjoyed a morning coffee and patisserie.
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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.
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Day of busy leisure opening up The Hayling View balconies for a fine day, tending an escaping dove chick, easing sticking doors, losing at chess to Daniel and swimming with the family before rushing David Tomlin back to the railway station as ex-Nazi Kurt Waldheim is elected Austrian President, the nuclear armaments disputes continue and The Hippies plan to stay put on a disused new Forest airstrip
Slept better and had a lay in as the only day that Daniel does not go to school. Showered and dressed in time for a nice fried breakfast and Debbie also had some bacon and egg, which is new for her. The boys went out on Aquabean this morning and were also persuaded to give Debbie a trip round the Island. I went round the house opening up all of the balconies, as it promised to be a fine and warm day at last and then saw from our bedroom balcony that one of the dove chicks was out of the nest box and hiding next to the chimney stack.
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Busy chilly and breezy day, tired after late night televised World Cup football, visiting St Ives for the auction viewing and then St Neots to collect Daniel before driving to St Albans to meet The Tomlin Family and collect David for the weekend; the boys enjoying the dinghy on the river and then everyone in the swimming pool after. Another South African security clampdown and appeals from Archbishop Tutu for peace, UK party differences over the Polaris nuclear deterrent and the Chileans being fingered for killing Olof Palme last year
Deadly tired after last night’s TV football and most reluctant to get up. A quarter of an hour late for breakfast and all of the family had already finished theirs. Put some seed out for the doves and then settled onto a veranda chair on the south balcony and started to read the Financial Times. Sheltered from this pesky north-west wind we have had this last couple of weeks, and in the sun, it was very pleasant and I would have insisted that we had coffee there, but Di wanted to set off for St Ives. The morning for the viewing for Tuesday’s antique auction, but, unlike yesterday, there was nothing of relevance and interest for me. Went to the farm and garden shop opposite and got an egg basket and new round feed hopper for the ducks, which is a great improvement on what I have now.